Shaping Sound and Society: The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments [1 ed.] 9780367417550, 9781032544090, 9780367816070

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Routledge Research in Music

SHAPING SOUND AND SOCIETY THE CULTURAL STUDY OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Edited by Stephen Cottrell

Shaping Sound and Society

This volume brings together leading voices from the new wave of research on musical instruments to consider how we can connect the material aspects of instruments with their social function, approaches that have been otherwise too frequently separated in musical scholarship. Shaping Sound and Society: The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments locates the instruments at the centre of cultural interactions. With contributions from ten scholars spanning a variety of methodologies and a wide range of both contemporary and historic music cultures, the volume is divided into three sections. Contributors discuss the relationships between makers, performers, and their local communities; the different meanings that instruments accrue as they travel over time and place; and the manner in which instruments throw new light on historic music cultures. Alongside the scholarly chapters, the volume also includes a selection of shorter interludes based on interviews with makers of comparatively new instruments, offering further insights into the process of musical instrument innovation. An essential read for students and academics in the fields of music and ethnomusicology, this volume will also interest anyone looking to understand how the cultural interaction of musical instruments is deeply informed and influenced by social, technological, and cultural change. Stephen Cottrell is Professor of Music at City, University of London. His previous books include Professional Music-Making in London, The Saxophone, Defining the Discographic Self: Desert Island Discs in Context (co-edited with Julie Brown and Nicholas Cook), and Music, Dance, Anthropology.

Routledge Research in Music

The Routledge Research in Music series is home to cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections. Considering music performance, theory, and culture alongside topics such as gender, race, ecology, film, religion, politics, and science, titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics. Recent titles: Musical Topics and Musical Performance Edited by Julian Hellaby Women in Convent Spaces and the Music Networks of Early Modern Barcelona Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita The Intersection of Animation, Video Games, and Music Making Movement Sing Edited by Lisa Scoggin and Dana Plank Music, Place, and Identity in Italian Urban Soundscapes circa 1550-1860 Edited by Franco Piperno, Simone Caputo, and Emanuele Senici Perspectives on Contemporary Music Theory Essays in Honor of Kevin Korsyn Edited by Bryan Parkhurst and Jeffrey Swinkin Shaping Sound and Society The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments Edited by Stephen Cottrell

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Researchin-Music/book-series/RRM

Shaping Sound and Society

The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments

Edited by Stephen Cottrell

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Stephen Cottrell; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Stephen Cottrell to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cottrell, Stephen, 1962- editor. Title: Shaping sound and society : the cultural study of musical instruments / edited by Stephen Cottrell. Description: New York : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Routledge research in music | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023010201 (print) | LCCN 2023010202 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367417550 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032544090 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367816070 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Musical instruments--Social aspects. | Musical instruments--History. | Musical instruments--Construction. | Musical instrument makers. Classification: LCC ML3916 .S536 2023 (print) | LCC ML3916 (ebook) | DDC 784.19--dc23/eng/20230412 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023010201 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023010202 ISBN: 978-0-367-41755-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-54409-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-81607-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070 Typeset in Times New Roman by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Notes on Contributors Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments— An Overview

vii ix x xiii xv 1

STEPHEN COTTRELL

Instrumental Interlude #1: The Skoog

29

BEN SCHÖGLER AND DAVID SKULINA

PART I

Ecology, Production, and Communities of Practice 1 The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe: Collaboration, Technology, Ecology, and Internationalization

33 35

CASSANDRE BALOSSO-BARDIN

2 Feeling Analogue: Using Modular Synthesizers, Designing Synthesis Communities

54

ELIOT BATES

3 Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr: Some Cultural and Social Repercussions

74

JOHN BAILY

4 Musical Instruments as Material Culture: A Case Study of the Cretan Lyra KEVIN DAWE

89

vi Contents Instrumental Interlude #2: The Yaybahar

109

GÖRKEM ŞEN

Instrumental Interlude #3: Recycled Instruments

113

ELI GRAS

PART II

The Circulation of Instruments 5 Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265: Musical Instruments and the Telling of Tales

117 119

STEPHEN COTTRELL

6 What’s in a Name? Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar

138

ANDRÉ J. P. ELIAS

7 Playing for God: Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World

158

STEWART CARTER

Instrumental Interlude #4: The Fluid Piano

177

GEOFFREY SMITH

Instrumental Interlude #5: The Pikasso Guitar

182

LINDA MANZER

PART III 

Reframing History through Instruments 8 Arcadian Tones: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel

187 189

DEIRDRE MORGAN

9 Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities: The Makers’ Perspective

212

JENNY NEX

10 Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection in the Long 19th Century

230

TREVOR HERBERT

Index

249

Figures

0.1 A plate showing trombones, cornetts, and trumpets from Praetorius’ De Organographia, measured against a ruler. 6 0.2 A cartoon from Life magazine (December 1925) 15 #1 The Skoog, invented by Ben Schögler and David Skulina. 29 1.1 Josep Rotger and his xeremies. 36 1.2 Musical and aesthetic comparison of a modern grall and an old grall. 41 2.1 Make Noise Maths Eurorack module. 55 2.2 Birdkids Unicorn Boom. 65 2.3 Example of one iteration of the author’s MODULARGrid rack. 67 3.1 The two-stringed Herati dutâr. 76 3.2 The 14-stringed Herati dutâr. 77 4.1 Dimitris Kounális cassette cover. 97 4.2 A Cretan villager ‘playing’ the lyra. 98 4.3 Signed photographs, Agrimákis workshop (taken in 2000). 101 4.4 Lyras, mixing desk and PA equipment. 102 4.5 A musical instrument shop in Iraklion. 104 #2 The Yaybahar. 109 #3 Eli Gras. 113 5.1 A Grafton alto saxophone. 124 5.2 Charlie Parker playing Grafton 10265 at Massey Hall, Toronto, in 1953. 126 5.3 Grafton 10265 in the American Jazz Museum. 129 5.4 Charlie Parker memorial sculpture in the 18th and Vine District, Kansas City. 130 6.1 Hindustani slide-guitar in construction alongside tools and Kali statue, Conchord Guitar Factory, Ultadanga district, Kolkata, India, 2016. 139 6.2 Siddha Veena next to a Saraswati shrine, Conchord Guitar Factory, Ultadanga district, Kolkata, India, 2016. 145 6.3 Hindustani slide-guitar being prepared for carving of traditional designs, Conchord Guitar Factory, Ultadanga district, Kolkata, India, 2016. 146

viii Figures 6.4 Bhaba Sindhu Biswas, Conchord Guitar Factory, Ultadanga district, Kolkata, India, 2016. 152 7.1 The Moravians at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, an engraving by A. R. Waud. 160 7.2 Members of the Bethlehem Trombone Choir, ca. 1867. 164 7.3 The 26th North Carolina Regimental Band, home on leave in 1862. 169 7.4 Native American trombonists in the Martinez Trombone Choir in 1911. 172 #4 The Fluid Piano, invented by Geoffrey Smith. 177 #5 42-string, three-necked Pikasso guitar made by Linda Manzer. 182 8.1 Detail from Burgkmair’s The Fools, from Triumph of the Emperor Maximilian I. 193 8.2 Detail of Ginotti’s sculpture of a young woman playing two ribebe in the Alpine style, in Valsesia, Italy. 194 8.3 Serenade, by Johann von Lederwasch. 195 8.4 Robert Lecke’s portrait of J. L. Daburger. 199 8.5 Christoph Schulz, of the Austrian duo Maul und Trommelseuche, performing a contemporary Wechselspiel technique using six instruments in his right hand. 203 10.1 A centrefold image from the catalogue of the Couesnon company at the 1900 Paris Exhibition. 233 10.2 ‘A Favorite Short Troop’ (ca. 1795) by C. F. Eley, bandmaster of the Coldstream Guards. 235

Tables

10.1 Outline description of brass instruments incorporating mechanical devices that were in use between the late 18th and late 19th centuries. 237 10.2 Instrumentation of bands configured by Carafa and Sax, 22 April 1845. 239 10.3 Sousa’s instrumental configurations. 243

Notes on Contributors

John Baily is Professor Emeritus of Ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths, University of London. His early work in ethnomusicology focused on the contrast between two Afghan plucked lutes, the multistringed rubab, and the two-stringed dutâr, and how the different morphologies of the two instruments shape the music played on them. Later research has focused on music in the Afghan diaspora. Major publications include Krishna Govinda’s Rudiments of Tabla Playing (Unicorn, 1974), Music of Afghanistan. Professional Musicians in the City of Herat (Cambridge University Press, 1988), “Can You Stop the Birds Singing?” The Censorship of Music in Afghanistan (Freemuse, 2001), Songs from Kabul: The Spiritual Music of Ustad Amir Mohammad (Ashgate, 2011), and War, Exile and the Music of Afghanistan. The Ethnographer’s Tale (Routledge, 2016). Cassandre Balosso-Bardin is an Assistant Professor in Cultural Musicology at KU Leuven, Belgium. She previously held an Associate Professor position at the University of Lincoln, UK. Her research interests include musical instruments, instrument making, music revivals, and working musicians. She has a special interest in bagpipes and is the founding director of the International Bagpipe Organization. She has published her research in a range of peer-reviewed journals and was awarded the Chester Dale Fellowship at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, to carry out the first study of their bagpipe collection in 2022– 2023. Cassandre is also a professional touring musician, specializing in recorders and bagpipes, with a background in early music and European folk music. Eliot Bates researches the design, materiality, sensoriums, and interfaciality of music technologies—and the gear cultures formed around them. His book Digital Tradition: Arrangement and Labor in Istanbul’s Recording Studio Culture (Oxford University Press, 2016) documents this within Istanbul’s recording studios, instrument factories, and music industries. Since 2013, his work has broadened to European, North American, and Australian audio technology gear cultures, which will manifest in a coauthored book (with Samantha Bennett, Australian National University) for MIT Press. Bates is Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center and currently produces microtonal electronic music as the artist Makamqore and as half of the duo Manifestoon Platoon.

Notes on Contributors xi Stewart Carter is Professor of Music at Wake Forest University. He is Past President of the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music and also of the American Musical Instrument Society. He serves as Editor of the Historic Brass Society Journal and General Editor of Bucina: The Historic Brass Society Series. Major publications include The Trombone in the Renaissance: A History in Pictures and Documents (Pendragon, 2012) and edited volumes such as Perspectives in Brass Scholarship (Pendragon, 1997); Brass Scholarship in Review (Pendragon, 2006); and Instruments, Ensembles, and Repertory, 1300–1600: Essays in Honour of Keith Polk (with Timothy J. McGee, Brepols, 2013). Stephen Cottrell is Professor of Music at City, University of London. His research interests encompass ethnographic approaches to musicians and music-making, particularly within the Western art music tradition; the study of musical instruments, especially the saxophone; and the study of musical performance. Books include Professional Music-Making in London (Ashgate, 2004), The Saxophone (Yale University Press, 2012), Defining the Discographic Self: Desert Island Discs in Context (Oxford University Press, 2017. Co-edited with Julie Brown and Nicholas Cook), and Music, Dance, Anthropology (RAI/Sean Kingston, 2021). During an earlier freelance career spanning nearly two decades, he earned an international reputation as a saxophonist performing contemporary music, particularly as leader of the Delta Saxophone Quartet. Kevin Dawe is (by choice) an early-retired Professor of Music (Leeds, Kent), having resumed ecological and zoological studies as well as caring responsibilities. He is the author of The New Guitarscape (Ashgate, 2010) and Music and Musicians in Crete (Scarecrow Press, 2007); and coeditor of Guitar Cultures (Berg, 2001), Island Musics (Berg, 2004), The Mediterranean in Music (Scarecrow Press, 2005), and Current Directions in Ecomusicology (Routledge, 2015). André J. P. Elias is an Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University who participates in a variety of musical traditions from the Americas, Spain, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. His research explores topics of identity, spirituality, nationalism, and the politics of organology, along with a focus on theory, improvisation, and performance practices. Recent publications include work on the slide-guitar’s evolution and adaptation to Indian and Burmese traditional and modern genres, which has developed into a new focus on economies of instrument making and environmental issues. André is an active performer on the classical and electric guitar, a range of percussion traditions, sitar, tabla, and Hindustani slide-guitar. With special emphasis on Hindustani classical music, he has been working in Hong Kong with local and immigrant communities on developing ensembles as vehicles of intercultural communication and collaboration. Trevor Herbert is Emeritus Professor of Music at the Open University and Professor of Music Research at the Royal College of Music. He spent much of his career as a professional trombone player and has written extensively on brass instruments and on musical subcultures such as brass and military bands. With

xii  Notes on Contributors Richard Middleton and Martin Clayton, he is coeditor of Routledge’s The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction. Deirdre Morgan is Professor of Music at Vancouver Community College. She is a scholar and performer of the jew’s harp, an ancient, mouth-resonated musical instrument found in many cultures around the world. Deirdre has studied the instrument since 2005, speaking, performing, and conducting award-winning research in over a dozen countries. Her writing has appeared in Ethnomusicology Forum, and Morgan is coauthor, along with Owen Coggins, of the forthcoming book Jew’s Harps and Metal Music: Folk Traditions in Global Modernity (Routledge). Jenny Nex is Curator of the Musical Instrument Collection at the University of Edinburgh. Her research interests focus on musical instruments and their social and cultural contexts, notably exploring the business operations of makers through diverse archival sources. Publications include work relating to Londonbased firms such as Longman & Broderip and to specific types of manufacture such as the gut string making trade, as well as highlighting the roles of women in the instrument business. Jenny is also a singer specializing in historically informed performance.

Preface

Shaping Sound and Society considers how musical instruments are both formed by and act upon the social contexts in which they are found. The perspective taken is deliberately broad, with studies of art, popular, and traditional musics drawn not only from Euro-American traditions but also a range of global musics. The ­emphasis in each chapter is not on the morphological details of the instruments under scrutiny––although these are inevitably covered to some degree––but on the links between the instruments and the forces that shape them, the values that ­become attached to them, and the people who play them. The volume begins with a substantial Introduction which outlines some of the key issues at play in the chapters that follow. These are organized into three sections. Part I, ‘Ecology, Production, and Communities of Practice’, brings together chapters that consider relationships between performers, makers, and their local communities in four different contexts: among Mallorcan bagpipers (Cassandre Balosso-Bardin); modular synthesis communities (Eliot Bates); Afghan dutâr players (John Baily); and lyra players on the Greek island of Crete (Kevin Dawe). In each case, the authors interrogate the relationships between the specific morphology and materials of the instrument(s) under consideration, and the intersecting social, technological, and/or ecological planes in which they are found. Part II, ‘The Circulation of Instruments’, considers the different meanings that become attached to instruments as they travel through various times and places, sometimes undergoing morphological changes en route. Specific case studies here are derived from a distinctive saxophone played by jazz icon Charlie Parker in the 1950s (Stephen Cottrell); the adoption and adaptation of the Hawaiian slide-guitar in India (André J. P. Elias); and the use of the trombone among the Moravian communities of Europe and North America (Stewart Carter). Part III, ‘Reframing History through Instruments’, comprises three chapters which take more avowedly historical perspectives: on the historical arc of the Austrian maultrommel and how contemporary practice relates to and is inflected by historical understanding (Deirdre Morgan); on the insights provided into the 19th-century London musical instrument trade through close examination of economic circumstance and commercial transactions (Jenny Nex); and how the activities of military music ensembles in the long 19th century were underpinned by a

xiv Preface prevailing ‘culture of perfection’ in which the military band itself might be seen as ‘the instrument’ rather than any single musical device within it (Trevor Herbert). The volume as a whole has its roots in earlier discussions between John Baily and the editor about a possible book focusing on the invention of musical instruments. That project did not come to fruition, but it provided the motivation to include here a number of contributions from those who are at the cutting edge of musical instrument innovation––musical instrument designers and makers–– whose voices are heard through the insertion of a number of Instrumental Interludes. These not only provide a counterpoint to the scholars’ voices but also serve as a reminder that it is in the moment of creative innovation that we find distilled those cultural forces which provoke instrument invention or modification. In such moments, societies are both shaped and sounded, and the voices of those who make or modify instruments thus provide us with powerful insights into the various forces which act on them. These short contributions thus build on a range of recent ethnographic studies of instrument makers (e.g., Dudley 2014; Jones-Bamman 2017; Pande and Lamba 1997; Roda 2013), although here we hear directly from the innovators themselves, unmediated by the words of scholars. Examples offered include entirely new instruments such as the Skoog, developed by Ben Schögler and David Skulina, and the Yaybahar, invented by Görkem Şen. Innovations more obviously related to existing instruments include Geoff Smith’s microtonal piano and the pioneering guitars designed by Linda Manzer, while Eli Gras takes a different approach, creating new musical instruments from a variety of recycled ‘found objects’, occasionally augmented by electronic resources. Bibliography Dawe, Kevin. 2003. ‘The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments’. In Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton (Eds.), The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (274–283). New York: Routledge. Dudley, Kathryn Marie. 2014. Guitar Makers: The Endurance of Artisanal Values in North America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Jones-Bamman, Richard. 2017. Building New Banjos for an Old-Time World. Urbana, ­Illinois: University of Illinois Press. Pande, Alka, and Rajni Lamba. 1997. ‘Folk Musical Instrument Makers of Punjab: An ­Ethnographic Study of a Languishing Craft Tradition’. Indian Anthropologist 27: 49–61. Roda, Peter Allen. 2013. Resounding Objects: Musical Materialities and the Making of ­Banarasi Tablas. PhD Dissertation. New York University.

Acknowledgements

The full title of this book in part borrows that used by Kevin Dawe in his contributory chapter to the 2003 volume The Cultural Study of Music. I am grateful to Kevin for allowing me to redeploy the phrase ‘The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments’ for the present volume. Thanks to my fellow contributors and to Genevieve Aoki at Routledge for their collective forbearance during the rather delayed delivery of this project, for which the COVID-19 pandemic is only partly responsible. Particular thanks are due to those instrument designers and makers interviewed here for giving freely and generously of their time, and to Bradley Strauchen for her feedback on parts of the manuscript. Grateful thanks are also due to Eva Mantzourani for her help and support in preparing the final manuscript for publication. As ever, all remaining errors or infelicities are mine alone. Stephen Cottrell

Introduction The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments—An Overview Stephen Cottrell

Introduction A fundamental premise of this volume is that musical instruments not only have morphological characteristics that are deserving of close study, but also that they exist within cultural ‘webs of significance’ (Geertz 1973) which determine how those for whom the instruments are meaningful understand and valorize them. Further, while material forms and social contexts might be conceptualized as separate domains, they are inextricably related: the morphology of a musical instrument is shaped by the social forces that bring it into being; the instrument in turn acts on those forces, either by underpinning existing artistic conventions and social relationships or by provoking new ones—and often both. This may cause the instrument itself to be modified in some way, resulting in a dynamic relationship between the artefact and its social contexts in which each is continually acted upon by the other. Ali Jihad Racy (1994, 38) neatly summarizes this relationship by noting that musical instruments ‘interact dialectically with surrounding physical and cultural realities, and as such, they perpetually negotiate or renegotiate their roles, physical structures, performance modes, sound ideals, and symbolic meanings’. However, too frequently in the history of Euro-American organology, greater importance has been attached to the morphological attributes of a given instrument, and the cultural webs in which that instrument is suspended have been given secondary consideration, if considered at all. Musical instruments have been seen as objects to be evaluated, analyzed and measured prior to being categorized or classified as a way of making sense of the known musical world. This chapter sets out a history of the oscillation between these two poles and considers how particular scholars have staked out their positions in the terrain of organology, broadly conceived. It does not purport to be a history of that subdiscipline, although some of that story is inevitably recalled here. Rather, it seeks to illuminate some of the major currents that have swirled around our engagements with musical instruments, and how the changing tides of scholarship have inflected our approaches to and understanding of the world’s instrumentarium.

DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-1

2  Stephen Cottrell The rise of collecting cultures When is a musical instrument not a musical instrument? One answer might be: when it stops being actively used to produce musical sound. The logic here is of course flawed; by comparison, a car does not stop being a car when it’s not being driven. But the answer does at least alert us to the profound conceptual shift involved when an instrument ceases to be a handy and familiar tool put to the service of lived, feelingful music-making, and becomes instead something to be viewed, displayed, analyzed, or in other ways ‘objectified’. This conceptual shift is often overlooked, but it remains a critical disjuncture. It suggests that we value the morphological and material properties of an instrument because we believe they provide insights into the music culture in which it arose, notwithstanding that it has become divorced from the musical practices to which it is ordinarily put. The risks of such inferences will be considered below, but their roots are longstanding. For example, in his Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil, first published in 1578, the French missionary Jean de Léry describes his experience of spending a year in Brazil some 20 years previously. After first recalling how indigenous musicians would hollow out a gourd and insert small stones to create a rattling sound, he draws attention to the symbolic significance of this musical artefact and its ornaments, observing that the Brazilians ‘set as much store by this Maraca itself as by its sound, after it has been decorated by them with beautiful feathers’ (quoted in Harrison 1973, 16). De Léry implicitly invokes this conceptual bifurcation between the maraca as a sound-producing object and the maraca as an ornamented cultural artefact valued as an object in and of itself. The curiosity of travellers such as De Léry in the cultural objects they encountered on their journeys eventually led to the rise of European collecting cultures. Such objects were transported back to Europe before being brought together as miscellaneous collections that could be displayed in houses belonging to the nobility or those of the mercantile or seafaring classes. Such ‘cabinets of curiosities’—sometimes comprising entire rooms—functioned to exoticize the artefacts on display, provoking wonderment on the part of the viewer and conferring prestige on those who were wealthy enough to undertake, or sometimes simply to underwrite, the journeys that had led to their acquisition. Collections were often dominated by objects drawn from the natural world—for example, plants or dead animals—but ethnographic items were also readily added, and musical instruments could be found among them, as was the case in the extensive collection put together by Hans Sloane, for example, which would later form the basis of London’s Natural History Museum (Ogborn and Pickering 2019, 126).1 And it should be noted that a natural history specimen might also be a musical instrument, as in the case of a conch shell blown for musical effect. Over the 18th and especially the 19th centuries, larger collections of musical instruments began to evolve, driven by the interests of particular individuals, especially in the Francophone world. The French engineer and cartographer Edme-François Jomard was an early avid collector of non-European instruments and donated to the city of Douai on his death in 1862 a collection that he had in

Introduction 3 part acquired on his travels in the service of the Emperor Napoleon (and which was largely lost during the bombing of the Douai museum in 1944). The inventor Adolphe Sax accumulated a collection of 467 instruments which were sold at auction in 1877 as part of his bankruptcy arrangements. Sax’s fellow Belgian, the musician and scholar Victor-Charles Mahillon, amassed more than 1,500 musical instruments as curator of the museum at the Brussels conservatoire, which eventually formed the basis of what is today the Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels.2 During the second half of the 19th century, the collecting curiosity of such individuals became translated into civic enterprise, with museums being founded throughout Europe, North America, and their colonial outreaches. Indeed, in the decades either side of 1900, museums expanded exponentially in number, scale, and scope. By 1910, there were more than 2,000 science and natural history museums around the world (Jenkins 2009, 244), with musical instruments frequently incorporated within more general ethnographic displays. A number of important points arise from this brief historical preamble. First, the development of this Euro-American museum culture was to a significant degree a consequence of colonization and the subsequent mercantile connections made through global trading relationships. Musical artefacts had little monetary value but, like other objects brought back from seemingly exotic locations, they afforded prestige because they connoted a global engagement and experience that was still comparatively unknown for many beyond the privileged few. The institutionalization of these objects thus reflected international power relations. Musical instruments on display not only provoked curiosity and intrigue on the part of the viewer, but they also symbolically expressed the occupation of colonized lands and the control by colonial authorities of other people and their culture. As Jann Pasler (2004) has shown, instrument displays in late 19th-century France specifically imbricated political discourses on race and colonial identity. Together with other material goods such as cooking utensils or weapons, or visual representations of objects through lithographs or photographs, they served to evoke superior/subordinate relationships with those from whom the objects had been gathered. But they also encouraged reflections on national and cultural difference. As with all forms of musically evoked exoticism, the display and appraisal of musical instruments taken to represent ‘exotic’ cultures from elsewhere not only explicitly required conceptualizing something about ‘them’, that is, the remote culture represented by the artefact on display, but it implicitly led to reflection on what defines ‘us’ also, and how those different notions might be compared and contrasted. The display of instruments in these institutional contexts inevitably alters the meanings that accrue to them, a point that will be returned to below. The risks of misinterpreting what an instrument might represent are profound and were identified by the anthropologist Franz Boas as early as 1887, when he noted that ‘by regarding a single implement outside of its surroundings, outside of other inventions of the people to whom it belongs, and outside of other phenomena affecting that people and its productions, we cannot understand its meaning’ (Boas 1887, 485). It is not only that, as Boas avers, we do not comprehend the meanings that attach to musical instruments in their original contexts, but we also attach to them new

4  Stephen Cottrell meanings and different interpretations in their new environments. These understandings again reflect our own worldviews. As Kevin Dawe (2001, 222) observes, the ‘identities’ or ‘roles’ ascribed to musical instruments can be in different contexts ‘mistranslated, subject to aestheticization, or totally transformed, and meanings can be added and subtracted from them’. To put this another way, musical instruments displayed in museums or elsewhere are not what they were, they are what we make them to be. We also unmake instruments in these display contexts. That is, we make them something they are not: we make them silent. Instruments are not so much displayed as ‘dis-played’. This point has been slightly mitigated in recent years as museum curators have sought to vivify their displays by including sound recordings of instruments or, very occasionally, by allowing some of them to be played by visitors. But for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, musical instruments in museums were mute, and exhibited on exactly the same nonsounding terms as other objects. Like children, as the English proverb would have it, instruments were to be seen and not heard. Eliot Bates (2012, 365) puts the point forcibly, declaring that ‘Instrument museums are mausoleums, places for the display of the musically dead, with organologists acting as morticians, preparing dead instrument bodies for preservation and display’. Such practices align with a history of Western, literate cultures since the early modern period, in which information gleaned visually both predominates and is accorded greater importance than evidence provided by other means, particularly orally or aurally (Ong 1958). Another consequence of this metonymic display of musical instruments—that is, taking one part of a music culture to stand for its whole—is that the static agglomeration of museum exhibits reifies space and time. Material fragments of other cultures are presented in a way that disconnects them from their own historical time and place and reconnects them to create a very different type of temporality and locality. This creates a world-out-of-time, and as David Jenkins (2009, 269) observes, this is true ‘whether artifacts—axes, agricultural tools, baskets, or musical instruments—are placed in evolutionary sequence or are arranged vis-à-vis specific cultures’. Indeed, it might be argued that this effect is exaggerated in relation to musical instruments, because in their home cultures they ordinarily participate in creating special worlds of time. Music events created by instruments combining with human subjects elicit ‘inner worlds of time’ (Schütz 1951) among the participants. There is thus a double temporal dislocation when instruments are denied the opportunity to take part in the performance events in which they are naturally found. They are neither of their own time nor of those special worlds of time they can engender: they are forever suspended in museum time. Many museums display large collections of instruments associated with the Western music traditions, in addition to those from elsewhere. These may superficially appear more familiar to us, but in fact they provide evidence of historic music cultures which are similarly distant. The aesthetic sensibilities denoted by the ornamentation of, say, a 16th-century Flemish harpsichord are unlikely to be shared today, even by those living in Flanders. The instrument is just as illustrative of its time and place as is de Léry’s maraca, and the contemporary

Introduction 5 meanings we now construe upon it may be very different from those attached in its own time. The historic spaces of our own cultures are in many ways just as exotic as those of global cultures elsewhere, a point neatly encapsulated by L.P. Hartley’s (1953, 1) oft-quoted line that ‘The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.’ Appadurai’s (1986) observations on the different values and meanings accorded to things as they move through global spaces is as applicable diachronically, in relation to historic music cultures, as it is synchronically, among the music cultures of our own times. This brief outline has focused only on collecting practices in Euro-American culture, reflecting a similar bias in other research and scholarship. What of collecting musical instruments in other cultures? In truth, we know too little about this. James Delbourgo points out that collecting traditions in Asia predate those of the West—he gives the gem collections of South Asian emperors and imperial collections of Chinese calligraphy as two examples. But in general he argues that our knowledge is scant because, ‘unlike the Europeans and Americans who made great collections long after them, they didn’t produce enduring museums that survive into our present’ (2019, 279). There is work to be done yet to understand better how musical instruments fit into these other collecting traditions. The science of classification The growth of collecting cultures led to concerns about how musical instruments in expanding collections should be organized. How does one categorize, whether for a viewing public or just for a collector/curator, a wide range of disparate instruments seemingly put to very different uses in different contexts, whose sole connection is that they appear to be for the purpose of generating musical sounds? In short, how does one order the world’s instrumentarium and, in ordering it, make sense of it? European interests in such categorization are evidenced in some of the earliest publications dealing specifically with musical instruments. Both Sebastian Virdung’s Musica getutscht und ausgezogen from 1511 and Martin Agricola’s closely related  Musica instrumentalis deudsch of 1529, although seemingly intended as methods and thus containing extensive performance instructions, propose rudimentary forms of instrument classification. More detailed in this respect is Michael Praetorius’s influential Syntagma Musicum, published between 1614 and 1620. The second of the intended four volumes of this work (only three were completed) is entirely devoted to musical instruments and titled De Organographia. The detailed illustrations it contains provide important information about instruments during the European Renaissance and were especially influential during the early music revival of the 20th century, when makers could refer to them to reconstruct ‘original’ instruments. Notably, Praetorius starts the volume with ideas about how the instruments might be classified, and many of the illustrations are accompanied by a small ruler (see Figure 0.1). Praetorius notes that all the illustrations ‘have been prepared in conformity with this ruler’, thus indicating both the analytical consistency and the ease of comparison between instruments that he hoped such measurements would provide.

6  Stephen Cottrell

Figure 0.1 A plate showing trombones, cornetts, and trumpets from Praetorius’ De ­Organographia, measured against a ruler.

In other parts of the Syntagma Musicum, Praetorius deals at length with the musical contexts in which the instruments are found, particularly in relation to their appropriate religious uses (from a Lutheran perspective). But De Organographia evidences a scientific approach to the measurement and categorization of musical instruments that laid the foundations for later developments in European organology. And since Praetorius includes a number of non-European instruments in the work, we can also see how such an approach began to be applied to the world’s instrumentarium, not just the instruments of European classical music. By the nineteenth century, the European study of musical instruments had become increasingly scientistic. Humanistic and social sciences were increasingly influenced by methodologies drawn from the natural and physical sciences. Charles Darwin’s ideas on biological evolution as outlined in The Origin of Species (1859) were especially admired.3 The notion that musical instruments might similarly be seen as ‘specimens’ which could be organized in such a way that inferences might be drawn about possible relationships between them was very much part of the late 19th-century European intellectual zeitgeist. Comparative musicology, the forerunner of ethnomusicology, evolved during this period, particularly through the work of pioneers such as Carl Stumpf (1841–1936), Erich von Hornbostel (1877–1935), and Curt Sachs (1881–1959)

Introduction 7 (sometimes conceived as constituting a Berlin ‘School’).4 Guido Adler’s 1885 definition of comparative musicology as ‘the comparing of tonal products, in particular the folksongs of various peoples, countries and territories […] grouping and ordering these according to the variety of [differences] in their characteristics’ (Adler,  1885; trans.  1981, 13) makes clear that categorization and classification were at the heart of this musicological endeavour. And the raw data with which these comparative musicologists were working came particularly from two sources: phonograph recordings and musical instruments. These different artefacts served similar purposes for these early scholars. Both were often collected via expeditions of some kind before being returned to Europe, where they could be pored over and analyzed in laboratory-like conditions, not unlike biological specimens. Both lent themselves to forms of analysis and classification, ostensibly to facilitate easy comparison but also as a way of seeing, indeed ‘ordering’, the world. And, as noted above, both suffered from the risks that, having been removed from the cultural contexts in which they were most meaningful, inappropriate assertions could be too easily made about what they represented, how they had evolved, and what they meant for whom. Interests in classification systems are far from being only a European trait. Margaret Kartomi (1990) has shown how such systems can be found in numerous historical and contemporary cultures. For example, in one ancient Chinese system known as pa yin, instruments were grouped according to the material of their construction but also in relation to points of the compass and the seasonal calendar (37–42). An ancient Hindu schema also had four major groupings, based on the physical characteristics of an instrument’s sounding body. These groups were then identified as either high or low status and further subdivided according to the importance of the musical roles played by the instruments within them (58–66). Kartomi’s many examples illustrate the prevalence and scale of these various classification systems, with some spanning cultures or nations over broad geographic areas and eras while others are more grounded in particular locales or contexts. Europe is no exception, with different approaches having been advocated from ancient Greek times onwards. Categorizing one’s own instrumentarium may or may not be a human universal, but it is clearly a widespread human activity. Classification systems thus reveal a great deal about the societies in which they emerge, how different musical instruments are understood at a particular time, and how those understandings align with other sociocultural or environmental concepts. It is therefore little surprise that the scientistic, natural history–influenced culture underpinning comparative musicology at the turn of the 20th century should lead to the formulation of a classification system deeply reflective of those values. Put forward by Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs in 1914, but modelled on an earlier system by Mahillon, the Hornbostel–Sachs (H–S) system initially divided instruments into four main groups, determined by the nature of the soundproducing material: idiophones (struck percussion), membranophones (drum-like instruments), chordophones (string instruments), and aerophones (blown instruments); a fifth group—electrophones—was proposed by Francis Galpin in (1937) to account for electronic instruments.5

8  Stephen Cottrell From this initial designation, the system proceeds in a tree-like fashion by determining further physical characteristics of a given instrument: for example, whether an aerophone has a reed, whether that reed beats percussively against a mouthpiece or concussively against another reed, etc. These various morphological distinctions are then captured in a series of numbers—each number essentially designating a branch in the tree—similar to the Dewey decimal system used to categorize library books, on which it is modelled. The violin, for example, becomes designated as 321.322, the saxophone as 422.212, and so forth. It is a highly rational system, reflecting the ‘grouping and ordering’ mindset that gave rise to it. Nevertheless, like any classification system, it is not flawless. It focuses only on the morphological, measurable qualities of instruments, with occasional insights into how they are played, to determine which branch of the tree to follow. The system obviates consideration of the social contexts in which an instrument is properly heard, or the musical affects to which it may give rise. If systems such as the preceding Chinese or Hindu examples locate musical instruments alongside the seasons or the points of the compass, expressing empirical worldviews in which sensory experience plays a vital role, the H–S system promotes scientific orthodoxy based on reasoning and intellect in a way that entirely ignores sensory experience. In this worldview, there is no place for the social, feelingful acts of musicking in which an instrument takes part, nor its relationship to other cultural traits; there is only an appraisal of its constituent components. The importance allocated to the supposed neutrality or objectivity of scientific ‘facts’ is itself deeply revealing of the Euro-American mindset that put it there. Nor does the use of numbers rather than words, as some have claimed, make the system entirely language neutral, since the language in which instruments are described, which thus determines the numerical allocations, may be contested.6 Reducing a given instrument to a numerical code arguably acts as a kind of knowledge gatekeeping: if you have the key to the code, you can translate what it means; if you don’t, you remain mystified. It also returns us to Ong’s point about the primacy afforded in Euro-American culture to visual information, of what can be observed about an instrument. The Hornbostel–Sachs system takes no account of how an instrument actually sounds, only what it looks like—a somewhat ironic consequence given the primary function of the musical instruments it seeks to classify. Notwithstanding the critiques made of it, the system has proven to be highly durable and is now widely used in museum environments and beyond. Indeed, it continues to be refined by those for whose work it remains central (see, for example, Birley and Myers 2020). It also provides a starting point for those who have sought to develop more robust ways of accommodating electronic and digital instruments, a challenging field for which the H–S system, with its ontological focus on physical objects, is poorly equipped (see Magnusson 2017). Recognizing the limits of the H–S system, various alternatives have been proposed. Montague and Burton (1971) maintain its essential taxonomic divisions but adopt nomenclature drawn from the Linnean classification system widely used in the biological sciences. Mantle Hood (1971) advocates the use of visual diagrams (‘organograms’) to represent instruments rather than a chain of numbers, which

Introduction 9 become increasingly complex as they endeavour to account not only for morphological details but also performance techniques, ornamentation, and more. Lysloff and Matson (1985) have proposed a complementary approach to the H–S system, using multidimensional scalar analysis to compare attributes, including sociocultural characteristics, between instruments that might otherwise appear only distantly related using the taxonomic hierarchies involved in other systems. None have had the impact of the H–S system nor its durability (for more comprehensive overviews, see Kartomi 1990, 2001). Finally, it might be reiterated that just as gazing on instrument specimens in museums and other displays reveals something about ‘us’ as much as it reveals something about an imagined other, so too do classification systems reveal as much about the culture of the classifier as they do about the culture being classified. Classification systems are imbued with the principles, understandings, and worldviews of those who devise them, and they can reveal to us much about those traits if carefully examined. But the point is universally valid: classification systems are always value laden, they are never value free. What is a musical instrument? During the first half of the 20th century, the activities of early scholars began to coalesce into an area of scholarship that came to be described as ‘organology’. The term was already in use in French as early as 1933, when a room for ‘organologie musicale’ was inaugurated at the Musée d’ethnographie in Paris by André Schaeffner (P.-M, J, and M 1933); Schaeffner (1936) also used the word throughout his Origine des Instruments de Musique, published three years later. Hornbostel’s (1933) review of Sach’s Geist and und Werden der Musikinstrumente may be the word’s first printed use in English, but it was sufficiently widespread that by the time Nicholas Bessaraboff published his Ancient Musical Instruments in 1941, he felt able to subtitle the book as An Organological Study. But what was organology understood to be? For Hornbostel (1933, 131) it implied ‘the comprehensive study of instruments, including their mental aspect’, whereas for Bessaraboff (1941, xxvi) it indicated the ‘scientific and engineering aspects’ of musical instruments rather than any broader study. As late as 1970, Wesler M. Oler was lamenting the word’s lack of currency in the broader world of scholarship, and Mantle Hood (1971, 123) similarly observed that at the time it did not appear in the Harvard Dictionary of Music. Nevertheless, the New Grove Dictionary did include the term for the first time in 1980, defining it as ‘the descriptive and analytical study of musical instruments’ (anon 1980). More important than the specifics of the word’s usage, however, is that its gradual acceptance evidences a growing collective identity for a particular group of Euro-American scholars focused on a specific subject and sharing some general conception as to how that subject should be studied. Add to this the foundation of the Galpin Society in 1946 as a scholarly organization wholly devoted to the study of musical instruments, and it is reasonable to assert that around this time a discrete subdiscipline of organology had evolved within the larger field of music studies.

10  Stephen Cottrell Yet there are both advantages and drawbacks to this disciplinarity. On the one hand, disciplines may provide consistency and coherence, shared methodologies, commonly understood conventions, institutional bases and forms of dissemination, etc. On the other, as the philosopher Michel Foucault puts it in his wellknown critique of disciplines, in which he sees them as controlling mechanisms closely related to penal institutions, they ‘characterize, classify, specialize; they distribute along a scale, around a norm, hierarchize individuals in relation to one another and, if necessary, disqualify and invalidate’ (1977, 223). Disciplines thus have a gatekeeping function: they determine what is accepted and acceptable, and they generate an internal momentum, a way of knowing and doing, that can be difficult for those not sharing the same disciplinary mindset to dislodge. At a very basic level, disciplines begin to formulate fundamental questions and precepts around which scholarly investigation is organized. The importance for early scholars of categorizing and classifying instruments has already been noted, but there was another fundamental question to be addressed: what exactly was a musical instrument? As early as 1936, Schaeffner (1936, 9) had explicitly asked, ‘Can we define the term musical instrument?’ For many, the answer will appear straightforward. The Oxford English Dictionary replicates many such entries by suggesting that the term designates ‘A device designed or used to produce musical sounds when played’.7 But such a definition has at least two problems: what do we mean by ‘device’, and who determines when sounds are deemed to be ‘musical’? A siren warning of an impending attack is certainly producing sound, and one which might in certain contexts be included in musical artworks for aesthetic purposes (such as in several works by the composer Edgard Varèse). But many would contest the idea that the sound it makes when heard in its original context, with its original function, constitutes ‘music’. From this perspective, then, determining whether something is a musical instrument becomes as contested as the notion of music itself, and thus both are entirely context dependent. Recognizing this difficulty at an early stage, von Hornbostel argued a few years prior to Schaeffner’s publication that ‘everything must count as a musical instrument with which sound can be produced intentionally and, for this reason, it is advisable to use the term “sound-producing instruments”’(1933, 129). The latter term has been preferred by several later scholars, notably Lysloff and Matson (1985, 127), who have argued that it should embrace ‘any device or human behavior constructed or carried out for the primary purpose of producing sound, whether musical or otherwise’. Here the term ‘carried out’ emulates Hornbostel’s intentionality, thus covering a range of objects—washboards or cooking pots provide just two examples—which may have been constructed for utilitarian purposes but can be pressed into the service of sound production. Sound reproduction technology provides particular examples of this approach. Items such as turntables, microphones, or loudspeakers have primary functions as technological artefacts that we use to reproduce sounds, notwithstanding that they have significant influence on the manner in which we perceive and thus valorize those sounds (Katz 2004). But used in other ways, they produce novel sounds

Introduction 11 which many would characterize as music, such as scratch music that relies on turntablism for its production, or the 1968 work Pendulum Music by American composer Steve Reich, where the musical interest arises from feedback generated by microphones swinging over loudspeakers. In such cases, the utilitarian function of these technological artefacts as sound reproducers has been repurposed to produce musical sounds themselves. Nevertheless, in all these examples it is still reasonably straightforward to determine what is and is not being used as an instrument. There is an identifiable, bounded ‘thing’ involved—a ‘device’–to which the term ‘soundproducing instrument’ can be appended, regardless of the artefact’s provenance. But there are many examples that problematize even this fundamental notion of musical ‘thingability’. The first of these returns us to sound technology and the taxonomic complexities relating to digitally produced sounds. Computers today (and by extension tablets, phones, etc.) can be used to generate a wide variety of sounds. Sometimes they are connected to other peripherals which take the software information and perform further manipulations before converting the signal to physical sound, and sometimes the computer handles all the transformations internally. In this volume, Eliot Bates draws attention to the multiplicity of synthesizers that can be created from patching together different modules, as well as ‘some of the problems that we face when attempting to taxonomically or ontologically attend to modular synthesizers as instruments’. The range of creative digital endeavours sometimes subsumed under the heading ‘new instruments for musical expression’ (NIME) further problematizes these issues,8 as does the advance of artificial intelligence and the capacity of computers to create and perform music autonomously. In all this activity, what exactly is the sound-producing instrument? The computer itself or the motherboard that manipulates the digital 1s and 0s which make everything else work? The components which convert this information into audio signals and/ or physical sound? The software programme that makes it all possible? And what about the relationship with the human performer (if present)? To what extent are they actually part of these digital instruments? Tellef Kvifte (2008), building on the work of Joel Chadabe (2002), suggests that we might approach these questions by focusing less on specific artefacts and more on what he sees as ‘loops’ in which such artefacts are embedded when actually used. These loops are closed, in the sense that they embrace only the parts of the artefact ‘used to control the sound’ and only the ‘musically relevant behaviour of the performer’. But the key point is that ‘the instrument’ is seen to arise not only from the ensemble of various components, human and nonhuman, that are joined together for the purpose of producing sound, but also from the manner in which they interact. Anything which isn’t directly relevant to controlling the sound is not considered as part of ‘the instrument’. Notwithstanding that Kivfte’s approach may help in determining the locus of the sound-producing object in the complex area of NIME, for present purposes it is unnecessarily constraining. To discard, as Kvifte suggests, those ‘physical features that [do] not influence control behaviour or sound’ is to lose the possibility of understanding something of the broader cultural implications in which such sounds

12  Stephen Cottrell arise. The decorations pertaining to a baroque harpsichord or a Zimbabwean mbira may well be irrelevant to determining whether such objects can be construed as ‘instruments’ from the perspective of Euro-American taxonomists, but they are equally likely to be highly relevant to an understanding of the meanings that accrue to an instrument in its cultural setting. Yet in focusing on the instrument/performer relationship, Kvifte draws attention to another major complexity in determining whether something is a musical instrument, and that is the role played by the human body. Can the body also be seen as a musical instrument or, at least, a component of certain instruments? And in such cases, how does one determine where the instrument ends and the body begins? Musical instruments and the body Curt Sachs (1940, 26) opines that the earliest instruments were probably strung rattles, worn on the arms and legs, which served to emphasize body actions involved in dancing, so that the movements of various limbs would be audibly accentuated. Sach’s argument is of course entirely speculative, but it serves to denote the close relationship that scholars have asserted between musical instruments and the human body. This is commonsensical, given that it is only relatively recently that instruments have evolved that are able to produce sound, especially musical sound, autonomously. Without the intervention of human bodies, most instruments would remain mute. Unsurprisingly, then, scholars have considered this body/instrument relationship from a variety of perspectives, including but by no means limited to music cognition and patterns of human movement (Baily 1977); phenomenological interpretations of the body/instrument relationship (Sudnow 1993); embodiment and musical affect in relation to instruments (Dawe 2005; Qureshi 2000); and the blurred boundaries between body and instrument in the performance of shamanic rituals (Pegg 2021). Yet even the distinction between ‘body’ and ‘instrument’, while usually clear in everyday conversation, is more complicated when considered closely. Wind instruments such as the clarinet may appear straightforward: we can measure ‘the instrument’ from the tip of its reed to the bell at the other end. But in performance, the mouthpiece is taken into the performer’s body. The lungs become an air reservoir that drives the reed, without which it cannot work. The vocal cavity has a critical role in shaping the sonic output. The same is true for many other instruments, such as the jew’s harp (or maultrommel) considered by Deidre Morgan in this volume. In these cases, the instrument is not simply controlled by an operator: the performer’s body plays a central role in determining the sound quality that is produced. Body and instrument are conjoined. Where, then, does one begin and the other end? Changing nomenclature from ‘musical instrument’ to ‘sound-­producing instrument’ increases rather than mitigates this difficulty, since there can be no sound produced without bodily engagement, and the more fundamental that engagement, the greater the terminological difficulty. Kvifte’s loops are designed to get around this problem, by seeing the body and the device together as ‘the instrument’. But as noted, while this approach solves certain problems, it brings others with it.

