Complete Encyclopaedia of Music/A/Apollino

Apollino. The name of an harmonic instrument, or rather machine, completed by one Mr. Plimpton, who had labored hard upon it for more than fifteen years. It combined the tones, characteristics, and powers of a great number of instruments, and was exhibited first in 1820, at New York and Boston. It contained twenty-eight different kinds of instruments, which could be played all at once, separately, or any number of them united. It combined, at the same time, the music of a full church organ, a grand orchestra, a martial band, and the Aeolian harp ; it contained twenty-five flageolets, twenty-five imitations of birds, twenty-five clarinets, four bugles, twenty-five trumpets, eight French horns, twelve bassoons, ten serpents, twenty-eight flutes, twenty-eight fifes, thirty-seven strings on violin and violoncello, thirty-seven strings on harp; bagpipes, bass drum, cymbals, harmonica, twenty-five music glasses, &c. ; the whole included in one machine, and played by one man assisted by a small boy. Mr. Plimpton was a self-taught artist, and from his machine would give forth music from the soft breathings of the Aeolian harp to the swelling majesty of the organ; from the sweet warbling of the canary bird to the hoarse trumpet's inspiring clangor ; from the mellow, liquid notes of the musical glasses to the astounding "thunder drum of heaven." In order to perpetuate the genius of Mr. Plimpton, the inventor of the Apollino, it was afterwards called Plimptonia, and OM again Plimptonichord.