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Kircher's Cat Piano & Other Musical Instruments Using Animals

Alexius4

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http://www.deadmedia.org/notes/32/327.html

"In keeping with Darnton's methodology and subject matter we might want to look at the cat piano. Athanasius Kircher first wrote about it in his great *Musurgia universalis* of 1650, and it has reappeared occasionally since. In order to raise the spirits of an Italian prince burdened by the cares of his position, a musician created for him a cat piano. The musician selected cats whose natural voices were at different pitches and arranged them in cages side by side, so that when a key on the piano was depressed, a mechanism drove a sharp spike into the appropriate cat's tail. The result was a melody of meows that became more vigorous as the cats became more desperate. Who could not help but laugh at such music? Thus was the prince raised from his melancholy [1].

"The cat piano confirms Darnton's discovery that most early modern Europeans found the torture of cats funny. It also illustrates Kircher's fascination with the relationship between the art of music and the natural production of animal sounds. But for us it is an instrument that has mercifully been forgotten."

http://www.stanford.edu/group/shl/Eyes/machines/

...Which is a rather nice essay on Kirchner and his contraptions.

Robert Darnton noted the predilection for persecuting cats in 'The Great Cat Massacre' - cats had a bad press in early modern Europe.

Now, a shiny new pound for the lucky person who can find an illustration.

Two shiny new pounds for the lucky person who can find Kirchner's plans.

A civil indictment for the lucky person who tries to make one. :D
 
IIRC there was an organ very similar to what's descibed here in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Muchausen, using slaves in cages.

Beyond that, I've not much to contribute.

Poor kitties :(
 
Alexius said:
"The cat piano confirms Darnton's discovery that most early modern Europeans found the torture of cats funny. It also illustrates Kircher's fascination with the relationship between the art of music and the natural production of animal sounds. But for us it is an instrument that has mercifully been forgotten."

http://www.stanford.edu/group/shl/Eyes/machines/

...Which is a rather nice essay on Kirchner and his contraptions.

Robert Darnton noted the predilection for persecuting cats in 'The Great Cat Massacre' - cats had a bad press in early modern Europe.

Though there is umm, folklore (UL? Revisionism? Wishful thinking?), that some measure of *justice* (well, maybe not the right word :shock: ) was meted out to the cat-persecuting culture of Western Europe in the form of the Plague. (with the lack of cats supposely allowing for an explosion in the rodent populattion.) It'd be interesting to find if the Italian Prince's 'amusements' had taken place 25 years before the publication date, but were eventually interrupted by the arrival of The Great Plague of Milan (1629-31). :miaow:
 
Didn't we have a thread on this? I remember mentioning the Muppaphone in reference to it earlier.

Anyway, it is a Muppaphone.

Or that Monty Python sketch with mice or something...
 
In a similar vein, here's an article from the book Facts and Fallacies (1988) by Reader's Digest Press about the Pig Organ:

The Pig Organ: A Chorus Fit for a King

King Louis XI of France was noted for his cruelty. He often tortured his enemies to death and organized manhunts in which a victim was covered with a deerskin, chased, and torn to pieces by hounds.

Louis was also fascinated by animals. He kept a large menagerie that included an elephant, monkeys, and bears, and he often traveled throughout his kingdom with a tame lioness.

On one occasion Louis contrived to combine his two preoccupations in a wager with one of his clerics. As the 17th-century English writer Nathaniel Wanley described it:

"The Abbot of Baigne, a man of great wit, and who had the art of inventing new musical instruments, being in the service of Louis XI, king of France, was ordered by the prince to get him a concert of swine's voices, thinking it impossible. That abbot was not surprised, but asked for money for the performance, which was immediately delivered him; and he wrought a thing as singular as ever was seen. For out of a great number of hogs, of several ages, which he got together, and placed under a tent or pavillion, covered with velvet, before which he had a table of wood, painted, with a certain number of hogs, he made an organical instrument, and as he played upon the said keys, with little spikes which pricked the hogs he made them cry in such order and consonance, as highly delighted the king and all his company."

Some 400 years later the abbot's highly original instrument was adapted by the inventor of the so-called Porco-Forte. The
Musical World of December 1839 described the device as having been invented in Cincinnati. It operated on a principle similar to the abbot's device: a number of pigs were placed in a partitioned box, with their tails projecting through holes. By means of a keyboard mechanism, the pigs' tails were pinched to elicit what was hoped to be a harmonious range of squeals.
 
With these "living pianos", the cat or pig might cry out in the right note, but how could you ensure that it wouldn't keep on crying out long after it was poked, drowning out its fellows?
 
