Nize Baby!
Top: Épinette des Vosges, Amant Constant Lambert, late 19th c., not on view.
Bottom: Film credits, The Third Man, 1949; Album Cover, Soothing Sounds for Baby, 1962.
An épinettier (a player of the musical instrument; see above) followed Montaigne, along with his tutor, from room to room, playing tunes whenever he was tired or bored. This was a ritual he learned as a child.
“Being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs the brains of children suddenly to wake them in the morning, and to snatch them violently and over-hastily from sleep (wherein they are much more profoundly involved than we), [my father] caused me to be wakened by the sound of some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a musician for that purpose.” - Montaigne, Of the Education of Children.
Raymond Scott, mid-century composer and early electronic music inventor, felt the same way about children and sound and recorded several volumes of Soothing Sounds for Baby. His quiet drones remind me of the zither’s constant vibrations. When I was about 10 years old I got an “AM / FM clock-radio” and contemplated each night what station I should wake up to the next day. Today, we have apps like Mornify or Spotify, “with science-backed morning playlists . . .” in case you don’t know how to wake up properly.
The zither, the dulcimer, and the pedal steel guitar, all descend from the French épinette. If you can get to Vienna . . . and if you are willing to sit in a theatre (the Berg Kino Theater, to be exact), you can hear modern zither music featured over real rubble in real post-war Vienna in The Third Man. The title theme was a Billboard number-one hit from April-July, 1950 - unheard of for the zither!
Orson Welles’ character Harry Lime seems like the kind of guy who would have an épinettier following him around Vienna to play whenever he got tired or bored. And as his lover Anna (played by Alida Valli) said, “He never grew up. The world grew up around him”.
Trumpet and Verse
Left to right:
Parade Trumpet, 1700, gallery 680.
Natural Trumpet in D, 19th c., gallery 680.
Bass saxtuba in E-flat, 1855, Adolphe Sax, gallery 680.
Over-the-Shoulder Soprano Horn in E-flat, ca. 1880, John F. Stratton, gallery 680.
Coach Horn in C, ca. 1825–89, gallery 680.
One of Evelyn Waugh‘s ear trumpets, Forum Auctions, 2017 (estimated value, £1000-1500).
Left to right:
Jean Cocteau reciting through a megaphone in his production of Les mariés de la tour Eiffel, 1921.
Evelyn Waugh with one of his ear trumpets.
There is little casual about these horns. From the Old Testament to the hunt, to our ongoing battle cries, they announce — “forcible” — attention.
“Cleanthes said . . . the voice, forced through the narrow passage of a trumpet, comes out more forcible and shrill: so, methinks, a sentence pressed within the harmony of verse darts out more briskly upon the understanding, and strikes my ear and apprehension with a smarter and more pleasing effect.” - Montaigne
Cocteau needed force in his ballet, because his themes were outlandish: "Sunday vacuity; human beastliness, ready-made expressions, disassociation of ideas from flesh and bone, ferocity of childhood, the miraculous poetry of everyday life.” So he turned to a horn, an “over-the-head-voice-trumpet”, increasing the power of his delivery.
Waugh used silence against those who displeased or bored him. By middle age, he’d become a pantomime villain with his ear trumpet — removed mid-sentence and brandished with devastating effect.
“They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound of a trumpet.” - Montaigne
Bells and Whistles (and Rattles)
The Kagura Suzu is associated with Shinto rituals at shrines and at court. Kagura (神楽) translates "god-entertainment" and encompasses instrumental music, songs, and dances.
The Mayan bird whistle has two chambers: one in its head and one deeper in the body. The blow holes are in the tail and crown.
The Native American Tlingit whistle depicts a double-headed eagle, and this bird could represent contact between Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast and Russian explorers.
The polished Kuba whistle is used for the arrival of a king or the delivery of messages during hunts.
The Pre-Columbian rattle wards off evil. The terracotta mother figure nurses, and her mouth, belly, and necklace make soothing sounds.
The English “precious and protective” baby rattles have whistles, a piece of teething coral, and silver bells. They were thought to ward off enchantment and disease. I think of Neil Postman’s Prisoners of Childhood, where he argues that preciousness signals both protected childhood and class structure.
I wish I’d had any of these fine instruments as a kid. . . . I just had a pink rubber elephant squeeze toy. Years later working as a composer, I layered tape recordings of it, slowed and enlarged in my first studio Musique concrète piece, Elephantomachia, (battle of the elephants). Perhaps attempting some overdue off-warding.
Twist it, Clap it, Rub it, Whack it, Strike it
Top left: Damaru, 19th c., Tibet, gallery 684.
Top center: Clapper, ca. 1850–1750 B.C., Egypt, Middle Kingdom.
Top right: Friction Drum (Lunet) 19th– 20th c.,Papua New Guinea, New Ireland, gallery 684.
Bottom left: Gamelan, Saron Panerus Slendro, 19th c., Java, Indonesia, gallery 681.
Bottom right: Robotic player piano, roto tom drums, and vibraphone, Aesthetic Research, Alec Bernstein & Daniel Carney, Baltimore, 1980s.
The thod-rnga, or damaru is made from two human skulls. The drum is played by twisting it back and forth with one hand so that the small pellets at the ends of the strings strike the two drumheads. Buddhist power-tools to fight evil.
Clappers are among the earliest percussion instruments in ancient Egypt. This clapper is shaped like forearms and hands “wearing” bracelets on each wrist. Musical clappers were used at banquets, funerary processions, and other rituals. Precursors to the secularized applause machines of 1950s television.
Lunets are "friction drums" with three sound-producing wedges or tongues on top. The musician moistens a hand with water and rubs the wedges. The tones echo the cry of the island bird for which the drum was named.
The structures of gamelan music share forms with Javanese poetry. The Macapat texts, especially Kinanthi, fit into their individual melodic patterns, which are sung with the percussive orchestras. Themed metric systems are marvelous: Kinanthi, love poems; Durma, violent passions or fighting; Mas kumambang, longing or homesickness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javanese_poetry#Sekar_madya_and_tembang_macapat.
And love those hammers. Not so far from my performance art/sound poetry, back in the day, the 1970s.
By the 1980s, digital control of analogue instruments was in vogue. My partner and I constructed systems to extend pianistic technique — any note, chord or cluster of notes could be performed live by aligning it to keys on a computer keyboard. The system relayed strike information to solenoids which struck the piano keys at the desired moment and volume. This same technique was applied to drums and mallet instruments, like the rosewood marimba I had. Real instruments, natural acoustics, no finger limits. This we called Aesthetic Research.
“John Zisca of Bohemia, a defender of John Wicliffe’s heresies [the influential dissident within the Roman Catholic priesthood], left order that they should flay him after his death, and of his skin make a drum to carry in the war against his enemies, fancying it would contribute to the continuation of the successes he had always obtained in the wars against them.” - Montaigne
While viewing these instruments of the past (including my own), I felt more in than out of the tradition. Power tools go way back.
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