Introduction 13 The voice is the first sound-producing instrument that humans become conscious of being able to deploy, whether to call for attention, respond to or mimic maternal lullabies, or learn special children’s repertoires, etc. Is the voice not also a musical instrument? In essence, it is a wind instrument, with the lungs supplying air that causes the vocal cords to vibrate, and the throat, mouth, and nose cavities acting as resonators to amplify the sounds of those vibrations. But our conceptualizations of ‘voice’ and ‘instrument’ are varied. In everyday discourse, in English and many other languages, we usually distinguish between these two ideas. But there is often slippage between them. Those assessing individual singers in conservatoires or music competitions, for example, will sometimes comment on the nature of ‘the voice itself’, as though it were somehow disconnected from the body that produces it. Elsewhere it may be seen to take over the whole body. Carole Pegg (2021, 178) notes that in the production of overtone singing—her preferred term is ‘timbral body music’—the Altai-Sayan people of southern Siberia use the entire body so extensively that it becomes ‘a multiphonic instrument or musical ensemble’. Notwithstanding that it is one of our most familiar and embodied musical instruments, with the myriad ways in which it is used, the voice is also one of the most complex. The physical relationships we have with other instruments are equally complicated. Most (nondigital) musical instruments are patterned by human bodies. That is, the shape of an instrument is determined by its ergonomic relationship with the body. There is little point in designing an instrument that defies reasonable control by a human body since this would in many cases defeat its purpose. But this body–instrument relationship is dynamic, not static. Performers will often work to exploit the physical possibilities of an instrument, extending the limits of what can be achieved in performance. This in turn can lead to instruments being modified to accommodate the performer’s aspirations, as John Baily observes in this volume in relation to the Afghan dutâr. In this sense, the instrument codifies the human body: it testifies as to the shape and disposition of the bodies engaged with it by recording the nature of their relationship. But the reverse is also true. Jonathan de Souza (2017, 17) draws attention to Foucault’s assertion that bodies are codified by instruments. Foucault argues that weapons training, for example, and the specific body movements that an individual is instructed to follow in relation to posture and weapon control, is an important part of the disciplining that ‘helps turn recruits into soldiers’. De Souza suggests that a detailed pedagogical approach to musical performance such as that advocated by the 19th-century composer and pianist Carl Czerny serves a similar purpose. Meticulous instructions on posture, how to strike the keys, and repetition of basic finger exercises all fulfil the same function: they discipline the body for the act of musical performance. Like the soldier’s rifle, the piano becomes the tool through which the pianist is trained in the correct rules of engagement. Musical instruments as cultural symbols If musical instruments tell us anything about the webs of culture in which they are enmeshed, they do so because of their capacity to act as signs. Through their

14  Stephen Cottrell relationship with people, discourses, politics, technology, and more, they signify things, they become ‘significant’, and it is worth considering in more detail how such signification operates. In the late 19th century, Charles Sanders Peirce put forward what has become a bedrock of semiotics—the theory of signification—in which he divides all signs into three major types: icons, indexes, and symbols.9 Musical instruments as signifiers can be ascribed to all three categories, according to context. For example, a picture of a trumpet used on the cover of a trumpet method signifies iconically: the picture directly resembles or imitates the original object to which it refers. An instrument hung outside or in the window of a shop for the purpose of drawing attention to that shop is indexical: it has a real relationship to the instrument shop (the object) in a way that is unambiguous and requires no discussion or negotiation; as a sign, it clearly indicates that ‘this is a musical instrument shop’. In relation to the cultural study of musical instruments, however, it is the symbolic attributes of musical instruments as signifiers that provide the richest area for investigation. Symbols are associated with the objects to which they refer, or characteristics they designate, because they are interpreted to do so. That is, the meanings ascribed to them arise from ‘the certainty, based on some habit, natural disposition, or convention, that they will be understood in certain ways’ (Peirce, quoted in Bellucci 2019, np). They connote ideas or concepts as a result of social negotiation and mutual agreement, rather than demonstrating an unambiguous or uncontested relationship between the instrument, as a sign, and the particular qualities or characteristics that it is taken to represent, or signify. Musical instruments as symbols can thus reveal a great deal about the cultural contexts in which their symbolic qualities are understood to be meaningful if the social forces which ascribe those qualities are properly interrogated. Visual examples of musical instruments as cultural symbols are commonplace. They can be seen on national and regional flags, on book covers and film posters, in advertising and the visual arts, etc., often deployed in ways that are intended to imply that the incorporation is not fortuitous but designates particular values, concepts, or ideas which are then associated with the country, culture, book, film, etc. (see Figure 0.2). Even when not visually depicted, instruments can be powerful symbols of the cultural imaginary, objects around which dynamic constellations of ideas and concepts are organized as part of individual and group identity construction. Unsurprisingly, there is a good deal of scholarship on the myriad ways in which particular musical instruments become symbolic of social and cultural identities. Much relates to national identities and concepts of nationhood. For example, Andy Nercessian has examined at length how the duduk, a double-reed aerophone that produces a particularly evocative sound now often heard on film soundtracks, has for many Armenians become ‘strongly associated with notions of national identity’ (2001, 3). Veronica Doubleday notes that ‘Afghans have a special feeling for the rubab, describing it as the “lion” of instruments and their “national instrument”’(2000, 4). Brian Manners asserts that ‘the harp is an international symbol of Ireland’ and traces such usage back to the 13th century, where it can be found on a French roll of arms for ‘The King of Ireland’ (2017, 3).

Introduction 15

Figure 0.2 A cartoon from Life magazine (December 1925) in which the otherwise reticent American President Calvin Coolidge is depicted playing the saxophone— a noisy, jazzy symbol of the economically prosperous ‘Roaring Twenties’—to praise the dancer of ‘Big Business’.

But assertions made about national identity and musical instruments must be treated with care. Bates notes that ‘the saz (also known as bağlama) is often called the “national” instrument of Turkey’, but as he goes on to point out, ‘simply being a potential (albeit unofficial) national instrument doesn’t immediately mean that the saz is symbolic of the nation, constitutes or embodies the nation, or even has a clearly conceived function in relation to society, regardless of how national borders might be drawn’ (2012, 374). These difficulties are well illustrated by the adoption

16  Stephen Cottrell of ‘state instruments’ among the different states of the USA. Kentucky aligns itself with the Appalachian dulcimer, Louisiana with the Cajun accordion, Texas with the guitar, etc.10 But what qualities are these instruments seen to connote, and how do those qualities reflect different worldviews among those USA citizens who, presumably, would otherwise share much in common? Similarly problematic is that Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and South Dakota have all adopted the fiddle as their state instrument, which again begs the question, what is being claimed here? In what way are the social or musical characteristics connoted by this instrument shared by the different subnational communities spread across the large but discontiguous geographical area these states encompass? What particular narrative of American history is each state seeking to align itself with by associating with the fiddle and its various musical traditions? Who decided that the fiddle was an appropriate instrument and through what civic mechanisms? To what extent does this choice represent the views of the majority within any given state, and who might contest this choice? Such questions are posed here only for rhetorical effect, and to illustrate some of the difficulties we face in understanding musical instruments as cultural symbols. There are other, often more nuanced or covert examples of identity construction supported by musical instruments that go beyond geopolitical boundaries. Maria Sonevytsky considers the associations of the accordion and ‘ethnic whiteness’ in the USA by examining the use and promotion of the instrument by Lawrence Welk, an American accordionist and television impresario.11 Sonevytsky argues that Welk’s conservative musical values, immigrant experience, and rural Midwestern upbringing all associate the accordion with a particular kind of ‘whiteness’ that should be seen not only as the ‘normative counterpart to the “other” of blackness’, but also as a marker of ‘immigrant backwardness, lower-class status, and/or marginalization from mainstream American culture’ (Sonevytsky 2008, 105). Steve Waksman explores at length how over the course of the 20th century the electric guitar became similarly caught up in the racial politics of the United States with a complex series of associations enveloping the instrument as a symbol of youth culture. Waksman argues that in the 1950s and 1960s particularly, ‘the electric guitar came to embody a certain set of countercultural desires that hinged upon the transference of racial and sexual identity between African-American and white men’ (1999, 4). Elsewhere I have shown how the saxophone has become similarly imbued with ethnic, gendered, and sexualized associations in a range of global contexts (Cottrell 2012, 315–335). In all these examples, musical instruments as cultural symbols are appropriated and deployed, consciously or unconsciously, by those seeking to negotiate forms of collective identity. Yet cultural traits viewed positively by some may be construed negatively by others who are politically or ideologically opposed to them. In such cases, instruments, like other culturally meaningful ‘things’ such as flags, books, statues, etc., provide physical evidence of the qualities perceived as undesirable, and thus obvious targets for antagonistic censure by those seeking to assert authority and power. John Baily (2001, 7) has shown how, during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, ‘all instruments were banned, and when discovered

Introduction 17 by agents of the Office for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice were destroyed, sometimes being burnt in public’. Inevitably this led musicians to hide their instruments, sometimes by burying them in the ground (42). Peter Cooke (2021, 247) makes a similar observation in relation to the royal instruments of Buganda, a traditional kingdom today contained within Uganda. Following the overthrow of the kabaka (king) in 1966 and his exile to the UK, the special entaala xylophone keys were concealed in the royal tombs while the Mujaguzo drums, which were said to be ‘in mourning’, were kept hidden and secretly moved around by their guardians. Nor should we assume this is only a contemporary phenomenon. Henry Stobart (2009, 100) notes how 17th-century Spanish missionaries to Peru carefully documented their destruction of local instruments as part of the ‘Extirpation of Idolatry’ campaign designed to ensure the hegemony of the Catholic Church over local belief systems. In such contexts, musical instruments become both powerful symbols and symbols of power. For some, their destruction connotes conquest and domination. For others, their survival demonstrates resistance and defiance. Like all signs, instruments can function simultaneously as both icon and symbol. This is particularly the case when they are depicted in the visual arts, where they may be included to demonstrate the practice of music-making or to suggest to the viewer coded meanings that are not otherwise immediately apparent. As with all symbolic interpretation, readings can be misconstrued. Artists who construct such representations are not necessarily seeking to portray their own social reality; they are, by definition, constructing an artificial representation which may be influenced by individual aesthetic choices, the wishes of the person commissioning the work, the expected audience for the work, etc. Artists may take liberties with the ways in which instruments are depicted, either deliberately or unwittingly misrepresenting their morphology, for example, for artistic effect. In her examination of paintings from Mughal India, Bonnie Wade (1998, liv) notes that she had to ‘distinguish artistic convention from artistic licence’ and learn to ‘trust to a greater or lesser degree a particular artist’s drawing of an instrument’. Similarly, artists may depict the practice of music-making in ways that run counter to the social reality the painting seeks to represent. Richard Leppert (1988, 122) observes that in 18th-century England, very few upper-class males were painted at the keyboard because of the effeminacy that was felt to attach to the playing of keyboard instruments, notwithstanding that in practice such instruments were often played by men; in paintings, however, it was more common for them to be represented playing a flute rather than a keyboard, because the former was deemed to be more appropriately masculine. The point being made here is straightforward: musical instruments as symbols are both polyvalent and polysemic. That is, an instrument can be represented visually in different ways yet still be understood as designating the same type of instrument; and any instrument can carry multiple meanings and associations which are arrived at through social negotiation and agreement (or dispute). Moreover, just as those who identify with the instrument may contest those meanings, so too will those who seek to interpret them for others sometimes contest what they are understood to represent.

18  Stephen Cottrell Instrumentalizing gender and power If, as has been argued here and elsewhere, musical instruments can be seen as integrated into human social relations such that they act upon the social networks of which they are a part, it is perhaps little surprise that they are often associated with qualities that are taken as fundamentally human. This anthropomorphizing is especially true in relation to the gendering of musical instruments, a particularly notable subset of musical instruments’ symbolic qualities. The attribution to particular instruments of characteristics construed as masculine or feminine, or ambiguated between these two poles, is culturally widespread but also, as ever, context dependent. This gendering occurs in a variety of ways which for present purposes will be subsumed into two overarching but related areas: instrument morphology, and the social practice of music-making (for a more comprehensive overview, see Doubleday 2008). At the most fundamental level, the shape of musical instruments allows them to be endowed with gendered characteristics. Wind and brass instruments such as flutes or trumpets are frequently coded as masculine because of their phallic associations, whereas stringed instruments such as violins or harps are conceived as feminine, in part on account of their more obviously curvaceous shapes but also because of the ‘sweeter’ sounds they are said to produce. In the West, these distinctions can be traced back to ancient Greece, where the aulos or double reedpipe was conceived by writers such as Plato and Aristotle as being devoted to the pursuit of pleasure, and wind instruments were identified as being played by satyrs and thus associated with libidinous behaviour. By contrast, the kythara or lyre—a form of harp—was associated with harmonious contemplation and moderation. This distinction was continued through the Middle Ages and beyond when, for example, the bagpipes were often symbolically taken in art and literature to represent human depravation in general and sexual lust in particular. Vivien Williams (2013), for example, shows how the Scottish bagpipes were quite explicitly used as substitutes for male genitalia in satirical prints circulating even in 18th-century Scotland. But gendered associations are not universal, nor are they necessarily constant over time; also, the same instrument can be gendered quite differently in performance from the way it is interpreted morphologically. Steve Waksman provides a good example. Drawing attention to Frederic Grunfeld’s The Art and Times of the Guitar (1969), Waksman quotes Grunfeld’s characterization of the instrument as having ‘the shape of a woman’s body: softly rounded at the shoulders, curving inward at the waist, and concluding with another gently rounded curve at the bottom’ (quoted in Waksman 2003, 251). Waksman notes the incongruity of Grunfeld’s remarks made at a time when ‘the instrument, in its electric incarnation, was becoming more and more used as a vehicle for phallic display’, a point that Waksman himself explores at length elsewhere (1999). The distinction between gendered meanings based on morphology and those arising from performance practice is self-evident. The social conventions pertaining to music-making reveal further insights into the gendering of instruments. The social practice of music-making is frequently controlled by males even in contexts where the music-making itself is undertaken by women. As Doubleday (2008, 15–18) points out, not only are most human

Introduction 19 societies patriarchal, and thus men hold the balance of power in most aspects of those societies, but musical instruments are also often aligned with the world of technology, a domain which is again frequently seen as the proper business of men and from which women are often excluded, whether implicitly or explicitly. JaFran Jones notes the cross-cultural absence of women playing instruments ‘as if it were a law of nature’ (1987, 81). There are numerous examples in the literature to support such views. Steven Feld (1984, 398) draws attention to the fact that, among the Kaluli people of Papua New Guinea, instruments such as hand drums and bamboo jaw’s harps are not even to be touched by women, much less performed by them. Doubleday elsewhere (1999, 116) describes an Afghan context in which ‘men have inhibited women from playing almost all musical instruments’; they are only allowed to play the frame drum and then only in private, all-female domestic circumstances. Marina Roseman (1984, 421) observes that among the Temiar people of Malaysia, although women do play instruments, they are restricted to those made from bamboo tubes. Such tubes are also used as cooking utensils, thus implicitly linking their use as instruments with labour understood to be properly part of the female domain. Gendering musical instruments in this way applies equally to Euro-American cultures. For example, Abeles and Porter explore different forms of sex stereotyping of musical instruments among children and parents in different states of the USA and suggest that ‘musical instrument gender associations are widespread throughout all age groups’ (1978, 74). And it is well recognized that in 19th-century Europe the piano was seen as an appropriate instrument for women to play since it connotated respectability and increased their marriage potential; as Cyril Ehrlich (1990, 93) observes, ‘every well brought up young lady was expected to be capable of entertaining company at the piano’.12 Just as today’s understanding of the gender identity spectrum goes beyond a simple male/female binary, so too can instruments be invested with more complex gender associations. The saxophone provides a case in point. As a wind instrument one might expect it to be characterized as essentially masculine, with the straight-bodied soprano saxophone, in particular, seen as fundamentally phallic, like a trumpet or oboe. But the instrument can also be seen as ambiguous or possibly hermaphrodite, since the integral curves of the S-shaped models of the saxophone family allude to more feminine characteristics—not unlike the curves of the violin or Grunfeld’s view of the guitar, noted previously. Furthermore, the bell end of the saxophone, with its flared opening held at the level of the hips and parallel to the groin, appears more suggestive of female genitalia than the male phallus, adding yet another layer of ambiguity (see Cottrell 2012, 27–35). Henry Spiller further dismantles the male/female heterosexual binary in relation to the social practice of music-making, showing how the harp has long been associated with ‘queerness, femininity and male homosexuality’, and that the double-action pedal harp, although invented in the 19th century, emerged in the 20th century ‘as a simulacrum of the “closet”‘: both the instrument and those who played it could be seen as inhabiting liminal spaces in which musical and social subterfuge was required to obscure what was really taking place (2019, 101).

20  Stephen Cottrell All this again speaks to the importance of musical instruments as cultural symbols: of power, of social and sexual relations, of gendered politics and hierarchies, of gendered roles in relation to music technology, and more. Musical instruments thus symbolize gendered power relationships but they also instrumentalize them: they are objects through which power and control are wielded, and they are almost universally wielded in such a way as to make women subservient to the demands and expectations of men. Musical instruments and material culture Over the last two decades or so, musicology has in certain quarters taken a socalled ‘material turn’, arising from a focus on the objects and materials employed in different aspects of musical practice. Examples include studies on the materiality of printed sources (Jennings 2015; van Orden 2015) or musical media (Devine 2015; Shuker 2010), among many others. The material nature of musical instruments has been central to this line of musicological scholarship and is considered by Kevin Dawe in detail in this volume. Arjun Appadurai’s seminal edited collection on The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Social Perspective provides part of the bedrock of this particular scholarly domain. He argues that, in order to fully understand the changing meanings attached to commodities, ‘we have to follow the things themselves, for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories. It is only through the analysis of these trajectories that we can interpret the human transactions and calculations that enliven things’ (1986, 5). To give a well-known example, a didjeridu carries a very different set of associations in a London museum where it might be displayed, from the often sacred and highly ritualized Australian Aboriginal environments in which it was originally heard. And these associations change again if the same type of instrument is heard on a busker’s pitch in a European tourist spot, helping to elicit donations of loose change from passing tourists, or as part of a New Age celebration of spirituality and healing (Neuenfeldt 1998). While the different instruments employed may be physically and sonically similar, the values and meanings associated with them are likely to be very different. Not only do instruments accumulate different meanings as they circulate, however, but in so doing they also actively animate social relations. From this perspective, musical instruments are seen to have agentive powers: they become integral parts of social constellations or networks to the extent that they provoke, shape, and influence the nature of those networks. Bates (2012) builds on Bruno Latour’s Actor–Network Theory, among other approaches, to illustrate how instruments can be thought of ‘as potential subjects (rather than objects) of research’ (368, original emphasis). Rather than seeing musical instruments only as symbols or icons, whose significance arises passively from the values or meanings ascribed to them, in his consideration of Turkish long-necked lutes (sazes) Bates draws on the work of political scientist Jane Bennett, who writes about thing-power, ‘the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle’ (quoted in Bates 2012, 373). Bates considers the role of the saz in a variety of

Introduction 21 contexts—among various performers, in relation to Turkish nationalism and, crucially, among the networks surrounding the makers of the instrument—to illustrate how the instrument becomes ‘a key actor’ (377) in these various networks, one which serves to both enable and modify social relations through the various roles the saz is asked to play. This idea that musical instruments have subjective properties which render them similar to sentient beings is not simply a scholarly construct. Pegg (2021, 182) notes that among the Altai-Sayan people, for example, ‘a musical instrument also has a spirit-owner and therefore is a “living being” with its own life, body, voice, energy and emotions’. In one instance, she observes that upon the death of a particular shaman, his instrument was sent with him to the afterworld because its personality was seen to be so entwined with that of its owner that the instrument could not be played by anybody else. The work of scholars such as Pegg and Bates illustrates the importance of ethnographic research in understanding the nuances of an instrument’s agentive capacities and the manner in which it may be seen to engage with broader social networks. But ethnography has often been a synchronic exercise: it provides insights into the ‘here and now’ of social activity, frequently expressed in an ethnographic present, which is itself something of a world-out-of-time (Fabian 1983). Historical perspectives have not always been easily accommodated within ethnographic approaches, a disciplinary anxiety which has been much debated within anthropology.13 But it is important to note that, in acting upon musical behaviour of the present, musical instruments simultaneously invoke musical principles of the past. Surviving instruments from earlier periods reveal something about the performance characteristics of those periods. This is particularly true in relation to tuning systems, for example, which can remain encoded within instruments over decades or centuries.14 Instrument components such as player piano rolls are similarly important because they provide insights into music as it might have been performed, thus yielding yet more information about historic music cultures and their performance tradition. In storing some of the musical conventions of the past, instruments also ensure that those conventions are brought to bear on current practice. The morphology of an instrument, arising from social negotiations perhaps undertaken over many years and among large numbers of interested networks, shapes current musical practice; and the musical heritage that surrounds an instrument, whether recorded orally, in written texts, or in other ways, also contributes to understandings and disputes about how it should be used. Musical instruments thus instantiate a conjunction between past and present, which becomes a lived, sonic reality in the act of musical performance. The philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (2004, xxx) refers to this as ‘historically effected consciousness’, by which he means ‘at once the consciousness effected in the course of history and determined by history, and the very consciousness of being thus effected and determined’. All those engaged in a musical performance are in some way aware of the history of the tradition that underlies it—how else might they know what or how to play, or how they might innovate? Musical instruments are central to this understanding and act as culture bearers for the tradition itself

22  Stephen Cottrell because of the information they are understood to encode; they are thus important components of the historically effected consciousness that pertains to that tradition. To borrow Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977, 72) terminology, instruments are both structured and structuring. They are structured by the historical precedents and trajectories that have led to them being as they are; but they are also structuring devices, in the sense that their present morphology significantly influences current musical practice and thus the musical patterns and social formations to which they contribute.15 Conclusion—whither organology? To return to my opening observations, organology in its broadest sense endeavours to strike a balance between two interrelated positions: on the one hand, seeing musical instruments as technological artefacts that can be evaluated through observational analysis and measurement; and on the other, seeing them as polyvalent and deeply symbolic examples of material culture in which are embedded meanings and significance that transcend their morphology. Organologists have tended to stake out different positions in this terrain, inflected by their own personal dispositions and the prevailing currents of their times. In the mid-20th century, some felt that the balance had been tilted too strongly in favour of the first perspective, and that, as Kartomi (2001, 287) puts it, organology was ‘concentrating too much on structures and technological, ergonomic developments of instruments [and] too little concerned with what really ought to interest us, namely the living music-cultures in which instruments are used’. But in the latter part of that century, a number of influential studies showed how these concerns might be addressed: Alan Merriam’s (1969) work on African drums, Paul Berliner’s (1993 [1978]) study of the Zimbabwean mbira, or Timothy Rice’s (1994) engagement with the Bulgarian gaida, to give just three examples, illustrate a broader epistemological shift, and in particular, recognition of the value of ethnographic engagement with the contexts in which instruments were being made, played, and valorized. By 2001, the breadth of Laurie Libin’s definition of the field as ‘The study of musical instruments in terms of their history and social function, design, construction and relation to performance’ was both appropriate and necessary. But the 21st century has seen some further rethinking of what the term organology means, or should mean, and how such study might be undertaken. Gabriele Rossi Rognoni (2019, 7) draws attention to the range of titular modifications that have been proposed in the last two decades, which have included ‘new organology’ (Roda 2007; Tresch and Dolan 2013), ‘lived organology’ (Hoosmanrad 2016), ‘general organology’ (Stiegler 2004), ‘critical organology’ (Sonevytsky 2008), ‘cultural organology’ (Johnston 2008), and ‘biographical organology’ (Hoosmanrad 2016), to which one might also add ‘queer organology’ (Spiller 2019).16 Museums have also moved away from displays founded upon classification systems to those which present the broader cultural contexts and histories surrounding the instruments they exhibit, especially those bound up in contemporary revisions of colonial narratives.

Introduction 23 It is in this wide-ranging spirit that this volume proceeds. Shaping Sound and Society might reasonably be described as a work of organology, although few of its contributors would describe themselves as organologists first and foremost. Most would perhaps claim affiliations as musicologists or ethnomusicologists, albeit that they have clear interests in studying musical instruments. The morphological details pertaining to musical instruments remain important, but the earlier focus on ‘scientific and engineering aspects’, as Bessaraboff would have it, has become attenuated by greater awareness of and sensitivity to those social and cultural forces with which these aspects are inextricably interlinked. Organology is now a broader church. Rossi Rognoni (2019, 4) also notes that much recent debate on the direction of the subdiscipline has been undertaken by scholars ‘who do not identify themselves as organologists, but rather as musicologists, ethnomusicologists, sociologists, biologists, and philosophers.’ Nevertheless, among these wide-ranging perspectives he asserts that ‘organology today is a discipline with a strong and recognised identity’. Perhaps. But there is another reading of all this activity. It could be argued that the range of studies now encompassed, the variety of approaches they employ, and the diversity of scholars involved are so diffuse that the overarching term ‘organology’ is beginning to lose its usefulness. Or at least, that some of those associated with the work it describes have a degree of ambivalence about its connotations, not least its historical precedents and Eurocentric leanings. Musicology has been similarly prefixed with variations of ‘new’ (Rosen 2000), ‘critical’ (Kramer 2006), ‘relational’ (Born 2010), ‘cultural’ (Abels 2016), etc., as part of its own disciplinary introspections over the past 40 years; and ethnomusicology continues to be afflicted by existential angst, as it has been for much of its own history, as evidenced by the wonderfully ambivalent title of Henry Stobart’s The New (Ethno)musicologies (2008). Laudan Nooshin (2008) has suggested the adoption of the more neutral term, ‘music studies’, as a way of alleviating subdisciplinary tensions while embracing intellectual diversity. Does all this suggest that the term ‘organology’ has outlived its usefulness? If so, long live musical instrument studies. Notes 1 For more on the development of 16th- and 17th-century collecting practices, see Impey and MacGregor (1983). 2 For more information on music instrument collecting in France in the 18th and 19th centuries, see Gétreau (1997, 2001). 3 It might be noted that botanical influences were felt well into the 20th and 21st centuries, as evidenced by Montagu and Burton’s (1971) adaptation of Linnean principles of botanical classification in their proposed system for classifying musical instruments, and Robert Howe’s (2003) similar investigation of the early development of the saxophone as a ‘species’ with ‘genera’, etc. 4 For more on the development of comparative musicology and the contributions of various scholars, see Nettl and Bohlman (1991). 5 The Hornbostel–Sachs classification system was first published in German in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914 (vol. 46, 553–590). Perhaps surprisingly, given its now widespread adoption, an English translation did not follow until 1961 (von Hornbostel and Sachs 1961). For further reviews of the system, and some historical context, see, for example, Jairazbhoy (1990) and Ghirardini (2020a).

24  Stephen Cottrell 6 On this point, compare for example the arguments of Jeremy Montagu (2020) with those of Cristina Ghirardini (2020b). 7 ‘instrument, n.’. OED Online. December 2021. Oxford University Press. https://www. oed.com/view/Entry/97158 (accessed 7 January 2022). 8 For further insights on NIME, see https://www.nime.org/ (last accessed 16 January 2022). 9 Peirce later subdivided these three categories in certain ways, but the sophistication (and complexity) of his later assertions is not important to the arguments here. For a comprehensive overview of Peirce’s semiotic theories, see Bellucci (2019). 10 A list of USA states and their instruments can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_U.S._state_instruments (last accessed 18 August 2021). 11 The show Lawrence Welk and His Musical Family of Champagne Music Makers was broadcast in the USA from 1955 to 1982. 12 It might be noted that similar understandings prevail among the Brahmin priestly caste in relation to the sarasvati vina, a lute which is integral to the Karnatic tradition of Indian classical music. The association of the instrument with Saraswati, the Indian goddess of wisdom, learning, and the arts has led it to be considered, like the Western piano, as an instrument appropriate for women and girls to study and perform (see Doubleday 2008, 7). 13 For a flavour of this debate, see Cohn (1987), Faubion (1993), and Geertz (2000). 14 This is truer of instruments such as a church organ, whose tuning is relatively fixed ­(because modifying organ pipes is a substantial operation that is seldom undertaken) than it is about an instrument such as the violin (because string instruments can be ­inflected in performance to accommodate different scales or tuning systems). 15 Bourdieu’s use of the terms ‘structured’ and ‘structuring’ apply to his conception of the habitus and his ideas about ‘dispositions’, defined as ‘permanent manners of being, seeing, acting and thinking’ (Bourdieu 2002, 27–28). He did not intend these terms to be applied to material objects as I have done here. However, he also identifies the hexis–– the tendency to hold one’s body in a particular fashion––as being a component of the habitus, and this might reasonably include the relationship between the body and the musical instrument. As noted previously in relation to the work of Foucault, instruments do train the body, and in this sense also they can be seen as structuring devices. 16 While drawing on Rossi Rognoni’s original idea, I have slightly amended his list of references.

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Introduction 25 Bessaraboff, Nicholas. 1941. Ancient European Musical Instruments: An Organological Study of the Musical Instruments in the Leslie Lindsey Mason Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Birley, Margaret, and Arnold Myers. 2020. ‘The Revision of the Hornbostel-Sachs Classification in 2011 by the Mimo Consortium’. In Christina Ghirardini (Ed.), Reflecting on Hornbostel-Sachs’s Versuch a Century Later: Proceedings of the International Meeting, Venice, 3–4 July 2015. Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi. Boas, Franz. 1887. ‘The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart’. Science 9: 485–86. Born, Georgina. 2010. ‘For a Relational Musicology: Music and Interdisciplinarity, Beyond the Practice Turn: The 2007 Dent Medal Address’. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 135: 205–43. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2002. ‘Habitus’. In J. Hillier and E. Rooksby (Eds.), Habitus: A Sense of Place. ­Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Chadabe, Joel. 2002. ‘The Limitations of Mapping as a Structural Descriptive in Electronic Instruments.’ In Proceedings of the 2002 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical ­Expression, 1–5. Dublin, Ireland: National University of Singapore. Cohn, Bernard S. 1987. An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays. Delhi; New York: Oxford University Press. Cooke, Peter. 2021. ‘Music, Power and Patronage: The Case of the King’s Musicians of Buganda’. In Stephen Cottrell (Ed.), Music, Dance, Anthropology. Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing. Cottrell, Stephen. 2012. The Saxophone. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Darwin, Charles. 1859. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the ­Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle For Life. London: John Murray. Dawe, Kevin. 2001. ‘People, Objects, Meaning: Recent Work on the Study and Collection of Musical Instruments’. The Galpin Society Journal 54: 219–32. ———. 2005. ‘Symbolic and Social Transformation in the Lute Cultures of Crete: Music, Technology and the Body in a Mediterranean Society’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 37: 58–68. De Souza, Jonathan. 2017. Music at Hand: Instruments, Bodies, and Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Delbourgo, James. 2019. ‘Commentary: Collect or Die’. BJHS Themes 4: 273–81. Devine, Kyle. 2015. ‘Decomposed: A Political Ecology of Music’. Popular Music 34: 367–89. Doubleday, Veronica. 1999. ‘The Frame Drum in the Middle East: Women, Musical Instruments and Power’. Ethnomusicology 43: 101–34. ———. 2000. ‘Afghanistan: Red Light at the Crossroads’. In Simon Broughton and Mark ­Ellingham (Eds.), World Music: The Rough Guide. London: Penguin Books Ltd. ———. 2008. ‘Sounds of Power: An Overview of Musical Instruments and Gender’. ­Ethnomusicology Forum 17: 3–39. Ehrlich, Cyril. 1990. The Piano: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press. Faubion, James D. 1993. ‘History in Anthropology’. Annual Review of Anthropology 22: 35–54. Feld, Steven. 1984. ‘Sound Structure as Social Structure’. Ethnomusicology 28: 383–409.

26  Stephen Cottrell Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Allen Lane. Gadamer, Hans Georg. 2004. Truth and Method. London: Sheed and Ward. Galpin, Francis W. 1937. A Textbook of European Musical Instruments: Their Origin, ­History and Character. London: Williams & Norgate Ltd. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books Inc. ———. 2000. ‘History and Anthropology’. In Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gétreau, Florence. 1997. ‘Alte Instrumente im Frankreich des 19. Jahrhunderts: Die Rolle des Conservatoire und Private Initiativen’. Basler Jahrbuch für Historische Musikpraxis XXI: 181–213. ———. 2001. ‘Instrumentenkabinette in Frankreich zur Zeit der Bourbonkönige’. Musica ­instrumentalis. Zeitschfrift für Organologie 3: 61–73. Ghirardini, Christina (Ed.). 2020a. Reflecting on Hornbostel-Sachs’s Versuch a Century Later: Proceedings of the International Meeting, Venice, 3–4 July 2015. Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi. Ghirardini, Cristina. 2020b. ‘Introduction’. In Christina Ghirardini (Ed.), Reflecting on Hornbostel-Sachs’s Versuch a Century Later: Proceedings of the International Meeting, Venice, 3–4 July 2015. Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi. Grunfeld, Frederic V. 1969 The Art and Times of the Guitar: An Illustrated History of ­Guitars and Guitarists. New York: Macmillan. Harrison, Frank. 1973. Time, Place and Music. Amsterdam: Frits Knuf. Hartley, Leslie P. 1953. The Go-Between. London: H. Hamilton. Hood, Mantle. 1971. The Ethnomusicologist. New York: McGraw-Hill. Hoosmanrad, Partow. 2016. ‘Contemplating the Tanbur of the Kurdish Ahl-I Haqq of ­Guran: A Biographical Organology’. Journal of the American Musical Instrument ­Society 61: 218–59. Howe, Robert S. 2003. ‘The Invention and Early Development of the Saxophone, 1840–55’. Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 29: 97–180. Impey, Oliver, and Arthur MacGregor. (Eds.). 1983. The Origins of Museums: The Cabinet of Curiosities in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century Europe. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jairazbhoy, Nazir A. 1990. ‘An Explication of the Sachs-Hornbostel System’. Selected ­Reports in Ethnomusicology 8: 81–104. Jenkins, David. 2009. ‘Object Lessons and Ethnographic Displays: Museum Exhibitions and the Making of American Anthropology’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 36: 242–70. Jennings, Laruen McGuire. 2015. Senza Vestimenta: The Literary Tradition of Trecento Song. Farnham: Ashgate. Johnston, Jesse Alan Newhouse. 2008. ‘The Cimbál (Cimbalom) in Moravia: Cultural ­Organology and Interpretive Communities’. PhD Dissertation. University of Michigan. Jones, L. JaFran. 1987. ‘A Sociohistorical Perspective on Tunisian Women as Professional Musicians.’ In E. Koskoff (Ed.), Women and Music in Cross-Cultural Perspective (169– 178). New York, Greenwood Press. Kartomi, Margaret. 1990. On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2001. ‘The Classification of Musical Instruments: Changing Trends in Research from the Late Nineteenth Century, with Special Reference to the 1990s’. Ethnomusicology 45: 283–314. Katz, Mark 2004. Capturing Sound: How Technology has Changed Music. Berkeley: ­University of California Press.

Introduction 27 Kramer, Lawrence. 2006. Critical Musicology and the Responsibility of Response: Selected Essays. Aldershot: Ashgate. Kvifte, Tellef. 2008. ‘What is a Musical Instrument?’ Svensk Tidskrift for Musikforskning 90 (1): 45–56. Leppert, Richard. 1988. Music and Image: Domesticity, Ideology and Socio-cultural ­Formation in Eighteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Libin, Laurence. 2001. ‘Organology.’ In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Oxford University Press. Lysloff, René T. A., and Jim Matson. 1985. ‘A New Approach to the Classification of SoundProducing Instruments’. Ethnomusicology 29: 213–36. Magnusson, Thor. 2017. ‘Musical Organics: A Heterarchical Approach to Digital Organology’. Journal of New Music Research 46: 286–303. Manners, Brian. 2017. The Trinity College Harp: Ireland and the Most Exotic Music Instrument in the World. Dublin: Dubhlinn Nua Publishing. Merriam, Alan. 1969. ‘The Ethnographic Experience: Drum-Making Among the Bala ­(Basongye)’. Ethnomusicology 13: 74–100. Montagu, Jeremy. 2020. ‘How Far Do We Dare to Revise Hornbostel and Sachs?’ In Christina Ghirardini (Ed.), Reflecting on Hornbostel-Sachs’s Versuch a Century Later: Proceedings of the International Meeting, Venice, 3–4 July 2015. Venice: Edizioni Fondazione Levi. Montagu, Jeremy, and John Burton. 1971. ‘A Proposed New Classification System for ­Musical Instruments’. Ethnomusicology 15: 49–70. Nercessian, Andy. 2001. The Duduk and National Identity in Armenia. Lanham, MD and London: Scarecrow Press. Nettl, Bruno, and Philip V. Bohlman (Eds.). 1991. Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Neuenfeldt, Karl. 1998. ‘The Quest for a "Magical Island": The Convergence of the Didjeridu, Aboriginal Culture, Healing and Cultural Politics in New Age Discourse’. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice 42: 73–102. Nooshin, Laudan. 2008. ‘Ethnomusicology, Alterity and Disciplinary Identity. Or “Do We Still Need an Ethno-?”, “Do We Still Need an -Ology?”’. In Henry Stobart (Ed.), The New (Ethno)musicologies. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press. Ogborn, Miles, and Victoria Pickering. 2019. ‘The World in a Nicknackatory: Encounters and Exchanges in Hans Sloane’s Collection’. In Adriana Craciun and Mary Terrall (Eds.), Curious Encounters: Voyaging, Collecting, and Making Knowledge in the Long Eighteenth Century. University of Toronto Press. Oler, Wesley M. 1970. ‘Definition of Organology’. The Galpin Society Journal 23: 170–74. Ong, Walter J. 1958. Ramus: Method, and the Decay of Dialogue from the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. P.-M, M., T. J, and P. M. 1933. ‘Nouvelles Musicologiques. Documents’. Revue de Musicologie 14: 152–57. Pasler, Jann. 2004. ‘The Utility of Musical Instruments in the Racial and Colonial Agendas of Late Nineteenth-Century France’. Journal of the Royal Musical Association 129: 24–76. Pegg, Carole. 2021. ‘Performative Bodies: Overtoning Self and Personhood among Nomadic Musicians and Shamans of the Altai-Sayan Mountains of Southern Siberia’. In Stephen Cottrell (Ed.), Music, Dance, Anthropology. Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing. Qureshi, Regula. 2000. ‘How Does Music Mean? Embodied Memories and the Politics of Affect in the Indian Sarangi’. American Ethnologist 27: 805–38. Racy, Ali Jihad. 1994. ‘A Dialectical Perspective on Musical Instruments: The East-­ Mediterranean Mijwiz’. Ethnomusicology 38: 37–57.

