Gavioli

The Gavioli were a family of makers of mechanical instruments originating in Italy, whose activity later developed in Paris. Their name is bound up with the street and fairground organ, a field in which the firm carried considerable weight between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The starting point was Giacomo Gavioli, born in Cavezzo, near Modena, in 1786 and died in Paris in 1875. After beginning by making horse-drawn cabriolets, he moved to Modena in 1818 to work for a clock repairer. By about 1828 he was advertising himself as a maker and seller of chimes and organs, and he became the city's leading clockmaker; the clock he installed in the Palazzo Comunale still works.

His son Lodovico Gavioli, born in Cavezzo in 1807 and also died in Paris in 1875, showed a remarkable mechanical talent from a young age. In the 1830s he began building mechanical or self-playing instruments, such as the harpist androïd David (1838) and the mechanical orchestra Panarmonico. At the Modena Triennial Exhibition of 1845 he received a prize for a street organ of his own design, which led him to concentrate on the hand-played harmonico. In 1854 he settled in Paris, in the former Pleyel piano and harp factory in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The following year he won a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition for a flautist androïd.

Lodovico worked alongside his sons Anselmo (1828–1902) and Claudio (1831–1905), who started with street pianos and then moved on to fairground and dance organs. The house's prestige rested on the Stratarmonica, regarded as the first true street organ. Anselmo took over the management in 1863, but the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 destroyed his factory, and in 1871 he reorganised the business with financial backing under the name Gavioli & Cie. In 1876 he patented the frein harmonique, which stabilises the air flow and allows high-pressure blowing without losing pitch; the technique was also adopted by makers of church and concert hall organs. In 1892 he applied the principle of the Jacquard loom to the 'keyboard and music book' system, using punched cards. His son Lodovico II (1850–1923) excelled in musical arrangements, during a period that marked the firm's greatest musical superiority.

After the father's death, Lodovico II ran into financial difficulties, and his foreman Charles Marenghi left with others trained by Gavioli to found a rival business. Despite this, in 1906 the firm launched the Gavioliphone, with 110 keys, which many regard as its masterpiece and which seems to have been especially popular in England. The 112-note instrument without a keyboard, patented in 1907, suffered mechanical problems and provoked complaints from buyers. Together with competition from Mortier, which infringed its patents, this probably led to the sale of the business to Limonaire Frères in 1910. Its legacy lies in the evolution of the fairground and dance organ, at a time when the centre of this manufacture was shifting from Paris to Belgium.