A serinette is a type of mechanical musical instrument

Musical instrument

A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...

 consisting of a small barrel organ

Barrel organ

A barrel organ is a mechanical musical instrument consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated...

. It appeared in the first half of the 18th century in eastern France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, and was used to teach tunes to canaries

Domestic Canary

The Domestic Canary, often simply known as the canary, is a domesticated form of the wild Canary, a small songbird in the finch family originating from the Macaronesian Islands ....

. Its name is derived from the French serin, meaning “canary.”

Serinettes are housed in a wooden case, normally of walnut

Walnut

Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...

, and typically measuring 265 × 200 × 150 mm. The instrument is played by turning a crank mounted on the front. The crank pumps a bellows

Bellows

A bellows is a device for delivering pressurized air in a controlled quantity to a controlled location.Basically, a bellows is a deformable container which has an outlet nozzle. When the volume of the bellows is decreased, the air escapes through the outlet...

 to supply air to the pipes

Organ pipe

An organ pipe is a sound-producing element of the pipe organ that resonates at a specific pitch when pressurized air is driven through it. Each pipe is tuned to a specific note of the musical scale...

, and also turns a wooden barrel by means of gears. Driven into the barrel are brass pins and staples with which the pieces of music are encoded. Mounted over the barrel is a bar carrying wooden keys connected to valves by vertical wooden rods. As the barrel turns, the pins and staples lift the keys, in turn opening the valves to let air into the pipes, which are located at the rear of the instrument. Tunes are selected by first lifting the bar carrying the keys, then shifting the barrel along its length. This brings a different set of pins and staples in line with the keys.

Most serinettes contain one rank of ten metal pipes at 2' pitch and play eight different tunes. Each tune lasts about 20 seconds and is normally of quick tempo and contains considerable ornamentation

Ornament (music)

In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes that are not necessary to carry the overall line of the melody , but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central note...

. A paper label pasted inside the lid listed the tunes available; one of the most common was “La petite chasse.”

Serinette construction was remarkably consistent; instruments built a hundred years apart by different makers can bear a strong similarity. Many builders worked in and around Mirecourt

Mirecourt

Mirecourt is a commune in the Vosges department in Lorraine in northeastern France. Mirecourt is known for lace-making and the manufacture of musical instruments, particularly those of the violin family...

 in the Lorraine region

Lorraine (région)

Lorraine is one of the 27 régions of France. The administrative region has two cities of equal importance, Metz and Nancy. Metz is considered to be the official capital since that is where the regional parliament is situated...

 of France.

The sound of the serinette is similar to that of the piccolo

Piccolo

The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...

.

External links

• Anonymous serinette in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Website of Bernard Pin, restorer of serinettes and related instruments (includes recordings of a serinette)