28  Stephen Cottrell Rice, Timothy. 1994. May It Fill Your Soul: Experiencing Bulgarian Music. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Roda, P. Allen. 2007. ‘Toward a New Organology: Material Culture and the Study of ­Musical Instruments’. Material World Blog. http://www.materialworldblog.com/2007/11/ toward-a-new-organology-material-culture-and-the-study-of-musical-instruments/ Roseman, Marina. 1984. ‘The Social Structuring of Sound: The Temiar of Peninsular ­Malaysia’. Ethnomusicology 28: 411–45. Rosen, Charles. 2000. ‘The New Musicology’. In Critical Entertainments: Music Old and New: Harvard University Press. Rossi Rognoni, Gabriele. 2019. ‘Organology and the Others: A Political Perspective’. Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 44: 7–17. Sachs, Curt. 1940. The History of Musical Instruments. New York: W.W. Norton & ­Company Inc. Schaeffner, André. 1936. Origine des Instruments de Musique. Paris: Payot. Schütz, Alfred. 1951. ‘Making Music Together: A Study in Social Relationship’. Social Research 18: 76–97. Shuker, Roy. 2010. Wax Trash and Vinyl Treasures: Record Collecting as a Social Practice. Farnham: Ashgate. Sonevytsky, Maria. 2008. ‘The Accordion and Ethnic Whiteness: Toward a New Critical Organology’. The World of Music 50: 101–18. Spiller, Henry. 2019. ‘A Queer Organology of the Pedal Harp’. Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 23: 99–121. Stiegler, Bernard. 2004. De la Misère Symbolique. Paris: Galilée. Stobart, Henry (Ed.). 2008. The New (Ethno)musicologies. Lanham, MD.: Scarecrow Press. ———. 2009. ‘World Musics’. In J. P. E. Harper-Scott and Jim Samson (Eds.), An Introduction to Music Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sudnow, David. 1993. Ways of the Hand: The Organization of Improvised Conduct. ­Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Tresch, John, and Emily I. Dolan. 2013. ‘Toward a New Organology: Instruments of Music and Science’. Osiris 28: 278–98. van Orden, Kate. 2015. Materialities: Books, Readers, and the Chanson in Sixteenth-Century Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Von Hornbostel, E. M. 1933. ‘The Ethnology of African Sound-Instruments. Comments on “Geist und Werden der Musikinstrumente” by C. Sachs’. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 6: 129–57. von Hornbostel, Erich M., and Curt Sachs. 1961. ‘Classification of Musical Instruments: Translated from the Original German by Anthony Baines and Klaus P. Wachsmann’. The Galpin Society Journal 14: 3–29. Wade, Bonnie C. 1998. Imaging Sound: An Ethnomusicological Study of Music, Art, and Culture in Mughal India. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Waksman, Steve. 1999. Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2003. ‘Reading the Instrument: An Introduction’. Popular Music and Society 26: 251–61. Williams, Vivien. 2013. ‘The Cultural History of the Bagpipe in Britain, 1680–1840’. PhD Dissertation. University of Glasgow.

Instrumental Interlude #1 The Skoog Ben Schögler and David Skulina

Figure #1 The Skoog is a highly tactile, interactive musical instrument invented by Ben Schögler and David Skulina following a research project at the University of Edinburgh undertaken from 2006–2009. The instrument works as a controller which can be attached to a range of sound-generating devices to produce a variety of customizable sounds. It has been particularly successful in educational contexts, especially when supporting the creative activities of children with special needs.1

DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-2

30  Ben Schögler and David Skulina The Skoog is a soft, tactile cube with spheres projecting out of each surface. The base is made of hard plastic, which holds all the electronics. So it’s really tactile and squeezy and squishy. It probably looks like something from the creche of the Starship Enterprise! It doesn’t look like a traditional musical instrument, but I suppose it is an object that invites interaction. It’s a controller. So this squeezy cube will connect to an iPad or a computer, and allow you to control and create musical sounds. They, together, make the instrument. It has a battery and Bluetooth. It has its own processor. It has sensors embedded in it. It isn’t just switches or buttons. The whole foam, deformable body is sensitive. It acts as a sensor, in a way. So I can push an edge. I can bend it. I can press in a button. I can do different things. It’s sensitive everywhere, so it behaves in a very analogue fashion, which allows it to be played in lots of different ways. You have people who may want to just press the buttons, but also, maybe, play it by moving it and pressing, depending on their range of physical ability. It offers a lot of different ways of interacting. It’s very tactile. It’s made of polyurethane foam with a sort of rubber skin. It has these spherical, button-like projections out of each surface, with a coloured ring around each one, and each side has a different colour. So you’ve got a red, a blue, a green, a yellow, and an orange side. The reason for that comes in later, in terms of what we do with notation and what we’re able to do with feedback in the programme. So when you’re pressing the side with the orange ring on it, you can see orange feedback colour. The two things align. It’s very useful in an educational context for creating concrete relationships between types of coloured notation and what you actually play on the device. It’s essentially a squishy box. But that tactility, the malleable, the hands-on aspect, being able to actually touch and feel something, has real psychological meaning and value to it. The original project was to create a new musical instrument for children with disabilities. Specifically, we wanted to address the needs of individuals who cannot use traditional instruments, for whatever reason. The thinking behind that was, ‘If we can make things work for people who face the most profound challenges, then, hopefully, we can create something that has a wider impact and is useful to a wider group’. But the primary driver was to help children with disabilities be able to participate, engage, be creative, and express themselves musically, and have the same opportunity to share in music-making as everyone else. There were three key points in our original project. One was that the instrument had to cover as wide a range of disability or ability as possible. In that area of accessibility, sometimes if you focus particularly on one group or one range of abilities, you can do something very targeted—not that it’s easy. That has a very meaningful impact for that group, perhaps, but we were trying to do something that would work on a bigger stage and for a much wider population. The instrument also needed to be something that would offer expressive potential, and not just be triggering sound, but offer real expressive, dynamic control of musicianship. And it also needed to offer the opportunity to develop and progress as a musician. So those were our three constraints, but that was the overall goal of the project.

The Skoog 31 Skoog is half my name and half David’s name. David is the ‘Sk’ and I’m the ‘Oog’ bit, so you have the ‘Sk’ and the ‘Oog’. We had a few different names. It was important to us that it had a name, and it wasn’t a ‘PR9000’ or something similar. That resonates with working with children and trying to create something that they could say, ‘This is my instrument’, and take ownership of it. So it needed a name. We had a few different options, and this was the one chosen by the kids we were working with. We said, ‘How about this?’ and they said, ‘That’s what it’s called’. We were like, ‘Okay, that’s what it’s called’. Initially, we were working with lots of different types of technology. We noticed that it can be quite hard to engage particularly young people who are perhaps nonverbal or who have sensory challenges, to get them to interact with wires and switches and things that you’re bringing in. But in all of these contexts, there was a huge amount of tactile sensory toys that the kids loved. So we started putting sensors and things inside these tactile materials, and that was the lightbulb moment. When we made the interaction pleasing and tactile and engaging, physically, we didn’t have to explain it. People wanted to touch it. We didn’t have to try to get them to touch it. For us, trying to get kids to interact with these objects and this technology was the key first step, particularly with someone who maybe doesn’t have language. You’re really working on a musical basis, and you’re trying to get them to make sounds and create a dialogue. So we opened up this tactile area. It makes sense from a psychological point of view. Your primary design function is to interact with other human beings, and other human beings are soft. Technology, including strings, keys, hammers, and all kinds of things, the majority of technology is usually hard to the touch, whereas organic things tend to be soft. Then you’ve got wood and stuff in between. How do you capture that and deploy it in a way that is practical and useful for controlling and making musical sounds? We had many prototypes. We had something called ‘Sound Log’ at one point, which was a huge piece of upholstery foam that you could jump up and down on, which was a lot of fun. But we were trying to create a thing that would make sense to someone and stand on its own two feet as an object. Ideally, it would be intuitive to use and not require explaining. We were trying to find the balance between something that was easy to understand and easy to use but still had enough complexity to offer creative and expressive potential. So we created some initial prototypes. We built this cubic device. The first one was upholstery foam, with tennis balls cut in half and stuck on the surface, but it worked. It is very simple. I press a side and I get one note. I push a different side, and I get another note. I can feel where these sides are with my hands. I can feel that they’re in a different space. If I have vision, I can see that they’re different. We were quite active in education with Skoog 1, particularly in the UK, and we were starting to be so in the United States. But teachers needed activities, things to do, and help in terms of being able to use this in the classroom. Then the iPad exploded into education in about 2012, particularly in special education, where we were focused, in many ways. Also, wirelessness began to be a thing. We’ve had an orchestra of 12 or 16 Skoogs, but it’s a lot of wires, laptops, and equipment.

32  Ben Schögler and David Skulina So the move to Skoog 2.0 was driven by the marketplace, and also by the things we wanted to achieve ourselves. We knew we wanted it to be wireless, and it took a while for Bluetooth technology to catch up with that, in terms of latency. We wanted to make sure it would work with the preferred platform in education, which at the time was the iPad, and it’s still very connected to that. Then in terms of the look and feel, the move to the black, actually more tactile, kind of rubbery feel was also to broaden the appeal. We worked with advanced adult musicians, some with disabilities, some not. The ‘Fisher-Price-styled’ Skoog 1 could sometimes be off-putting for older or more ‘serious’ musicians. There was a very popular YouTube video by a guy called Brett Domino that’s had over half a million views of him doing stuff on the Skoog.2 So the black, more PlayStation look-and-feel really cuts across those areas, in terms of aesthetics. If a child has never seen a white Skoog, then they’re equally drawn to this. It’s the shape. It’s the bumps on the flat surface that make you want to press them. The other benefit of using this cubic design and having five active surfaces is that you can really exploit the power of pentatonic scales. With five notes, you can do a hell of a lot. The majority of the musics of the world are based on pentatonic systems. The app enables you to have preset pentatonic scales that will work and allow you to be keyed into a piece of music, so you can just play around. It’s fully customizable, so if you want to set them individually and not use pentatonics and specific notes from melodies, that’s all doable. So you’re just making it accessible to everyone, the ability to create and play with other music or other musicians. One of the things that teachers often ask us is, ‘Can we put our own sounds on Skoog?’ Yes, we’ve built an app called Skratch, so you can just record or copy sounds in and put animal sounds or speech or mechanical sounds, or anything you like. The current Skoog app will integrate with Spotify and iTunes and will automatically set the notes on the Skoog to be the right pentatonic key. So in that sense, anyone can play with any piece of music. No training is required. It will give you a scale that will work, and you are free to play and improvise. Not only can anyone play with any piece of music, but you can also make music with any sound very simply, by recording different sounds. When you start to play around with this physical object, you’re starting to order those sounds. So when you take sound and start to put it into an ordered sequence, you’ll get music. We’re interested in bringing that tactile human experience to other creative ways of interacting with technology. That was particularly the case during the pandemic, when people were doing so much stuff digitally. How can we bring that touch quality to things? That, I think, has real psychological impact and meaning. Notes 1 For more information on the Skoog, see https://skoogmusic.com/. 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkRPd5VtUOQ (last accessed 23 September 2021).

Part I

Ecology, Production, and Communities of Practice

1

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe Collaboration, Technology, Ecology, and Internationalization Cassandre Balosso-Bardin

Introduction: a Mallorcan bagpipe In the fiestas of Montuïri, a village on the plain of Mallorca, under the scorching rays of the Mediterranean sun, the sound of bagpipes, flute, and drum rise up from the streets, merging with the laughter and cries of joy from the villagers.1 It is the 24th of August 2019, the annual celebration of St Bartholomew. The village is a whirlwind of colour with, at the centre of the action, the ritual dancers (cossiers) performing, flaunting bouquets of basil, multicoloured ribbons on their flowery hats and bells around their knees. They are accompanied by a flute and drum player and protected by a demon in a potato sack costume, whipping people who stray too close to the dance circle. To one side, the accompanying colla––a duo formed of a bagpiper and a flute and drum player––look on, waiting for the dance to finish before leading the revellers to the next stop. This year, like every year since their debut in 1978, the Xeremiers de Sa Calatrava colla are on duty, ready to encourage the participatory celebrations with their music and their antics.2 A closer look at the bagpiper (xeremier) reveals a short man with a sprig of basil stuck between his ear and his glasses, playing a Mallorcan bagpipe, the xeremies. This is Josep Rotger with his new instrument, ordered in 2014, completed in 2017 and played for the first time in this year’s summer celebrations (see Figure 1.1). To curious onlookers and experts alike, Rotger’s xeremies fit the bill. Made out of recognizable local woods, the reddish jujube (ziziphus jujuba) and the lighter almond tree (prunus dulcis), it has a bag the size and shape of a one-year-old goat, a cover made out of artisanal Mallorcan cloth with traditional designs and, on the drone stock, an unusual but striking inlaid coat of arms with the unmistakable regional stripes under two roaring lions. Here is a beautiful instrument that, when filled with air to lead the party to the next dancing spot, sounds melodious and powerful at the same time, fulfilling the expectations of the locals who know that when they hear this sound, something exciting is afoot. A Mallorcan instrument, then, for a Mallorcan celebration. The instrument makes visual and aural sense; the aesthetics3 support the strong cultural identity and connections with local heritage that are resoundingly reaffirmed on these celebratory days. The traditional cloth used at home for generations, the recognizable bagpipe made out of local trees that grow all over the island, and the sound that brings Mallorcans back to memories of DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-4

36  Cassandre Balosso-Bardin

Figure 1.1 Josep Rotger and his xeremies. Left: Josep Rotger playing at the Cosso of Felanitx in 2019 (courtesy of Llatzer Mendez). Right: Rotger’s xeremies with the blowpipe taken apart (courtesy of Josep Rotger).

village celebrations in their childhood all contribute to the affirmation of their Mallorcan identity. But if one was to ask who made the instrument, the answer would be much less straightforward. Indeed, if picked apart, the instrument comes from no less than four different locations with contributions from more than six or seven workshops or factories. The instrument played in 2018 in Montuïri is the result of collective labour (see Becker 1982, 13) centralized by the musician’s long search for craftspeople, materials, and technologies that would allow the creation of an optimal instrument, which would, in turn, be able to serve the local musical cultural heritage to an extremely high standard. In this chapter I illustrate how, through the cultural, social, ecological, and technological description of this instrument, tangible objects can shape intangible cultural heritage. Following Aaron Allen’s suggestion to use the material links between culture and nature to support cultural sustainability (Allen 2019, 56) and Kevin Dawe’s call for more ‘detailed in-the-field study’ to show how musical instruments become ‘entangled in webs of culture’ (Dawe 2003, 278), I show the highly social nature of musical instrument production and the role of instrument making in sustaining musical culture. The xeremies, a locally anchored instrument invested with significant amounts of cultural heritage capital, is not an object made

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe 37 by one person in a discreet hideaway but rather the combined fruit of curiosity, collaboration, and research that brings together technology, ecology, and heritage for the purpose of collective identity building through social musicking. Xeremies construction in the 20th century—from professional to patchwork Little is known of xeremies construction before the last known professional maker, Pere Bestard ‘Filo’4 from Santa Maria, who died in the mid-20th century. Xeremier Tomeu Camps, from a lineage of at least ‘11 generations of pipers’ (Coanegra 1988, 18), owns one of the oldest known bagpipes in Mallorca. No one can date them specifically, although Camps thinks they are from 1810 (Camps interview, 2012). Nothing is known about the bagpipes’ production. Their ancientness can be ascertained through one morphological aspect: all three drones have bores, a feature which had disappeared by the end of the 19th century; since then, xeremies have been simplified, and 20th-century instruments only featured one large functioning drone with two smaller dummy or muted drones (Alonso and Rotger 2008). Xeremies were expensive instruments (Rotger personal communication, 2019), kept safe on the domains (possessiós) where young shepherds were sent to work and given an instrument to play while keeping the animals (‘Xisples’ interview, 2012). Pere Bestard Matemales ‘Filo’, born on 12 September 1877, is thought to have been active between the late 19th century (Morro 2010, 33) and the 1920s. He made xeremies but also flabiols (one-handed flutes) and tamborís (small drums; the flabiol and tamborí were traditionally played with the xeremies), all considered to be excellent. Coming from a family of shepherds, he followed that vocation along with his brother Bartomeu, also a flabiol and xeremies player. In 1910, five melodies played by Pere Bestard and other colla members were collected for the Cançoner Musical de Mallorca (Massot i Planes 1984, 58–66). Pere Filo is recognized as being the first professional xeremier, selling off his flock of sheep after the death of his young daughter to dedicate himself solely to music. He moved from his native village, known for its furniture-making tradition and where he may have learned his wood-turning skills, to Palma, where he dedicated himself to playing music, travelling often to Barcelona to play and record music during the Second Republic.5 One of his instruments was donated in 1936 by the people of Santa María (who pooled their resources to buy it, underlining the cost of a set of xeremies) to a brutal high-ranking fascist soldier, Arconovaldo Bonaccorsi, alias ‘Conde Rossi’, who seemed to enjoy Mallorcan dance and music (Desclot 1986, 20). Towards the end of his life, Pere Filo taught younger xeremiers his repertoire while working as a musician for the ethnographic Museum of Can Mulete in Genova, a Western district of Palma, where he died sometime in the middle of the 20th century (Rotger interview, 2019; Alonso and Rotger 2008). After Pere Bestard Filo, bagpipe making all but disappeared in Mallorca. This meant that instruments could only be purchased secondhand and, as broken pieces were replaced, xeremies often became an amalgamation of elements from different origins, thus creating patchwork bagpipes that were difficult to identify.

38  Cassandre Balosso-Bardin Arnau Canyelles from Bendinat, for example, had a box full of different pieces of xeremies from which one could pick and choose (Rotger interview, 2012b). Older xeremiers who lived through this secondhand phase stress that it was important to acquire a good grall (melodic pipe), as it was understandably the most essential part of the bagpipes. Indeed, the gralls in circulation were often the best parts of bad instruments that had been abandoned. One of the only ways to possess a good instrument was to buy the xeremies of a recently deceased musician from his grieving widow ahead of anyone else (Aloy interview, 2014; Alonso and Rotger 2008). If one was ingenious, there were other ways around the lack of makers. Miquel Tugores, for instance, managed to exchange a functioning grall from a xeremier in Caimari for a box of high-quality contraband Cuban cigars: ‘To be a xeremier used to be a whole philosophy of life’, he said, referring to the craftiness and patience required to acquire precious new instruments (Tugores 2010, 31). However, despite the lack of professional instrument-making artisans, testimonies show that there were still a significant number of people with skills that enabled the xeremies and its practice to survive throughout the century. As the following paragraphs will show, the creation of an instrument was the concerted effort of many individuals with different skills: no finished product could be attributed to one person (Morey 1997, 339). Although there were no instrument workshops, a few new gralls continued to be made by people with wood-turning skills. Tomeu Aloy, son of renowned piper Miquel Aloy ‘Llargo’, recalled how his father would design melodic chanters and ask a shoemaker, Sebastià Grau from Sencelles, to turn them (Aloy, interview, 2014). Others carved gralls and flabiols themselves with personal knives (Morey 1997, 343). Rotger remembered Toni ‘Tesa’ from Santa Eugenia used to make flabiols and had many innovative ideas, but more often than not his instruments would fall apart quickly; however, he continued making them well into his 80s, despite suffering from Parkinson’s disease (Rotger interview, 2012b). Another important character was Toni Blanc, who was described as an instrument maker by Rotger: Toni Blanc from Campanet was a shepherd his whole life. He would go to celebrations but would only play two songs because he knew he was a very bad musician. But he was a good instrument maker. He worked wood and did a bit of everything such as wooden goat collars. He dedicated his time to this because he was retired. He made pipe bags and decent single and double reeds. Of course, when people stopped being shepherds, it was difficult to find skins for bags, so many people went to him. They killed goats and kept the hide for him. If your bag broke, then you could go to him and get one. He also made some decent reeds. He learned everything by himself and taught me a lot. (Rotger interview, 2012b) Like Toni Blanc, many shepherds were familiar with the techniques for making bagpipe bags and passed on that craft knowledge when a new generation of pipers and makers appeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Morey 1997, 80–83).

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe 39 Some skins came from wild goats hunted with dogs in the mountains near Lluc, a tradition from the northwest of Mallorca (Marroig personal communication, 2015). Miquel Tugores, a revivalist who is now the main provider of natural bags, learned how to prepare the skin from a man in Campanet who did not know how to play but knew how to make a good bag. Tugores explained how, in the earlier days of the revival, the new generation of pipers were reliant on the expertise of other people: Today, if you want a xeremies, there is no problem. You telephone and they will make you one in no time. Before, this wasn’t the case, and if you wanted a xeremies you had to pester the chaparral warden or a shepherd for them to kill a goat for you, but they first had to go and catch it in the mountains […]. You should have seen how they lived. There was an old man who used the goatskins as flasks and he would go to the villages to sell olive oil, and when the flasks had been carrying oil for 10 years, that was when they would become the best bagpipe bags. (Tugores 2010, 30) This statement underlines the reliance of instrument manufacture and materials on knowledge of the local economy and ecology. Tugores, now known for his excellent drums as well as for his bagpipe bags, is currently supplied goat hides by a local farmer. He learned drum making partly from Miquel ‘Llargo’, which shows the diversity of skills a single piper could have (Tugores 2010, 32). Many shepherds made their own reeds, having easy access to the raw material. After ­gathering all the necessary pieces, xeremiers would often assemble an instrument themselves, adjusting it to their liking, and local blacksmiths would add the ­final touch with metal decorations on the breguer (bagpipe stock) or grall (melodic pipe), following the requirements of the piper. Fieldwork in Spain and Crete led Dawe to observe that ‘[a]n intimate knowledge of the properties of materials used in musical instrument construction is common within the culture that surrounds the makers’, and that the ‘[t]he sources or provenance of materials used in musical instrument construction are important indicators of value (authenticity, quality), connected to landscape and integral to placemaking’ (2016: 112). This knowledge of materials and their intimate link with the land was evident in Mallorca even after Pere Filo’s death, when instruments continued being repaired or even reproduced thanks to a large network of ecologically and economically embedded individuals. Shepherds––who seemed to hold the monopoly of xeremies production due to their proximity with the land (Morro 2010, 32)––could easily make reeds and goatskin bags due to the availability of the necessary materials in their environment. Rural workers were knowledgeable about the quality of local woods, how and when to harvest them, and which trees would give a good instrument. Shoe and furniture makers could reproduce chanters and other wooden parts thanks to their woodturning skills. Finally, xeremiers had the skill to assemble the pieces and transform them into workable instruments, adjusting them to their needs (Morey 1997, 342).

40  Cassandre Balosso-Bardin What was missing, however, was the creativity and understanding of the skilled maker, leading to impoverished instruments now confined to repairs and copies by artisans with no intimate knowledge of them. This scarcity of makers and associated decline was remarked on by 86-year-old flabioler Guillem Tix from Muro in 1979: There are people who make [flabiols] in Muro. El Marier would come by a year or two ago with two or three flabiols of his own confection, and they were good. If I were 30, I would have bought one. There used to be lots of them […]. I saw a person play at La Calatrava for Saint Cristopher’s day with a flabiol that did not have a block. They used to make these in Buger and sell them for 2 reals. But that was 50 or 60 years ago, I think. They used to make them in Buger but now they are all dead and everything […] eeeeh! (Tix, in Artigues 2000, 31) Thus the lack of skilled instrument makers led to declining quality over the 20th century. Gralls copied on old models and turned by shoemakers were merely inaccurate replicas rather than well-crafted technological objects. But the combination of different craft competencies, sustained by people in touch with the land and their manual skills, allowed the bagpiping tradition to continue, if at a slower pace than previously. It is therefore understandable that bagpipes which survived to the end of the 20th century were not called after an instrument maker but were referred to by their owner’s name or by the name of the places where they were stored and where generations of shepherds played them as they came to work on the land. Their composite nature precluded their association with one particular artisan.6 A musical and instrument-making revival Instrument making of a professional standard did not return to Mallorca before the early 1980s. Joan Morey, a schoolteacher from San Joan who had an interest in the Mallorcan bagpipes, was the first to set up a dedicated workshop, initiating interest in instrument making and becoming essential to what would become a hugely successful revival movement. He was, according to Tugores, ‘the first element in the chain of events that set this world into motion. He was “the gimbal”’ (Tugores 2012, 10). Morey’s instrument-making activity was key to propelling the world of xeremies into a thriving musical practice. Morey created his workshop to make up for the lack of anything equivalent in Mallorca. His passion for research enticed him to discover as much as possible about the instruments and their manufacture. He worked tirelessly, publishing much of his knowledge in 1989 with young xeremier revivalist Antoni Artigues (Artigues and Morey 1989). Joan Morey produced many instruments over the years––over a thousand flabiols and a few hundred xeremies––and significantly influenced the standardization of the bagpipe’s melodic scale. After copying old instruments and systematically measuring the different scales and pitches, he eventually created a melodic pipe with a standardized pitch and a more tempered scale than the older instruments (see Figure 1.2), facilitating the insertion of the xeremies into multi-instrumental bands.

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe 41

Figure 1.2 Musical and aesthetic comparison of a modern grall (left) and an old grall (right). The numbers refer to the semitones between the holes. The grall to the right is a general sketch of an old grall. Each would have its own specific characteristics. Illustration by Joan Morey (1997, 42).

Through extensive comparative research on old xeremies, Morey established that the tonic of each was between C and D, often around C#. This was often referred to as ‘Do Brilliante’ or a ‘brilliant C’ both in Mallorca and in Galicia, where this tonic was used. Morey chose to continue using this as the main tonic for Mallorcan instruments and modified the scale so that the third would be recognizably major rather than the more common neutral interval. The second, sixth and seventh also became more stable than they usually were in older instruments. The fourth, fifth and octave remain pure, tuned to the drones (see Morey 1997). Today, instruments are traditionally played in C# with a major scale (although minor scales can be played with cross-fingerings), and new gralls are purchased to play in different keys (mainly D or C) to play with other instruments and in bands. By 2012, however, Morey’s output had become minimal as he was no longer passionate about the making process: he felt that he had more or less covered the entire subject and ‘discovered everything there was to discover’ (Morey interview, 2012b). This was not, however, the reaction of Josep Rotger and Pep Toni Rubio, who first started playing in the late 1970s. As teenage musicians, they quickly showed an interest in instrument making, becoming central to the creation of a new

42  Cassandre Balosso-Bardin prototype that combined modern technology and skills with traditional Mallorcan visual and aural features. Morey’s work was a huge step forward in manufacture, providing the local scene with much-needed good-quality xeremies, but the new generation of musicians soon wanted a different instrument. While Morey was interested in researching old instruments and producing new instruments that were reliable and played a clearly defined scale, Rotger and Rubio became more interested in developing an instrument that could cater for their artistic needs. At this point, Morey expressed his reluctance to create ever-more modern instruments, feeling that such instruments had already been invented in other parts of Spain: ‘There came a time when I had researched extensively and I came to think “why evolve more if it has already been invented?”’ (Morey interview, 2012c). Rubio’s and Rotger’s progressive ideas led them to work with different bagpipe makers on the Spanish mainland, where bagpipes were being manufactured on a larger scale. Rubio explained that: We were looking for professionals. People here [on Mallorca] were making good instruments but if I had a problem or wanted something to be modified, they would not understand. It was easier to work with professionals who had the technical knowledge and would know what I meant. (Rubio interview, 2011) Rubio explained that their requirements were small but numerous: ‘I want the instrument to sound like this’, or ‘could you move this hole by a millimetre so that it fits around the finger more easily?’ Such small modifications were easier to ask of craftsmen who dedicated their entire time to the instrument, unlike the part-time makers on Mallorca, and who therefore had the time and technology to satisfy the musician’s demands. Rotger and Rubio’s trials and errors with multiple craftsmen from Spain and beyond illustrate their attempts to modernize the xeremies while retaining their heritage and identity aspirations for the instrument. It could be argued that they were extending their roles as core revivalists (see Balosso-Bardin 2016) through the xeremies, which embodied their sociocultural ideals about Mallorcan tradition (after Gell 1998). Before working with different makers, Rotger and Rubio started the process themselves and became involved in instrument making, after struggling for years to find a decent instrument. Rotger describes here how they started out: People started making instruments of very bad quality. Then we started to try out some ideas; Pep Toni [Rubio] and Miquel Tugores were the first. We would take the instruments apart to make bagpipes. The results were not very good. The melodic pipe made by a mattress maker in Sencelles had to be changed. I used one from Arnau Canyelles, a shepherd from Bendinat. He had boxes full of instrument parts so you could choose the parts you needed. This was the first instrument I could play. Then I got another one. It was made out of rosewood by a professional wood turner but he wasn’t a

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe 43 musician. I used this second one for quite a while, and a long time after that I used an instrument made by Pep Toni Rubio. It sounded quite good but the wood was not of good quality so it only lasted two weeks. After that, Pep Toni and I started to get our act together. (Rotger interview, 2012a) After many unsuccessful efforts to create a better instrument, Rotger and Rubio began to contact other makers. They started to work with the Galician bagpipe maker Anton Varela around 1994, after seeing several of his instruments. Varela collaborated with an engineer friend who made a technical drawing of a set of old xeremies in order to understand the instrument. Varela and the Mallorcans worked together for several years, refining a prototype that would be mutually satisfactory, rising to the level of Varela’s skill and knowledge and fulfilling the musical and visual identity criteria of Mallorcan bagpipes. One of Varela’s main contributions was to open the two muted drones and, in discussions with Rotger, they settled for the octave and the fifth (Varela interview, 2013; Alonso and Rotger 2008). The partnership was successful: Varela would make the wooden pieces and send them to Mallorca, where Rubio would assemble the bagpipes and sell them on. Their working relationship stopped after a batch of ten bagpipes arrived and the wood had split (Rubio interview, 2011). After briefly working with Catalan maker Xavier Aixalá, the xeremiers then started working with Las Xanes, an instrument factory opened in 2003 in the mountains of Asturias, where machines could work with extremely high precision. ‘It was going very well for our research’, said Rubio. ‘They had people from the university studying sound and air locks […]. They had an extremely fast turnover. You would ask for something and have it in a week’ (Rubio interview, 2011). These quick responses facilitated research and innovation as the musicians could give almost immediate feedback after receiving a new part. The factory closed down in 2005, but some of the high-tech machinery was bought by Asturian bagpipe maker Chus Solís.7 As a result, Solís’ workload increased in spite of the otherwise crippling effect of the financial crisis in Spain. Rotger and Rubio started working with him until they finally managed to obtain instruments that they were satisfied with. Rubio only regretted the fact that the waiting time for an instrument was several months, hindering the feedback process. During these years of intense research, Rubio and Rotger patented a prototype that was morphologically very close to old instruments but which integrated all the technology and skill brought by these external instrument makers. The ­Mallorcan prototype featured a just-tuned scale (an overall tempered scale, but with just-tuned fifths and fourths to be in harmony with the drones) without compromising the timbre of earlier bagpipes. Early xeremies were thicker, with a wider bore (see Figure 1.2), and produced a loud and rich sound; this quality diminished as new Mallorcan makers made tempered melodic pipes with thinner bores, closer to Galician gaitas. Unsurprisingly, some of these makers had gone to Galicia to hone their manufacturing skills, since bagpipe-making skills there were strong and much more developed, and this may have influenced their instruments.

44  Cassandre Balosso-Bardin The prototype, however, tried to balance the resonant sound quality and wider bores of older xeremies with the standardization of the scale, retaining some of the early bagpipes’ identity while pushing for practical innovations. Alongside their research on the wooden components, the Xeremiers de sa ­Calatrava also undertook research into the bag. Goat hide had been used for this in Mallorca for hundreds of years, yet it had its disadvantages. Not every hide would turn out to be airtight, and many were prone to insect infestation. Although goats were common in Mallorca, meaning that hides were readily available to shepherd musicians, skins seldom lasted more than two or three years, a problem that older xeremiers had tried to address in the early 1970s by using bags made from rubber (Alonso and Rotger 2008). This produced mixed results, however, as rubber did not react well to humidity. It was also difficult to play the pipes in tune, as rubber bags were too flexible, impeding the piper’s control of the bag pressure (Sureda, in Trujillo 2014, 18; Alonso and Rotger 2008).8 Searching for an alternative, John Lambourne from the Xeremiers de Sa Garriga created bags made out of neoprene rubber that maintained adequate pressure, but this caused condensation to build up, which led the wooden instrument parts to deteriorate (Sureda, in Trujillo 2014, 18). Later, a new material began to be imported that revolutionized bagpipe bags: Gore-Tex®, a waterproof membrane that lets the moisture out while remaining airtight. Commonly used for shoes and diving equipment, Gore-Tex® was utilized for bagpipe bags to create a material that would not deteriorate when exposed to high humidity levels. Scottish bagpipe bag company CANMORE® developed the first fabric-based bag with a Gore-Tex® membrane and put it on the market in 1987.9 Shortly after, the Galicians started adopting the material for their instruments. The simple Gore-Tex® bag, though, was unsatisfactory for Rotger, as he felt that, once again, the piper was not able to control the pressure of the bag well enough due to its elastic ‘balloon effect’. The bag did not offer enough resistance, impeding the airflow into the grall and drones. This meant that when exerting arm pressure, the air inside the bag extended the container like a balloon and did not flow sufficiently into the different reeded pipes, reducing the control of the piper on the airflow. The next step was to use tanned hide, which was for a while the preferred option, until Mallorcan pipers discovered bags manufactured in Scotland by Bannatyne Ltd. The company used a combination of materials and techniques, such as the multilayering of synthetic and natural materials, which significantly enhanced the bags’ quality and duration and supported accurate bag control. Rotger favoured a hybrid model with an outer layer of tanned cowhide and an inner synthetic membrane––not Gore-Tex® but featuring the same qualities10––with an additional zip that enabled the musician to open the bag and let humidity escape. Rotger considered that this improvement had ‘saved [his] life’ as a musician during celebrations; he was able to unzip the bag and let it dry during breaks, a useful feature when one is required to play for two days straight with only three hours to sleep and two hourly meal breaks a day (Rotger interview, 2012b). However, not every Mallorcan maker sources their synthetic bags from abroad. Bagpipe maker Joan Marroig ‘Píu’ from Sóller, for instance, has an agreement with a shoe factory in

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe  45 Lloseta, Sa Muntanya. This factory uses a material called Sympatex®, an equivalent to Gore-Tex® but patented in Germany, also used to line hiking boots manufactured in Mallorca. Rotger also described the search for adequate melodic pipe and drone reeds, which were, until the 1980s, ‘made by very old xeremiers […]. After the death of the last maker, they were replaced by the few Galician reeds that appeared in Mallorcan music shops (of bad quality, of course, as these were the only ones that reached the island)’ (Alonso and Rotger 2008, 48). They then used Catalan bagpipe reeds made by Catalan shawm maker Josep Ballester before deciding to return to Galician reeds, albeit of specific dimensions and better quality than the previous ones and sourced through direct communication with the reed makers. At the time of writing, Mallorca has at least one dedicated reed maker, Josep Manel, who specializes in xeremies reeds, which are slightly wider than Galician reeds and adapted to the instruments made on the island. Drone reeds are less sensitive than melodic pipe reeds, and pipers interchangeably use cane or plastic reeds for these, often of Galician origin, as they are easy to obtain. Rotger favours Seipal reeds, a synthetic model developed by the renowned Seivane workshop in northern Galicia. Notwithstanding the focus on Rotger and Rubio, who undoubtedly played a significant role in researching instruments, the bagpipe-making scene in Mallorca slowly grew, accommodating new craftsmen over the years who built on the work of these early pioneers. This consolidated the revival movement. At the time of writing, Mallorca counts five makers who engage with bagppipe making with varied levels of activity, production and workmanship. Interestingly, all moonlight from other professions, which not only provides them enough free time to dedicate themselves to the research and construction of instruments but also enables them to financially support themselves. In some cases, their professions involve mechanical skills––one of them is a retired train mechanic, for example; another is a professional carpenter; yet another is a retired electrician––facilitating their access to machinery. This echoes Deirdre Morgan’s remarks about mouth harp makers in Norway (Morgan 2018, 198, 202): there, pensioners with professional metal-working skills or engineering/manual labour backgrounds and fully employed enthusiasts with space for a workshop were more predisposed to engage in instrument-making activity than others. Indeed, they possessed the time, finances and skills that allowed them to concentrate on fine handiwork. Morgan points out that the close and privileged collaboration between makers and musicians encouraged quality manufacture to support high-level playing (2018, 204). This was very obvious in Mallorca, as illustrated by Rotger and Rubio’s extensive work with numerous artisans in order to create an ideal instrument. Local Mallorcan manufacturers invariably started out by playing themselves, then slowly developed appropriate expertise with time, practice and their previously acquired technical skills. They gradually inserted themselves into the island’s market, thus fuelling the bagpipe revival by facilitating access to new instruments. Joan Marroig ‘Piú’, for example, has been an active member of the Xeremiers de Sóller bagpipe band since its creation in 2001. As a mechanic for the historic train of Sóller, his technical knowledge of machinery and access to appropriate tools led

46  Cassandre Balosso-Bardin him to try making instruments. He learnt his trade from Artigues and Morey’s 1989 book as well as from the Internet and occasional courses run by Mallorcans and invited Galician makers, and he started making instruments in earnest around 1998. He prefers working with hard woods such as granadillo, jujube, and boxwood for the grall, and other fruit or exotic woods for the rest of the instrument. Marroig has an agreement with a shoe factory in Lloseta, Sa Muntanya, that provides him with ready-made synthetic bags based on his design (Marroig email, 2015). He uses reeds made locally by Pep Manel, his wife produces the bagpipe covers, and his son, Tomeu Marroig ‘Píu’, tries out the instruments and gives feedback on every item that emerges from his workshop (Marroig 2010, 10). In November 2009, Joan Marroig obtained the official title of ‘Mestre Artesá’ (master artisan), awarded by the Balearic Island’s Conselleria de Comerç i Indústria (Ministry of Trade and Industry) after a jury came to his workshop to evaluate his work. Although a few criticize his instruments for sounding too similar to Galician bagpipes––the melodic pipes are slightly thinner and quieter compared to older models––his instruments are popular all over the island. Another local maker, Tomeu Massat, is a civil servant at the town hall of Santa Eugenia, which means that his afternoons are free. He was interested in manual work and art, which pushed him towards instrument making in the early 1990s. Based in Binissalem, Massat began by making bagpipes for himself, copying old xeremies he had in his possession. Around 1995, he visited a workshop in Galicia, where he realized that the Galicians were ‘much more ahead of the game’ than Mallorcans (Massat 2010, 10). Massat gradually built up his business by selling his earlier models as he manufactured new instruments. He favours local woods such as jujube, almond tree, and cherry wood and synthetic bags made out of Symaptex®, bought from the same factory as Joan Maroig and similarly put together by his wife, who also sews the decorative textile bag covers. He expanded his business to make flabiols as well as different kinds of drums and worked on his bagpipe model to create ‘a melodic pipe […] that goes up the chromatic scale to a high G’ (Massat 2010, 11), thus expanding the range of more traditional xeremies, which was usually about a ninth and rarely used the minor scale. As with Marroig, there has been some criticism around these modified pipes, including some musicians suggesting that they are more Galician than Mallorcan in their design. This problematizes the delicate relationship between aural cultural identity and technological advance: how does one navigate an instrument’s ‘cultural integrity’ (after Feintuch 2019, 210) within the realms of musical and technological development, and what is the threshold for innovation? How far can one go before meeting resistance from third parties (see also Bates 2012, 388)? The brief presentation of two of these makers highlights the differences and similarities between Rotger’s approach and theirs. On the one hand, all rely on a network of providers and skilled craftspeople to complete their instruments; on the other hand, where Rotger uses externally sourced skills to shape the excellence of the instrument within a Mallorcan musical frame, the other makers seem to have opted to emulate external instruments (Galician bagpipes in this instance) that had developed different characteristics (chromaticism and a wider range) and included

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe 47 some of these onto their instruments, prompting criticism that these were Galician gaitas rather than Mallorcan xeremies. Nor were Rotger and Rubio immune from criticism, with negative comments made by other Mallorcan pipers (freely expressed during my fieldwork in 2011– 2012) about authorship, linked to the patent, and price: their instruments tend to cost a few hundred euros more than other bagpipes made in Mallorca. Because of their patent, every bagpipe made on this model had to be purchased through Rotger or Rubio, who thus had an economic monopoly. The bagpipes were branded as Xeremiers de sa Calatrava instruments, but younger xeremiers often did not know about the provenance of the components nor in which workshop they had been made. This led to the anonymization of the craftspeople who had made the components, since they could not claim full credit for their work due to the patent. In effect, the patent was protecting what was seen as the intellectual and perhaps also the cultural property of the Xeremiers de sa Calatrava. This did not sit well with one Mallorcan piper, also involved in manufacturing xeremies, who stopped at a workshop in Spain and met an instrument maker whom Rotger and Rubio were working with at the time. The maker could not sell the piper a melodic chanter as every purchase had to go via Rotger or Rubio because of the patent. The next day, the maker told him that he had phoned Mallorca and that the two had agreed to the sale. The visiting piper rejected the offer and left without purchasing anything, unhappy about the monopoly created by the patent as, in his opinion, the artisan was the true maker. This argument was rejected by other xeremiers who pointed out that the new instrument could not have been developed to the standard it reached without the relentless collaborative work of Rotger and Rubio. This anecdote, collected during my fieldwork in 2012, also points to the issue of cultural prerogative: does a traditional instrument belong to the community, to the makers or to the musicians; how do individuals navigate their personal contributions in what could be perceived as a collective practice? The collective activities leading to the final production of an instrument can be compared to Becker’s sociology of art worlds, where the production of a piece of art is dependent on ‘some division of labour among a large number of people’ (1982, 14). More recently, Schippers highlighted the extensive ‘ecosystems’ in place on which the creation of music and culture depends (2015). Similarly, the production of musical instruments, which then go on to feed musical art worlds or ecosystems, depends on a distinctive network of people who provide material, labour, and ideas. In Mallorca, the invisibility of the people involved in the manufacture of the final instrument echoes the prerevival production system. There were just as many parties involved in the construction of the modern patented instrument as there were for earlier xeremies. As noted previously, early instruments were named after their owner or their location. Today, despite working with well-known and at times internationally acclaimed artisans, some new instruments are named after those patent holders who led the research into the instrument’s construction yet who now simply assemble the parts––often sourced from elsewhere––in Mallorca before selling the complete instrument. This led to young musicians ordering a set of pipes from Rotger and Rubio without having

48  Cassandre Balosso-Bardin any precise knowledge of who made the different parts. Their main concern was that this was an instrument of quality, guaranteed by the research carried out by the local musicians. When referring to the instrument, they named it after the patent holder, who had put the instrument together and sold it to them (Frontera interview, 2012). This goes against the trend in most of the wider instrument-making world, where instruments are recognized and named after their maker or the maker’s workshop. The latter may call upon the expertise of others (as demonstrated in the examples of Joan ‘Píu’ and Tomeu Massat), but their name as an artisan will be the one put forward. One might describe the former practice as naming the instrument after the curators of a network of skilled but anonymized artisans. Both these ‘curators’ and the named maker lay claim to original developments and depend on a wide network to produce the instrument, thus problematizing the attribution of ownership and the manner in which the nomenclature used obscures contributions from a range of hidden others. A 21st-century instrument In 2017, Rotger received his latest instrument from Asturian maker Chus Solís, ordered in 2014 according to the principles laid out in Rotger and Rubio’s own patent. The instrument arrived in separate parts: only the wooden elements were sent over by Solís. The pieces of jujuba (for the drones) and 200-year-old almond tree (for the grall) were turned on Rotger’s precise instructions, with decorative stripes carved in the wood, much in the style of older xeremies. The reinforced rings were simple, made out of stainless steel, as is the custom. Since the 2004 patent, Rotger has improved the blowpipe system. It is now patented by Solís. This might be read as a small step towards reclaiming rights over the manufacturing process taken by the maker. In addition to the new blowpipe, Rotger added small taps at the base of the drones to open or close the airduct, a common feature in Galician bagpipes since the 2000s, allowing pipers to choose how many drones they wish to use, simultaneously facilitating the tuning process. Rotger used Galician reeds from both artisan reed maker Brea (double reeds for the grall) and the large family-run Galician workshop Seivane (single synthetic drone reeds patented by the Seivane workshop) and meticulously tried out the melodic pipe, making small adjustments in the tuning so that the instrument was fully to his liking. Once satisfied, he cloaked the ultramodern hybrid bag, made in Scotland in the shape of a Mallorcan goat, with a textile cover sewn by Natalia Llaneza, a local seamstress originally from Asturias. The cover for the bag was made out of a traditional cloth, featuring a typical Mallorcan flame design, made by an artisanal textile factory in Bujosa, Mallorca, well known for manufacturing traditional Mallorcan material. He then fit the blowpipe and the melodic pipe to the bag before turning to the drone stock. The latter was adorned with an inlaid medieval coat of arms from the guild of tanners of the district of Sa Calatrava, where Rotger has lived his whole life, and after which he named his colla when he was only 15 years old, sealing a lifelong relationship with flabiol and tamborí player Pep Rubio. Departing from the usual silver or leaden angels that habitually decorate the stock, staining one’s hand when picking it up,

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe 49 this wooden design was subtle and carefully executed by Pep Hernández, a restorer on Calle Monte Sion, also in the district of Sa Calatrava (see Figure 1.1). Rotger curates the instrument to his liking, producing an object that visually represents his identity as a Mallorcan piper, with strong links to local crafts and the environment (traditional bagpipe bag cover, goat-shaped bag, local woods), his personal heritage (coat of arms of the tanner’s guild, based in Sa Calatrava since the 14th century) and the history of the xeremies (traditional designs and morphology). He often criticizes local pipers and makers for designs that are, in his opinion, too far removed from old Mallorcan instruments or that produce a Galician sound rather than searching for an appropriate balance between Galician and Asturian know-how and Mallorcan sounds. He also criticizes the use of some materials, lamenting the fact that bagpipe bags that do not have the right consistency can never be played comfortably by musicians. Through his instrument, he attempts to balance Mallorcan musical heritage and the musician’s need for a reliable and comfortable instrument, with the constant aim of sustaining the specificity of the Mallorcan xeremies, which at times equates to retaining the limits of the instrument. This includes, for example, maintaining the heavy wooden drones at the front to provide visual continuity and allow the bag to keep its one-year-old goat shape, referencing cultural and ecological heritage, or continuing to use a thick and wide bore to have the timbre of older pipes, notwithstanding that this hinders chromaticisms and the extension of the scale range, thus referencing musical heritage. Josep Rotger thus sustains the ‘cultural integrity’ of his instrument (Feintuch 2019, 210) through careful curation. His bagpipe is in some ways very different from the instruments played before the music revival, yet in other ways it evidences both visual and aural continuity. He also sustains Mallorcan traditional music-making by constantly seeking new avenues that can enhance musical skills development musicianship through continuous conversations with makers and providers from beyond Mallorca. Access to a carefully curated high-quality instrument provokes interest and allows new generations of musicians to emerge while simultaneously retaining connections with local cultural heritage and––in a way––paying homage to the instruments and pipers who transmitted this music. As such, Rotger’s choices for his carefully curated instrument exemplify Allen’s notion of aesthetics as a ‘philosophy of the senses [connecting] culture and […] ethics: what is good, what is right, what we value’ (Allen 2019, 53). Instrument making and cultural sustainability Mallorcan bagpipe production has always been a highly social and collaborative process, driven by bagpipe players and depending on local ecological knowledge as well as technologies sourced from beyond the island. The examples throughout the 20th century, from old xeremiers patching together instruments to the latest technologies curated by Rotger, underline the numerous connections needed for the creation of an object considered a symbol of local cultural heritage. The modern internationalization of this process must be emphasized, as it highlights the economic, ecological, and cultural impact a traditional instrument may have both at home and externally.

