Publisher's Synopsis
The so-called Laudon's Tomb was a pompous, temple-like diorama with life-sized wax figures, shown by Count Deym from 1791 in his art gallery. A barrel organ playing Mozart's KV 608 provided the musical accompaniment for this installation. This musical automaton and the original cylinder of Mozart's piece were lost in 1821. However it seemed possible to restore the original sound and performance thanks to a number of recent studies, historical automata that are still extant, and experience with other mechanical music of the period (cf. research conducted by the Austrian Audiovisual Research Archive since 1980). With the help of these sources, an attempt was made to reconstruct the articulation and tempo of the piece, based on the new complete edition of Mozart's works.
