The Müller Art Museum in Vienna was founded in 1780 by Count Josef Deym, who at the time was fleeing Holland under an assumed name. The museum eventually acquired statues, wax works, and a collection of mechanical musical instruments, including clocks and organs.
In May 1799, Countess Brunsvik and her two daughters Therese and Josephine visited the Müller Museum. This was the same month that the sisters briefly became students of Beethoven, who wrote WoO 74 (Day 117) for them. A month later, Count Deym married Josephine.
Among the composers that Count Deym commissioned to write music for his mechanical musical instruments were Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. See the article “Count Deym and His Mechanical Organs”.
Mozart’s compositions for mechanical instruments have attracted more academic attention than Beethoven’s. See Annette Richards’ “Automatic Genius: Mozart and the Mechanical Sublime”.
Count Deym probably commissioned Beethoven’s WoO 33, “Fünf Stücke für die Flötenuhr” (“Five pieces for a flute clock”) for a mechanical musical instrument that incorporates a rotating wooden barrel with pins that trigger the sound of small organ pipes.
The five pieces of WoO 33 are (1) Adagio in F, (2) Scherzo (Allegro) in G, (3) Allegro in G, (4) Allegro in C, and (5) Allegretto (Minuet and Trio) in C. The score on the IMSLP site includes only the first three.
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5 Pieces for a Flute Clock (WoO 33), 1799
The sound of the flute clock is perhaps best mimicked using flute stops on an organ. In this recording, the five pieces are played in the order 4, 5, 1, 2, 3.
Wouldn’t it be great to hear the pieces of Beethoven’s WoO 33 on an authentic mechanical Flötenuhr from the collection of the Müller Art Museum? Sorry, can’t be done. Apparently, all the mechanical musical instruments from the museum have been lost.
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Five Pieces for a Flute Clock (WoO 33, No. 1), 1799
The Adagio of WoO 33 has been frequently transcribed for other instruments. Here it is played on flute and piano by Francesca Canali and Monaldo Braconi
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Five Pieces for a Flute Clock (WoO 33, No. 1), 1799
The Adagio can also be played by a chamber ensemble, such as the uniformed Music Corp of the Bundeswehr (German armed forces) before ein sehr diszipliniert audience.
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Five Pieces for a Flute Clock (WoO 33, No. 3), 1799
Here’s the Allegro in G major performed by Moscow Military Music College cadets. The flute on the far right is an alto.
Piano pedagogue Carl Czerny wrote:
I was about ten years old when I was taken to Beethoven through the kind offices of [pianist Wenzel] Krumpholz. It was the winter of 1799–1800. How I was overjoyed and terrified on the day when I was to meet the esteemed master! Even today [1842] every moment of it is still fresh in my memory. On a winter’s day, my father, Krumpholz and I … climbed up, as if in a tower, to the fifth or sixth floor, where a rather grubby-looking servant announced us to Beethoven and then showed us in. A very barren-looking room, papers and clothes strewn all over the place, a few boxes, bare walls, hardly a single chair save for a rickety one by the Fortepiano, a Walter, at that time the best make. In this room were gathered six to eight persons, including both the brothers Wranitzky, Süssmeyer, Schuppanzigh and one of Beethoven’s brothers.
Beethoven himself was dressed in a jacket of some shaggy dark grey cloth and trousers of the same material, so that he immediately reminded me of Campe’s [adaptation of] Robinson Crusoe, which I had just then read. The coal-black hair cut à la Titus stood up around his head. His black beard, unshaven for several days, darkened the lower part of his already dark-complexioned face. Also I noticed at a glance, as children are wont to do, that his ears were stuffed with cotton-wool which seemed to have been dipped in some yellow fluid.