50  Cassandre Balosso-Bardin This outsourcing diversifies the activities of instrument makers and/or factories, broadening their income streams beyond their usual market. At home, however, this externalization can also have a huge impact. Outsourcing can increase the quality of instruments thanks to a larger pool of skilled craftspeople and a broader availability of materials and new technologies, all of which should, of course, be used in close communication with local musicians who are familiar with local cultural codes. There has been little criticism of this externalization, even by local makers who have, for the most part, also been influenced by external skills and technology and factored this into their production. The market is currently strong enough to accommodate different makers, local and external, a situation further sustained by the fact that no maker, whether Mallorcan or not, makes xeremies full-time. External practice is complemented by the use of local materials and knowledge, thus maintaining cultural relevance. The ecological and material shift from natural materials to more durable synthetic substitutes is understood as a way of supporting the ‘cultural integrity’ of the instrument both visually and aurally while allowing the musicians to play an instrument that is reliable and supports the use of locally sourced materials. The cultural position of an instrument is constructed by the musician and instrument maker/curator, who work together to create something that will sustain the aural, visual and symbolic integrity of the object while also working on its ergonomic and sonic potential. Makers obviously have considerable influence on the design of instruments and choose to limit or develop certain aspects according to their aesthetic and ethical preferences; for example, is it better to increase the instrument’s range, therefore impacting its timbre, or remain closer to tradition by maintaining a rich timbre but keeping the range limited to a ninth. Through such decisions, makers inevitably become important gatekeepers of musical heritage. The threshold for innovation is not fixed but moveable (see also Bates 2012, 388). Someone like Rotger, for example, who learned from older xeremiers and can be considered as belonging to that lineage, may hold a firmer idea of traditional instrumental heritage, yet quietly inflect it by tempering the instrument’s scale and playability through discreet technological improvements. Makers and instrumentalists less connected to this heritage may look more towards the technical capacity of the instrument, allowing them to play new or non-Mallorcan repertoire, while creating an object that ‘looks’ Mallorcan. Even more conservative than Rotger, Morey chose to abandon further research when instruments became too ‘evolved’, as he felt they had become other instruments altogether, defeating the purpose of the local roots of the instrument: ‘[i]f you make changes, you’ll eventually get an oboe, and oboes have been around for a while. Why waste your time researching that?’(Morey interview, 2012a). The preservation of cultural heritage is often highly sensitive and politicized, and the different positions taken by these makers illustrate the contestation that occurs in the authenticity discourses within which it is often enmeshed. The Mallorcan example highlights the role that instrument makers play in these debates, and the threats to cultural sustainability when their skills are lost. For example, the death of Pere Filo heavily impacted the Mallorcan traditional music scene because, in the absence of a skilled maker, instruments were patched together and badly

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe  51 copied in order to maintain an ever-diminishing practice. While this decline was also linked to political, economic, and social circumstances, it is striking to witness how a renewed instrument-making practice injected a new lease of life into a minority practice and supported the revival of a tradition that, a generation later, may have otherwise been completely lost. A similar example is provided by Catalonia, where revivalists turned to Mallorca and Morey in the 1980s to revive their own bagpipe practice, which had been in decline since the mid-19th century and extinct since 1965 (Busquets i Peret and Sans i Bonet 1995, 9, 33). It is clear that the loss of instrument-making skills endangers a musical culture, even if the disintegration process occurs over several generations, and that preserving such skills is therefore central to the sustainability of any instrument-based musical culture. Further, I argue that the quality of instrument construction appears to correlate to local qualities of musicianship, since musicians and makers exhibit synergistic relationships, improving prototypes as technology and skills (both technical and musical) develop. Jeff Todd Titon writes that ‘sustaining music means sustaining people making music’ (Titon 2009, 5–6). I argue that this must include supporting people who make musical instruments and who, through their skills, technological curiosity and know-how are able to support musicians in the search for the best possible instrument. This search is always informed by musical performance and by wellcrafted objects that allow all parties to explore prevailing boundaries and return with suggestions as to how they might be extended. Notes 1 I am immensley grateful and indebted to my Mallorcan friends who patiently answer my questions over and over again. For this article, I would specifically like to thank musicians Josep Rotger, Càndid Trujillo, and historians Miquel Amengual Bibiloni and Mateu Morro Marcé for their time and help. 2 For more information about the Xeremiers de Sa Calatrava and their role in the Mallorcan music revival, see Balosso-Bardin 2018. 3 I draw here on Allen’s analysis of aesthetics as a meaningful framework for cultural sustainability, more specifically through the notion that ‘aesthetics connects with culture and ultimately ethics: what is good, what is right, what we value’ (Allen 2019, 53). 4 Surnames were rarely used in Mallorca. House names or nicknames in quotation marks were given to people according to their place in society or to their family. These names could be passed down to younger generations, thus passing down information about each other (Waldren 1997: 57). 5 One of these recordings is in the Museum of Music in Barcelona. A 1940s Odeon recording by Aires Mallorquines (n.d.) features two tunes, ‘Corregudes Populars’ and ‘Jota de l’Oferta’, played by Pere Bestard, his brother and Bartomeu. This dating was established in collaboration with Andrew Pace based on the musical group’s history, the aesthetics of Odeon recordings throughout the 20th century and other dated Odeon recordings with similar serial numbers. 6 Shepherds or swineherds working for landlords generally started at a young age. When arriving on a farm, they would be handed an instrument (a bagpipe or a flute) and told to play all night, while they looked after the goats or the pigs. Herding happened at night, when the sun had set, and the volume of the instruments was such that landlords (senyors) would only have to listen to make sure the shepherds were not sleeping. This has been reported by many shepherds, who experienced this as young men (Toni ‘Xisples’ interview 2012, Alonso and Rotger 2008, Morro 2010: 33–34).

52  Cassandre Balosso-Bardin 7 ‘La crisis baja el plazo máximo de entrega de una gaita asturiana a un año, y sólo sube en el único taller mecanizado’. http://www.20minutos.es/noticia/1087094/0/#xtor=AD15&xts=467263, last accessed 4 September 2019. 8 For more information about bag pressure and its importance, see Balosso-Bardin et al. 2018. 9 http://www.canmorepipebags.com/history, last accessed 4 September 2019. 10 According to a phone conversation with a Bannatyne Ltd. spokesman, 24 March 2015.

Bibliography Allen, Aaron S. 2019. ‘Sounding Sustainable; or, The Challenge of Sustainability’. In Timothy J. Cooley (Ed.), Cultural Sustainabilities: Music, Media, Language and Advocacy (43–59). Urbana and Springfield: University of Illinois Press. doi: 10.5406/j.ctvh9w1f9. Alonso, Inacio and Josep Rotger. 2008. ‘La Gaita Mallorquina: Origen y Evolucion’. Anuario da Gaita, 23: 44–49. Ourense: Escola Provincial de Gaitas da Deputación de Ourense. Artigues, Antoni. 2000. Xeremies, El sac de gemecs catala de Mallorca. Palma: Edicions Cort. Artigues, Antoni and Joan Morey. 1989. Repertori i construcció dels instruments de la colla de xeremies: Catalans a Mallorca. Palma: Universitat de les Illes Balears. Balosso-Bardin, Cassandre. 2016. ‘Xeremiers de sa Calatrava, from Heyday to Unemployment: Lives Dedicated to the Mallorcan Bagpipes’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 48: 48–70. doi: 10.5921/yeartradmusi.48.2016.0048 Balosso-Bardin, Cassandre, Augustin Ernoult, Patricio de la Cuadra, Benoît Fabre and Ilya Franciosi. 2018. ‘The Secret of the Bagpipes: Controlling the Bag. Techniques, Skill and Musicality’. Galpin Society Journal 7: 189–206. Bates, Eliot. 2012. ‘The Social Life of Musical Instruments’. Ethnomusicology 56 (3): 363–395. Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. Busquets i Peret, Simo and Francesc Sans i Bonet. 1995. Les Cornamuses i el Sac de Gemecs. Generalitat de Catalunya, Salamanca: Via Grafica Sabadell. Coanegra. 1988. ‘Mestre Pep Camps de Son Roca: un xeremier que va aprender de Mestre Pere Filo de Santa Maria.’ Coanegra 47: 18–19. Dawe, Kevin. 2003. ‘The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments.’ In Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton (Eds), The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction (274–283). New York and London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203149454 Dawe, Kevin. 2016. ‘Materials Matter: Towards a Political Ecology of Musical Instrument Making’. In Aaron S. Allen and Kevin Dawe (Eds), Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Nature, Environment. New York: Routledge. Desclot, 1986. ‘El “comte Rossi” tambe vengui aqui’. Coanegra 82: 20. Feintuch, Burt. 2019. ‘Cultural Integrity and Local Music in Cape Breton and New Orleans’. In Timothy J. Cooley (Ed), Cultural Sustainabilities: Music, Media, Language, Advocacy (210–219). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marroig ‘Píu’, Joan. 2010. ‘Interview by Antoni Genovart Espinosa’. Es Grall (July): 10–11. Massat, Tomeu. 2010. ‘Interview by Albert Herranz’. Es Grall (March): 10–12. Massot i Planes, Josep. 1984. Cançoner Musical de Mallorca. Palma: Caixa de Balears ‘Sa Nostra’. Morey, Joan. 1997. Tres Passades de Xeremies. Unpublished manuscript.

The Social Production of a Mallorcan Bagpipe  53 Morgan, Deirdre. 2018. ‘Cracking the Code: Recordings, Transmission, Players, and Smiths in the Norwegian Munnharpe Revival’. Ethnomusicology Forum 27 (2). https://doi.org/ 10.1080/17411912.2018.1506942 Morro, Mateu. 2010. ‘Els pastors mallorquins i les xeremies. La colla de xeremiers d’Andreu Comes “David” i Antoni Marcé “Xisples”’. Caramella 22: 32–37. Schippers, Huib. 2015. ‘Applied Ethnomusicology and Intangible Cultural Heritage: Understanding “Ecosystems” of Music as a Tool for Sustainability’. In S. Pettan and J.T. Titon (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Applied Ethnomusicology (134–156). New York: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199351701.001.0001 Titon, Jeff Todd. 2009. ‘Economy, Ecology and Music: An Introduction’. The World of Music 51 (1): 5–15. Trujillo, Càndid. 2014. La cornamusa mallorquina: una visio retrospectiva de l’instrument. Palma: Conservatori superior de les Illes Balears. Tugores, Miquel. 2010. ‘Interview by Antoni Genovart Espinosa’. Es Grall (October): 29–33. Tugores, Miquel. 2012. ‘Interview by Miquel Jordi Girart Tous’. Es Grall (September): 10. Waldren, Jacqueline. 1997. ‘We Are Not Tourists – We Live Here’. In Simone Abram and Jacqueline Waldren (Eds), Tourists and Tourism: Identifying with People and Places (29–50). Oxford, New York: Berg. Interviews and other communication Aloy, Bartomeu, interview, 12 September 2014, Sa Pobla, Mallorca Camps, Bartomeu, interview, 23 May 2012, Son Roca, Mallorca Frontera Luna, Joan, interview, 12 June 2012, Palma, Mallorca Marroig, Joan, email, 31 March 2015 Morey, Joan, interview, 26 June 2012a, San Joan, Mallorca Morey, Joan, interview, 28 June 2012b, San Joan, Mallorca Morey, Joan, interview, August 2012c, San Joan, Mallorca Rotger, Josep, interview, 20 March 2012a, Palma, Mallorca Rotger, Josep, interview, 25 August 2012b, Palma, Mallorca Rotger, Josep, email, 1 September 2019 Rotger, Josep, phone interview, 1 September 2019 Rotger, Josep, phone interview, 3 September 2019 Rubio, Pep Toni, interview, 12 November 2011, Mallorca Toni ‘Xisples’, interview, 23 April 2012, Santa Maria, Mallorca Varela, Anton, interview, January 2013, Ferrol, Galicia

2

Feeling Analogue Using Modular Synthesizers, Designing Synthesis Communities Eliot Bates

Introduction In a recent post on a well-known modular synthesizer message forum, a ‘newb’ (new user, short for newbie) who had never used modular synths asked ‘experienced wigglers’ (a ‘wiggler’ is a term originating in the forum in question and roughly means modular user) to list their ‘top ten’ favourite modules. Considering that newbies asking for purchasing advice constitute a significant percentage of the threads on this forum, this aspect was ordinary. In contrast to many related threads, though, this one quickly turned sour. For starters, the original poster hadn’t followed the forum’s conventions, where a newbie posts a link to a sketch version of a rack (a collection of discrete hardware modules that each perform different synthesis-related operations that the user connects together via 3.5 mm cables to make a performance patch) they’re thinking of purchasing, helping users to comment on this instrument-in-progress. More generally, the forum regulars had no idea how to answer the question, since they didn’t think about modules in general this way at all; a module that was essential to one user’s way of creating music, sound, noise, or visualization might be useless to another user’s way of doing the same, leading some of the four dozen regulars who did choose to respond to suggest that the original poster didn’t understand ‘the modular spirit’. One user quipped that the original poster should just buy ten Make Noise Maths, which was sort of a joke, but also not a joke at all, as it tested whether the newb possessed practical knowledge of how Serge modular synthesizers worked.1 In a prior thread, users had been challenging each other to create pieces of music using nothing but this staple of synthesis—a challenge, since a Maths module (see Figure 2.1) typically doesn’t produce audible frequencies by itself, but instead performs mathematical operations (e.g., addition, multiplication, scaling, inversion) to voltages. This example elucidates the conversational norms and gatekeeping practices of this transnational online synthesis community, where only by learning how to discuss ‘slewing’, ‘rectification’, ‘slope’, ‘exclusive ors’, and the power of generating ‘triggers’ at the end of an operational cycle for chaining sequences of operations can one describe what modular synthesizers do that fixed-architecture synths (e.g., Minimoog, Roland TB303, or the many virtual analogue ‘softsynths’) cannot. Notably, the module in question, despite being an DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-5

Feeling Analogue 55

Figure 2.1  Make Noise Maths Eurorack module.

exploration in mathematics, is presented to the user as an interface with two buttons, ten knobs, and 25 patch points. You patch together (i.e., use a cable to connect) two patch points to ‘do’ that mathematical operation. Maths has never been so hands-on, so fun! In a concurrent thread, an occasional poster was asking users to compare two different modular formats: Eurorack and 5U. Eurorack is a popular format, with hundreds of developers, defined by a 3U, or ~5.25′′ panel height and a ± 12v electrical specification, while 5U connotes several similar formats (MOTM, Modcan, MU) which have a nominally ‘better’ electrical specification and considerably larger front panels but boast considerably fewer developers (Vail 2014). While opinions were mixed, the aspect most consistently highlighted had nothing to do with sound quality but strictly with interface aesthetics. Some users simply can’t stand the miniature knobs or plastic-shaft potentiometers used in some Eurorack modules and apparently can only enjoy synthesis if the instrument has large metal knobs with a lot of space between them. Other users find 5U ‘cumbersome’ and appreciate the amount of functionality Eurorack packs into a small space, either because synthesis performance for them doesn’t involve twisting a lot of knobs in real time (especially if they prefer setting up generative patches that ‘play themselves’)

56  Eliot Bates or because they enjoy the wide variety of approaches to interface layout, design, visual aesthetics, and tactility available in Eurorack—which within a single module can often include different knob sizes—and control layouts that are not grid based. This thread quickly moved towards noting instrument-specific demographic differences, though, and comically rearticulating stereotypical perceptions (Dundes and Bronner 2007) that Eurorack and 5U users might indeed be different kinds of people with differing musical aesthetics (pushing the envelope versus obsessed with 1970s progressive and space rock), performance conventions (deemphasizing versus emphasizing the performer’s stage persona) and sociocultural identities (eclectic/experimental versus aging rockers with ponytails). These threads articulate two central concerns within modular synthesis: interface aesthetics and feel, and the design of instruments that move beyond the limitations of fixed-architecture synths. These are not just empirical concerns, and indeed are potentially constitutive of different social formations—gear cultures (Bates and Bennett 2024)—but I will invert the typical ethnomusicological sequence and discuss the sociocultural formations after outlining a few of the ways in which meanings and bodies and ideas and practices and relations get enmeshed in synthesizer objects. I do this specifically since modular synthesis gear cultures are organized first and foremost around these problematic objects, especially their interfaciality (Bates 2021). For most experienced users, the least interesting thing you can do with modular synthesis is to replicate the performative norms of fixed-architecture synths as popularized in the 1970s, where the user plays melodies or rhythms in real time on a keyboard and turns knobs only to alter timbral and envelope characteristics. In contrast, most hardware modular synthesizer assemblages lack any keyboard at all, and the idea of ‘composing’ for the instrument does not typically entail the predetermination of a fixed melody that can be reliably performed or reproduced. If the very act of assembling modules ‘becomes a compositional process in which the scope of the music is defined’ (Magnusson 2019, 118), then the ‘composition’ would be a patch diagram, documenting the decisions the ‘composer’ made concerning how to route voltages between modules (Navs 2016). Hence, the expression popularized by Andreas Schneider, the owner of Europe’s best-known modular synthesizer store and organizer of the Superbooth festival/trade show: ‘we play around with the low voltages’.2 The preceding vignettes suggest some of the problems that we face when attempting to taxonomically or ontologically attend to modular synthesizers as instruments. This is compounded by the number of modules that prospective users could choose from when making an instrument, which for the Eurorack format alone as of November 2021 consists of at least 9,306 unique modules produced by over 700 makers (temporarily ignoring the variety of cables, cases, and external devices that could be included within an instrument too).3 Furthermore, modular synthesis is not just used for creating music but is used for sound art, data sonification, visual synthesis, and genres such as noise and drone which, depending upon the artist and listener in question, may be perceived as residing somewhere between the extremes of musical aesthetics and the utter negation of music altogether (Thompson 2017).4

Feeling Analogue 57 Conventional historiographies of synthesis tend to organize objects based on the synthesis mode (e.g., additive, subtractive, digital frequency modulation, Karplus–Strong, granular), but modular synthesis allows multiple synthesis modes to coexist and is better defined through the widespread adoption of standard interface elements from analogue synthesis—knobs, sliders, 3.5 mm jacks, buttons—and experimentation with alternative control surfaces such as capacitive touch and forcesensing resistors. According to Tony Rolando, the designer of the Make Noise Maths module discussed earlier, regardless of whether the module’s faceplate is concealing a microcomputer that’s doing digital signal processing or a classic ‘analogue’ circuit, ‘everything has to feel analog’ (Botstein 2014a). In the words of Mark Verbos, a noted developer of Eurorack modules formerly based in Brooklyn but now operating out of Berlin, Germany: What we’re doing with modular is not really about analogue versus digital, it’s about a hands-on, in front of you interface versus hidden behind menus that are on a screen. It’s not really about what’s behind the panel, it’s about the panel itself. (Mark Verbos, interview in Botstein 2014b) If we approach the instrument’s interface as the site of feeling and affect (Bennett 2010, xii), organology then becomes an approach towards articulating how a particular mode of sound production becomes sensible. This pertains not just to domains of instrumentality and performativity but is constitutive of social and cultural realities. Rather than imposing a top-down taxonomic definition of modular synthesis in the mode of Hornbostel–Sachs (Hornbostel and Sachs 1961) or its extensions (e.g., Weisser and Quanten 2011), I derive taxonomic and ontological features ‘ground up’, based on the discursive norms within contemporary modular synthesizer communities (Charmaz 2006), which I situate within critical organology frameworks resulting from ethnographic inquiry. This chapter provides just a subset of the results from a multiyear, multisited, and multimode research study conducted with modular synthesizer community participants— makers, users, retailers, and social media produsers (Bruns and Schmidt 2011)— who are based in North America, Europe, and Australia, which I supplemented with a discourse analysis of modular synthesizer discussions happening at trade shows and online at four modular synth message forums. Through this, I hope to build upon our understanding of instrumentality (Hardjowirogo 2017) to better attend to synesthetic perspectives and aesthetic attributes, and to provide an approach towards assessing interfaciality—two sides of the same coin. Critical organology One assumption within critical organology scholarship is that musical instruments are designed and redesigned to do particular social, political and/or economic labour: not just regarding the sound they produce but in their wider set of functions as technologies. This has been productively analysed with recourse

58  Eliot Bates to the ‘social lives’ of instruments vis-à-vis their ability to produce/reproduce social class relations (Sonevytsky 2008), the perception that some instruments are composed of or akin to ‘vibrant matter’ (Bates 2012; Bennett 2010), and how the transnational flows of materials, instruments, and instrumentalists are active agents within local and transnational ecologies (Roda 2015). Shared between critical organology (Bates 2019) and the contemporary practice of organology done within museum studies (Rossi Rognoni 2019) is a conviction that the materials and making of instruments matter (Dawe 2016; see also Balosso-Bardin in this volume). As I argued in an earlier work, building up a saz bowl with staves instead of carving out a solid chunk of mulberry produces a different type of instrument, even though they morphologically might appear the same (they are both a ‘long-necked lute’) and there may be no established vocabulary to describe specific timbral/audible differences between instruments made with the two processes (Bates 2012). Part of the difference resides in the techniques and materials of artisanal versus assembly-line/semi-automated labour; the carvedout bowl provides irrefutable evidence of a maker’s hands at work with nonelectric tools, whereas staving today is typically the result of ‘factory’ (fabrika) modes of production with an electric bandsaw doing most of the work. Similarly, with analogue electronics there are widespread but not universal perceptions that something significant is lost when design and assembly eschew through-hole components hand-soldered to circuit boards for the much smaller surface-mount components that are wave/reflow soldered without requiring artisanal labour at the moment the solder is being applied (Strauss 1998). This is not just a matter of materials and tools but can become part of the perception of the ‘feeling’ of an instrument and of peoples’ affective relations to it. As Joshua Tucker has recently argued, a critical organology cannot be concerned solely with the materiality of instruments but needs to ‘observe these points of engagement between instruments and the human body’ (2016, 328)—both in making and in performance. In his study of Andean chinlili (guitar) makers, he riffs on Bernard Stiegler’s concept of ‘tertiary retention’, one of the many concepts in Stiegler’s philosophy of technology, to show how instruments: Allow performers and makers … to continually grammatise the flux of the social, distributing some experiences to the realm of indigeneity and leaving others outside that formation. These properties are properly located neither in the instrument and its materials, nor in the minds and bodies of the actors who engage them. They are the always-emergent product of contingent alignments between all of these entities, alignments that shift constantly due to the ever-changing demands placed upon performers, luthiers and consumers alike. (Tucker 2016, 341–342) Tucker, of course, is not the first to highlight how the (social) relationality between people and instruments, rather than simply the instruments ‘in themselves’, constitutes the primary site for organological analysis. Veronica Doubleday’s study

Feeling Analogue 59 of frame drums in the Middle East shows the variety of ways that such drums have been historically associated with women, femininity, and power (1999). John Baily’s research into Afghani dutār performance, in dialogue with concurrent research into the anthropology of the body, examines the role of kinesthetics and training on the performer’s body (1995). Kevin Dawe (2003; see also Chapter 4 in this volume) elaborates on these concerns in his research into the Cretan lyra, where he juxtaposes the embodied practices of making and performing lyras with the instrument’s role as symbolizing the body politic of Crete. All of these works, however, tend to reduce human–instrument relations to matters of kinesthetics, listening, or symbolism. Certainly the symbolic, kinaesthetic, and aural aspects of embodied relations do represent three common perceptions of human–instrument relations. Greg Downey touches upon a fourth aspect of embodied relations when writing about several effects of berimbau playing on the performer’s and listeners’ bodies (2002, 500); he doesn’t name this phenomenon, but we could include it under the concept of haptics, which is the feedback that technological interfaces provide to the sensing body. As I will show in this chapter, to adequately understand why the disposition of ‘feeling analogue’ developed the way it did, and why it led to a resurgence of interest in hardware modular synthesis, including the formation of new gear cultures, requires an understanding of the social life of synthesizers that pays careful attention to the entanglement between kinesthetics, haptics, tactility, look, affect, materiality, and sound. Resynthesizing synthesis Harald Bode, an engineer for Estey Organ, publicly presented his first version of what became known as the Audio System Synthesizer at the 1960 meeting of the Audio Engineering Society (Palov 2011). While inspired by preexisting objects and circuits that had been used for the creation and processing of electronic sound (Bode 1984), morphologically speaking it appears to be the first instance of a rack-mountable modular synthesizer system and was a direct inspiration for the considerably better-known modular synthesizers that Robert Moog (1934–2005) developed four years later. However, at the time it was not yet clear whether this ‘first’ modular synthesizer was a musical instrument or a less-defined form of studio-sited audio technology (Subotnik 1970). Something had to happen before synthesizer objects, which had much more aesthetically in common with test and military equipment, could be perceived as being a musical instrument. In the widely cited narrative by Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholars Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco, a number of factors were essential for enabling this transformation, few of which had anything to do with the primary tasks that synthesizers were designed to do: encouraging new kinds of creative musical practice either through the simulation of familiar sounds or the creation of totally new sounds. These included questions of repertoire. While there had been some 80 years of experiments with synthesizing sound prior to ‘the invention’ of the Moog synthesizer, ranging from Helmholtz’s experimental devices (Lenoir 1994) to Harry ­Olson’s work with the 1950s RCA synthesizer (Rodgers 2015), Pinch argues that

60  Eliot Bates it wasn’t until synthesizers gained the ‘interpretive flexibility’ to perform repertoire ranging from Bach to progressive rock that Moog synthesizers became regarded as musical instruments (2008, 471). However, for synthesizers to attain the status of a whole new kind of instrument required more than some popular performances and recordings. Pinch and Trocco (2002) point to the role of two kinds of standards: the adoption of a volt-per-octave standard for electrically conveying pitch information (e.g., if one volt represents a pitch of ‘A’, then two volts represents an ‘A’ one octave higher), and the adoption of a familiar interface in the form of a piano-style keyboard. Certainly, the implementation of particular standards enabled multiple companies to manufacture products that could work together in a reasonably predictable manner, and the integration of a keyboard made sufficient aspects of synthesis as a practice accessible to existing musicians who were comfortable with keyboards, as opposed to electrical engineers who were comfortable with test equipment. At the time, this made the synthesizer appear to be a kind of keyboard instrument and thus ontologically similar to pipe organs, mechanical tonewheel organs (such as the Hammond B-3 or Telharmonium; see Honisch and Schedel 2018), or transistor organs (such as those produced by Farfisa). Five decades later, keyboard-laden synthesizers continue to be very popular in the music instrument market, so conceiving of them as keyboard instruments may appear uncontroversial. However, the picture is complicated by popular drum machines that are based on analogue synthesis, such as the Roland TR-808, TR-909, and CR-78.5 Besides sharing some interfacial features (buttons, knobs, and jacks), the innards of analogue drum synthesizers include the very same operational amplifiers (op amps), transistors and passive components as contemporaneous keyboard-laden synthesizers, often organized into similar circuit topologies. We thus encounter the first of many taxonomic problems. In fact, synthesizers have always featured a wide range of interfacial possibilities: from capacitive touch plates to the mastic-and-glass sheets of the ANS (Kreichi 1995) to the paper tape of the RCA Mark II (Olson and Herbert 1958). Even in the early ‘golden age’ of keyboard-laden synthesizers explored by Pinch and Trocco, many synths that nominally had keyboards could be controlled externally instead via sequencers (devices that similarly output a set of control voltages representing changing pitches); some of these used knobs or sliders to set pitches rather than a keyboard. The prominent and iconic synthesizer melody on the song ‘On the Run’, featured in Pink Floyd’s album Dark Side of the Moon (1973), was not a keyboard performance but instead a machine-generated sequence from the EMS Synthi AKS synthesizer. The main human ‘performative’ element in this song was not the melody but a manually implemented filter sweep—knob turning—that changed the sequence’s timbre. Perhaps the question should be reframed: how was it that physical engagement with knobs, buttons, switches, and sliders—in other words, engagement with electronic controls that historically existed most commonly in nonmusical ­domains—came to be regarded as musical activities? Additionally, how did the most distinctive activities of modular synthesis, particularly the creating, slewing, manipulating, filtering, distorting, routing, and logical calculation of voltages,

Feeling Analogue 61 become regarded as a site of creative play? Framed this way, we resist both the teleological urge to look for the moment of closure when objects became concretized and the taxonomical impulse to reduce a complex assemblage to one kind of thing. Instead, a ground-up organology of synthesizers attends to the broader range of practices, multisensory experiential domains and repurposing of nonmusical ­activities and objects towards music and sound creation. Returning to the materiality of specific synthesizer objects and studying how they are used by particular musicians or mixed-media artists refocuses the attention on interface, embodied relations to the material interface and to voltages, and creative workflows where synthesizer objects, interfaces, voltages, sound, visualizations, and human users are all constitutive actors. Part of the problem lies in the ambiguities inherent in the terms analogue, digital, and synthesis (Sterne 2016). We have unfortunately inherited a legacy of historicizing synthesizers vis-à-vis their purported ability to recreate the sound of preexisting instruments rather than establishing a vocabulary suitable for understanding synthesizer sounds for the ‘lively individuals’ that they are (Rodgers 2011). But despite hyperbolic marketing materials and occasional musical performances suggesting the contrary (De Souza 2018), ‘analogue synthesis’ has rarely been effective at making sounds that truly resemble violins, pianos, clarinets, or human voices, and it is not ‘analogous’ to anything other than itself (Scott 2016). When considering ‘digital’ synthesizers, we must bear in mind that we never hear digitized data in themselves but only analogue reconstructions based on that data, and that all digital synthesis goes through considerable analogue circuitry before it can be heard at all. Moreover, many of the synthesis modes commonly described as inherent to digital instruments––for example, frequency modulation (popularized with the Yamaha DX keyboard series in the mid-1980s; see Théberge 1997)––are readily implementable today with analogue circuits, and our perceptions of them as digital are mainly because historically they were expensive to realize with sufficient precision with analogue technologies. Despite nascent attention to the distinctive ‘digital signatures’ imparted by many popular ‘digital’ audio technologies over the past 40 years (Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen 2016), we lack a general understanding of what kinds of operations done in a digital realm actually impart a quality of sound that is best defined as being ‘digital’. Twenty-first century modular synthesizers are better defined by their modularity (a rack consisting of many modules) by the central importance of patching (connecting outputs and inputs, typically done with cables but sometimes done with the user’s body serving as the cable) within and across modules, and by the tactile control (via knobs, buttons, switches, stepped potentiometers, capacitive touch, force-sensing resistors, sliders) of multiple parameters. The patch, meaning the specific connections made within and between modules, is the functional unit of analysis, although seeing a patch doesn’t necessarily tell us how a patch was performed. This is because there is an inherent systemwide flexibility concerning which controls might become the object of real-time performative acts (e.g., the knob that gets turned during performance) versus ones that are set at a particular place and not intended to be changed in real time when performing

62  Eliot Bates a patch. Accordingly, when we think about questions concerning interface and Eurorack modules, the interface pertains not only to the surface of contact between the human and technological but the connection between technological objects too. The Maths module noted above can be set up to interface between two other modules (by performing specific mathematical functions) and recede to the status of infrastructure, or instead can become the centre of performance and the site of performative kinesthetics. Feeling analogue design It’s all about the interface. The interface of Euro stuff feels analog even when it’s digital behind the panel. It doesn’t matter what it’s doing behind the panel as long as there’s not a bunch of menus you’ve got to dive through, it’s an analog interface. And it feels good. (William Mathewson, interview, 27 October 2017, emphasis added) Feeling analogue, and achieving a good feel, is a concern not only for users, but it has also become one of the main principles underpinning the design process of many companies producing Eurorack format products. Some designers such as Mathewson, who founded WMD in Denver and runs the largest synthesizerfocused contract assembly facility in the US, themselves perform synths and are inspired to create modular synths that are immediately playable in performance. But whether or not they are making modules for their own use, all successful designers have to balance the creation of interesting circuits and algorithms with the look and feel of their modules. When Scott Jaeger, designer of the Harvestman line of modules (now branded as Industrial Music Electronics) began introducing his modules in 2006, he not only wanted to bring some of the sound and functionality of 1980s digital synthesizers into a modular environment, but also to change the look and feel of synthesizers: Modulars that existed at that point in time, mid 2000s, were inspired by what came in the 60s and 70s, all the controls in a perfect row, jacks in a grid on the bottom. I wanted devices that had the controls laid out in a way that made more sense to the hands, or playing in the dark. Then the functions that the modules would perform would also fill in gaps of the more traditional offerings of the time. (Scott Jaeger, interview, 10 May 2009) As he suggests, the problem with existing products was both one of feel and look: making things that ‘made more sense to the hands’ and that appealed to or were navigable by the eyes. In contrast to many of the synthesizers whose sounds were a strong inspiration for Jaeger—whether digital phase modulation-type frequency modulation synthesis as popularized through the Yamaha DX and Casio CZ series synths, or wavetable synthesis as popularized by German synth companies PPG and Waldorf—he didn’t want his devices to require ‘menu diving’. Instead he

Feeling Analogue 63 strove to preserve a knob-per-function feel, even when ‘sometimes a big knob on a module will be modifying a dozen things under the hood in various ways’. He was attuned to the problems specific to the performance settings of electronic music, where limited or nonexistent ambient light means performers can’t rely on seeing controls or their explanatory labels when making rapid performance decisions. Through this, he developed a practice for graphic and industrial design that resulted in each of his modules having a unique interface layout: I’ll do a lot of staring at the thing from a distance to see if it does identify itself readily as its own unique object, not anything else. And then that usually maps pretty well to what the hand expects when it’s playing in a live environment. It can find the arrangement of the controls. And usually there’s enough LEDs on the thing that are lit up that you can look at the panel if you need to, but I want to get away from having tiny text labels above the jacks and they’re all grouped in a grid at the bottom so you have to memorize either a dozen different grids, or read the things as you use them. I want the location of the inputs to have some relation to the things that they are modifying. So I’m inspired actually by old Tektronix test equipment, they had modular test equipment through the 70s and the 80s, and that also informed some of the graphic design elements. The Euro-style text and the rounded corners everywhere. (Scott Jaeger, interview, 10 May 2019) Many designers I spoke with were initially inspired by discovering a particular circuit component, for example a lesser-known integrated circuit chip that had interesting characteristics that might impart a distinctive sound or that could accomplish a particular synthesis operation in a novel fashion. For example, one of the earlier products of William Mathewson (WMD), the Synchrodyne, began when Mathewson became interested in exploring the possibilities of a ‘switch capacitor chip’. Since the part normally behaves like a 4-pole filter rather than as an oscillator, it requires a variable speed clock to change the cutoff frequency; so Mathewson added a phase locked loop to get it to cycle at a high enough frequency. Like many of his modules, his early experimentation was done through a process of ‘tinkering’ on a breadboard (a plastic and metal board you plug parts into that swiftly facilitates the prototyping of a circuit), where he discovered that indeed this chip had ‘a sound of its own. It tracks and slews and gets weird if you overtrack and underdamp it or overdamp it and you can get some really interesting sound effects that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to get from a normal continuous time filter, like a Moog ladder’ (interview, October 27, 2017). Mathewson is one of several designers who noted that some of their most popular designs were in part the result of ‘happy accidents’ that happened during the very hands-on process of breadboarding, rather than originating in a process of working with circuit simulation software (especially, SPICE and its variants).6 However, other designers approach things differently. Joran van Gremberghe of the Belgian firm Joranalogue, who has a formal background in electronics engineering

64  Eliot Bates and designed circuits for Internet and communications technologies (ICT) before becoming a synthesizer designer, is similarly inspired by the possibilities of particular parts, especially Burr Brown op amps. He starts with circuit concepts and simulations before playing around physically with parts. The Joranalogue modules represent standard building blocks of analogue synthesis (e.g., oscillators, filters, slope generators, voltage-controlled amplifiers, and other ‘utility functions’), but he often presents uncommon module controls on the front panel that allow users to exploit previously unexplored sonic possibilities. I asked him about the relation between the circuit design and the interface design processes: The design of the circuits and the design of the front panel and the aesthetic and the ergonomics, that’s all one complete package. So if I make a circuit which can do different things, and it’s versatile and accurate, I want this to be reflected in the front panel, since that’s ultimately what the user interfaces with and uses. And it’s the only way that the circuit can really communicate things to the user. So that’s very important, and also I just like to keep it clean and visible in low light conditions just for practical reasons. My modules are quite dense, so I’m not going to do some crazy ornamental stuff, because then it just becomes completely impossible to use. I just like the cleaner look of things and I just let the module speak for itself and not do some crazy [thing]. (Joran van Gremberghe, interview, 9 May 2019) If the visual aesthetics of Jaeger’s and van Gremberghe’s designs most clearly evoke nonmusical test and measurement equipment, other designers have instead produced more ‘playful’ designs. This is especially apparent in the collaborations between several Eurorack companies and the Italian design firm Papernoise, a partnership between designers Hannes Pasqualini and Elizabeth Busani.7 Pasqualini had developed an interest in chiptune and DIY musical instruments while doing industrial design and comic books, and his first instrument design collaboration was with Mutable Instruments. After Mutable’s Émilie Gillet provided a set of design ideas, including clippings of graphic novels and abstract South Asian textile patterns, Papernoise created a distinctive and immediately ‘playful’ look which eschews the typical straight lines and test equipment aesthetic. Pasqualini, along with Busani (an illustrator for children’s books who Pasqualini describes as having ‘a more handmade, cute and cartoonesque style’), went on to create designs for Canadian instrument makers Hexinverter, and their cartoon influences on interface aesthetics are perhaps most obvious with the Alright Devices Chronoblob.8 On the other hand, Birdkids caused a stir on online forums when in 2018 they announced a new synthesizer that was intended to have an ‘inclusive’ and gendered ‘nonbinary’ interface. But perhaps Birdkids’ most talked about design choice was with their Unicorn Boom kick drum module released as a DIY kit for the Superbooth festival in 2019 (see Figure 2.2). It features a wildly coloured acrylic front panel where the low bass kick sound quite literally comes out of a jack located at the ass of the colourful cartoon unicorn.

Feeling Analogue 65

Figure 2.2  Birdkids Unicorn Boom.

Feeling analogue cultures With over 9,300 modules to choose from, and dozens of websites that teach enthusiasts how to make their own modules if none of those 9,300 meets their needs, part of the challenge for Eurorack users concerns which modules to acquire and how to present them within a ‘rack’. While I have suggested that interface designs emerge primarily from the aesthetic dispositions and personal idiosyncrasies of the designers—and certainly these are key factors that have led to the current eclecticism of product offerings—one of the aspects of Eurorack most discussed in online fora concerns the interfaces themselves, and this user-community influence leads to changes in industrial design. Quite a few active online participants describe themselves as especially ‘OCD’, and only buy modules if they have silver faceplates; others only buy black faceplate modules (neither subset of the Eurorack milieu culture would be the least interested in the Unicorn Boom). The design aesthetics of Make Noise, producer of the very popular Maths module noted above, are especially polarizing, with some users being put off by the abstract, difficult-to-read graphics on the panel (see Figure 2.1). Others agree with Make Noise’s designers (especially Tony Rolando) that the unconventional aesthetics do indeed encourage the user to try out new ideas and to think differently about the operations that constitute synthesis.

