Reading all this chatter about the "Ballet Mecanique" reminds me of
a visit I had to the workshop of Herr Hofbauer in Gottingen, Germany,
awhile back.

Herr Hofbauer and his wife were most gracious to us unannounced visiting
firemen.  Hofbauer is primarily a church organ builder but has turned
out many crank organs.  They spent all morning showing us around his
laboratory and production line.

In his laboratory he was developing MIDI schemes to play MM Instruments
together.  He demonstrated a radio link for an accordion, a link to a
Caribbean steel drum and links to multiple crank organs.  He also
invited Caroyl and me to a concert he was coordinating down in Augsburg
which was to hook up 35 of his customers who had brought their Hofbauer
crank organs from all over Europe to be in this concert.

He daisy-chained all 35 organs with a coiled MIDI cable.  His master
program assigned various parts through different MIDI channels to like-
sounding crank organs.  (He was a little vague about technical details
so some of this is speculation.)  It was the darndest thing I have ever
seen.  As each owner arrived, they plugged him in and then, before doing
any testing, started the concert.  The conductor stood in back with his
organ which contained the master program and issued the order for all
to start cranking.

The results were spectacular.  A standing audience in the large square
listed attentively for an hour and a half and then gave them a standing
ovation (of course, it was the only kind they could give) and demanded
an encore.

The five Augsburg members of the orchestra had their own little group.
They sold me a CD of a classical music concert that they had recorded.
It is surprising how much better even 5 crank organs sound while playing
classical music then just one.

Herr Hofbauer talked about bringing his orchestra to Ohio in March of
this year but I have never heard any more about it.

Jim Westcott