Portrait of the cat piano can be found here:

kirchersociety.org/blog/?p=116
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be retrieved from the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060302080548/http://www.kirchersociety.org/blog/?p=116

... And here's the picture ...
cat piano.jpg
 
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BlackRiverFalls said:
IIRC there was an organ very similar to what's descibed here in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Muchausen, using slaves in cages.

And wasn't there a similar contraption in Mel Brooks "History of the world"? Here jewis prisoners are arranged like a xylophone, and they get whacked over the head by a member of the Spanish inqusition.

(It's in the film, really! This is not an anti-semitic remark!)
 
Thanks to MrRing for posting the cat piano engraving. I found this years ago in a magazine and then lost it mysteriously, spending many hours trying to refind it - to no avail.

It does raise the question of the damping, as Leaferne notes above. Starting the cry is easy enough but we need some form of escapement to put a sock in the cats' jaws as their key is released. Otherwise the cat-organ would be nearly as horrid as the harpsichord.

Nor can I work out why those elegant lady-hands are playing a bare diatonic octave of cats from a chromatic keyboard of at least two octaves.

I think this early instrument could usefully be resurrected and improved now that we have a surplus of cats. Children would skip on their merry way to music lessons, perhaps with the domestic pet in their satchels, determined he should enjoy his share in the pleasure of sweet harmony. :D
 
<looks gleeful> my father has TWO cats!

And if I borrowed them for music, he would no longer have to wonder how to get children into the classics! what a good idea!
 
uair01 said:
BlackRiverFalls said:
IIRC there was an organ very similar to what's descibed here in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Muchausen, using slaves in cages.

And wasn't there a similar contraption in Mel Brooks "History of the world"? Here jewis prisoners are arranged like a xylophone, and they get whacked over the head by a member of the Spanish inqusition.

(It's in the film, really! This is not an anti-semitic remark!)

Don't worry! Mel Brooks is jewish.
 
Is THAT how they make those christmas carols sang by cats? :shock: :lol:
 
I've heard of this bastastard thing when I was young. Ah humans never fail to make me hate them.
An animal-torturer-klavier where a hammer hammers the willies of those stuck inside would make my day and I would play it for a loooong time.
 
How horrible! Did these things REALLY exist, or did people just think they did and so drew pictures of it?

Cat-torture still goes on. There's a custom somewhere (Spain or Italy, I think, sorry for lack of precision) where they put cats in pots and hang them on lamp posts or telephone wires and throw stones at them until they crash to the floor, thus killing the cats. I think they were asked to use toy cats instead.
 
Kondoru said:
<looks gleeful> my father has TWO cats!

And if I borrowed them for music, he would no longer have to wonder how to get children into the classics! what a good idea!
We've got two cats (both tuned differently) and a dog. That's three tones right there, so if I can find a way of introducing helium to the equasion I'll have six. Two more and I'll have an octave. ;)
 
Though there is umm, folklore (UL? Revisionism? Wishful thinking?), that some measure of *justice* (well, maybe not the right word :shock: ) was meted out to the cat-persecuting culture of Western Europe in the form of the Plague. (with the lack of cats supposely allowing for an explosion in the rodent populattion.)

I am happy to believe that!
 
I am happy to believe that!

Though there is umm, folklore (UL? Revisionism? Wishful thinking?), that some measure of *justice* (well, maybe not the right word :shock: ) was meted out to the cat-persecuting culture of Western Europe in the form of the Plague. (with the lack of cats supposely allowing for an explosion in the rodent populattion.) It'd be interesting to find if the Italian Prince's 'amusements' had taken place 25 years before the publication date, but were eventually interrupted by the arrival of The Great Plague of Milan (1629-31). :miaow:

That's worth looking at rather than doing the odd jobs around the house I'm supposed to be doing!
 
Here's a little gem from the wikipedia entry on the cat organ:

Kircher notes that the instrument can be used to reduce the melancholy of princes by moving them to laughter, almost exactly the situation that occurred in 2010 when Prince Charles was greatly amused by a performance of the tune "Over the Rainbow" on an instrument recreated using squeaky toy cats by Henry Dagg for a garden party held at Clarence House supporting Charles's Start initiative for sustainable living.
 
With these "living pianos", the cat or pig might cry out in the right note, but how could you ensure that it wouldn't keep on crying out long after it was poked, drowning out its fellows?
This is called a "sustained note" in piano. Pianos normally have a sustain pedal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustain_pedal) ; presumably this would be rendered (not in the punning sense) redundant (not in the British sense) by having the animals sustain the notes on their own initiative.
 
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