66  Eliot Bates Eurorack modules are modular not just in the sense that they maintain compatibility with other modules, but in their very assembly. Subsequently, users can typically replace the faceplates if they desire, and there’s a healthy aftermarket of replacement and alternative faceplates for hundreds of popular modules, ranging from the drab and no-nonsense replacement panels made by Grayscale (including their two alternate Maths faceplates) or the elegant curvaceous, sandblasted, powder-coated, and ultraviolet-light-printed aluminium panels by Magpie Modular.9 The sizeable aftermarket for replacement knob covers caters to users who prefer either rubberized knobs, firm plastic ones, or more ‘vintage-looking’ metal and plastic test equipment parts but not the others, or prefer larger or smaller knobs based on the size of their fingers or the likelihood that they might need to control a particular knob in real time. For open-source modules such as Mutable Instruments’ designs or the ornament & crime multifunction module,10 several companies produce alternative layout versions, either shrinking the functionality into a smaller space and eschewing real-time knob control or expanding the interface with more controls and more space between controls. There are, at the time of writing, 17 different versions alone of the now discontinued Mutable Instruments Clouds texture synthesizer module, varying with regards to size, number, and position and kind of knobs, and the number of patch points too. The key point about the proliferation of alternates and variants is that they are primarily an outgrowth of online social interaction between users and DIY enthusiasts (some who transition into establishing small businesses) and not the direct initiatives of the better-known module design companies. Hence, analyses of the interfacial decisions of key designers as previously noted often need to be counterbalanced with the wider circulation of design/redesign labour in user communities and informal businesses. Interfaciality and interface concerns provide some of the main stimulants for social interaction within the Eurorack modular gear culture. As Bates and ­Bennett note in their book introducing the gear culture concept, ‘gear is not the tool itself, but what happens when tools and ideas about tools articulate discursive formations and inculcate embodied practices/dispositions that structure social and economic relations’ (2024). Whereas electronic music communities have historically been described as ‘scenes’ (Straw 1991), ‘subcultures’ (Thornton 1996) or ‘tribes’ (Bennett 1999), none of these terms usefully frames modular synthesis communities. They are not predominantly youth cultures, they lack predominantly cosmopolitan origins, many participants are not part of local modular synthesizer communities, and there is little evidence of kinds of resistance (whether towards society, mainstream music forms, or commodity capitalism). There is no canon of widely enjoyed music, and when livestreamed or in-person performances do happen, musical experiences appear to be for many participants considerably less important than chance encounters with gear. Due to the similarity that contemporary modular synthesis has with the fetishized technological relations found in other audio technology milieux, where the irreducible materiality of a specific class of technical objects—gear—comes to take a disproportionately large role in mediating sociability, I regard modular synthesis as a gear culture.

Feeling Analogue 67 I would argue that the particular online modular synthesizer gear cultures I studied are held together in large part by the sharing of interface representations of rack configurations. This not only communicates useful information to other users but is a main site for performing individual aesthetic preferences and a conduit for discussion. On the website MODULARGrid.net, registered users can drag and drop from lists representing every known unique synth module, and each ‘rack’ they create generates a unique weblink that can be shared both on MODULARGrid and elsewhere (Figure 2.3). If a forum user wants feedback on a rack they’re designing, whether on MODULARGrid’s forum or on other fora such as Modwiggler (formerly named Muffwiggler), Gearspace (formerly named Gearslutz), or Lines (https://llllllll.co/), they typically post the unique MODULARGrid rack link; these links and their visual representations are shared more than any music/sound produced via these racks and thus become the centre of social interaction around the user design of their personal instruments. Some of the shared racks are actual instruments, whereas others are idealized or hypothetical. Regardless of which kind are being shared, MODULARGrid provides the largest repository of documentation of the range of possible instruments that tens of thousands of users have made or imagined making; over 238,000 such racks have been designed and named by tens of thousands of users. Many of the individual racks are works-in-progress that may change from one day to another. Indeed, the contemporary modular synthesizer appears to differ from its 1960s and 1970s predecessors in its inherently unstable composition. However, even from a small random sample, the heterogeneity of approaches to

Figure 2.3  Example of one iteration of the author’s MODULARGrid rack.

68  Eliot Bates synthesis and desired sonic outcomes quickly become clear, as do the ways that users attempt to frame each collection of modules as an instrument. Racks may be specifically named around the desired sound art or musical genre that the user hopes to create with them (techno, glitch, ambient, drone, and noise appear to be the most popular), while others are given ‘adjectival’ names (my funny/spiffy/ doltish/ugly/gorgeous/strange Eurorack) or human names (Ms Mangal, Hank). The sharing of racks may be for pedagogical reasons (getting feedback on a rack idea, or demonstrating a combination of modules that will accomplish a particular creative task), and a small subset of these racks (especially those of popular performers/ producers such as Richard Devine) circulate more widely than others. But when personified rack sharing accompanies audio or video Eurorack recordings hosted on SoundCloud or YouTube, beyond providing useful technical information such sharing functions as a major technique for demonstrating or generating social and cultural capital through the display of distinction (Duff 2016) and performance of gear acquisition (Herbst and Menze 2021). As users’ sensible prostheses, MODULARGrid racks and YouTube videos are tasked with doing disproportionate labour in mediating social relations within this gear culture. Conclusion Expanding on Scott Jaeger’s concern for users’ hands and their ability to navigate the interface, while part of the challenge is kinaesthetic and relates to the ability to perform sequences of rehearsed actions, the problem is also one of haptics—being touched by the synthesizer interface and receiving sufficient feedback from the controls while using them. This suggests that synth playability is less a problem of user interaction with technological interfaces than with user–interface intra-action. The concept of intra-action, which in part has conceptual origins in quantum mechanics and feminist technoscience, has been most eloquently presented by Karen Barad (2007) as part of what Barad terms an entangled ‘ethico-onto-epistemology’, and is intended as an analytic for queering our conceptualizations of causality and individualism. Of course, haptics and intra-action isn’t just a problem with electronic instruments: it is inherent to all instrumentality. But this phenomenon has been primarily identified when assessing the design of ‘new instruments for musical expression’ (NiME; see Magnusson and Hurtado 2017) instead of being a core concern of wider organological inquiry. That said, over the past five decades the practices of performing and designing synthesizers have complemented designers’ and users’ exploration of their own transgender or queer identities frequently enough to merit attention. Preliminary research into this concerning a few prominent musicians such as Wendy Carlos (Kheshti 2019) has not yet theorized whether it is primarily the haptic aspect of these interfaces that facilitates this exploration, or the fluid representational possibilities of synthesized sound (as is hinted at in several interviews contained within Rodgers 2010), or if perhaps this queering resides in the (entangled) synaesthesias between haptics, kinesthetics, listening to electronic sound and the look of technological interfaces. Further research into such questions would make for a rewarding

Feeling Analogue 69 and exciting expansion of our theorizations of synthesis. It would extend the work that’s already been done to queer the histories of electronic music; it would meaningfully contribute to our general understanding of intra-action and Barad’s entangled ethico-onto-epistemology by examining further the fullest range of material, experiential, and ontological aspects of synthesis; and it potentially produces applied research that could assist designers who feel that gender nonconforming interfaces might constitute good industrial design. However, we cannot avoid juxtaposing this with a critical analysis of the hegemonic masculine framings of some of the main synthesis-specific online platforms—the previously titled muffwiggler. com and gearslutz.com—that in their very naming not only encourage and discourage particular gender-defined demographic groups from participation but define specific (masculine heteronormative) ways in which gear is intended to be sexualized by their forum users (Bates and Bennett 2020). The complex relation between the queering practices I noted earlier and the hegemonic masculine frame in which online socialization of gear transpires requires further research. The present study has a number of implications for future organological, ethnomusicological, and electronic music research. While materiality and morphological forms matter to an extent, more important here is the variety of kinds of relations between users/designers and the morphology and materiality of instruments—the intra-actions—and the qualities of and widely held attitudes towards these relations. This multisited study assessed questions of haptics, kinesthetics, and tactile engagements with materiality both in sensorially overwhelming environments such as trade shows or festivals, and in sensorially reduced environments such as online message fora. Rather than interfaciality and human–technological intra-action receding when discussion moved online, in fact it became more important, demonstrating the strong feedback between actual embodied experiences with technology and vicarious, imagined, or aspirational embodied experiences with other technological objects. Hence, the ‘analogue feel’ I have explored in this chapter, while stemming from embodied, haptic, and kinaesthetic concerns, especially becomes a problem in the mediatized environments of online discussion, so much so that it even is productive of distinctions between synthesizer-focused gear cultures. Acknowledgements Aspects of research related to this chapter were presented at 4S (2017), UC Berkeley (2017), the University of Michigan (2018), Australian National University (2018), Stony Brook (2019), Wesleyan University (2020), and at the Social Distinction in the 21st Recording Studio Symposium at the University of Lethbridge. I thank Jocelyne Guilbault, Lester Monts, Samantha Bennett, Margarethe Adams, Jane Alden, Meg Schedel, and Amandine Pras for the invitations and for their critical engagement with the topics, and the attendees for their questions and critiques. I also thank Joran van Gremberghe, Scott Jaeger, and William Mathewson for their willingness to participate in interviews, and Ladi Dell’aira and Stephen Cottrell for their attentive reads and edits of earlier versions of the manuscript. That said, as always, all mistakes are my own.

70  Eliot Bates Notes 1 The Make Noise Maths is based on the Serge Dual Universal Slope Generator, widely considered one of the most distinctive and versatile modules in the 1970s Serge modular system, but also one that assumes that the user knows quite a bit about electronics and voltages—not to mention maths (Stinchcombe 2016). 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZsWVjJpey0 [accessed 3 November 2019] 3 Statistics come from https://www.modulargrid.net/e/modules/browser [accessed 30 November 2021]. 4 Although Thompson doesn’t discuss this aspect in detail in the book, several of the musicians she discusses in her book have been important for the contemporary resurgence of modular synthesis. For example, Chris Carter, a member of industrial music group Throbbing Gristle and other industrial and dark techno acts, wrote two influential articles assessing the emerging Eurorack scene for Sound on Sound magazine (Carter 1998; Carter 2003), and went on to license a synthesizer object he had made in the 1970s, the Gristleizer, for a series of Eurorack modules in the 2010s. 5 Not only did analogue drum synthesizers lack piano-style keyboards, they didn’t adhere to any volt/octave specification either. The CR-78 and TR-808 lacked any standard MIDI or CV ports to permit interoperability with other instruments. Though failing to articulate Pinch and Trocco’s criteria, they became wildly successful for their abilities in the ‘programming of posthuman rhythmatics’ (Eshun 1998, 79). 6 SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis), originally an academic software package developed in the 1980s, allows the user to predict the behaviour of specific components organized into a circuit. 7 https://www.papernoise.net/ [accessed 8 July 2020] 8 http://divkidmodular.com/interview-papernoise/ [accessed 30 March 2018] 9 As an interesting side note, the Magpie name emerged from Kris Northern’s process of making custom aluminum faceplates: ‘One day I came into the kitchen; face covered in the grime of aluminum polishing to show off the custom shiny Tides panel I was working on. My flatmate at the time, Dave Tipper, teased that I looked like a filthy magpie hoarding all the shiny bits of modular gear’. https://magpie-modular.myshopify.com/ pages/about-us [accessed 3 November 2019] 10 See https://mutable-instruments.net/ and https://ornament-and-cri.me/ [accessed 8 July 2020].

Bibliography Baily, John. 1995. ‘Music and the Body’. The World of Music 37 (2): 11–30. Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press. Bates, Eliot. 2012. ‘The Social Life of Musical Instruments’. Ethnomusicology 56 (3): 363–95. doi:10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.3.0363. ———. 2019. ‘Actor-Network Theory and Organology’. Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 44: 41–51. ———. 2021. ‘The Interface and Instrumentality of Eurorack Modular Synthesis’. In A. Hennion and C. Levaux (Eds), Rethinking Music through Science and Technology Studies (170–88). London: Routledge. Bates, Eliot, and Samantha Bennett. 2020. ‘From Audio Technologies to Gear Fetishes’. Presented at AES Vienna in the roundtable ‘Remapping the Model of Studio Production Techniques’. Bates, Eliot, and Samantha Bennett. 2024. Gear: Cultures of Audio and Music Technologies. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Feeling Analogue 71 Bennett, Andy. 1999. ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes?: Rethinking the Relationship ­between Youth, Style and Musical Taste’. Sociology 33 (3): 599–517. doi:10.1177/ S0038038599000371. Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press. Bode, Harald. 1984. ‘History of Electronic Sound Modification’. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society 32 (10): 730–39. Botstein, Sam. 2014a. ‘Tony Rolando (Make Noise).’ The Distillery Episode 7 (September 24). https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/sam-botstein-2/the-distillery/e/36619312. ——— 2014b. ‘Mark Verbos’. The Distillery Episode 14 (December 2). https://www. stitcher.com/podcast/sam-botstein-2/the-distillery/e/36618418. Brøvig-Hanssen, Ragnhild, and Anne Danielsen. 2016. Digital Signatures: The Impact of Digitization on Popular Music Sound. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Bruns, Axel, and Jan-Hinrik Schmidt. 2011. ‘Produsage: A Closer Look at Continuing ­Developments’. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 17 (1): 3–7. doi:10.1080/ 13614568.2011.563626. Carter, Chris. 1998. ‘Doepfer A100 Modular Synthesiser’. Sound on Sound 13 (9), July. https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/doepfer-a100 ———. 2003. ‘Doepfer A100 Modular: Synthesis Modules’. Sound on Sound 19 (2), ­December. https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/doepfer-a100-modular Charmaz, Kathy. 2006. Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. London: Sage. Dawe, Kevin. 2003. ‘Lyres and the Body Politic: Studying Musical Instruments in the Cretan Musical Landscape’. Popular Music and Society 26 (3): 263–83. doi:10.1080/ 0300776032000116950. ———. 2016. ‘Materials Matter: Towards a Political Ecology of Musical Instrument Making’. In A.S. Allen and K. Dawe (Eds), Current Directions in Ecomusicology: Music, Culture, Nature (109–21). New York: Routledge. De Souza, Jonathan. 2018. ‘Timbral Thievery: Synthesizers and Sonic Materiality’. In E. Dolan and A. Rehding (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Timbre. New York: Oxford University Press. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190637224.001.0001/ oxfordhb-9780190637224-e-8. Downey, Greg. 2002. ‘Listening to Capoeira: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and the Materiality of Music’. Ethnomusicology 46 (3): 487–509. doi:10.2307/852720. Duff, Andrew. 2016. ‘Synths and Social Capital.’ eContact! 17 (4). https://econtact.ca/17_4/ duff_socialcapital.html. Dundes, Alan, and Simon Bronner. 2007. The Meaning of Folklore: The Analytical Essays of Alan Dundes. Logan: Utah State University Press. Eshun, Kodwo. 1998. More Brilliant Than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books. Hardjowirogo, Sarah-Indriyati. 2017. ‘Instrumentality: On the Construction of Instrumental Identity’. In T. Bovermann, A. de Campo, H. Egermann, S. Hardjowirogo, and S. Weinzierl (Eds), Musical Instruments in the 21st Century: Identities, Configurations, Practices (9–24). Singapore: Springer. Herbst, Jan-Peter, and Jonas Menze. 2021. Gear Acquisition Syndrome: Consumption of Instruments and Technology in Popular Music. Huddersfield (UK): University of Huddersfield Press. Honisch, Erika Supria, and Margaret Schedel. 2018. ‘Editorial: New Wor(l)ds for Old Sounds’. Organised Sound 23 (2): 133–43. doi:10.1017/S1355771818000018.

72  Eliot Bates Hornbostel, Erich M. von, and Curt Sachs. 1961. ‘Classification of Musical Instruments’. Translated by A. Baines and K. P. Wachsmann. The Galpin Society Journal 14: 3–29. doi:10.2307/842168. Kheshti, Roshanak. 2019. Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach. (33 1/3 Series). New York: Bloomsbury. Kreichi, Stanislav. 1995. ‘The ANS Synthesizer: Composing on a Photoelectronic Instrument’. Leonardo 28 (1): 59–62. Lenoir, Timothy. 1994. ‘Helmholtz and the Materialities of Communication’. Osiris 9 (1): 184–207. doi:10.1086/368736. Magnusson, Thor. 2019. Sonic Writing: Technologies of Material, Symbolic, and Signal Inscriptions. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Magnusson, Thor, and Enrike Hurtado. 2017. ‘The Acoustic, the Digital and the Body: A Survey on Musical Instruments’. In A.R. Jensenius and M.J. Lyons (Eds), A NIME Reader: Fifteen Years of New Interfaces for Musical Expression, (317–34). Cham: Springer. Navs. 2016. ‘Basic Electricity: An Appeal for a Greater Understanding of Rudimentary Modular Functions’. eContact! 17 (4). https://econtact.ca/17_4/navs_basicelectricity.html. Olson, Harry F, and Belar Herbert. 1958. ‘Music Synthesizer’. US Patent US2855816A, filed 1951. Palov, Rebekkah. 2011. ‘Harald Bode — A Short Biography.’ eContact! 13 (4). https://econtact.ca/13_4/palov_bode_biography.html. Pinch, Trevor. 2008. ‘Technology and Institutions: Living in a Material World’. Theory and Society 37 (5): 461–83. doi:10.1007/s11186-008-9069-x. Pinch, Trevor, and Frank Trocco. 2002. Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Roda, Allen. 2015. ‘Ecology of the Global Tabla Industry’. Ethnomusicology 59 (2): 315–36. doi:10.5406/ethnomusicology.59.2.0315. Rodgers, Tara. 2010. Pink Noises: Women on Electronic Music and Sound. Durham: Duke University Press. ———. 2011. ‘“What, for Me, Constitutes Life in a Sound?”: Electronic Sounds as Lively and Differentiated Individuals’. American Quarterly 63 (3): 509–30. doi:10.1353/aq. 2011.0046. ———. 2015. ‘Tinkering with Cultural Memory: Gender and the Politics of Synthesizer Historiography’. Feminist Media Histories 1 (4): 5–30. doi:10.1525/fmh.2015.1.4.5. Rossi Rognoni, Gabriele. 2019. ‘Preserving Functionality: Keeping Artefacts “Alive” in Museums’. Curator: The Museum Journal 62 (3): 403–13. doi:10.1111/cura.12327. Scott, Richard. 2016. ‘Back to the Future: On Misunderstanding Modular Synthesizers’. eContact! 17 (4). https://econtact.ca/17_4/scott_misunderstanding.html. Sonevytsky, Maria. 2008. ‘The Accordion and Ethnic Whiteness: Toward a New Critical Organology’. The World of Music 50 (3): 101–18. Sterne, Jonathan. 2016. ‘Analog’. In B Peters (Ed.), Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture (31–44). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Stinchcombe, Timothy E. 2016. ‘The Serge VCS: How It Works’. EContact! 17 (4). https:// econtact.ca/17_4/stinchcombe_sergevcs.html. Strauss, Rudolf. 1998. SMT Soldering Handbook. 2nd ed. Oxford: Newness. Straw, Will. 1991. ‘Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music’. Cultural Studies 5 (3): 368–88. doi:10.1080/09502389100490311. Subotnik, Morton. 1970. ‘The Synthesizer: Is It the Ultimate Musical Weapon?’. Recording Engineer/Producer 1 (1): 17–21.

Feeling Analogue 73 Théberge, Paul. 1997. Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press. Thompson, Marie. 2017. Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Thornton, Sarah. 1996. Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Tucker, Joshua. 2016. ‘The Machine of Sonorous Indigeneity: Craftsmanship and Sound Ecology in an Andean Instrument Workshop’. Ethnomusicology Forum 25 (3): 326–44. doi:10.1080/17411912.2016.1246973. Vail, Mark. 2014. The Synthesizer: A Comprehensive Guide to Understanding, Programming, Playing, and Recording the Ultimate Electronic Music Instrument. New York: ­Oxford University Press. Weisser, Stéphanie, and Maarten Quanten. 2011. ‘Rethinking Musical Instrument Classification: Towards a Modular Approach to the Hornbostel-Sachs System’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 43: 122–46. doi:10.5921/yeartradmusi.43.0122.

3

Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr Some Cultural and Social Repercussions John Baily

Introduction This chapter examines the long-necked lute (dutâr) characteristic of the Herat region of western Afghanistan and its transformation from a simple two-stringed instrument to a much more complicated 14-stringed model. This change occurred between approximately 1950 and 1965. The morphologies of the two types of dutâr are described, and the process of transformation discussed in detail. The outcome is viewed in terms of the expanding repertoire of the dutâr, increased opportunities for practitioners in learning about music theory, the changing role and status of dutâr players and how dutâr players acquire their performance skills and in some cases become full-time professional musicians.1 Herat, ‘the pearl of Khorasan’ If anyone should ask which is the pleasantest of cities, you may answer him that it is Herat. For if the world is like the sea, and the province of Khorasan the oyster contained within, then the city of Herat is as the pearl in the middle of that oyster. Attributed to Hamdullah Mostowfi, 14th-century Persian poet and mystic. (Gammell 2016: 1) Herat is one of the westernmost provinces of Afghanistan, bordering Iran and containing a vast and fertile riverine oasis, at the centre of which lies the ancient city of Herat. In the 15th century C.E., this was a very important centre of Islamic civilization, having been ruled for the previous two centuries by the Timurid Dynasty, celebrated for its poets, visual artists, and musicians. The court music of the Timurids influenced the art music of Safavid Persia, Ottoman Turkey, and Mughal India (Baily, 2018). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Herat was strongly affected by the Persian classical music of the time. The Persian târ was an important long-necked lute, the santur (hammered dulcimer) had some prominence and the Persian dastgâh system of melodic modes was to some extent familiar to local urban musicians (Baily 1988: 19–22). In the 1930s, elements of the classically orientated art music of Hindustan (i.e., today’s India and Pakistan) DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-6

Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr 75 were introduced to Herat through the residence in the city of Ustad Nabi Gol, a famous singer from K ­ abul, who was familiar with the genres and instruments of the capital’s Hindustani-­related music, such as the hand-pumped Indian harmonium, tabla drums and the double-chambered plucked lute called rubâb, regarded as the national instrument of Afghanistan. The changes in the dutâr reflect the ways in which the music of Herat was transformed in the last century, shifting from a Persianate past towards a more Hindustani present. Two types of Herati dutâr The long-necked two-stringed fretted lute is a common instrument in Central Asia, including parts of western Afghanistan and especially in Herat Province, where it was in the recent past an important instrument of rural music-making. Such instruments are generally known as dutâr (or dotâr), which literally means ‘two strings’. The body was usually carved out of a single block of mulberry wood, with the neck of mulberry, walnut, or apricot. The two strings of the Herati dutâr were usually made of gut, or sometimes silk. It had a simple system of fretting, known later as pardeh râsteh (‘simple fretting’), which produced various neutral seconds (intermediate between semitones and wholetones) characteristic of Persian music, and had a very limited range of modal possibilities, the principal mode being a form of the Phrygian (or E mode). It was played ‘open-handed’, using the thumb and fingers of the right hand to activate the strings, with both downstrokes and upstrokes. Only the first string was fingered with the left hand; the second string, usually tuned a 4th or 5th below the first string, served as a drone when the two strings were struck together, as was normally the case. The junction between the neck and the resonator was decorated with a series of inlaid bone strips (see Figure 3.1). The two-stringed dutâr was essentially a rural instrument, used mainly to accompany local traditional vernacular songs, many of which could be described as ‘folk songs’, though some might be based on classical Persian poetry by known authors, such as Saadi, Hafez, Rumi or Bedil. There was not much by way of a distinct instrumental repertoire; but one could play melodies of local songs as instrumental pieces. Between about 1950 and 1965, the two-stringed Herati dutâr underwent a series of changes which eventually transformed it into a 14-stringed long-necked lute, with an increase in size, a longer neck, a more rounded body and elaborate inlaid decorations. In addition to the single melody string, there were now three long drones with tuning pegs in the head of the instrument and a set of ten sympathetic strings with tuning pegs along the side of the neck. All the strings were now made of steel. The sympathetic strings (called tarab) are the most significant of the various morphological features of the reinvented dutâr. In performance, they are tuned to the scale of the melodic mode (râg) being played and resonate in sympathy and reinforce the sound of each note as it is played on the melody string. In performance, they produce a ‘wash’ of sound, with complex interactions of the harmonics of each string.2 The number and placement of frets were altered to give an approximately chromatic 12-note scale, which provided access to all the modes of Afghan

76  John Baily

Figure 3.1  The two-stringed Herati dutâr.

urban music as played on instruments such as the Afghan rubâb (a short-necked double-chambered plucked lute, the national instrument of Afghanistan). The first string served as the only melody string, and the new instrument was still called dutâr despite having so many added strings. As for the right hand, the new instrument was now played with a plectrum, usually made from a bicycle spoke fashioned to fit thimble-like onto the index finger and gripped with the thumb. The main stroke was downwards, towards the resonator of the instrument, often with the plectrum making audible contact with the wooden soundboard of the resonator. Downstrokes could include not just the main string but the adjacent long drones, or even across all the strings, including the sympathetics. A special feature of the 14-stringed dutâr was the raising of the shortest sympathetic string by a protuberance on the bridge, which allowed that string to be played in isolation in complex high drone patterns called parands that are the hallmark of the skilled musician. This technique was borrowed from the Afghan rubâb. In this process of transformation, the Herati dutâr changed from being an instrument of rustic vernacular music to a vehicle for popular and classical music performed by professional urban musicians. The increase in the overall length of the dutâr, from around 105 cm to about 130 cm, made the instrument more difficult to hold and challenging to play, with the musician usually sitting cross-legged ‘tailor fashion’ on a carpet (see Figure 3.2).

Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr 77

Figure 3.2  The 14-stringed Herati dutâr.

The process of transformation According to views expressed by dutâr players and others during my research in Herat in the 1970s, the transformation of the dutâr occurred in a series of idiosyncratic stages, starting with the addition of several extra frets, to eliminate the neutral seconds of the pardeh râsteh system to give a semichromatic scale, which allowed access to a wider range of melodic modes and enabled the dutâr player to perform genres of Afghan music and Indian film music that were previously inaccessible.3 This system of fretting was referred to as pardeh filmi, ‘film (music) fretting’. In this process of change, steel replaced gut for the strings, and the number of strings initially increased from two to three, so now we had the three-stringed dutâr. This version of the instrument was played with the metal plectrum described above for the 14-stringed dutâr, used mainly to strum across all three strings, with the downstroke as the main stroke. The three-stringed dutâr was commonly encountered in Herat in the 1970s, notably in teahouses in the city, especially those near the livestock market, which attracted crowds of visiting villagers on market days. Even at that time it seems that some dutâr players experimented with adding a few extra strings with tuning pegs along the side of the neck, a trend that culminated in the 14-stringed dutâr. The transformation of the dutâr was thus in its early stages a collective innovation by amateur musicians, with different players trying out their own ideas.

78  John Baily The man generally credited with having designed the final form of the 14-stringed dutâr was Mohammad Karim Herawi, generally known as Karim Dutari, who came from a musically inclined family in Herat. His father played the tabla, his uncle the santur. As a boy, Karim learned to play the harmonium and the three-stringed dutâr. His father died when Karim was 16, and his relatives sent him to Kabul to enrol at a technical college. After several weeks in Kabul, he was persuaded by some young friends to go to Radio Kabul to seek an audition. A tabla player was sent for, and they played together for the director of the radio station, who liked what he heard, and that afternoon Radio Kabul broadcast Karim’s playing, live (the radio station had no recording machines at that time). Many people phoned in to say how much they had enjoyed his playing, so they invited him to perform again the next day, and the day after that. The upshot was an offer to join a new orchestra then being formed at Radio Kabul, consisting of traditional ‘Afghan’ instruments, known as the Ârkestrâ-ye Melli, the National Orchestra, under the leadership of rubâb player Ustad Mohammad Omar. This was about 1957. Stateowned Radio Kabul was run by the Ministry of Information and Culture, and the musicians working there were government employees. Karim described the daily schedule when I worked with him in 1974: 6:00–8:00 a.m., playing live with various singers; 8:00– 10:00 a.m. free; 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. rehearsals of new songs and instrumental pieces, 12:00 p.m.–1.00 p.m., live performance; 1:00 p.m.–4:00 pm free; 4:00 p.m.–10:00/11.00 p.m., on duty again as required. By his own account, Karim felt disadvantaged in the midst of the highly proficient professional players of rubâb, tanbur, sârinda, sârang, ghaichak, tulak, dohol, and zirbaghâli in the National Orchestra, most of whom were from hereditary musician backgrounds.4 Strumming across the three strings of the dutâr was often inappropriate, yet played single-string style the instrument was too quiet, and he could hardly hear himself play, let alone be heard by other members of the orchestra. So he set about improving the dutâr. Collaborating with a renowned local luthier, Bacheh Qader, a specialist in rubâb making, they produced a series of developmental prototypes, adding a set of sympathetic strings, making the instrument larger, with a stronger neck (in order to bear the tension of the extra strings), and with a more rounded resonator, which Karim believed improved the sound. Hitherto, the dutâr’s resonator was rather narrow, as can be seen in Figure 3.1––‘spoonshaped’, as the Heratis describe it. The final form of the new 14-stringed dutâr was arrived at in about 1960. Karim employed the wire plectrum (nakhunak) used for the three-stringed dutâr but adopted the upstroke rather than the downstroke as the main stroke, telling me this technique was borrowed from sitâr playing. In retrospect, we can see that the most significant of the changes to the dutâr was the addition of the sympathetic strings. They were to be found on two of the instruments in the National Orchestra, notably the rubâb and tanbur, and on several other instruments employed at Radio Kabul, such as the sârangi, delrubâ, sarod, and sitâr. The leader of the National Orchestra was Ustad Mohammad Omar, originally trained as a vocalist in the quasi-Hindustani classical music of Kabul. As a young man, he was obliged to give up singing professionally because of health problems, and in due course became an outstanding player of the rubâb and a very important

Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr 79 member of the radio station’s staff, as a soloist, accompanist, and prolific composer of short instrumental pieces. Karim learned to play the rubâb from Ustad Mohammad Omar and transferred some of that technical knowledge to dutâr playing. Karim worked with the National Orchestra for about 14 years. In addition to their duties at the radio station, the National Orchestra (all male) made a number of official visits to various cities in the USSR in addition to their duties in Kabul. Karim learned a great deal from performing with his musician colleagues, especially Ustad Mohammad Omar. His informal education included learning a number of classical instrumental pieces from the Kabuli repertoire, notably examples of the multipart instrumental piece variously called lâriya (instrumental piece), naghmaye kashâl (extended instrumental piece), or naghma-ye chahârtuk (four-part instrumental piece), used to start a performance of music at a concert or wedding party. A second type of instrumental piece for rubâb adopted by Karim to play on the dutâr was usually called a naghma-ye klâsik (classical instrumental piece) in Afghanistan, derived from the Rezakhâni gat of Hindustani music. Then there were instrumental pieces loosely based on particular râgs to be learned, and the melodies and attendant instrumental sections for a wide range of songs. There were also new compositions produced by singer-songwriters employed by the radio station, such as Hafizullah Khyal and Jalil Zaland. From time to time, singers from different parts of the country would come to Kabul to perform on air with the National Orchestra. In this milieu, Karim received a broad informal musical education, including familiarity with the sargam notational system.5 In 1960, the radio station moved to new premises, with modern equipment and more powerful transmitters installed in the mountains around Kabul, and in due course its name was changed to Radio Afghanistan, for its broadcasts could now be received in neighbouring countries. Tape-recording machines were installed in the studios of the new building, and the tapes recorded became in due course the national sound archive. The sound of the 14-stringed dutâr gradually reached Herat through people hearing it on radio broadcasts. The sound of the high drone led a few dutâr players to add a short string with a tuning peg near to the neck–body junction to allow this technique to be used, which led to a brief vogue for a five-stringed dutâr. A local dutâr maker, Zebiullah, started to produce what he presumably imagined the 14-stringed instrument to be like. When Karim brought a dutâr with him on a visit to Herat, people there could see how the new instrument was really shaped and constructed, with its sympathetic strings, heavier neck, and more rounded body. When he returned to live in Herat, he gave precise details about the design of the new dutâr to another luthier, Paindeh Mohammad, who started making 14-stringed dutârs to this design, in different sizes and with varying decorations, according to the wishes of the customer. Handcrafted musical instruments were bespoke, and the quality of the final product depended in part on the customer’s ideas of what made for a good instrument, as well as regular visits to inspect the work to make sure it was of the expected standard. The best players also tended to get the best instruments because of their prestige as master musicians. Unlike Karim, the emergent players of the new dutâr used the downstroke as the main stroke, as on the rubâb.

80  John Baily Music and modernity in Afghanistan The transformation of the dutâr can be interpreted in some respects as a manifestation of processes of modernity in Afghanistan. During the 19th century, the country had been deliberately kept isolated from its imperialist neighbours, Afghan rulers fearing invasion by the Russians from the northwest, or by the British from the southeast. Indeed, the British in India fought three wars with Afghanistan between 1839 and 1919, suffering serious military defeats in the process. Russia also made incursions. In part, Afghanistan’s isolation was achieved by deliberately retaining inadequate transportation facilities, with poor roads and no national railway system. The population was largely isolated from the modern world until the early 20th century, and this included ignorance of the ways in which musical life functioned in other countries. For most people, the experience of music was connected with special ritual occasions, such as engagement parties and weddings, the birth of a new child, and male circumcision. At the time of Now Ruz (New Year) at the spring equinox, on or around 21 March, crowds of men would gather at country fairs held in local beauty spots to celebrate the advent of spring, with tented tea houses, there to be entertained by the occasional singer and two-stringed dutâr player, and to engage in other activities such as wrestling and card playing. At the time of the two Eids, one celebrating the climax of the Hajj in Mecca, the other to mark the end of Ramadan, professional musicians in the city would visit their patrons to solicit gifts of money for services rendered. For most people, the experience of music was confined to these kinds of social situations. There was a degree of religious control over music-making, which was condemned by the religious establishment as contrary to the tenets of Islam, though there is no clear condemnation of music in the Holy Quran, the definitive word of God, and indeed, in the hadith, the sayings and actions of the Prophet, there are instances of the sanctioning of music. In the popular imagination, music was associated with clearly disreputable activities, such as licentious behaviour and the drinking of alcohol. At a more mundane level, the reverie-inducing effects of music were recognized, and there was a fear that listening to music would cause people to neglect to perform their evening prayers (Baily 1988, chapter 9). The luxury of having music for entertainment was the prerogative of the elite, the rulers of Afghanistan with their royal courts and the local households of provincial governors. A succession of Amirs (rulers) of Kabul from 1863 to 1973 were music lovers and in several instances keen amateur performers (Baily 2016: 15–25). The Amirs patronized the development of a new kind of Kabuli classical music which owed a great deal to the Hindustani music introduced by musician groups from India. At the core of this new music was the art of ghazal singing, based on the spiritual poetry of Persian and Pashto language poets such as Hafez, Saadi, Rumi, and Rahman Baba. The music for performing such poetry was rooted in Hindustani conceptions of râga and tâla (mode and metre). The reign of King Amanullah (1919–1929) was notable for attempted reforms and modernization, often inspired by recent developments in Turkey under Atatürk. Amanullah’s radical modernist aspirations were interrupted in 1929 by an Islamist

Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr 81 uprising in which the king was deposed. After a period of political strife, Zahir Shah came to the throne in 1933 and remained there until 1973. This is regarded as the golden age in recent Afghan history, with an attempt at parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, education of girls, unveiling of women and so on. Kabul became something of a sophisticated modernized city, and radio broadcasting had an important role in these developments. In the 1940s, Radio Kabul was established and became the focus of musical activity in the country, with several orchestras coming into being, including the National Orchestra that Karim Dutari joined, and in the context of which the dutâr was reinvented. The government saw radio as the best and quickest way to inform the population of its policies and development programmes. It may well be that music on air was deployed as a way of attracting an audience that could then be informed about local news and government edicts and policies. Music may also have been deliberately used to promote nationalism, modernity, and secularism. The radio station came to have great importance in the world of Afghan music, as a conservatory, archive, and centre of musical creativity in the musical life of the nation. In the 1950s, perhaps inspired in part by music on air, the local tea house as a social institution for men became an important venue for music-making. Tea house music sessions were a feature of northern Afghanistan, especially on market days (Slobin 1976). Tea house music was also popular in Herat, often with music provided by the proprietor playing the dutâr hanging temptingly from a hook on the wall. This was the era of the three-stringed dutâr, with semichromatic (filmi) fretting steel strings and strummed with a metal plectrum. The role, status, and social rank of musicians playing the dutâr The advent of the 14-stringed dutâr in Herat coincided with some important changes in the role and status of musicians, following the partial liberalization of music from religious censorship. Merriam (1964, chapter 7) identifies three central characteristics of what he terms musician status operative in many societies: low rank, high ritual importance, and a licence to deviate.6 This was certainly the case in Herat regarding professional (kesbi) as distinct from amateur (shauqi) musicians. The term kesb refers to one’s profession or occupation, while a shauq is a hobby, a passionate interest. The classic examples of low-ranking kesbi musicians in Herat Province were players of the sorna (folk oboe) and dohol (double-headed frame drum), whose main social role was to provide music for the staging of processions and group dancing by male guests at village wedding celebrations. The music they provided at such ritual celebrations was important to add value to the ritual, but the musicians who provided this service came from a very low-ranking social group (Gharibzâdeh) whose main occupation was that of barber, cutting men’s hair and trimming their beards, either in small hairdressing salons or out in the street. In the city of Herat, there were hereditary musicians playing urban music in small bands consisting of a singer, often also playing the Indian hand-pumped harmonium, rubâb, tabla drums, and sometimes other instruments such as tanpura (drone) or delruba (bowed lute). There were strong connections with the music

82  John Baily and musicians of Kabul. The urban Herati musicians were familiar with the music theory articulated by hereditary musicians of the capital, initially brought to Herat by Ustad Nabi Gol, as mentioned previously. Once the 14-stringed dutâr became established in Herat in the 1960s, the local urban musicians started to add the new instrument to their bands, showing their audiences that they were up to date with the latest developments in the field of music in Kabul. The presence of the dutâr gave these ensembles a more distinctly local Herati identity and allowed for occasional solo spots for the dutâr player during a programme lasting for several hours.7 In contrast to the professional urban musicians, the kesbis, there were many amateur musicians in Herat, the shauqis (the word shauq meaning ‘hobby’). If the kesbi played music to make a living, the shauqi played to express his love of music and did not expect to be rewarded, financially or in gifts, for his performances. To offer money to a shauqi could be taken as a slight, a suggestion that the musician who protested his shauqi status was in fact from a low-ranking hereditary musician family. However, bit by bit shauqis started taking payment or gifts for their performances and discovered ‘how sweet money is when you take it by dutâr’, as one player put it. As a consequence, the clear-cut shauqi–kesbi dichotomy began to break down. Some shauqis kept up with their ‘day jobs’, as weavers, dyers, tailors, carpenters, bakers, or whatever, occupations usually inherited from within the family. As they started taking money for playing, the role of musician gradually became established as their secondary occupation. Popular dutâr players were in demand, had to travel around the Herat valley to perform and were kept up until late at night to satisfy their friends and patrons, and were in due course obliged to give up what had been their primary occupations, as weavers, dyers, etc. Some were recruited into kesbi bands and became fulltime musicians in economic terms, though they continued to claim shauqi status on the grounds that they were not of barber-musician kesbi lineage. Or they might claim that unlike the kesbis, they did not enter into a verbal contract in advance of a performance but accepted whatever was offered after the party was over. At the times of spring country fairs, which extended intermittently over a period of 40 days, 14-stringed dutâr players would form small dutâr bands, typically three dutâr players and a zirbaghali (goblet-shaped hand drum), to play in tented tea houses. They were paid according to how much the tea house had made at the fair. Such bands were highly unstable and often ended the day’s work with an acrimonious argument about the division of the spoils of the day. Learning to play the dutâr Asked how they had learned to play the dutâr, amateur musicians usually replied that they were self-taught and denied having been the pupil of an established dutâr player. But persistent questioning revealed that they could name one or more individuals whom they had adopted as ‘models’ and copied. Sometimes the model might have been unaware that a budding shauqi was learning from him. Often the model was an older relative who played the dutâr at home and was likely to forbid the child to touch his instrument, telling him it was sinful to play and thereby

Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr 83 avoiding the possible rumour amongst neighbours that through dabbling in the dangerous waters of music the family was preparing the child to become a professional musician. When the relative was out of the house, the child would take the dutâr and try to reproduce what he had seen and heard. He might also see the dutâr being played at a wedding party or in a tea house and try to memorize the tunes and experiment later at home in private. An important juncture was reached when the budding amateur was able to obtain a dutâr of his own, by saving up to buy one or perhaps receiving one as a gift. My principal dutâr teacher, Gada Mohammad, was an excellent example of an originally amateur musician who became a full-time professional. He was from the village of Gol Darwaz, a mile north of the city of Herat. His father, Seid Mohammad, operated a water mill and also worked as a broker in the city’s animal market. Gada Mohammad was educated at a local school to the sixth grade and was fully literate. As a boy, he became fascinated by the dutâr. He had an older cousin, Abdul Qader, who lived with Gada Mohammad’s family and liked to play a dutâr with gut strings and simple fretting. Aged about ten, Gada Mohammad became very interested in playing the dutâr himself. Abdul Qader would not let his young cousin play his instrument, but when he was out of the house Gada Mohammad would take the dutâr and try to reproduce what he had seen his cousin do. When Gada Mohammad was about 12, he was given a three-stringed dutâr with simple fretting by a friend of his father’s, who must have wanted to encourage the boy’s interest in music. A few years later, he added several more frets so that he could play filmi tunes, an idea he got from observing other dutâr players. Upon leaving school, Gada Mohammad worked for two years for the Wool Company in Herat, supervising the cleaning of raw wool, and was then conscripted for two years’ military service which he served in the distant town of Spin Baldak, on the Pakistan frontier. While in the army he had plenty of opportunity to play his three-stringed dutâr for his fellow conscripts and officers. Upon completing his time in the army, he returned to Herat and began earning a modest living playing the dutâr. He became friendly with Ghulam Haidar, a young silk weaver and dutâr player, who helped Gada Mohammad, showing him new pieces, and sometimes playing together with him. Nâle a military band member based in the army camp close to the city, organized a band of dutârs, rubâbs, and zirbaghâli to play at the stadium in the upcoming annual celebrations of Afghanistan’s full independence in 1919, and Gada Mohammad joined the band. Some other dutâr players had by now converted the three-stringed dutâr to a five-stringed model. Another member of Nâle’s group was Sadiq Bolbol, singer and zirbaghâli player, and he and Gada Mohammad became close friends and played a lot as a duo, Sadiq Bolbol singing and playing zirbaghâli and Gada Mohammad accompanying him on the dutâr. Their partnership was further strengthened by the subsequent marriage of Sadiq Bolbol to Gada Mohammad’s wife’s sister. The word bolbol refers to the nightingale, a songbird frequently mentioned in the poetry favoured in the languages spoken in Afghanistan, and Sadiq acquired the nickname Bolbol on account of his celebrated nightingale imitations. It became his stage name during his many years’ association with the Herat Nanderi, the theatre run by the local office of the

84  John Baily Ministry of Information and Culture. After the aforementioned Independence Celebration, the two of them went to Kabul and joined a theatre troupe based there and toured with the group in northern Afghanistan. They then spent six months working for a theatre in Mazar-e Sharif. It was in Mazar that Gada Mohammad commissioned his first 14-stringed dutâr. Returning to Herat, Gada Mohammad started to play regularly in urban bands with the usual singer-harmonium player, rubâb, and tabla lineup. During this period, Gada Mohammad had the opportunity to extend his repertoire, develop his skills and improve his knowledge of music theory. A critical moment in his career came when he was asked to deputize for Karim Dutari in the band of a visiting singer from Kabul, Amir Mohammad, who came from the community of hereditary musicians based in the musicians’ quarter of that city, the Kucheh Kharabat. In 1971, Amir Mohammad was contracted to perform every night in a hotel during Ramadan, the month of fasting, and had asked Karim (now back living in Herat) to join his band for the month. But Karim soon tired of the long hours and asked Gada Mohammad to take his place. This marked the start of a long-term relationship between the Kabuli singer and his Herati sideman. In 1973, Amir Mohammad was playing for the month of Ramadan in the Badghisi Hotel. This happened to be the start of my first year of fieldwork in Herat, and Amir Mohamad and his band was my initial exposure to such professional musicians, performing ghazals and the Afghan music repertoire currently popular in the city, which included popular songs from Iran. Amir Mohammad began to receive invitations to play at wedding parties in Herat, and spent increasing amounts of time in the city, up to five to six months of the year in 1976. He usually brought a tabla player from Kabul with him and frequently employed two of Herat’s leading musicians as his regular accompanists, Rahim Khushnawaz on rubâb and Gada Mohammad on dutâr. Over the two years of my fieldwork in the 1970s, I had ample opportunity to hear and record this exceptional group of musicians, at Ramadan concerts, wedding parties and in my own home in Herat.8 Just as Mohammad Karim Herawi had learned a lot from his colleagues in the National Orchestra, Gada Mohammad acquired a great deal of knowledge from his kesbi colleagues. In 1974, he described his own progress as a musician through the opportunities to play with the leading musicians in Herat, especially Amir Mohammad, who taught him many râgs, the details of which Gada Mohammad had written down in a notebook in sargam notation. These were not formal ‘lessons’ as such, but moments when nothing much was happening and Amir Mohammad felt in the mood to impart some of his knowledge. Gada Mohammad also learned a great deal from the outstanding rubâb player Rahim Khushnawaz through playing together with him over the course of many years. In 1995, the two of them were invited to give a concert in Paris in the Théâtre de la Ville, along with Rahim’s young cousin Azim on tabla. This was one of the first occasions for the 14-stringed dutâr to be presented to a nonspecialist Western audience.9 Like other dutâr players who joined bands of kesbi musicians, Gada Mohammad had a somewhat ambiguous status within the community of hereditary professional urban musicians in Herat. As a shauqi by origin, he had to put up with a certain amount of teasing and with being the butt of jokes from his kesbi colleagues, which

Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr 85 he tolerated good-humouredly. They admired his skill as a dancer of the traditional dances performed by groups of male guests in the context of rural wedding celebrations and acknowledged his expertise in playing the dutâr. For a laugh, they occasionally pressured him to sing at a gathering of musicians for their own rituals, such as the gormani, the string-tying ceremony when a young musician becomes the official student of a mature practitioner. They loved it when his voice cracked on the high notes and applauded him. Then there was the time when Gada Mohammad commissioned an unusually large dutâr, which took up an inordinate amount of space when the band travelled to a gig by private car or taxi. After several such trips, Amir Mohammad complained about the dutâr and suggested that Gada Mohammad should ‘saw it down’ to shorten it. Gada Mohammad reverted to using a smaller instrument, but the story about ‘sawing the dutâr down’ remained a source of amusement for his fellow band members and other kesbi musicians. I recorded Gada Mohammad’s dutâr playing in many contexts: solo, to accompany Bolbol Herawi and other singers, in dutâr bands at spring country fairs and as part of Amir Mohammad’s band. He had a large repertoire of local songs, old and new, popular songs from Radio Afghanistan and from Iran, and songs from the Indian films screened in Herat’s cinema. Above all, he admired and respected the classical music of Kabul, ghazals and naghmas (instrumental pieces) in various râgs. He was familiar with sargam (Indian solfege notation) but not fluent in its use, in that he could not sing sargam properly. Mohammad Karim Herawi was the only dutâr player fluent in the use of sargam, and he acquired that skill from his rubâb lessons with Ustad Mohammad Omar, and from being a member of the National Orchestra in Kabul. I recorded Gada Mohammad playing the three-stringed dutâr, the 14-stringed dutâr, and a restored two-stringed dutâr with nylon (rather than gut) strings, which I devised to explore the former right-hand technique for that instrument. After six weeks working intensively with Gada Mohammad, I turned to other dutâr players as part of a systematic research paradigm, in which I worked with a sample of 15 players, performing a selected set of five standard pieces, all of them well known to dutâr players. This sample included Gada Mohammad and two other masters of the dutâr, Mohammad Karim Herawi and Ghulam Haidar (Lorraine Sakata’s principal dutâr-playing informant), average players of the instrument, and learners (Baily 1976). I also began a programme of recording in-context performances of different kinds, particularly spring country fairs, wedding parties, and Ramadan concerts, as reported by Baily (1988). Over two years of fieldwork in Herat and beyond, Gada Mohammad remained my good friend, research assistant, and dutâr teacher. He passed away in 2021. Conclusions The reinvention of the Herati dutâr is a classic example of how a significant new instrument is created, and how the transformation in an instrument’s morphology may lead to changes in performance techniques, repertoire, and ways of learning to

86  John Baily perform. In the case of the dutâr, the early stages of this development were in part a collective innovation, a trend consolidated by one particular musician, Mohammad Karim Herawi, who was placed in an information-rich situation in Radio Kabul, within an orchestra made up of traditional Afghan instruments. He became motivated to improve the instrument, principally by adding a set of sympathetic strings and modifying the shape of the resonator. These structural innovations led to certain changes in performance techniques, from open-handed to plectrum strokes, to activate the strings. These morphological and performance practice innovations greatly enriched and expanded the repertoire of the dutâr. Whereas the two-stringed version had been well suited to local folkloric music utilizing mainly a single melodic mode, its 14-stringed successor enabled engagement with a much greater variety of melodic modes, many of them derived from Hindustani classical music, as well as with contemporary popular music disseminated by radio. This in turn made greater demands on performers’ musical cognition and general musicianship, since they now had to move from thinking about playing the dutâr in terms of patterns of sound and physical movement to conceiving music in terms of a theory underpinned by a more explicit musical terminology, articulated through named notes (Sa, Re, Ge, Ma, Pa, De, Ni), the concept of melodic mode (râg) and metric cycle (tâl). Acquiring this new knowledge enabled some dutâr players to join small urban ensembles of predominantly hereditary professional musicians who regarded the performance of music as their birthright. It also resulted in a trend towards professionalization of the instrument’s practitioners, and thus contributed in some small way towards larger patterns of social and cultural modernization. Thus, one can interpret the changes in the dutâr and in dutâr playing as aspects of broader modernization in Afghanistan in the later part of the 20th century, a modernization instigated by the Afghan government in which music on state-run radio was strongly encouraged. One aspect of that process was to create a national orchestra that brought together instruments characteristic of different regions of this culturally diverse country. The presence of the dutâr in that orchestra can be seen as symbolic of an integration of the diverse cultural elements coexisting within the Afghan nation state, particularly given the instrument’s iconic relationship with both the province and city of Herat. And the incorporation of the 14-stringed version of the dutâr can further be seen as representing a coming together of traditional and modern practices which continues to characterize Afghanistan today. Notes 1 The research reported here was conducted in and around the city of Herat in western Afghanistan in 1973–1974. At that time, the author was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology, The Queen’s University of Belfast, and was supported by a grant from the Social Science Research of the UK to the author and John Blacking. The results of this research were first published in Baily (1976) and Baily (1977). Veronica Doubleday contributed substantially to the field work (Doubleday 1988).

Re-inventing the Herati Dutâr 87 2 An early reference to the principle of sympathetic strings is found in Sylva Sylvarum, or a Natural History Ten Centuries, by the British philosopher Francis Bacon (1561–1626). ‘It was devised, that a vial [viol] should have a lay [layer] of wire strings below, as close to the belly, as a lute; and then the strings of gut mounted upon a bridge, as in ordinary vials; to the end, that by this means, the upper strings stricken, should make the lower resound by sympathy, and so make the musike the better; which, if it be to purpose, then sympathy worketh, as well by report of sound, as by motion.’ See Roy (2017: 309). 3 On the dutâr, the usual tonal centre is a fifth above the note of the open string. Commonly, this note is about D in Western terms. So the semichromatic fretting yields the following notes: G Ab A Bb B C D1 Eb1 E1 F1 Gb1 G1 A1 Bb1 C1 D2. There are gaps between C and D1, G1 and A1, Bb1 and C1, and C1 and D2. 4 The rubâb is a double-chambered plucked lute with sympathetic strings; the tanbur is a long-necked lute with sympathetic strings; the sârinda, sârang, and ghaichak are forms of bowed lute; the tulak is a side-blown flute; the dohol is a double-headed barrel drum; and the zirbaghâl is a goblet drum. 5 In the solfege-like Indian sargam system, the notes are named Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni Sa. This can be used as both oral and written notation. 6 Merriam (1964: 137) refers to a ‘pattern of low status and high importance coupled with deviant behaviour allowed by the society and capitalized by the musician may be fairly widespread and perhaps one of several which characterizes musicianly behaviour in a broad world area.’ Neuman (1980: 90) points out that the term status refers to ‘the rights and obligations associated with a given social identity’, and asserts that a more correct term for what Merriam means would be social rank. Cottrell (2004: 30) agrees with Neuman’s position. 7 The hereditary professional urban musicians of Herat rejected playing the dutâr themselves on account of its traditional connection with rural amateurs. 8 In Baily (2011), I published a collection of Amir Mohammad’s ghazals that I recorded in the 1970s, with song texts in Romanized Dari and an accompanying CD of the original recordings. 9 The following day, the musicians made a recording for Radio France, released as AFGHANISTAN. Rubâb et Dutâr. The credited musicians were Ustad Rahim Khushnawaz, rubâb; Gada Mohammad, dutâr; and Azim Hassanpur, tabla. Ocora C 560080, Radio France.

Bibliography Baily, John. 1976. Recent Changes in the Dutâr of Herat. Asian Music 8 (1): 29–64. ——— 1977. Movement Patterns in Playing the Herati Dutâr. In J. Blacking (Ed.), The Anthropology of the Body (29–64). London, New York, San Francisco: Academic Press. ——— 1988. Music of Afghanistan. Professional Musicians in the City of Herat. With accompanying audio cassette. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——— 2011. Songs from Kabul: The Spiritual Music of Ustad Amir Mohammad. With accompanying CD. Aldershot: Ashgate. ——— 2016. War, Exile and the Music of Afghanistan. The Ethnographer’s Tale. With accompanying DVD. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. ——— 2018. The Music of the Timurids and its Legacy in Afghanistan. In R. Harris and M. Stokes (Eds.), Theory and Practice in the Music of the Islamic World. Essays in Honour of Owen Wright (199–216). Abingdon: Routledge. Cottrell, Stephen. 2004. Professional Music-Making in London: Ethnography and Experience. Aldershot: Ashgate. Doubleday, Veronica. 1988. Three Women of Herat. London: Jonathan Cape. Updated edition 2021, London: Eland Publishing.

88  John Baily Gammell, C.P.W. 2016. The Pearl of Khorasan. A History of Herat. London: Hurst & Co. Merriam, Alan. 1964. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Neuman, Daniel M. 1980. The Life of Music in North India: The Organiszation of an Artistic Tradition. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Roy, Sylvain. 2017. Le rubâb afghani, étude historique, musicologique et organologique d’un luth d’Asie Centrale. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Université Paris Nanterre. Slobin, Mark. 1976. Music in the Culture of Northern Afghanistan. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology No. 54. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

4

Musical Instruments as Material Culture A Case Study of the Cretan Lyra Kevin Dawe

Introduction Developments within the field of anthropology continue to impact upon the direction of research within ethnomusicology, deeply affecting its core theory and methodology. It is little wonder that for many ‘ethnomusicologists’, ethnomusicology means simply ‘the anthropology of music’. However, most ethnomusicologists work within music departments, where their presence and impact are felt within the sphere of music studies but less so within the wider social or human sciences. Of course, there are scholars who provide us with exceptions to this rule and who are able to transcend disciplinary boundaries via wide-ranging and widely read publications, for example, Alan Merriam’s The Anthropology of Music (1964), John Blacking’s How Musical Is Man? (1973) and Steven Feld’s Sound and Sentiment (1982/1992/2012). It is worth recalling in the context of this volume that even though they were practicing musicians, Blacking and Feld both majored in anthropology, whereas Merriam studied music before graduate work in anthropology. Since its inception, anthropology’s influence has been felt at the most fundamental levels within ethnomusicology. The work of Merriam, Blacking, and Feld emphasizes fieldwork to the extent that we ethnomusicologists generally agree with anthropologists that it is still imperative to conduct localized studies involving immersive and prolonged fieldwork, as reinforced by more recent overviews of ethnomusicology (see, for example, Nettl 2015; Rice 2013), but also that one should follow musicians wherever they might travel. Of course, there are different approaches and emphases within ethnomusicology as to the length of time one might need to spend ‘in the field’ to investigate particular musical problems. And ‘the field’ could and has for a long time involved the study of village performances as much as production techniques within a recording studio and also the use of archives. Such studies might lead to structural analysis (perhaps a lab-based study of collected audio/visual materials and/or commercial recordings out of the field) or talk about music (dependent on a thorough understanding of local language and constant and ongoing encounters with musicians and others) or in-depth study of historical records. The emphasis

DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-7

90  Kevin Dawe here, however, in connecting thoroughly with anthropology is how we identify and root out the value, meaning, and significance of music and sound in the lives and livelihoods of musicians, instrument makers, and audiences in the context of local culture and society whether in a village, town, or national context. In conducting a focused ethnography, one does not lose sight of the connections beyond a particular locale or cultural context or node, which exist within a wider world or larger network. For instance, as Africanist anthropologist Sally Falk Moore notes: ‘No longer would any anthropologist conduct a local study in Africa without acknowledging the world beyond the community’ (Falk Moore 1994, 2). In other words, it is critical to study the epistemologies and ontologies of those people(s) we work with, incorporating the wider conceptual and historical universe in which they situate themselves or claim relationships. But in studying music and its relational ontologies (subject-subject, subject-object, object-object), clearly a team effort is required, given the scope of such a project with – to make a rather crude distinction – anthropologists (who are generally not music specialists) and ethnomusicologists (who are music specialists) working together in order to understand the fundamental meaning of music in cultures and societies worldwide. In general, ethnomusicologists will be long-term participant observers in musical activities in the field. Moreover, it is no longer rare for academics to receive training in both anthropology and music. It is not uncommon for the budding ethnomusicologist to have undertaken undergraduate studies in the performance of a musical instrument, perhaps at a music conservatoire, followed by a master’s degree in anthropology in conscious preparation for doctoral studies in ethnomusicology, which will most likely include fieldwork. Located in both music and anthropology, such scholars are in an excellent position to take advantage of, develop and sustain what must be an essential, continuing and ever-deepening dialogue between the two disciplines. There is one particular area of study that is now clearly gaining ground as a fruitful meeting place for anthropologists and ethnomusicologists while already informing the doctoral work of a new generation of scholars (see, for example, Conner 2012; Roda 2013). This is the area of material culture studies as developed and defined in anthropology and archaeology departments, especially via the Journal of Material Culture (Sage), which in 1996 was founded by and is still edited within the Material Culture section of the Department of Anthropology at University College London. This international journal has demonstrated engagement with archaeology, museology, folklore and environmental anthropology, among other fields or disciplines. As an ethnomusicologist, I have found this interdisciplinary forum both instructional and inspirational for my own research into musical instruments, which I have learned to approach as obviously musical but also material, social, and cultural phenomena. There are, of course, many ways in which music ‘materializes’ as culture, for example, as scores and recordings, in visual media and live performance. But none of these musical materialities are isolated: they are merely aspects of an interrelated musical whole or music-culture incorporated into bigger entities of meaning and influence (e.g., home cultures,

Musical Instruments as Material Culture 91 cityscapes, societies, nations, third spaces, international networks, political, and material economies, global cultural flows, etc.). Several key works coming from anthropology have certainly informed my own and others’ (as noted) current thinking and research as part of the rather limited amount of work that has been carried out on material culture in ethnomusicology at the time of writing. I draw attention to the following works by anthropologists and sociologists: the ‘early’ The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1988) edited by Arjun Appadurai; Pierre Lemonnier’s Elements for an Anthropology of Technology (1992); Alfred Gell’s Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (1998), and The Art of Anthropology (1999); the works of Daniel Miller and his collaborators, whose publications are too extensive to list here but include Materiality (2005); and Tim Ingold’s extensive and much-cited output, which includes Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (2013) (see also Ingold 2012); the widely read and influential work of anthropologist, sociologist, and philosopher Bruno Latour, for example, Re-assembling the Social (2005) (wherein he reintroduces and clarifies the Actor-Network Theory); and sociologist and cellist Richard Sennett with his book The Craftsman (2008) and Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation (2012). These examples now represent the tip of a large iceberg, and any definition of the field of material culture includes subjects as varied as the study of technology, home, cloth and clothing, food, and the visual arts (each area already assigned or eligible for an ‘anthropology of…’ designation). The claim here is that in seeking direction and insight from anthropology, there has been disappointingly very little written about musical instruments in the anthropological literature, especially in key and core texts where one might expect to find them. Is there an ‘Anthropology of Musical Instruments’ waiting in the wings? Until we have such a book in our hands, we must grapple with and employ insights from the wider range of available literature. A prime example of a field summary is The Handbook of Material Culture (2006), which highlights the rapid growth of an area that ethnomusicologists are only just beginning to grapple with. I found myself thumbing eagerly through the pages of this tome (since the 556-page paperback edition came out in 2013) to find references to musical instruments. Yet musical instruments are mentioned only three times and in passing. Perhaps the significance of musical instruments as material artefacts has been underestimated? Or perhaps it is up to ethnomusicologists to demonstrate the need for their more detailed inclusion in a book such as this? Whatever the reason, in their Introduction the editors (Tilley et. al. 2006, 1–6) note the following rationale for the Handbook, which I have summarized for brevity

• Studies of material culture have undergone a profound transformation during

the past 20 years and are now among the most dynamic and wide-ranging areas of contemporary scholarship in the human sciences. • Although questions of materiality pervade a wide range of disciplines in the social and human sciences, no single academic discipline unifies the various approaches to material culture and gives them an institutional identity.

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• At present, material culture studies form a diffuse and relatively uncharted in-

terdisciplinary field of study in which a concept of materiality provides both the starting point and the justification. • The field of study centres on the idea that materiality is an integral dimension of culture, and that there are dimensions of social existence that cannot be fully understood without it. A study of material culture is as fundamental to an understanding of culture, they argue, as is the study of language (to linguistics and linguistic anthropology), social relations (to sociology and social anthropology), time (to archaeology and history), representations (to art and historical studies), or relations of production, exchange, and consumption (to economics). • Material culture studies is undisciplined and fluid, but with a primary ‘home’ and point of origin in archaeology and anthropology. • In short, things matter, and the study of things makes a difference to the way in which we understand the social world, and it can make a unique and valuable contribution to the broader concerns of the social and historical sciences in general. Material culture studies, then, are anchored in anthropology and archaeology, but they form a wider interdisciplinary field where ‘materiality is considered an integral dimension of culture’ and where ‘there are dimensions of social existence that cannot be fully understood without it’. I argue that ethnomusicologists have much to contribute to such a study, but also much to learn from publications such as the Handbook of Material Culture, which must surely challenge us to reconceptualize and research in greater depth ‘musical instruments’ as part of a ‘material culture’ wherein one finds the conceptual ordering of ‘things’ within a cultural universe, including musicians’ and makers’ views of the world as culture bearers. Some highly revealing insights already exist in ethnomusicology, and these can be seen to engage somewhat with the theoretical perspectives given in the Handbook, such as structuralism and semiotics; phenomenology; objectification; agency, biography, and objects; poststructuralism; and colonialism. Yet it would take a combination of the publications of Stone (2007), Bates (2012), and Roda (2013, 2014) to afford us even the briefest of introductions to these areas in ethnomusicology. Margaret Kartomi, in her seminal 1990 book Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments, calls for consideration of the ‘broad picture’ in studies of musical instruments and their schemes and meaning of their classification within particular cultures. She notes that: ‘The expression concept of instruments refers to the dominant or competing views in a society of the meaning and significance of musical instruments as cultural phenomena, including the hierarchical ratings of instruments [and ensembles]. […] Whatever the authorship of a scheme, the choice of instruments included in it and its principles or characters of division (and its resultant categories and steps) are all largely determined by the classifier’s view of the significance of musical instruments’ (1990, xv), and she later observes that: ‘Concepts and classifications of musical instruments and ensembles are part of a seamless web of cultural knowledge’ (1990, 271).

Musical Instruments as Material Culture 93 Clearly, ethnomusicologists have much to contribute to the study of material culture with work already engaging with some of the core theory, concepts, and methodological approaches as collated and summarized in the Handbook. For example, Geneviève Dournon in her Handbook for the Collection of Traditional Music and Musical Instruments (1981) provides a prologue to later studies such as Kartomi’s, and echoes approaches in development at that time, for example, as found in Paul Berliner’s detailed 1978 ethnography of an African lamellophone The Soul of Mbira: Music and Traditions of the Shona, and John Miller Chernoff’s African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms (1981), with its focus on Ghanaian drums, drumming and drumming ensembles. In her preface, Dournon (1981, 2) notes that: ‘Music and instruments convey the deepest cultural, spiritual, and aesthetic values of civilisation, transmitting knowledge in many spheres. Whether they are the creations of superlative craftsmen or rudimentary, yet none the less expressive objects, instruments represent the tangible aspect of intangible heritage. They bear witness to cultures revealed through the musical expression that they preserve and renew.’ Dournon provides significant insights into the creative entanglement of musical instruments in cultures and societies around the world. Dale Olsen includes the following tantalizing quote from Appadurai in his book on ancient South American music cultures (in Olsen 2002, 8): Even if our own approach to things is conditioned necessarily by the view that things have no meaning apart from those that human transactions, attributions and motivations endow them with, the anthropological problem is that this formal truth does not illuminate the concrete, historical circulation of things. For that we have to follow the things themselves, for their meanings are inscribed in their forms, their uses, their trajectories. It is only through the analysis of these trajectories that we can interpret the human transactions and calculations that enliven things. Thus, even though from a theoretical point of view human actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their human and social context. (Appadurai 1986, 5; original emphasis) Olsen lets the quote speak for itself in the context of his own study of the material culture of ancient South America, where ‘trajectories’ in a past human and social context are hard to find. Nonetheless, Appadurai’s italicizing of the words ‘theoretical’ and ‘methodological’ in the preceding quote is timely, especially for those of us studying musical instruments whose ‘trajectories’ are still active and as yet not fully determined. Olsen, the ethnomusicologist, takes an important step in his book towards both musical archaeology and material culture studies, providing a portent of things to come in terms of expanding our approach to the study of musical instruments.1 These studies of musical instruments by ethnomusicologists have helped my own exploration of current thought in the field of material culture studies as

94  Kevin Dawe exemplified and defined in such works as the Handbook of Material Culture. In this chapter, I will discuss key areas of material studies as I see them––in relation to my own model of Cretan musical culture gained from fieldwork in the 1990s–– as follows: the body, materiality and the senses (in ‘experiencing instruments’, later in this chapter), subjects and objects (‘placing instruments’), process and transformation (‘making instruments’), and presentation and politics (‘displaying instruments’). I will endeavour to provide evidence for my claims for a Cretan musical-material culture by focusing on my own study of the lyra (an upright bowed fiddle) as accompanied in performance by the laouto (a four-course plucked lute) as I found it on the Greek island of Crete throughout the 1990s. Indeed, this chapter represents at least a theoretical update in light of my current thinking or synthesis of ideas in material culture as found in such tomes as the Handbook, even if there was already much within the original study that could have been identified as ‘material culture studies’. I could have perhaps made this point more strongly at the time. Examples in one of the following sections clearly benefit from insights in another, as they are but pieces in a mosaic whose patterns are widely determined and shaped by coalescing material, social, and cultural forces within the context of Greece in the 1990s. Experiencing instruments The Handbook notes that ‘material culture cannot be understood apart from the body; a theory of materiality requires a theorization of the embodied subject and the multiple ways in which the world is sensed and experienced’ (5). There is little doubt that the incantations of the lyra and laouta create an intense, exciting, and challenging performance dynamic at Cretan celebrations for all those involved. Although village and town celebrations are open to the whole community, the focus at them is upon the activities of men, dancing, the recitation of poetry, the firing of guns and other displays of bravura, eating and drinking, as well as lyra music and musicians. To my mind, this is a description of the sensual culture (after Howes 2005) of the celebration involving sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touch. The sound and appearance of the instrument is worked or unconsciously exploited by musicians as they intervene in and oversee the proceedings, both man and instrument becoming symbols of authority, masculinity, village identity, Cretan-ness and ‘tradition’. Ultimately, the lyra itself becomes the focus of attention, dominating the celebratory soundscape. The unique and unmistakable sound of the lyra—aided and abetted by minimixing desks and a PA system—cuts through the cacophony and reverie of the celebration, framing the event, pulling in the community, reinforcing a sense of the liminal but keeping everything under control. When playing in or processing through the streets of a village or town during a wedding celebration, the lyra player will stand or walk with the instrument tucked into their belt (there is a peg/bridge holder on the bottom of the lyra that facilitates

Musical Instruments as Material Culture  95 this), whereas the musician normally sits down to play at evening celebrations. Even when in sitting position, a high degree of coordination is required. The bow has to be kept on a fixed plane and trajectory. The player has to tilt the lyra itself from left to right so that the bow glides over one of the three strings or two of the three strings simultaneously. The lyra must be on two pivots. The tailpiece/one side of the bottom curve of the instrument rests on the side of the left thigh of the player (when tilted to the right for top string access). The back of the headstock touches if not rests on the left side of the chest. Tilting to the left brings the bottom curve of the lyra off the thigh (giving easier bowing access to the bottom string), where it is then only supported by the tailpiece and the chest, and vice versa for the high string. Naturally, the whole bowing/resting system is reversed if the right hand bows. One of the strings of the bowed pair might be used as a drone. In any case, one holds the lyra in position as it is bowed. Quick and furious alternation/tilting of the lyra from side to side is a necessary technique in fast passages, especially those with a wide register. Only in this way could the player hope to achieve the akreves (‘correct’) tone throughout. A relaxed bowing hand is essential, without the clenched fist that would result in the bow scraping over the strings giving a thin and unsustainable tone. Here I am reminded of Eliot Bates’ work on the Turkish saz when he asks: ‘What sensoriums and kinesthetics are necessary for performers to interact with instruments? What happens in that interaction, and how do certain modes of interaction necessitate the cultivation of a specific bodily or sensory pedagogy on the part of the performer?’ (Bates 2012, 387–388). John Baily (1976, 1977) and Aho (2016) take such questions into the field of psychology, and its interfaces with both musicology and anthropology (including discussion of topics such as haptics and cognitive schema crucial to a study of musical instruments). Elsewhere I suggest that ‘musical instruments can transform minds and bodies, affecting states of mind as much as joints, tendons and synapses, ergonomics and social interaction—the joy of playing musical instruments is a joy that comes from exhilaration felt at physical, emotional and social levels’ (Dawe 2005, 60). Eliot Bates notes that such an assertion ‘is one of the few in music scholarship, following DeVale, where instruments are regarded as potential subjects (rather than objects) of research’ (Bates 2012, 368). In a sense then, the lyra might be regarded as an embodied (projected?) subject able to ‘interact’ as part of Cretan social life. In a similar sense, it might be regarded as animated if not animate, because it is certainly agential, but through and also beyond the musician it is perhaps an actant (a mediator or translator and an actor within a network of actors) (see Latour, 1996; but see also Gell 1998, 1999). Such musings are not the province of academics alone. Indeed, Cretan musicians and audiences hold on to older ideas about musical performance practice and the meaning of lyra music wherein the instrument can be seen to be ‘alive’ and ‘well’ in folklore. Here I draw the reader’s attention to the work of Alfred Gell, particularly his work on the ‘enchantment of technology’ and the ‘technology of enchantment’ (after Gell 1999), which may be somewhat

96  Kevin Dawe applicable to the Cretan context. For example, Llewellyn Smith skilfully recounts a commonly recited Cretan folk tale: Whoever wishes to learn the lyre well, it is said, must go at midnight to a deserted crossroads and there carve a circle on the ground, with a black-shafted knife. Then he must go inside it and sit down and play. Soon Nereids will come from all directions to surround him. They mean him harm. But they cannot enter the charmed circle, and so they try to entice him out with sweet words and lovely songs. If he is prudent he will make his heart of stone, and continue to play. When the Nereids see that all their ruses are failing, ‘Don’t you realize,’ they say ‘You’re wasting energy playing like that?’ ‘That’s how I learnt, that’s how I play,’ he says. ‘What’s it to do with you?’ ‘Nothing,’ they say. ‘But if you want we can teach you to play so the rock will dance.’ And they beg him to come out of the circle and be taught. He goes on playing. They ask, at any rate, for the lyre. He hands it over taking care not to put his hand outside the circle—for they would cut it off. A Nereid takes the lyre, plays it for a few moments with ravishing skill, and gives it back: ‘Take it. You don’t trust us.’ But they go on trying to trick him into putting at least a hand or a finger outside. Finally the cock crows. It is the signal for their departure. They cannot teach him without some form of payment. So now, carefully, the lyrist puts just the tip of his little finger outside the circle, and the Nereids cut it off. In next to no time they have taught him to play like themselves —and then they are off, to hide during the daylight hours. (Llewellyn Smith 1973 [1965], 123) Beyond various enchanting folk tales, the enchanted technology of the lyra within and outside of performance arenas is still regarded as a largely male domain, a man’s instrument, its ‘body’, ‘neck’, ‘eyes’, ‘heart’, and ‘soul’ having special symbolic resonance and technical significance. The stýlos or ‘pillar’, a device that takes the weight of the bridge and acts as a carrier for the transmission of vibrations between the bridge and the back of the instrument, is said to be the site where the psyche or ‘soul’/‘spirit’ of the lyra resides. If this post is missing, the instrument loses volume and tone—its sound will die, and so too, it is said, does the lyra. The sound of the lyra moves between sweet and bittersweet tones, expressing a range of emotions experienced by sensitive but strong men in the face of what life can throw at them. Local musical aesthetics largely revolve around and interpenetrate the instrument itself, as it continues to reinforce longheld ideals that can be seen to make up a poetics of manhood (Herzfeld 1985) and form the basis of notions of professional musical performance practice in modern Crete (Dawe 2007). As the island’s ‘national’ instrument, the lyra has become emblematic of the struggle that many Cretans experience in their attempt to retain a sense of a local identity.

Musical Instruments as Material Culture 97 In a theory that potentially accommodates all the modes of musical expression discussed so far, Bourdieu describes bodily hexis as ‘political mythology realized, embodied, turned into a permanent way of standing, speaking, walking’ (Bourdieu 1977, 93). But how is one to capture this hexis, to freeze-frame it, to analyse it? Perhaps photographic images can come to our aid; as we shall see, they are used to great effect in Cretan musical culture. Combined with the great power of the photograph to manipulate and control (see Sontag 1979), bodily hexis within a particular culture may find meaningful expression through photographic imagery, gestures, and postures, and the ways in which musical instruments are played. The cassette cover and photograph of the villager in Figures 4.1 and 4.2, respectively, provide not only examples of the expressive power of visual culture to keep musical instruments alive in the memory, but also another means by which musical instruments can be experienced, sensed, embodied, enchanting. In Figure 4.2, the man becomes the instrument and vice versa, a merger that reflects the engendered nature of the lyra and the embedded nature of not only the instrument but the imagery in a local cultural milieu.

Figure 4.1  Dimitris Kounális cassette cover.

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Figure 4.2  A Cretan villager ‘playing’ the lyra.

In Figure 4.2, a villager engages in the act of playing the lyra, an act which is carried in gesture and posture even when the instrument is not present, so powerful is the material trace of the instrument in Cretan culture. Placing instruments The Handbook notes the importance of studying the way in which ‘material forms are related to differing kinds of subjectivities and social relations’ (5). Highly subjective views based on particular relationships to others and other places on the island of Crete involve the appropriation of music and musical instruments to give them expression. Cretans on the western half of the island where I conducted much of my ethnographic fieldwork often related styles of music to the island’s topography. Depending on where they came from, of course, they described the music of the eastern, less mountainous part of Crete as ‘softer’ and ‘slower’. Only skopoi tou gambrou (melodies of the groom) existed in western Crete, in contrast to skopoi tis nefes (melodies of the bride) in the east, so it was said. A local moral geography was therefore conflated with a gendering of the island’s topography, a male, ‘tough’, dominating part of the island contrasted with a female, ‘weaker’,

Musical Instruments as Material Culture 99 and dominated part. This indigenous theory of place was developed much further, and the main features are as follows:

• In the west, the men are difficult, just like the mountains. • Life is fast for the shepherd; sheep run fast, they hide and are often invisible in the uneven terrain. They must be chased and found.

• Shepherds wear traditional trousers that are less baggy in the west, along with

tough knee boots which help them move fast through the low undergrowth of prickly, unyielding vegetation. • Shepherds do not eat much, having thin, lean, and athletic bodies. • The shepherd’s bastouna or ‘crook’ is jagged in the west, where it is said to be a trademark of the owner’s life, reflecting life’s ups and downs and the mountainous terrain. Shepherds are the same as their crook. In the east, life is easier and the crook is smooth. As noted, musical instruments feature in this construction of a local moral geography. It is said that the lyra forms part of the shepherd’s baggage when he goes into the mountains to stay for long periods of time to pasture the sheep. He also carries the floyera (small flute), eating utensils and a repair kit for clothing and boots. The lyra is carried in a special shoulder bag along with changes of clothing. When he dies, the lyra is put away into this bag forever, for its owner has gone to the mountains, forever. The shepherds live in small villages high up in the mountains, in hamlets of dry-stone round huts, known as mitata. They live off the meat of their flocks and relax by drinking tsikoudiá or raki while one of them plays the lyra or floyera. This is the usual romantic vision of the life of shepherds in the mountains, fuelled by a number of books by outsiders (for example, see Ivanovas 2000). The shepherds are said to be alert to the power of sound in the mountains. They use the acoustic space of the mountain landscape practically and symbolically, where the power of sound is said to be a means of overcoming physical, mental, and supernatural challenges. The belling of flocks (goats and sheep) is said to protect them from evil spirits while acting as a locating device. Magical power is attributed to the sound of the bells (see Anoyianakis 1991; Picken 1976). On our way to one of the coffeehouses in the mountain village of Anoyiá, one dark and cold January evening, Manolis Kalergis (owner of the Pension Mitato), stopped me dead in my tracks in response to my question about the meaning of lyra music. He stood in front of me and pointed a finger at me, saying, ‘Listen! Listen! Do you hear the animals?’ He raised his eyebrows, smiled, and walked off. The cries of the livestock and the sound of their bells filled the air, echoing through the valley like whale song through thermal layers in the ocean (in the manner of sound of the lyra cutting its way through the social and acoustic environment of the wedding celebration). The instrument is often described as a product of the mountains. It is ideally made from mountain wood. It has a body, a neck, eyes, a heart, a soul and a voice that cries out like the spirits and animals of the mountains. In the same way that instrument makers are said to craft the lyra ‘to work in the mountains’, the shepherds ‘craft’ their animals. The dogs and the cats that the

100  Kevin Dawe shepherds keep in the mountains are physically modified to meet the demands of the working life imposed upon them. Shepherds say that they cut a dog’s ears short to keep the flaps out of its ear hole so that it can hear better and also cut its tail short so that it does not become caught in the thickets. A kitten will be given tsikoudiá (the local ‘firewater’) only a few days after birth. If it lives, it tends to grow very large legs and a small body. This will enable it to move quickly and to catch the hundreds of mice that live off the carob trees grown by the shepherds. I was also told that the lyra is the first instrument of Crete because it ‘fits’ the bodies of, or is suitable for, the small-framed Cretan people. The original Minoan population is said to have been, on average, five feet tall. On Crete, most vegetables and fruits are small, so I was told, due to the poor soil. Weapons were also small. The small Cretan knives were put forward as an example. Like the lyra, they must be portable and light if they are to be of use in Crete’s difficult mountainous terrain. One older man complained about the size of the bouzouki, ‘the long bouzouki’, which he said was designed for the long-limbed peoples of Turkey and central-south Asia, and that the instrument was not fit to play Greek (and especially Cretan) music. Notions of Cretan identity are informed by a complex cultural politicking that not only sets Crete apart from the Middle East but also the rest of Greece. Cretans are Cretan first, Greek second. They are also first and foremost profoundly devoted to their village, even before the region, island, and nation-state in which they live. No wonder then that such a highly elaborate system of potential ‘put-downs’ exists! One must also remember the wider political arena that informs the mobilization of such rhetoric in Crete, an island invaded and occupied by the Ottoman Empire and the German army, among others. The lyra represents something uniquely their own. It finds safe haven in the mountains where the Cretans have found sanctuary for centuries. Making instruments The Handbook proposes a tripartite biography of things: ‘things made, things exchanged, things consumed’ (5). As a thing, which becomes more than a thing during its lifetime, a musical instrument acquires agency and meaning throughout its ‘life’. Here, by way of example, I provide a brief discussion of the various ways in which instruments are transformed over time, flowing in and out of the workshop and into a variety of performance arenas. Whether on advertising boards, a part of a musician’s onstage equipment or on record covers, instruments feature in a complex web of symbolic and economic exchanges. On entering the workshop, one can observe the systematic organization of a Cretan musical instrument workshop into a place where craftwork, retailing, and social space are combined to create a particular type of world associated with instrument making in Crete. I spent time in several such workshops in Crete, notably the establishments of the famous Stagákis and Agrimákis families. These were places where business was done, but it was carried out in a determinably Cretan way. The workshop was a cultural space and a social world as much as a place of work, and it was also a place where famous players were talked about and their

Musical Instruments as Material Culture 101 work documented and enshrined. In a sense, biographies could be constructed for particular instruments insomuch as that they had taken on a social and musical life of their own in the hands of various players. Dimitris Agrimákis, who semiretired in 1991, had at that point worked in Iraklion as an instrument maker for 45 years, moving between three shops. In the 1990s, he was only making ‘a few’ lyras per year. These were in great demand. However, his son Nikos, who is also a respected instrument maker and one of the few professionals on the island, is carrying on the family tradition. One of the most striking features of the Agrimákis workshop is the big display boards hung on the walls (Figure 4.3). Attached to these pinboards are memorabilia that the Agrimákis family has collected over the 45 years that it has been making musical instruments. These displays are storyboards, telling the life history not only of the Agrimákis family firm but also of Cretan music and musical instruments. The signed portraits and business cards feature many of the well-known faces, figures, and names making up Cretan music history. Many are now dead, so the boards take on the role of a shrine to musicians. This is history enshrined. The memorabilia also act as credentials for the Agrimákis workshop, a seal of authenticity that draws attention to the firm’s continued engagement with ‘the tradition’, while supplying its performers with first-rate instruments. The most dramatic change in terms of lyra construction has been modifications made to the headstock. Mandolin machine heads and tuning keys appear on most modern lyres. The result is a more easily tunable instrument with little pitch slippage during performance. However, there are two machine heads positioned on either side of the headstock, and only three of the four are used. Two pegs are left on either side to balance out the appearance of the instrument. It seems that Cretans think it looks better this way. Indeed, the mandolin machine heads come in strips

Figure 4.3  Signed photographs, Agrimákis workshop (taken in 2000).

102  Kevin Dawe of four, and it seems that instrument makers are happier cutting this strip in two but once. The four pegs also hint at the four-string violin, matching up with the violin scroll on the headstock of the lyra and also harking back to a violin tradition that was once very popular on the island. One or two lyra players play with four strings on their lyra. The ‘violinization’ of the lyra may also represent a conscious wish on the part of manufacturers and performers to have their instrument associated with ‘the West’ rather than ‘the East’ and with ‘classical-style’ instruments rather than ‘folk-style’ instruments. Older lyras have a flat and highly ornate headstock with only three or more simple or nonmechanized wooden tuning pegs. The scroll decoration found on the headstock of the violin can also be found on most modern lyras. It is also something of a throwback to the days when the violin was popular, as well as a being a feature that is associated with European constructors. This is in contrast to its pear-shaped body, which has a similarity to instruments found in other parts of the Balkans and the Middle East, particularly in Greece and Turkey. Besides these features, the modern lyra is sometimes fitted with a contact microphone, which makes contact with the bridge of the lyra and amplifies the sound via a public address sound system. Holes usually have to be drilled in the back of the instrument to accommodate the microphone cable, or cables are left to hang loose from the bridge and down over the tailpiece of the instrument, sometimes getting in the way during performance. Indeed, most professional performers (whether lyra or laouto) amplify their instruments in this way when performing live. In addition, violin bridges, bows, and rosin are used with the lyra. Laouto players use guitar footstools and sometimes use a minimixer between the instrument and the PA system (see Figure 4.4). The strings for these instruments are usually obtained from a firm based in Italy and are basically wound steel guitar strings.

Figure 4.4  Lyras, mixing desk and PA equipment.

Musical Instruments as Material Culture 103 Musical instrument makers and musicians consume modern technology when it suits them. Obviously, they are not frightened to experiment or adopt new practices to meet the demands of professional performance and the expectations of new audiences. But they try to keep a balance between innovation and ‘tradition’, and most do not appear to work with novelties. However, some musicians play newer versions of older-style lyras either exclusively or alongside the modern version described previously. These lyras are often made to order and to the specifications of performers, and consequently are very expensive. Sometimes they come with sympathetic strings and ornate carvings. It is argued that these instruments provide for a more ‘authentic’ sound and appearance. Displaying instruments The Handbook also engages with what its editors describe as ‘the contemporary politics and poetics of displaying, representing and conserving material forms in the present and the manner in which this impacts on notions of tradition and social identity’ (5). Throughout the island of Crete in the 1990s, I came across many examples of musical material culture––the iconography of records, posters, and the promotional materials of tourism, as well as displays in music shops and folk-life museums––that drew attention to musical instruments and their potential to be powerful icons of ethnicity and a means of negotiating local identity and tradition within the contemporary and globalizing context. Indeed, images and displays provide a visual counterpoint to talk about music. They also reveal something about the nature and interaction of the forces that create, sustain, and move instruments around. For example, instrument displays in music shops convey much about the types of music popular in an area. In Crete, lyras are on display with Greek bouzoukis, Turkish bağlama (long-necked lute, often known in Greece as sazi––the collective term in Turkish for ‘instruments’, particularly of the long-necked lute family), and electric guitars revealing the musical aspirations of the local musical community and old and new trends in the local music scene. Often these trends create a tension with locally held notions of what instruments may be appropriately used in the musics of the island. Musical instrument shops and workshops are therefore microcosms of the greater musical world at large, and they have an important and often understated role in the construction and working out of local musical ideas. In the foreground of Figure 4.5, there is a stand with (from left to right) six- and eight-string bouzoukis, bağlama, laouto, and a lyra. A range of potentially exciting musical opportunities are made available to musicians through a collection of instruments such as this; however, in the context of Greek, and especially Cretan, musical culture, the placing of these instruments in close proximity can be problematic. The bağlama is, as noted before, a Turkish instrument. Although Greek musics have an affinity with Turkish musics and there is an interest in Turkish musics among Greeks, the bağlama is seen as peripheral and something of a novelty in relation to Greek music. Its sound, playing techniques, moveable frets, microtones, and repertoire do not fit easily with much popular Greek music. However, there is a move to incorporate instruments like the bağlama into Greek music, changing and

104  Kevin Dawe

Figure 4.5  A musical instrument shop in Iraklion.

spicing up what many see as conservative music in the process. The bouzouki is an instrument not associated with Cretan music but with Greek popular music. Purists prefer six-string bouzoukis, others eight-string bouzoukis. Although bouzoukis are used in some Cretan music ensembles, they are rarely used to play Cretan music. Cretan music is lyra and laouto, and often mandolin. I took the photograph in Figure 4.5 in a music shop located in one of the main thoroughfares in Iraklion. The landscape of a music shop is to some extent crafted from the shapes and contours of its instruments. Musical instruments in this shop represent a diverse range of musical traditions, cultures, places, and times. The layout of the shop, in turn, can tell us much about how musical instruments fit in with local values in relation to the world at large. As such, the music shop becomes a kind of geopolitical landscape. The guitars at the back of the shop can be seen to represent the wall of sound of guitar culture that is reverberating within and getting ever louder within local contexts around the world. At present, this guitar culture is being played out behind or beside Greek instrumentation. In Figure 4.5, an inexpensive (or entry-level) lyra can be seen hanging underneath a collection of ‘copy’ guitars. However, those Cretans interested in buying a very good quality lyra would normally visit a workshop like that of Agrimákis (see above). In this shop, the one good-quality lyra and a few inexpensive ones are here for those with a more casual interest in lyra music, such as tourists or guitar players.

Musical Instruments as Material Culture  105 Conclusion The city- and mountain village-scapes described in this chapter accommodate a range of musical material culture as created through a variety of events and media. Indeed, they can be seen to provide a canvas for the elaboration of live and recorded performances within Cretan life. The posters in the city streets and mountain village coffeehouses are manifestations of the same Cretan musical culture, which has a materiality that is fluid, pervasive, agential and intertextual. As elsewhere, the musical instrument workshop is the crucible of this musical material culture. In this context, musical instruments are still relatively solid. However, it is clear that materials enter the workshop from far and near, whether as wood or business cards. Materials flow in, through and out of the workshop and take on a variety of forms before and after. The dense and complex material culture given overview here has a number of historical, social, and cultural contingencies shaping and empowering it. It is clearly agential on behalf of a variety of agents within Cretan society, most obviously musicians, makers, aficionados, and audiences. Yet cultural relationships are contested and negotiated. Instruments are brought to bodies. And bodies are shaped through instruments. As elsewhere, musical instruments are thus active and influential in shaping subject–subject, subject–object, and object–object relations within Cretan society. Moreover, they are not only agential within the social life of islanders but are also affective in locals’ negotiations with the world that lies beyond the island. The significance of Cretan musical culture is thus far reaching, where musical instrument culture is resilient and entangled, and instrumental in creating and sustaining a wide variety of social relations and experiences. I have provided but one example of a complex musical material culture, which takes the form of a restudy as I try to keep pace with the literature in material culture studies. Using the evidence of in-depth ethnographic studies, we are beginning to see the value of studying musical instruments as material culture or, rather, treating them as sounding objects made in our image before they take on a life of their own. Note 1 For examples of this ‘expanded approach’, see Allen (2012); Bates (2012); Conner (2012); Dawe (2001a, 2001b, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015); DeVale (1990); Dewitt (2003); Diamond, Cronk and von Rosen (1994); Kartomi (1990); Merriam (1969); ­Neuenfeldt (1997, 1998); Polak (2000); Qureshi (1997, 2000); Roda (2013, 2014); Schmidt (1994); and Simonett (2012).

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106  Kevin Dawe Appadurai, Arjun (Ed.). 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baily, John. 1976. ‘Recent Changes in the Dutār of Herat’. Asian Music 8 (1): 29–64. ——— (1977) ‘Movements in Playing the Herati Dutār.’ In The Anthropology of the Body, edited by John Blacking (275–330). London: Academic Press. Bates, Eliot. 2012. ‘The Social Life of Musical Instruments’. Ethnomusicology 56 (3): 363–395. Berliner, Paul. 1978. The Soul of Mbira: Music and Traditions of the Shona. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Blacking, John. 1973. How Musical is Man? Seattle: University of Washington Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Chernoff, John Miller. 1981. African Rhythm and African Sensibility: Aesthetics and Social Action in African Musical Idioms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Conner, Will. 2012. Constructing Musical Associations Through Instruments: The Role of the Instrument Maker in the Maker-Instrument-Player Network Within the Neo-Medievalist Gothic Music Scene. Ph.D. dissertation, University of London. Dawe, Kevin. 2001a. ‘People, Objects, Meaning: Recent Work on the Study and Collection of Musical Instruments’. Galpin Society Journal 54: 219–232. ——— and Dawe Moira. 2001b. ‘Handmade in Spain: The Culture of Guitar Making’. In A. Bennett and K. Dawe (Eds), Guitar Cultures (63–87). Oxford and New York: Berg. ——— 2005. ‘Symbolic and Social Transformation in the Lute Cultures of Crete: Music, Technology and the Body in a Mediterranean Society’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 37: 58–68. ——— 2007. Music and Musicians in Crete: Performance and Ethnography in a Mediterranean Island Society. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ——— 2010. The New Guitarscape in Critical Theory, Cultural Practice and Musical ­Performance. Farnham: Ashgate. ——— 2011. ‘The Cultural Study of Musical Instruments’. In M. Clayton, T., Herbert, and R. Middleton (Eds). The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction. Second and revised edition. London: Routledge. ——— 2013. Guitar Ethnographies: Performance, Technology and Material Culture. Ethnomusicology Forum, 22(1), 1–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43297373 ——— 2015. ‘Materials Matter: Towards a Political Ecology of Musical Instrument Making’. A. Allen and K. Dawe (Eds). Current Directions in Ecomusicology London: Routledge. DeVale, Susan C. (Ed.). 1990. ‘Organizing Organology’. In Issues in Organology: Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 8 (1–34), edited by Susan C. DeVale. Ethnomusicology Publications, Department of Ethnomusicology and Systematic Musicology, Los Angeles: University of California. DeWitt, Mark. 2003. ‘The Diatonic Button Accordion in Ethnic Context: Idiom and Style in Cajun Dance Music’. Popular Music and Society 26 (3): 305–30. Diamond, Beverley, Cronk M. Sam and Franziska von Rosen. 1994. Visions of Sound: Musical Instruments of First Nations Communities in Northeastern America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dournon, Geneviève. 1981. Guide for the Collection of Traditional Musical Instruments. Paris: Unesco Press. Falk Moore, S. 1994. Anthropology and Africa: Changing Perspectives on a Changing Scene. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press.

Musical Instruments as Material Culture 107 Feld, Steven. 2012. Sound and Sentiment: Birds, Weeping, Poetics and Song in Kaluli Expression. Durham: Duke University Press, [Third Edition] [1982, 1992]. Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. London: Berg. ——— 1999. The Art of Anthropology: Essays and Diagrams. Edited by Eric Hirsch. New York and Oxford: Berg (Bloomsbury). Herzfeld, Michael. 1985. The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Howes, David (Ed.). 2005. Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Oxford and New York: Berg. Ingold, Tim. 2012. ‘Toward an Ecology of Materials’. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 427–42. ——— 2013. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Ivanovas, Sabine. 2000. Where Zeus Became a Man with Cretan Shepherds. Athens, Greece: Efstathiadis Group S.A. [A short section of the book is now online at: http://www.explorecrete.com/books/crete-shepherds.html] Kartomi, Margaret. 1990. Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Latour, Bruno 1996. ‘On actor-network theory. A few clarifications’. Soziale Welt 47: 369–382. ———. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Lemonnier, Pierre. 1992. Elements for an Anthropology of Technology. Anthropological Papers No.88. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan. Merriam, Alan P. 1961. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. ——— 1969. ‘The Ethnographic Experience: Drum-Making among the Bala (Basongye)’, Ethnomusicology 13: 74–100. Miller, Daniel (Ed.). 2005. Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University. Nettl, Bruno. 2015. The Study of Ethnomusicology. Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Neuenfeldt, Karl (Ed.). 1997. The Didjeridu: From Arnhem Land to Internet. London and Sydney: John Libbey & Company Pty. Ltd./Perfect Beat Publications. ——— (Ed.). 1998. Old Instruments in New Contexts. Special Issue of the World of Music 40 (2). Olsen, Dale A. 2002. Music of El Dorado: The Ethnomusicology of Ancient South American Cultures. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Papadatos, Ioannis and Kevin Dawe. 2018. ‘Popular Music in Crete: The Case of the LyraLaouto Ensemble’. In Dafni Tragaki (Ed.), Made in Greece: Studies in Popular Music. Abingdon: Routledge. Picken, Laurence. 1975. Folk Musical Instruments of Turkey. London: Oxford University Press. Polak, Rainer. 2000. ‘A Musical Instrument Travels Around the World: Jenbe Playing in Bamako, West Africa, and Beyond’. The World of Music 42 (3): 7–46. Qureshi, Regula. B. 1997. ‘The Indian Sarangi: Sound of Affect, Site of Contest.’ Yearbook for Traditional Music 29: 1–38. ——— 2000. ‘How Does Music Mean? Embodied Memories and the Politics of Affect in the Indian Sarangi.’ American Ethnologist 27 (4): 805–838.

108  Kevin Dawe Rice, Timothy. 2013. Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Roda, P. Allen. 2013. Resounding Objects: Musical Materialities and the Making of ­Banarasi Tablas. PhD dissertation. New York University. ——— 2014. ‘Tabla Tuning on the Workshop Stage: Toward a Materialist Musical Ethnography’. Ethnomusicology Forum 23 (3): 360–382. Schmidt, Cynthia (Ed.). 1994. ‘The Guitar in Africa: The 1950s–1990s’. Special issue, The World of Music 36 (2): 3–20. Simonett, Helena (Ed.). 2012. The Accordion in the Americas: Klezmer, Polka, Tango, Zydeco, and More! Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Smith, Michael Llewellyn. 1973. The Great Island: A Study of Crete. New York: Viking Books. Sontag, Susan. 1979. On Photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Sennett, Richard. 2008. The Craftsman. London: Penguin/Allen Lane. Stone, Ruth. 2007. Theory in Ethnomusicology. Abingdon: Routledge. Tilley, Chris, Webb Keane, Susanne Küchler, Mike Rowlands & Patricia Spyer (Eds). 2013. Handbook of Material Culture. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Instrumental Interlude #2 The Yaybahar Görkem Şen

Figure #2 The Yaybahar is an acoustic musical instrument described by its inventor as a ‘real-time acoustic string synthesizer’ in which large, coiled springs act as bridges between vibrating strings and drumheads, the latter then acting as resonators. The strings can be made to vibrate in several ways: by bowing or hitting them in a manner similar to orchestral string instruments; by hitting the drumheads; or by sliding the bow to the top of the strings. Photo credit: Kerim Belet

I started to make sounds and music when I was 13, and then I just focused on this after the age of 13 because I had brain surgery and I was stuck in the house. It was a brain trauma––I fell down on my head. For one year, my doctors told me not to move because of the risk to my skull. Anyway, then I started. During those years, I searched and tried something to reach new sounds. This is my approach to music––new sounds, new sounds. What can be new with instruments and music? DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-8

110  Görkem Şen Eventually I did a lot with the computer––composition, electronic sounds––and the computer helped me a lot to discover new music and sounds. Four or five years before the yaybahar, and before my attempt to make instruments, I listened to music from the Internet––all the world’s music, and lots of regional music and I started to become aware of the instruments. So for four or five years, I researched instruments and music. A lot of different music and sounds were there on the Internet, and a lot of instruments also. I was searching for instruments with new sounds, actually. I live in Turkey, between East and West. This was my starting point. I scoured the instruments of the Eastern world. I was aware that there were thousands of instruments from the East, all handmade and all really mystical with different quality sounds. They may be primitive, but they touch your soul more. I got the courage from the Eastern world, all handmade and beautiful sounds, but again I was asking, what can be new in music and sounds? Then I started to make instruments from a new design. I already played more than 10 ethnic instruments. I collected ethnic instruments and some Western instruments, and then for something more unique I started experimenting with the instruments, to find something new and to say something new. I started to experiment with natural materials, like Eastern instruments, like calabash, gut strings, and different woods. I didn’t try to make another violin or another sitar; instead, I tried to do different things, creating combination or hybrid instruments. I experimented for three or four years, and I made maybe 20 or 30 models. I had a workshop, a laboratory, because of all the materials I collected, like natural skins and natural materials, trying new designs and making new things. I experimented with basic and normal string things, trying to imitate them but always looking for something new. That was my motivation. I started the yaybahar adventure in that laboratory. Three or four years before the yaybahar, I discovered the spring drum, a very small, short spring that you can shake to make thunder drum sounds. I was already making those sounds when I saw and touched the instrument in an instrument shop. I said to myself, ‘I can do this. It is a very basic instrument, I can do it.’ I found a spring factory in Istanbul, and when I entered their shop I saw on the walls a lot of springs. I went to buy a short spring to make this thunder drum, but I saw the diversity of springs they had: long ones, thin ones, thick ones. I collected all of them because I thought, ‘If the short ones make those kinds of sounds, what sounds can the long ones make?’ Then I entered the academy in Istanbul, the Bilgi University. It is a very contemporary music school in Turkey. In the academic medium, they lead you to discover rather than you being an explorer by yourself. In this way, they also give you inspiration and they force you to discover something more. It helped me in these experiments because I started to make instruments in the university. But when I entered the university, I had just started to make digeridoos with plastic pipes, adding different dimensions to the pipes to change the tuning of the digeridoo. There was a creative workshop class. In this class, we were given an assignment which was about prepared instruments: ‘Make something prepared’. I had my laboratory because by now this was the second or third year of the university, and I had a lot of material in my home and in my workshop, and prepared instruments.

The Yaybahar 111 I took a bag of springs into my laboratory, and I started experiments with them. I had already made my drums and now I connected the springs to the drum. Then the magic happened, because the long spring, when you connect it to the drum, makes acoustic reverberation. Normally the membrane of the drum catches the sound vibration from the air. But when you connect springs, the vibration on the skin feeds back into the spring and it makes very nice drum sounds, a kind of cyclic vibration. I kept experimenting. I did drum to drum springs, spring to spring and the drums, and different kinds of serial and parallel connections between the springs and the drums, five drums and seven springs, etc. I used a lot of different combinations. When I worked on this assignment, I already had the springs and I made a prepared guitar, with springs and with drums. At first, I was just using the drum for the vibration, but then I thought that I would do something prepared and new. When I connected the spring to the electric guitar, the first yaybahar came. I heard those sounds for the first time. For one hour, I was lost in the sounds, the acoustic sounds and my special drums that have the strings, and the electric guitar turned into another instrument. At first, I just plucked the guitar, but when I hit the bow to the string, the sound was amazing. I lost myself in the sounds for a few hours. I recorded those sounds for the assignment. I gave in my assignment, but a new journey had started for me. The yaybahar has two strings on the neck. I started with a monochord, but now it is a two-string instrument and that is the simplest idea. These are cello strings, the G and A strings from the cello, and I adjust them one octave apart, G and G or G# and G#, so the string tension does change. It is now a two-string instrument, but I’ve made a 36-string version, 36 strings on one yaybahar, in a dome, and all the frequency ranges, from sub-bass to high frequency. There are a lot of octaves there! But it is a big instrument. I made this yaybahar in 2012. I discovered it in 2010, but my vision and my desire are to make it a kind of orchestra because all the possibilities are there. You can give it contrabass strings, and more than contrabass. I can go there with my experiments. But 32 strings is not portable, and not really playable. It was just a vision, and I made it. But then I began to think that less is more. I tried three, four, and five strings also, but two is really enough for any instrument. Even one string is enough. It can be fretless or fretted. It can also use any string; it does not have to be a cello string. I connect the spring near to the bridge, but not too near. So the three elements here––string, spring, and drum––are all connected. If you think about the terminology of instruments, the spring here is a new bridge system. When you play the string, the spring carries the vibration to the resonator, like a cello––there is a string, a bridge, and a resonator. The spring is the new bridge system, and the sound source is the membrane. This is another difference from normal instruments. Normally you hit a drum and make the drum sound. But now we can hear the vibrations through the drums. The spring is connected to the membrane, and the connection is more flexible and moveable. The membrane works like a drum membrane, and it creates the volume and the timbre. The membrane, spring, and string have their own physical vibration modes and physical laws, but they are all connected in this instrument. The membrane is the sound source, but all the

112  Görkem Şen frequency modulation and amplitude modulation or any kind of synthesizer effect are all acoustic modulations or vibrational moments here. The spring is the most important part of the yaybahar. You can actually make an electric yaybahar without membranes. If you connect a contact microphone to the spring, you can make an electric yaybahar. But I wanted to make an acoustic instrument because I want to play everywhere, without electricity, and I don’t need any amplification because the acoustic yaybahar has a lot of volume already. This is a more authentic and more unique way to make sounds––it’s not electronic. The membrane makes the sounds, all the trebles, all the bass, and all the frequencies come from that surface. They are interesting sounds, because of the surface dimensions of the membrane and also the springs, modulation, and delay––it is a very new experience for every human being. I play the yaybahar around the world. I’ve been to more than 20 countries and played the yaybahar solo. I go on stage and play for around one hour, either from my repertoire or improvisation. But I’ve also performed some duets, including concerts with a piano, acoustic piano, a grand piano, or cello. Every person, every human being, is affected the same, with the same discovery and excitement. When I play somewhere, on the beach or on an island, if somebody hears the sound, they are coming towards it. They know this is something new and they want to discover, ‘What is coming to my ears?’ When they see and hear it, they all say, ‘There’s something new and something exciting here.’

Instrumental Interlude #3 Recycled Instruments Eli Gras

Figure #3 Eli Gras is a multidisciplinary artist working across many different creative fields. She is mainly a composer and experimental luthier. She builds and performs on many different instruments, usually recycling found objects and converting them into sound-generating devices. She has given solo experimental improvisation performances around Europe, often accompanied by workshops and/or illustrative talks aimed at both children and adults. In addition to her musical projects and sonic experimentation, she has also worked as a graphic designer, illustrator, scriptwriter, and photographer/videographer, and on devising special effects. Credit: Viorica Cernica

I started by doing experimental music, but I’ve always more or less done curious things with instruments, even playing standard instruments, like bass guitar and flutes, in a normal but also an experimental way, playing them with some tricks. But as I like to invent and amuse myself with different materials and ideas, one day, years ago, I did something that was silly but important to me: I built a device, a sort DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-9

114  Eli Gras of theatre of cheap, electrically driven objects that could be operated with a remote control. Then I began to play with it. It was a bit mad, but it sparked for me a future way of doing things. Some years after this, I was invited by an arts organization to create an installation, through a sort of grant. They gave me several concepts to work with, but they didn’t tell me, ‘You have to do instruments’. They just told me, ‘Do as you want, the important thing is the process, the ideas that comes from the concept. We don’t really mind if the things are not finished at the end.’ After thinking about several possibilities, the one that remained was the concept of a player piano found in an old, abandoned house where thousands of player piano rolls were found. So I developed a sound installation using the concept ‘home and leisure’, with which I developed an installation called Saló Sonor (Sound Saloon), with objects like trays, furniture, a football, all kinds of things. I worked on it for two or three months, resulting in several pieces halfway between instruments and sculptures, and a set for performance with scenery and lighting touches and a certain mystery. I was thinking about how to do this without complex technology, not only because I am not an engineer but also because using easy-to-find materials and recycling existing parts into more or less complex machines leads to curious sounds and ways of playing. And it was really amusing because of my tendency to invent things, to build, and to develop or find solutions, and also to perform. I use a lot of recycled stuff, not only buying used things but also finding things lying around. Working with existing shapes and resources is part of the fun. Of course, you can spend money buying precise materials or even having a wellequipped workshop. But to find industrial solutions and make something different with them––how to fix it, how to stop the vibrations, how to use it in the cleanest way possible with sound, how to amplify it––this is all part of the pleasure. Because sometimes there are things that are very difficult to play or to play with a controlled sound. For me, this is important. Yes, I could do only electronics, I could just play a computer, but it’s not usually my way. I use the computer for all the other aspects: to design parts, for postproduction, composing, arranging, and editing or to affect the sound when required. But for me, it’s most important to interpret the instrument with my hands, to play any object, because I try to take the capabilities of expression, and the capacity of that object as a sound device, to find its expressive ways, or whether it needs extra tools like a bow, feather, or stick. To explore the expressive range of an experimental instrument, you also need to find tricks to make more, or more interesting, sounds. You are only limited by your creativity or your aesthetic sense of sound. Also, the instrument teaches you. You can’t wait for precise results or for something previously desired. You are always walking around it, and that’s nice. If the artefact is not sounding well, then how do you make it sound better? In a way, I am exploring how to make good music with bad sounds! One of my silliest but also favourite instruments is a flowerpot that has metal strips, like a metal ribbon plant. It’s something like a gong, but very low. It gives a special deep sound, and you cannot imagine that this little plant can sound this way. Sure, I equalize it, the poor thing, but to me it is something really strong, to have an apparently decorative thing that is suddenly able to generate such a scary ambience.

Recycled Instruments 115 For me, pedagogy or education is very important. When I play, it’s a bit like I’m doing educational concerts, because the audience can see everything I’m doing. There’s no computer and often a camera is showing details of what’s happening onstage. And I let the audience play with my set after the gig, when the situation allows it, to come up to the stage and ask, test, play a bit. I think it is important if they can see something that I would love to have seen when I was small or young, to be able to use the sound in a recreational way, not only in an artistic or musical way. Just the sound is fun, doing noises is amusing. That’s why I do workshops, all ages, or open concerts, or talks. Sometimes this provokes wonderful situations, because when you see them playing a prepared piano, just my little instruments or new devices we just built, in the beginning they do noises, but very quickly it becomes more than noises. They begin to express themselves, giving intention to the playing. There is always somebody who is very good with it, even small children or old people, it doesn’t matter. For instance, I was once asked at a concert to explain to people what happened there, and suddenly a blind woman came to me. I thought it was clear for everybody how I made a gong from a sun plant, for example. But blind people only heard strange sounds coming and not how they are made. It was fabulous to explain it, with the fingers playing the shapes. A blind person could see the sound with their hands, why a string sounds stronger, for example, or a metal strip. I am interested in these very tactile and visual instruments because they, by themselves, explain the sound and the nature of music. It is like science. It is science, in fact. So I always like people to play the instruments, with care, because the visual, tactile, and educational aspects are part of my work. Recycling materials is very important to me. I am a worker. I was never a money person, so for me to recycle is not just ecology or ideology, it’s normal. I don’t buy so much to do my work. Sometimes, of course, I order cuts or buy materials. It depends. I explain in workshops the importance of recycling, but not only because of the environment or to save money, or to give a second life to an object. It is also because it is interesting to use things that can work, in the sense of something still being used, and conceptually, taking advantage of its technologies. To be able to reuse the result of somebody else’s design and industry is like a gift. To create something from nothing doesn’t always work. If the shapes are different, it makes your inspiration go another way. That is something that is by default ecological. If you go to a flea market and you find little industrial trash, pieces of machines, or just things made with a certain material, it makes you part of this object’s journey too. You complete it. The materials that I’ve found can be anything: metal strips, a box with a special device, little electronic parts, an old radio. It is quite amazing. If you’re patient, materials will appear like magic. Of course, I can view a catalogue of materials and order some pieces, but why? It’s more fun to find a way to reuse readymade things and to use easy-to-find materials and low technology that, in the end, is not so low. Now I’m working as a graphic designer. I think it’s interesting sometimes to use graphic design tricks in my instrument building. If something needs to be cut by laser or I need to reproduce the same piece several times, then I use graphic design

116  Eli Gras techniques. This allows me to make more creative or accurate parts. I’m very bad at mathematics! But using graphic design tools allows me to do perfect things without the use of numbers, only with shapes and logic. I also like creating things that have more than one aspect, to work with concepts and ‘round’ ideas or results, works that are not only one thing. For instance, for the label Esc.rec., I made an instrument, recorded a number of sounds with that instrument, and composed a track which was transferred onto just one vinyl copy. Then I designed and built a box that was a container for the record and also the instrument. So the music on the record can only be played by that unique instrument, and if you own this object release, with its single copy, you are the owner of the entire concept. If you own the box, you own the record and the instrument, and any possible future music from it. It is a ‘round’ concept. And the instrument was round as well, ha ha! In my studio, I largely have normal tools, not highly specialized ones. If I need something specialized, I order work from others or ask friends for favours. I’d never stop adding tools to my workshop! I love tools too much. For me, the interest is to learn by finding difficulties, technical or otherwise. If I find a problem, I think the fun is to solve it with whatever I have. That’s why sometimes I avoid watching DIY videos on YouTube. Sometimes it works, but I make mistakes when I build instruments. There are always a bunch of mistakes, design mistakes because of time, because you cannot test things properly. Usually when you build these things you trust that it is going to work well enough, but no, it is not working as you thought, so you have to do little tricks to refine it. Then you think, ‘I will do it better, I will repeat it’. But the next time is not coming, so you use the original and learn how to get the best out of it. So you use your beloved defective instruments with little tricks, little adjustments, adding things, to make them work better in concert. I could use only one instrument, that could be enough rather than using all the other stuff, and would complicate my life less. In fact, people or organizers sometimes ask, ‘Why do you use so many things? Why don’t you use only one device?’ But it is because I like this, my table is full of family, assorted sounds, and it makes me feel comfortable. And perhaps it’s because I’m messy by nature. I have to change!

Part II

The Circulation of Instruments

5

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 Musical Instruments and the Telling of Tales Stephen Cottrell

Introduction This chapter tells the story of a particular saxophone, an alto model made by the Grafton company in the early 1950s and given the serial number 10265.1 I consider how focusing on the object biography of musical instruments illustrates not only how they become imbued with qualities that are both constitutive and reflective of their time and place but also how they can be seen as having ‘thing power’, as Jane Bennett (2010, 6) puts it, ‘the curious ability of inanimate things to animate, to act, to produce effects dramatic and subtle’. I draw attention to some of the conceptual overlaps between ethnographic writing and literary fiction in representing the lives of these musical ‘things’ and, in the case of Grafton 10265, I show how focusing on the biographical details of this particular musical object provides insights into the broader cultural patterns within which that biography is played out. Writing about instruments—object biographies Annie Proulx’s novel Accordion Crimes (1996) has as one of its central characters a green, 19-button diatonic accordion built by a Sicilian maker and musician in 1890 prior to his migration to the United States. Migration and assimilation are key themes in the book, and the green accordion reappears in the narrative at various points, providing a literary leitmotiv within a series of vignettes that evoke the different experiences of migrants pursuing the American dream across the late 19th and 20th centuries. We quickly infer in the novel that the accordion’s travels are themselves symbolic of the journeys these migrants undertake, and the accordion family becomes a metaphor for the multi-ethnic social panorama of the USA itself, with the quasiprotagonistic green accordion ultimately integrated among a wide range of other similar instruments: He examined [the accordion], an old instrument, too old and too small. Leather bellows and still supple despite the dust. He picked it up and made a couple of chords, set it back on the counter, looked at the shelves of melodeons, Cajun open-valved diatonics, big square Chemnitzers, English and DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-11

120  Stephen Cottrell Anglo concertinas, a small single-voice bandoneon, electric piano accordions, Yugoslavian melodijas, plastic accordions, a Chinese mudan, a bayan from Russia, two Pakistani harmoniums, and row after row of Bastaris, Castigliones, Sopranis, Hohner Black Dots—god, look at them all, every immigrant in America must have pawned an accordion here. (Proulx 1996, 400–401) Proulx’s story of the green accordion begins with the instrument’s Sicilian roots before its migration to New Orleans and its various journeys to Quebec, Iowa, Texas, Montana, and elsewhere. The literary theorist Rodney Stenning Edgecombe describes this approach as being a form of ‘object biography’, a literary device that he sees rooted in Homer, Alexander Pope, and Hans Christian Andersen, and which functions at its best as ‘a variant of the parable’. Edgecombe contrasts Proulx’s approach with that of the poet Edwin Morgan, who, he argues, ‘treats the object biography in the context of animizing metaphor, and, within that frame, can render the “sentient” experience of things’ (Edgecombe 2008, 554–556). This distinction between simply recording the history of an object and capturing the subjective, socially animating nature of ‘things’ in certain contexts is also considered by Eliot Bates in The Social Life of Musical Instruments (2012). Unlike Edgecombe, who sees the green accordion only as a connective between Proulx’s different narrative episodes, Bates argues that the centrality of the green accordion demonstrates how ‘we can conceive of musical instruments as not only having some degree of agency, but even as protagonists of stories—as actors who facilitate, prevent, or mediate social interaction among other characters’ (364). He goes on to give the saz—a Turkish lute—a central role in his own ‘saz stories’ (375), illustrating how the instrument becomes invested with human qualities in relation to both its morphology and its musical employment, and how it has been used to mobilize ideas about nationhood, materiality, and musical sound in various social contexts (375–386). Kevin Dawe has written about Cretan lute cultures in similar terms, particularly in relation to gender politics, noting powers of transmutation invested in instruments that, among other things, ‘transform individuals into a community, Cretan boys into Cretan men […] masculine ideals into a powerful discourse, and musical ideas into affecting sounds’ (Dawe 2005, 63). Capturing the rich panoply of symbolic associations, transformative potential, or agentive powers that might be invested in musical instruments is often a literary task. Obviously, the now widespread scholarly use of audio-visual media significantly enriches our understandings of how instruments sound, the contexts in which they are played, their relationships with the human body, etc. There is much about the study of musical instruments that is better captured using such media than through the inevitable two-dimensionality of the written text. But there is still a great deal written about musical instruments, and in the stories we tell of them it is through the writing strategies we employ that we convey their essential characterization. If, as Bates suggests, instruments ‘mediate social interaction among other characters’, then it is through our reporting of these mediations and interactions, our storytelling, that we bring our characters—human and nonhuman—to life.

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 121 These observations will not be new to those familiar with discourses on the literary nature of anthropological texts. Clifford and Marcus’ seminal Writing Culture (1986) and Geertz’s Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (1988) are two key texts in this debate. In his introduction to the former, Clifford notes that ‘Ethnographic writings can properly be called fictions in the sense of “something made or fashioned,” the principal burden of the word’s Latin root, fingere. But it is important to preserve the meaning not merely of making, but also of making up, of inventing things not actually real’ (1986, 6). Geertz similarly observes that ‘the responsibility for ethnography, or the credit, can be placed at no other door than that of the romancers who have dreamt it up’ (1988, 140). To be clear, as these various authors are, this is not to suggest that anthropological texts are works of fiction or that anthropologists are essentially novelists. Neither is true. But ethnographic texts do share some of the qualities of creative writing such that there are blurred boundaries between the imagination demonstrated by the novelist in constructing a world which is known to be ‘unreal’ and the recollection of memories—usually aided by fieldnotes, interviews, recordings, etc.—on which the supposedly ‘real’ worlds of ethnographic description are based. These ambiguities are not confined to ethnography. Philip Lopate draws attention to similar dilemmas faced by those writing narrative (or literary) nonfiction, and queries the extent to which writers in this genre should allow themselves to use the literary strategies and imagination employed by fiction writers when they are retelling stories that are, by their nonfictional nature, grounded in ‘facts and truths’ (Lopate 2013, 77–81). Proulx notes at the beginning of her novel that in her text, ‘historic personages mingle and converse with invented characters. In some cases invented characters have been placed in real events; in others, real events have been slightly or greatly fictionalized’ (Proulx 1996, 15). Proulx may not be an anthropologist per se, but her approach to the construction of her literary texts resonates strongly with Clifford’s notion of ‘not merely […] making, but also […] inventing things not actually real’. Written texts, then, can seldom be identified purely as fact or fiction. Each inhabits a point on a narratological continuum in which these two concepts occupy opposite poles, notwithstanding that they are idealized positions that are seldom (if ever) reached in literary practice. These points on the literary construction of texts are relevant here because in this chapter I take a similar approach to that of Proulx in her work, drawing, as most scholars do, on a variety of historical and other sources to construct a narrative about the life of a particular instrument. Or rather, like her, I want to use the literary conceit of an instrument’s biography to tell a story about the social and musical contexts in which that biography unfolded, to draw attention to the broader cultural currents that frame it. The story of Grafton 10265 The district of 18th and Vine in Kansas City, Missouri, remains recognized today for its role in the development of jazz during the 1930s and 1940s. Like Basin Street in

122  Stephen Cottrell New Orleans or perhaps 52nd Avenue in New York, it provides a geographical lieu de mémoire, as Pierre Nora (1984) puts it, a site of memory for a musical tradition that has been officially designated by the United States government as an ‘American National Treasure’.2 Kansas City’s role in that tradition is well documented.3 Notwithstanding the general economic decline of the Depression era in the USA for much of the 1930s, the city remained economically prosperous because of its strengths in agriculture and farming and its advantageous location in the centre of the country. Its relative commercial success, coupled with a laid-back and sometimes illicit approach to licensing and alcohol laws on the part of influential local politician Thomas Pendergast, provided a context in which nightclubs, cabarets, dance halls, and similar all flourished. Segregation was also less strictly enforced in Kansas City than many other places, especially the southern states, and this too made the city attractive to many black jazz musicians who were drawn to it from elsewhere because of the numerous employment opportunities available. Bandleaders such as William ‘Count’ Basie and Jay McShann brought entire ensembles with them, and individual musicians such as saxophonists Ben Webster and Lester Young were also regularly heard. Most other US touring jazz musicians would have played in the city at some point during this period. All this led to the development of a particular ‘Kansas City’ style of jazz, characterized by an even, four-in-a-bar rhythmic groove rather than the two strong/two weak styles that were common elsewhere; a reduction of elaborate orchestrations to looser, riff-based charts that provided space for extensive soloing; and a heavy 12-bar blues influence that counteracted the 32-bar AABA structures underpinning many other jazz tunes of the time. No musician is more closely identified with this Kansas City brand of jazz than the saxophonist Charlie Parker (1920–1955), widely and affectionately known as ‘Bird’, one of jazz’s most influential performers and one of its greatest icons. Parker was a native of the city, albeit that he was born on the Kansas side of the state line before moving to the Missouri side as a child.4 The local jazz scene made a significant impression on him during his formative years. He later recalled that he would ‘stand outside the club in Kansas City where Lester Young played—I was only twelve at the time and couldn’t go inside—and would listen for hours’ (quoted in Reisner 1975, 139). Parker would eventually become an important contributor to the city’s musical environment, which provided a springboard for his later national and international success. It is unsurprising, therefore, that when the city chose in 1997 to recognize the area’s jazz heritage by establishing in the 18th and Vine district the American Jazz Museum (AJM), built only a few blocks from the site of Parker’s childhood home, it should wish to include in that museum a tribute to the city’s most famous musical son. Nor is it surprising that the museum should choose to purchase for display an alto saxophone with which Parker was in some way associated, as a symbol of his connection to both jazz and the city. What is more notable, however, is that the instrument chosen was only briefly played by Parker, seldom in the United States and it was made of plastic. The instrument concerned was an acrylic saxophone with the serial number 10265 made by the Grafton company, a small British manufacturer, in the early 1950s. The Grafton story is itself somewhat novelistic, which contributes to the

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 123 romantic myths surrounding this particular instrument. The company was established in the late 1940s by Hector (Ettore) Sommaruga, a skilled Italian engineer who had migrated to Britain in 1936, having left first Italy and then Portugal— where he ran a musical instrument shop—following the rise of European fascism. He had also previously spent time in both Paris and London, working for a variety of instrument manufacturing companies. After being briefly interned in the UK at the beginning of World War II, because of his Italian passport, he was released and spent much of the war using his engineering skills to make surgical instruments. He established his own company, the Grafton Light Engineering Company Limited, the name being taken from the north London street in which the company was located. Eventually the company evolved to repairing musical instruments, particularly for the military. Towards the end of the war, brass sheets and tubes were expensive and in short supply, creating difficulties for those using brass to manufacture instruments. But Sommaruga recognized that synthetic plastic technology, particularly in relation to injection moulding, had advanced to the point where it might be used to produce musical instruments, and it could thus provide a more cost-effective alternative to traditional manufacturing methods. He set about designing a saxophone in acrylic nylon, a type of plastic, that could take advantage of these new technologies An initial patent was lodged in September 1945, with full specifications being added in December 1946; the patent was awarded in July 1948.5 The patent text records Sommaruga’s aspiration to ‘manufacture a saxophone possessing all the conventional playing facilities, and moreover with a more pleasing appearance, greater solidity, less liability to break-down, improved tonal qualities—and all this at a greatly reduced cost of production.’6 There were also several innovations to the basic design of the instrument necessitated by working with this new material. These included reducing the number of pillars and altering their position on the body, changing the system of guards used to protect keys and adapting the body so that preassembled unitary keywork could be fitted. The plastic body was not strong enough to accommodate the conventional needle springs which normally keep saxophone keys open when not in use, so these were replaced by coiled springs; this gave a slightly ‘soggy’ feel to the fingering, since the keys did not snap back as readily as a conventional instrument. Although the body was plastic, the neck remained made of brass, because of the difficulty of accommodating a mouthpiece on a plastic neck (see Figure 5.1). A prototype was demonstrated as early as 1946, but instruments were not offered commercially until 1950, when they were advertised for sale at £58, about half the cost of a brass instrument at the time. The technological innovations underpinning the injection-moulding process that produced the Grafton were sufficiently newsworthy that British Moulded Plastics Ltd took out an advert in The Times to draw attention to their expertise in realizing Sommaruga’s design, complete with a picture of the Grafton alto.7 Grafton 10265 would have been assembled by injecting the acrylic nylon into preformed moulds. The body was moulded separately from the bell, the latter being produced in two parts prior to assembly. The two key guards and some of the pillars

124  Stephen Cottrell

Figure 5.1  A Grafton alto saxophone. Credit: Peter Cox.

were also made separately and attached later, as was the keywork. The acrylic bell was ornamented by a delicately shaped brass insert, and the key guards flowed elegantly around the U-shaped curve of the instrument in a manner reminiscent of certain art deco figurations. The instrument was certainly stylish, and Sommaruga was perhaps influenced by the growing importance attached in his home country in the early postwar years to attractive designs as important elements of consumer goods, including plastic ones. As the design historian Penny Sparke observes, ‘it was in the years after 1945 that plastics met high culture and coincided with the democratic ideals underpinning the “good design for everyone” movement. The most progressive implementation of that ideal took place in Italy, where […] mundane products […] suddenly aspired to the status of art objects, so sleek were their sculptural forms and so vibrant their colours.’8 Advertising copy of the time described the Grafton as ‘a tone poem in ivory and gold’, and though such advertising rhetoric is inevitably overstated, Graftons retain today a certain retro stylishness that continues to underpin their second-hand prices. Although initial interest in the acrylic saxophone led to some commercial activity, it was not a financial success. Its radical appearance was felt to be out of place in musically conservative arenas such as swing bands, in which the different

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 125 sections were expected to present some level of visual uniformity. Notwithstanding the claims made in Sommaruga’s patent, the instrument was not especially robust, and if dropped the body might crack. It also needed regular adjustment, which presented challenges for touring musicians. While the Grafton company in London operated an efficient repair system, others were hesitant to engage with the instrument because of its unfamiliarity and the intrinsic difficulties of maintaining it. Somewhat disillusioned, Sommaruga left the UK again in 1953. John Dallas Limited retained the rights to the instrument and continued to manufacture it for several years, but by 1967 production had already been discontinued for some time, and in 1968 the specialist tools and jigs required to produce it were mistakenly thrown out as scrap metal. None are likely ever to be made again. When the instrument was launched, several popular UK saxophonists of the time were asked to endorse it, notably Freddy Gardner, Ken Mackintosh, and Ivy Benson. There was little interest in the Grafton from classical performers. The visual prominence of its white body was not suited to traditional environments such as the symphony orchestra, and the classical saxophone scene in Britain in the 1950s was in any case very small. Perhaps the most high-profile British endorser was the jazz musician John Dankworth, who was pictured with Sommaruga and a Grafton alto in the music magazine Melody Maker in May 1950, having reportedly performed on the instrument at the opening of a music club the previous week.9 Dankworth also performed on a Grafton at one of the jazz concerts at the Festival of Britain in 1951, a festival designed to showcase the ‘best of British’ and stimulate the British economy out of its postwar slump. The innovative nature of the manufacturing process underpinning the Grafton most likely made it very appropriate for inclusion. But none of these British names had the same international profile as the two most well-known American jazz players to adopt the instrument.10 Ornette Coleman was one of the Grafton’s most ardent supporters and used their saxophones for many years, having replacements sent over from England when he needed a new instrument, which was frequently.11 He played it on perhaps his most influential album, The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959), the cover image for which clearly depicts him embracing his Grafton alto. The other significant jazz figure to use a Grafton was Charlie Parker. The 1953 concert at Massey Hall The details of Parker’s life and work are often hazy, not only because of his own frenetic lifestyle but also because of the slightly chaotic and marginalized contexts in which jazz was frequently performed at the time. Tracing the specific biography of Grafton 10265 is therefore challenging, and we gain only glimpses of Parker’s use of the instrument, in large part through the pictorial legacy of his performances at this time and through occasional textual references. There is a suggestion that Parker was playing the Grafton as early as spring 1952, in a little-known neighbourhood bar called McCanns in Leominster, Massachusetts, but there appears to be no documentary evidence to support this.12

126  Stephen Cottrell Certainly Parker was using the instrument in Montreal in February 1953, performing first a studio session for Canadian television on 5 February and then on 7 February at a club called Chez Paree. He also used the instrument on at least two occasions in the USA following these dates.13 This is perhaps slightly surprising, given that Parker was contracted to endorse King saxophones at the time and risked breaching this agreement if he were seen to play a competitor instrument. But these earlier occasions are largely forgotten in jazz annals today. The continuing interest in Grafton 10265, and the reason that the AJM was keen to acquire it, is because Parker played it at a concert in Massey Hall, Toronto, on 15 May 1953 (see Figure 5.2). This event has come to be seen as especially iconic within jazz because it is the only occasion in which five leading lights of the jazz firmament of the time played on stage together: Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Max Roach (drums), Charles Mingus (double bass), Bud Powell (piano), and Parker. It also proved to be the last recorded meeting of Parker and Gillespie, who had together done so much in the 1940s to establish the fast-paced, harmonically complex musical language of bebop. The iconic nature of Grafton 10265 for jazz aficionados is not difficult to discern.

Figure 5.2  Charlie Parker playing Grafton 10265 at Massey Hall, Toronto, in 1953. Credit: Harold Robinson.

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 127 Prior to this event, Roach and Mingus, together with Mingus’ then-wife Celia, had established in 1952 a record label, Debut Records, and they recorded the Massey Hall concert with a view to releasing it on their label. It seems unlikely, however, that the other three soloists were aware that the concert was being recorded (Miller 1989, 66). Parker was at the time contracted to another impresario in New York (Norman Granz), so his proper name could not be used on the album cover. When the recording was released later in 1953, the group was described simply as ‘The Quintet’, and Parker was listed as Charlie Chan, perhaps an oblique reference to his partner, Chan Parker. The original album cover had no pictures of the event and thus no trace of Grafton 10265, although a subsequent re-release by Fantasy Records in 1962 does show Parker playing the instrument.14 This later release also inscribes on the cover the phrase ‘The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever’, underlining the symbolic and quasimythical status with which the event had already been invested less than a decade after it took place. It is on these recordings that Grafton 10265 is brought to life. The saxophone is clearly audible (unlike some of the bass lines, which Mingus overdubbed for the original release) and played sometimes at blistering speed by Parker. Sommaruga’s supposedly ‘soggy’ springing system appears unproblematic in his hands. The sound is characteristically Parker’s: hard-edged and forceful, with bursts of rapid note patterns interspersed with swoops and glisses and relatively little use of vibrato or indeed any sustained notes on which it might have been employed.15 We also get a sense of the musicians enjoying the event. Gillespie seems to be in a particularly mischievous mood as he shouts ‘Salt Peanuts’ over Parker’s solo during the performance of this eponymous tune. But how did Charlie Parker, one of the most high-profile saxophonists of the day, come to be playing a white acrylic saxophone at a time when so few were in circulation and very few other people knew of them? In truth, nobody is sure, but this hasn’t prevented, and has perhaps encouraged, a certain mythology to build up around Charlie Parker and Grafton 10265. Principal among these myths is the idea that Parker was forced quickly to find a saxophone for the gig because, having pawned his normal one to purchase alcohol and drugs, he arrived in Toronto without one. For example, Parker’s biographer Ross Russell notes that ‘Charlie arrived in Toronto without his horn, and played with a white plastic alto lent by a local music store’ (1996, 312). But Mark Miller (1989, 20–21) has persuasively demonstrated that Parker was already playing the instrument on a previous visit to Canada only a few months previously and in the United States on several documented occasions during the intervening period. So a hasty visit to a local saxophone shop, that just happened to have one in stock, seems improbable. The serial number 10265 indicates that this was only the 265th instrument to come out of the London factory, so the chances of it showing up in an instrument retailer in Toronto just in the nick of time appear slight. A more plausible idea is that somebody connected with the Grafton company gave Parker the instrument in New York, as suggested by bass player Bill Crow in his autobiographical recollections Birdland to Broadway. Crow notes that ‘One night at Birdland, Bird showed up on the bandstand playing an

128  Stephen Cottrell alto saxophone made of cream-colored plastic. Everyone speculated about the new instrument, some claiming it was an improvement on a metal horn, some deprecating it as a toy. Bird played it because the instrument company had given it to him. As they had hoped, people accepted the plastic alto because Bird was playing it’ (Crow 1992, 131–132).16 Whatever the veracity of these different ‘origin myths’, Parker’s significance within the jazz tradition, the mythologies that surround his own life (and death), the unorthodox look of the Grafton and the particular significance ascribed to the Massey Hall concert have all encouraged a certain amount of mythologizing around this particular instrument. Reports of Parker playing Grafton 10265 after the Massey Hall concert are sporadic and difficult to confirm. There is very limited pictorial evidence of this, and thus the pictures taken of the Massey Hall concert by photographer Harold Robinson anchor the instrument in this Canadian environment, providing a paradox to the instrument’s appropriation as an icon of ‘American Jazz’ in the AJM. This linguistic slippage between ‘America’ and ‘United States’ is of course frequently encountered in jazz historiography and well beyond, and naturally it is the association with Parker, rather than Canada, for which the instrument is remembered. After Parker’s death in 1955, Grafton 10265 remained in possession of Parker’s partner Chan for nearly 40 years—unplayed, it seems. The instrument was presumably in France, to where Chan had moved in 1971 after the breakdown of her relationship with another bebop saxophone player, Phil Woods. But in 1994, the instrument was once again in the limelight. Chan Parker had decided to auction a collection of memorabilia associated with her former partner, and the Grafton was included in the sale. There was significant interest in the auction, organized at Christie’s in London, which the auctioneers further stimulated by organizing a performance on the instrument by British saxophonist Peter King prior to the bidding commencing.17 The Grafton sold for £93,500 (at the time c.$140,000), nearly half of the total amount raised for the collection overall. As Chan Parker herself observed after the auction, ‘It’s remarkable to think that some of the items went for more than Bird ever made’.18 The successful bidder for saxophone 10265 was Emanuel Cleaver, the thenmayor of Kansas City. The museum for which it was intended opened three years later, in 1997. It remains on display in the AJM today, given pride of place in a protective glass case and surrounded by other memorabilia relating to the Massey Hall concert: a poster, an album cover of an LP release and a copy of the contract for the concert (see Figure 5.3). This inevitably somewhat nostalgic exhibit, consciously evoking jazz’s halcyon days in Kansas City, contrasts with the otherwise modernistic, forward-looking decor of the museum as a whole. But it is here, at least for the moment, that Grafton 10265 has been laid to rest. Rereading the life of Grafton 10265 Musical traditions often closely resemble belief systems, with musical creators seen to have supernatural powers and any artefacts with which they were associated becoming sacralized in a quasi-religious manner. Levi-Strauss, for example,

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 129

Figure 5.3  Grafton 10265 in the American Jazz Museum. Credit: American Jazz Museum.

writes that the musical creator ‘is a being comparable to the gods’ (1986, 18). Just as Mozart, Beethoven, and others can be seen as the deities of Western classical music (Nettl 1995; Small 1987), so too are jazz’s major creators treated hagiographically by those who identify closely with tradition. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is saxophonist John Coltrane’s adoption, after his death, by the One Mind Evolutionary Transitional Church of Christ in San Francisco, for which part of the Sunday ritual is based around the music and poem of Coltrane’s 1965 album A Love Supreme; stranger still, the church became part of the African Orthodox Church in 1982, and Coltrane was officially canonized as a saint.19 Parker has been spared this fate thus far, but after his death in 1955 it became fashionable in New York and occasionally elsewhere to inscribe the words ‘Bird Lives’ as graffiti in public places.20 The hagiographic overlap with the widely used phrase ‘Jesus Lives’ is self-evident. In Kansas City this sacralization goes further: in an open public space just behind the AJM is a large statue of Parker’s head set upon a pedestal, created in iron by the sculptor Robert Graham and unveiled in 1999, two years after the museum opened. The sculpture further emphasizes the museum’s status as a lieu de mémoire, powerfully symbolizing the cultural heritage of the 18th and Vine District while also seeming to use Bird’s image to sanctify the immediate area in which the sculpture stands. And inscribed in large letters on the pedestal is that quasireligious aphorism: ‘Bird Lives’ (see Figure 5.4). Brought home to Parker’s birthplace, Grafton 10265 anchors the AJM collection, iconically reinforcing its owner’s place at the heart of the museum and thus

130  Stephen Cottrell

Figure 5.4  Charlie Parker memorial sculpture in the 18th and Vine District, Kansas City. Credit: Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri.

the jazz tradition celebrated there. Its association with one particular ritual event— the 1953 Massey Hall concert in Canada, that ‘Greatest Jazz Concert Ever’— further lends the instrument a totemic significance. The quasimythical nature of that event, the unconventional appearance of the Grafton, the rareness of Parker’s performances on it, and the fact that he died only two years after the concert itself all serve to imbue Grafton 10265 with symbolic properties. Now the instrument rests in its Missouri reliquary, a hallowed historical artefact to which the jazz tradition’s followers are drawn as they worship the memory of their spiritual hero. Yet the glass case in which the instrument rests, necessarily protecting it from probing hands and the midwestern dust, also provides a barrier between those who come to pay homage to the instrument and the very thing that makes Grafton 10265 distinctive: its material nature. The acrylic nylon from which it is made would have a very different feel from the brass instruments that many would be familiar with, were they able to touch it. Plastic has itself connoted many different things since Sommaruga worked with it in the 1940s. Dankworth’s performance on the instrument at the Festival of Britain in 1951 was appropriate because it drew attention to the innovative manufacturing process, the unusual material employed, and the flair and originality embedded in the instrument’s design. Indeed, the Festival was designed to promote precisely those attributes in relation to British manufacturing as a whole during the immediate postwar period. It advocated a national design aesthetic which signalled a progressive future for British science, arts, and technology and, as a contemporary promotional film observed, ‘the skills that make the

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 131 British workman famous [and the] design and craftsmanship and quality that go to make the fame of Britain’s goods.’21 Grafton 10265 symbolized such characteristics in relation to musical instrument manufacturing. As the 1950 advert by British Moulded Plastics crowed, ‘departing from convention and using moulded plastics for the first time for this purpose [has produced] a handsome instrument to please the connoisseur’.22 Plastic goods were seen as modern, innovative, and chic, and by extension, so was Grafton 10265. But by the 1960s, attitudes had begun to change. Plastic imitations of many products were becoming increasingly common and flooded certain markets. Plastic came to be seen as cheap, inferior, throwaway, and, it was occasionally hinted, ecologically problematic (see Fisher 2013). Part of the often forcefully articulated negative responses towards Ornette Coleman’s music—apart from the fact that his free jazz approach sounded so radically different from everybody else at the time— was because it was produced on a plastic instrument. Since the instrument was obviously cheap and inferior, the argument went, the music must be also. Parker was not so closely identified with Grafton saxophones to experience the same reaction, and his music was more widely appreciated. But if, previously, the plastic body of Grafton 10265 implied a cheap, disposable instrument of limited worth, this is today countered by its veneration as part of the permanent display at the AJM and the considerable amount of money used to acquire it. Indeed, Grafton saxophones in general have become collectors’ items, partly because their 1950s retro looks are seen by many to be desirable, and partly because they can no longer be made. The pool of surviving instruments is a finite and likely diminishing resource, inevitably pushing up their resale value. Perhaps the Grafton was just too ahead of its time. Certainly the principles underpinning its manufacture have been resurrected in the 21st century with the advent of additive manufacturing (3-D printing), wherein plastic goods can be produced comparatively cheaply by dedicated printers controlled by computers. The technology has been used to produce many different instruments or component parts, including entire saxophones.23 Such instruments are once again at the cutting edge of manufacturing technology, although, at the time of writing, as with Grafton 10265, they remain somewhat marginalized in the world of musical performance and have not been widely adopted. Nevertheless, it could be argued that they have a technological kinship with Grafton saxophones, the story of which provides a rich historical resonance to these more recent developments. Another important aspect of the material nature of Grafton 10265 is its whiteness. The usually golden sheen of other saxophones is often part of the instrument’s allure. Gold is the colour most people associate with the instrument, notwithstanding that different coloured lacquers have sometimes been applied to saxophones to enhance their novelty value, particularly during the 1920s. But the body of a Grafton is quite distinctly white, and its visual difference is easily discerned even by those who may know little about the saxophone. This visual incongruity also contributed to some of the antagonistic attitudes shown towards Ornette Coleman. This whiteness stands in contrast to the skin colour of many of jazz’s leading practitioners. Indeed, for much of the 20th century jazz was seen as a

132  Stephen Cottrell predominantly black musical tradition, not only within the USA itself but internationally. Notwithstanding that jazz and dance music were played by both white and black individuals and groups, jazz was most usually identified as an AfricanAmerican music tradition, including by African Americans themselves. As Coleman himself put it, ‘the best statements Negroes have made, of what their soul is, have been on tenor saxophone’ (quoted in Litweiler 1992, 83). And, as I have observed elsewhere (Cottrell 2012, 315–327), the close association of the saxophone with black music culture meant that in the eyes of racist political regimes who were ideologically opposed to nonwhites, the instrument itself was denigrated and sometimes proscribed. The racial politics of jazz have been considered at greater length elsewhere (e.g., Peretti 1992), but it is relevant to note here that the arrival of bebop in the 1940s, as what can now be seen as a more modernist form of jazz involving complex rhythms and harmonies, angular melodic lines, and elevated levels of individual virtuosity, was welcomed in part because it provided a more obviously sophisticated musical language, which counteracted widespread but pernicious stereotypes of African Americans as rural, backward, or ignorant. Bebop provided a mechanism that facilitated cultural resistance against white hegemony (Lott 1988; Porter 2002). Kansas City jazz was very largely built on the skills of black musicians, and Grafton 10265 can be seen as symbolic of these racial tensions. In the legacy images involving the instrument during the period, its whiteness is particularly distinctive. For example, in Harold Robinson’s monochrome photographs of the Massey Hall concert (see Figure 5.2), the white Grafton contrasts notably with the dark stage and background, with the darker hues appearing deliberately enhanced in the printing process. A similar contrast arises in the cover picture used for the Ornette Coleman LP The Shape of Jazz to Come, released in 1959, only six years after the Massey Hall event.24 Again the white Grafton contrasts notably with Coleman’s black sweater and, indeed, his black skin. In both these examples, it is the white saxophone that is subservient to, in fact controlled by, the black performer. The white instrument is now pressed into service at the black man’s behest, and these images provide a symbolic visual record of cultural resistance to white hegemony, musically encoded. This reading of the relationship between the black jazz musician and the white instrument is reinforced by the display of Grafton 10265 in the American Jazz Museum. If the travels of Annie Proulx’s accordion can be read as symbolic of the journeys of America’s immigrant population over the course of the 20th century, then it is not too far-fetched to observe that in the AJM, an institution conceived as a tribute to the black musicians of Kansas City who made the district of 18th and Vine their own, it is the white saxophone that is now isolated, constrained, put on display, and subject to the curious gazes of passers-by. Grafton 10265 has become the exotic other. Divorced from its musical function, it rests in the heart of one of the USA’s most important jazz cities, its white body providing silent testimony to the previous mastery of it by the black musician who brought it to life.

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 133 Conclusion In his ethnographic study of banjo makers, Richard Jones-Bamman notes that ‘Musical instruments are more than mere tools or artefacts. They are inscribed with the stories of those who build, play, collect, or simply preserve them in closets and attics. Each person handling an instrument potentially leaves an imprint—physical, emotional—adding to the tale and often being affected by the experience’ (2017, 208). The way we relate these stories surrounding musical instruments requires us to be attentive to the literary narrative we construct, in a fashion that is sometimes not so very different from the novelist. We are not, of course, simply constructing fantasies, but we are telling stories: to recall Geertz’s phrase, we are the romancers who dream those stories up. Here I am suggesting that focusing on the biography of one specific instrument—telling the reader its story—provides one literary strategy through which we can illuminate the broader social and cultural currents that lend that instrument its significance. The texts produced by the novelist and the scholar have different objectives, but they share many attributes: choosing literary style with respect to characterization and point of view; using specific narrative strategies directed towards a particular readership; dialogically blending presumed ‘facts’ with authorial experience and interpretation; relying on the reader’s imagination to both deconstruct the author’s words and reconstruct their presumed meaning in the reader’s imagination, etc. Once released into the world, the author has little or no influence as to how their text will be understood. As Roland Barthes famously puts it, ‘the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author’ (1977, 148). Yet there are some important differences between novels and scholarly texts, particularly ethnographically grounded narratives pertaining to musical instruments. Both Bates (2012) and Dawe (2007) draw attention to the importance of ethnographic fieldwork to illuminate the ways in which people relate to their instruments, to fully understand the multilayered meanings that accrue and how, as material objects, instruments have agentive powers within the social networks in which they are implicated. The ethnographic present is a rather different place to the fantasy world arising from the relationship between the novelist and their source materials. It is also different from the approach taken in this chapter, which seeks to narrate a story about the biography of a particular instrument based on the reworking of historic data, without the opportunity for ethnographic engagement. Yet all these approaches, to recall Clifford’s words, require the writer not merely to make, but to make things up—to invent things which are not actually real. One of the challenges that fiction writers face is knowing when and how to end a story. Edgecombe notes that literary object biographies often conclude with ‘misprizement and loss of dignity’ (2008, 560), with the object that has been central to the narrative somehow meeting an injurious and often ruinous end. He provides examples from Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde to illustrate the point, and notes that the green accordion that is central to Proulx’s Accordion Crimes meets a similar demise, crushed beneath the wheels of an onrushing truck on a North American highway.

134  Stephen Cottrell It is tempting to see the fate of Grafton 10265 similarly. Obviously, the instrument has not been destroyed. It stands proudly in the AJM, a testament to the covetous acquisition that placed it there as well as to the protective environment that keeps it safe. But entombed within a glass case in the AJM’s main space, it provides another example of the silent objectification of musical instruments that museum incarceration inevitably confers. Bates (2012, 365) describes such museums as ‘mausoleums, places for the display of the musically dead’, and in the sense that the instruments they contain have been rendered mute and removed from the social networks that previously gave them life, this is true. But although Charlie Parker may no longer live in any literal sense, his music does. His recordings ensure that his performances can be resurrected on demand, and as the instrument on which a small number of those recordings were made, Grafton 10265 is itself revivified. Through the time-shifting portals offered by recording technology, it continues to animate social relations by affording material for discussion among jazz aficionados, providing aural models for aspiring jazz players who seek to learn about the technical intricacies of bebop, and supplying musical information to be pored over by critics or scholars. Even in its mute state in the AJM, its agentive powers continue. It draws people to the museum to discuss the instrument’s historical significance, its place in the 18th and Vine district, and its broader relationship with jazz worlds past, present, and future. In a final twist to the Grafton 10265 story, in 2021 the instrument was temporarily loaned to the Disney Company, to be displayed in their EPCOT theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort in Bay Lake, Florida, as part of an exhibition titled ‘The Soul of Jazz: An American Adventure’. The exhibition continues at the time of writing, purporting to offer ‘a musical tour of several influential American cities’.25 Thus another layer of meaning accrues to the instrument. Now it iconically asserts Kansas City’s position in the history of American jazz for those beyond the AJM. Displayed among exhibits denoting other North American cities in which jazz evolved, it inflects social interactions and individual understandings among those who visit EPCOT to mull over the exhibition, just as it had done in the AJM. But since visitors to the resort are drawn in part through their identification with globally recognized animated characters such as Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and a host of modern equivalents, perhaps the instrument itself and the man who played it are now projected into this popular culture imaginarium. The interactions provoked by the Grafton are now components of a larger panorama of modern American identity shaped by negotiations which freely commingle subject and object, fact and fiction, and memory and imagination. These ongoing discourses continue to inform our engagement with Grafton 10265, and as they evolve so too do the meanings we attach to this humble plastic saxophone. We thus retain a dialogic relationship with the instrument. As the philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) would have it, the Grafton can be understood to be one link in a chain of interconnected events that stretch back into the past and project into the future. Our understandings of the instrument and its significance

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 135 are constantly evolving. The nature of its iconicity is continually being remade, forged from the ongoing interaction of myriad events and the discourses in which they are situated. Or, to put it another way, Grafton 10265 lives. Notes 1 I am grateful to Petter Frost Fadnes and Tom Perchard for their insightful comments on a draft of this chapter. 2 In October 2017, Kansas City, Missouri, was also designated a “Creative City” by ­UNESCO in recognition of its musical heritage. 3 See, for example, Driggs and Haddix (2006) and Russell (1971). 4 The city of Kansas is divided by the Missouri River and thus split between the states of Kansas and Missouri. 5 These patents were lodged at the Patent Office in London: Provisional Specifications Nos. 604,407 and 604,418 were applied for on 14 December 1945, with Complete Specifications for both patents being lodged on 13 December 1946 and 13 January 1947 respectively. These were finally granted on 2 July 1948. 6 Patent Number 604,407, 1945, 2. 7 ‘A New Use for Moulded Plastics’, The Times, 30 December 1950, 4. 8 https://www.proquest.com/docview/2002723814?accountid=14510&pq-origsite=summon (last accessed 19 December 2021). See also (Sparke 1993) and (Lees-Maffei and Fallan 2013). 9 See Melody Maker, 20 May 1950, 2. I am grateful to Petter Frost Fadnes for bringing this to my attention. 10 It might be noted that David Bowie also played on a Grafton saxophone for a time, ­apparently having been given it by his father on his 14th birthday in 1961. 11 When the supply of Graftons finally faded, Coleman reverted to a brass Selmer instrument, albeit one that was lacquered white. 12 According to the liner notes accompanying the album Charlie Parker, Boston, 1952 (UPCD 27.42). 13 22 February 1953 at Club Kavakos, Washington, and 9 May 1953 at Birdland in New York City. Details taken from discussion thread at http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/ topic/27379-why-did-bird-play-a-plastic-saxophone/ (last accessed 11 September 2021). 14 https://www.masseyhallandroythomsonhall.com/our-history/masseyhall/jazz-storiesat-massey-hall/. The picture used is one taken by Harold Robinson. Many of the photos taken can be found in Miller 1989. See also Figure 5.2. 15 There are various uploads of this recording on the Internet. See, for example, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XSo_lK9Qto (last accessed 9 September 2021). 16 I am grateful to Alan John Ainsworth for bringing this reference to my attention. 17 A video of this performance can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= MjY1NPUUp9U (last accessed 19 December 2021). 18 The Times, 9 September 1994, 5. 19 See https://www.coltranechurch.org/ (last accessed 11 September 2021). 20 The phrase ‘Bird Lives’ was later appropriated for the title of a biography of Parker (Russell 1996) as well as several albums by other musicians by way of tribute. 21 ‘Festival in London’, made by the Crown Film Unit for the Central Office of Information, 1951, 4’50” to 5’10”. The film may be freely streamed from https://player.bfi.org.uk/ free/film/watch-festival-in-london-1951-online (last accessed 9 September 2021). 22 ‘A new use for moulded plastics’, The Times, 30 December 1950, 4. 23 Examples of 3-D printed saxophones can be found at http://www.vibratosax.com/index. php, and https://uk.3dsystems.com/blog/2014/08/worlds-first-3d-printed-saxophone, among others (last accessed 17 September 2021).

136  Stephen Cottrell 24 Copies of this album cover are widely available on the Internet. See, for example, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shape-Jazz-Come-Ornette-Coleman/dp/B000002I4W. 25 https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2021/02/experience-the-soul-of-jazz-an-american-adventure-beginning-today-at-epcot/ (last accessed 8 October 2021).

Bibliography Bakhtin, M. M. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana Press. Bates, Eliot. 2012. ‘The Social Life of Musical Instruments’. Ethnomusicology 56: 363–95. Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Clifford, James, and George E. Marcus (Eds.). 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Cottrell, Stephen. 2012. The Saxophone. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Crow, Bill. 1992. From Birdland to Broadway. New York: Oxford University Press. Dawe, Kevin. 2005. ‘Symbolic and Social Transformation in the Lute Cultures of Crete: Music, Technology and the Body in a Mediterranean Society’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 37: 58–68. ———. 2007. Music and Musicians in Crete: Performance and Ethnography in a Mediterranean Island Society. Lanham, Md., Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press. Driggs, F., and C. Haddix. 2006. Kansas City Jazz: From Ragtime to Bebop—A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning. 2008. ‘Narrative Structure in Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes’. English Studies 89: 552–70. Fisher, Tom. 2013. ‘A World of Colour and Bright Shining Surfaces: Experiences of Plastics After the Second World War’. Journal of Design History 26: 285–303. Geertz, Clifford. 1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Jones-Bamman, Richard. 2017. Building New Banjos for an Old-Time World. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Lees-Maffei, Grace, and Kjetil Fallan. 2013. Made in Italy: Rethinking a Century of Italian Design. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1986. The Raw and the Cooked. London: Penguin Books. Litweiler, John. 1992. Ornette Coleman: The Harmolodic Life. London: Quartet Books. Lopate, Phillip. 2013. To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction. New York: Free Press. Lott, Eric. 1988. ‘Double V, Double-Time: Bebop’s Politics of Style’. Callaloo 11: 597–605. Miller, Mark. 1989. Cool Blues: Charlie Parker in Canada 1953. London, Ontario: Nightwood Editions. Nettl, Bruno. 1995. Heartland Excursions: Ethnomusicological Reflections on Schools of Music. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Nora, Pierre. 1984. Les Lieux de Mémoire. Paris: Gallimard. Peretti, Burton W. 1992. The Creation of Jazz: Music, Race, and Culture in Urban America. Urbana, IL and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. Porter, Eric. 2002. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists. Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA, London: University of California Press.

Charlie Parker, Massey Hall, and Grafton 10265 137 Proulx, Annie. 1996. Accordion Crimes. London: Fourth Estate. Reisner, Robert George. 1975. Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker. New York: Da Capo Press. Russell, Ross. 1971. Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest. Berkeley, CA, Los ­Angeles, CA: University of California Press. ———. 1996. Bird Lives: The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker. New York: Da Capo Press. Small, Christopher. 1987. ‘Performance as Ritual: Sketch for an Enquiry into the True ­Nature of a Symphony Concert’. In Avron Levine White (Ed.), Lost in Music: Culture, Style and the Musical Event. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Sparke, Penny. 1993. The Plastics Age: From Bakelite to Beanbags and Beyond. Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press.

6

What’s in a Name? Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar André J. P. Elias

Introduction Mohan Veena, Satvik Veena, Hansa Veena, Shankar Veena, Siddha Veena, Gyan Veena, Kachhapi Veena, Vishwa Veena, Swar Ragini Veena, Saraswani Veena … these are all names of a new generation of Indian instruments. Generically identified as Hindustani slide-guitars, each fanciful name adds a modifier to the Sanskrit word for lute, imbuing each object with symbolism from ancient traditions of South Asian slide-instruments. These monikers profoundly affect a performer’s career in ways that combine marketing and authenticity with an aura of spirituality and invention. The modern veena takes many forms and is produced in collaboration between performers and instrument makers, all styled inventors who have worked tirelessly and creatively to balance the structure, technique, and sound of modern instruments in traditional classical genres like Hindustani and Carnatic music. The construction of instrument mythologies has catapulted the careers of many players who sometimes promote narratives of divinely guided organological creativity. Ancient paintings, the parting of the Ganges, visions of water pouring down the four sides of Mt Kailash from far above in the sky-chariot pushpaka vimana, the goddess descending from the heavens offering the axe of wisdom in the morning over Kanchenjunga; some exaggeration is not far off the narratives devised from visions of musical genesis, yet I am also concerned with the sawdust reality of instrument makers toiling in humble workshops. The luthier gives form and function to an instrument, refining it according to desired aesthetics, and providing performers the tools with which to express their most authentic selves. A focus on makers resonates with other recent scholarship on organology (Pollens 2017; Jones-Bamman 2017), which seeks to demystify the genesis, production, and maintenance of musical instrument designs without losing sight of the individuals responsible for creative and artistic morphological adaptations. Many Hindustani slide-guitarists readily admit their dependence on their luthier to keep their custom instrument in top performance condition, yet few give details about the maker or company that creates their instruments, preferring to focus on the specifications of playing technique and narratives that claim divine inspiration.1 Previous academic research on the Hindustani slide-guitar (Clayton 2001; Sontakke 2015) also pays little attention to how and by whom these iconic DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-12

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar 139 instruments were created. The skilled luthiers who design the instruments are often lost, as if slide-guitars are created by nameless workers on a factory line. Some luthiers are even contractually obliged to remain silent about their modifications due to competition over intellectual property claims managed by powerful players. The sensitivity of the subject created divisions within the community, polarizing the field and creating political contentions between the foremost practitioners of the instrument, with the voiceless luthiers often caught in the middle. My ethnographic research on the Hindustani slide-guitar began in 2010 and covered Jaipur, Delhi, and Kolkata. This experience revealed a complex web of community relationships, fierce competition, brilliant musicians, and inventors who have faced significant challenges over their careers. Much of my time has been spent with instrument makers, documenting the process of construction, the careful choice and seasoning of woods, and the constant creative developments achieved in the dialogue between performer and luthier (Figure 6.1). This chapter draws from interviews, participant observation, and theoretical work to outline the symbolic and political power enacted through the process of creative naming and design of instruments. The truth behind the creation of many of these instruments is contested, becoming more obscure with each passing year due to shifting attitudes and public pressure. This project attempts to balance an understanding of the reality of these instruments with an analysis of the myth making which often surrounds them. The Hindustani slide-guitar can be situated within a creative hybrid cultural space where localized definitions of acoustics and performance appeal to both traditional mystical and modern scientific aesthetics. But this image is blurred by

Figure 6.1 Hindustani slide-guitar in construction alongside tools and Kali statue, Conchord Guitar Factory, Ultadanga district, Kolkata, India, 2016.

140  André J. P. Elias luthiers and players who continue to develop the instrument’s structure and performance techniques while contributing to narratives of divine resonance. Here I theorize the aura surrounding these instruments and analyze how spiritual and cultural nationalism fuels the adaptation and acceptance of the slide-guitar, as evidenced by its appearance as a lead instrument in a 2012 remake of India’s national song ‘Vande Mataram’, produced by Bikram Ghosh and featuring one of the most prominent Hindustani slide-guitarists, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. My examination of the national song’s history and motherland symbolism only tangentially emphasizes the importance of Bhatt and his new instrument’s integration into the pantheon of Indian classical instruments (Elias 2017). His adaptation represents both a morphological and conceptual development far more transformative than what has occurred to any other instrument in India. From within a small instrument-making and playing community, Hindustani slide-guitars seem to have inspired a flood of naming and narrative building in the 1990s, garnering international attention and riding a wave of cultural change. The slide-guitar in India is an instrument in a constant state of development, making it an ideal subject for theoretical analysis within an emerging field of critical organology that addresses the social and political aspects of instrument creation, the creative byproducts of cultural exchange, and the effects of spirituality and cultural nationalism on these small musical economies. This chapter proceeds with a short historical overview of the slide-guitar in South Asia followed by theoretical perspectives on the value of the authentic voice in performance, which I argue is at the crux of the instrument’s global popularity. Following this, I consider modern Hindu nationalism, gender roles, and myth making, which have catalyzed the instrument’s adaptation, creating the political context for claims of organological genesis and appeals to spiritualism. I also focus on the specifics of performers, their instruments, the work of luthiers, and the ways in which careers have been developed alongside the form, function, and symbolism of these Hindustani slideguitars. I conclude by focusing on the power of novelty, invention, and innovation at the heart of the slide-guitar’s diverse morphology. Navigating cultural exchange—Hawaiian slide-guitar in India The slide-guitar arrived in India through British colonial era maritime economies, which brought musicians and instruments from around the world into contact with urban cultures of South Asia. The slide-guitar’s arrival in India is widely attributed to the Hawaiian performer Tau Moe (1908–2004), who spent time in Kolkata between the late 1920s and early 1940s, inspiring locals to use the instrument for their own creative expression (Sontakke 2015, 54).2 While colonial oldies and Hawaiian tunes were popular, the slide-guitar found its greatest success in the interpretation of modern Bengali songs (a genre called adhunik gaan) and music by revered poet/composers Rabindranath Tagore (a genre called Rabindra sangeet) and Kazi Nazrul Islam (a genre called Nazrul giti). Amateur historian Probir Kumar De spoke at length with me about his research, detailing the early Indian performers who studied with Tau Moe in the 1930s and

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar 141 then adapted the instrument for Bengali music and then film music in the 1960s.3 The shift from Western music to Bengali music was gradual, beginning with Moe’s student Garney Nyss, who accumulated a vast repertoire of Hawaiian music and sang with the popular group the Aloha Boys, becoming a regular on All India Radio Channel B, which played only Western music. The next generation of Indian Hawaiian slide-guitar players included Sujit Nath, Batuk Nandy, Kazi Aniruddho, Gautam Dasgupta, Van Shipley, and Sunil Ganguly. During the 1950s and 1960s, many of the Kolkata-based artists rose to fame playing the music of Bengali poet genres, where the sound of the Hawaiian slide-guitar acted as a proxy for vocal melodies that articulated the often political and philosophical topics of Bengali poetic song. Soon Bengali and Hindi films began to feature Hawaiian slide-­guitars, reaching their peak in the 1970s.4 The sound of the Hawaiian slide-guitar played in an Indian style continues to be a nostalgic reference to this period of filmmaking, where it was often paired with romantic themes and the voice of female protagonists. The first player of slide-guitar in the Hindustani classical style was Brij Bhushan Kabra, whose 1967 recording Call of the Valley showcased his ability to play classical and light-classical music on the instrument (Troutman 2016, 125). According to his disciple Debasis Chakroborty, Kabra faced criticism from conservative gatekeepers of the classical genre, encountering institutional barriers, economic hardship, and lack of recognition as an artist of traditional music.5 At first, the tonal and structural limitations were extensive, including the lack of resonant sustain, tonal stability with a slide, and speed. There were no standards for technique or materials, as evidenced by the range of slide and plectrum types that are still used today. Kabra went on to great success, inspiring and teaching the next generation of players and establishing a legacy of slide-guitar connected to the Maihar gharana, a style of playing made famous by Hindustani music luminaries like Allaudin Khan, Ali Akbar Khan, and Ravi Shankar. Kabra’s playing was key to the instrument’s success in crossing genres, a feat made possible because of his ability to articulate an authentic Indian voice appropriate for the tradition of Hindustani classical music. The voice of Saraswati—mimicry, gender, and modernity Mimicry was a key component of the slide-guitar’s global success since culturally specific vocal inflections were easily rendered with the slide implement in diverse musical contexts, from Cantonese opera, southern Vietnamese amateur music (Nhạc tài tử), Burmese modern-traditional music (kalabaw), and both Hindi and Bengali poetic songs and film music. In copying the voice, the slide-guitar produced expressive nuances that conjured poetry in the minds of the experienced listener or could even be mistaken for the true human voice from afar. The value of instruments as signifiers for language and emotion as a result of their uncanny vocal qualities is a topic not uncommon to scholars of organology (e.g., Cottrell 2012, 186–187, 338–340). Studies regarding vocal anthropology confirm how the voice, and expressive and accurate reproductions of it, are powerful markers

142  André J. P. Elias of authenticity and identity (Du Perron 2002; Rahaim 2012; Weidman 2011). Of course, the listener is the arbiter of these associations, yet the slide-guitar has endured the process of cultural exchange and integration better and more quickly than most foreign instruments in India. Fiercely guarded, the culture of classical music in India is a vibrant tradition that has developed in parallel with the moulding of Hindu national identity. Great music theorists of the early 20th century codified the system to modernize performance and pedagogical practices (Bakhle 2008). High standards were developed with government support, and criticism came swiftly to foreign instruments deemed to be damaging to the rich musical traditions of South Asia. For example, while the violin earned praise in South Indian Carnatic music (Weidman 2006), the harmonium was reviled and banned from state-sponsored All India Radio for 30 years (Rahaim 2011). Pitch limitations were at the root of the harmonium controversy because the crucial microtones lying beyond the equally tempered Western 12-tone scale were unavailable from the instrument. Vocalists found the harmonium especially vexing as their melodic precision was jarred by its constraints. This was not the case with the Hawaiian slide-guitar, as early performers demonstrated pitch-based and tonal capabilities which surpassed even traditional instruments in replicating the nuances of human voice. While morphological experimentation continued, playing raga music with a slide on the guitar opened up myriad new techniques that have contributed to the way artists have defined their musical identities and found their authentic voice within a rather conservative musical genre. Connecting theories about cultural nationalism with ideas about the Indian voice, Amanda Weidman (2006, 5) noted that in ‘twentieth-century South India the voice came to be associated with Indian-ness and not Western-ness, originality and not reproduction, humanity and not mechanization, tradition and not modernity’. This culturally ubiquitous perspective inserted the politics of voice into discourses that distinguish ideas of naturalness and spirituality from the artificial and the secular. Weidman argued that the violin’s success was due to its tonal parallels with the female voice, its precise articulation, and endless sustain via bowing techniques, while simultaneously having clear associations with Western music and modernity. This conceptual midpoint complicates the otherwise simplistic dichotomy put forth by postcolonial theorists, including Partha Chatterjee’s (1993) bifurcated sense of nationalism, which maps the traditional to India and spirituality, and the modern to the West and technology. The divide between spirituality and technology remains a controversial theorization in the 21st century and certainly falls short when considering the slide-guitar’s development. The instrument makers I encountered were always adapting the best technology, using acoustic and electrical components from around the world along with modern instrument-building techniques on instruments that operate in largely traditional contexts. Conversely, the most famous players are often revered as spiritual figures, projecting a quasidivine status while also promoting themselves as innovators and inventors. For them, spirituality is a technology in itself: to promote tantalizing narratives that indisputably connect the performer with the creation of their instrument and the performance techniques they have trademarked.

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar 143 A history of gender roles in Indian performance cultures also engages with the traditional—modern and spirituality—technology binaries. The postcolonial cultural shift which mapped the feminine to the traditional and the masculine to the modern can be identified across a range of cultural practices, from music to clothing, education, and career choice. During the early 20th century, Westernized Indian women were subject to ridicule and abuse for what was ostensibly seen as a betrayal of traditional gender roles, breached by any activities that resembled European customs (Chatterjee 1989, 625). Additionally, the nationalist drive began to shift the site of Indian classical music from the court system into middle-class households (Subramanian 2006), where women were actively encouraged to take up traditional instruments like the sitar, sarod, or veena. Interestingly, the slide-guitar became a unique choice during this time for women performers who, in Kolkata and other Bengali enclaves like Varanasi, were performing film songs, Rabindra sangeet, and Hindustani music. It seems that the Hawaiian slide-guitar didn’t inspire the prevalent critiques of the cosmopolitan madams, and perhaps the instrument’s ability to articulate an authentic Indian voice played a large part of its acceptance. Clayton (2001, 188) notes that it became ‘de rigueur’ in the 1950s for middle-class Bengali women to learn slide-guitar to mark their maturity and suitability for marriage. This was corroborated by many of my interviewees, who frequently pointed to the women in their families as the primary slide-guitarists of the household, often using the instrument as an aid to vocal practice. By entering India through Bengali musical subcultures in the mid-20th century, the slide-guitar conceptually occupied an in-between cultural space much like it does in Burmese traditions, where its prominence in the kalabaw genre of the 1930–1960s is classified as traditional–modern (Elias 2020). Even this sort of classification might encounter some resistance, as the status of the Hindustani slideguitar is becoming more associated with traditional culture through the efforts of prominent players of the last 50 years. The continuous expansion of hybrid spaces and cosmopolitan values in India suggests the need to renegotiate the labels of modernity and tradition, because the success of instruments like the slide-guitar depends on new notions of authenticity that are based on an evolving symbolic voice. The Indian context offers a unique historical background for doing so, where representation has been shaped by various social structures, including the Indian state: the latter’s secularizing policies during the Nehru era (1947–1964) reflected postcolonial nationalist movements, while more recent antisecularizing impulses under Bharatiya Janata Party dominance (1996–current) have altered ideas about contemporary Indian identity. These pendulum swings are important cultural shifts that have had undeniable effects on the market for classical, popular, and folk performing arts in India. Secularism has become a major contention in the current Indian political sphere, pushing some artists to present a more overt spiritualism and nationalism. Despite often being discussed as a nonreligious but spiritual artistic practice, Hindustani music typically has overt Hindu spiritual elements, which were emphasized by influential pedagogue and theorist V. D. Paluskar in the early days of India’s independence

144  André J. P. Elias movement (Bakhle, 2008). A common ritual and felicitation at the beginning of performances often features invocations of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and music, which connect a performance to potent and profitable symbolism, framing divine inspiration within the context of novelty, innovation, and invention. Other deities also occupy this ritual space, including Lord Shiva in the form of Natyaraja and Ganesha, the elephant-headed god. Other nondeist practices are also common, such as lighting an oil lamp or presenting flowers. Yet, there is an overall atmosphere in Indian classical music that emphasizes the spiritual and the traditional, so much so that performers are often reticent about revealing elements of their performance that are modern additions. Hindustani slide-guitarists operate within this field of cultural production, contending with Hindu-normative rituals and conservatism that sometimes compels them to hide the technological advances that constitute their traditional sound. Initial rejection of the slide-guitar in classical music was common, yet with its symbolic, functional, and structural modifications, the instrument has become famous in India and garnered international accolades for performers of traditional and modern music. Furthermore, new names such as those noted previously actively work to purge any sense of foreignness from the instrument, connecting the new models of Hindustani slide-guitar to culturally salient senses of history and myth making. Theorizing the Hindustani slide-guitar— cultural capital and adaptation In India’s climate of Hindu supremacy, the slide-guitar was reinvented to connect with an idealized past with overt spiritual aesthetics (see for example Figure 6.2). Coterminous with changes in Indian political culture, the success of this process can be understood with ideas drawn from cultural theory. Pierre Bourdieu’s (Bourdieu and Johnson 1993) concept of cultural capital can be useful to recognize how quasidevotional pedagogical practices and the use of traditional symbolism can advance the careers of Hindustani slide-guitarists. Drawn from an economic model, cultural capital refers to social (rather than financial) assets, which through education and cultural influence promote upward social mobility and, by extension, economic gains. One example of the accumulation of cultural capital arises from the traditional pedagogical system of Hindustani music, the guru-shishya parampara, which reinforces a spiritual connection between teacher and student that engenders a unique social relationship, inculcating the student into a culture of devotion. In the past, a student may have been expected to clean the house, cook, and do errands for the teacher, and there are still elements of service attached to this tradition of learning Hindustani music. Additionally, lineage remains of utmost importance, and this is often one of the first questions asked of a performer’s background, along with how many hours a day they do riyaz, a devotional concept of practice (Neuman 1990). As integral aspects of classical training, the guru-shishya parampara and riyaz are practices through which cultural capital is seen to accrue and which are commonly discussed in the Hindustani slide-guitar community.

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar  145

Figure 6.2 Siddha Veena next to a Saraswati shrine, Conchord Guitar Factory, Ultadanga district, Kolkata, India, 2016.

In addition to the lineage of pedagogy, Hindustani slide-guitarists have also had to contend with the lineage of their slide-guitar model. The instrument name and visual brilliance has a value in marketing while at the same time dividing the community between rival clans and disrupting standardization in performance techniques. Programmers of traditional music events tend to favour the Sanskrit monikers, and audiences often balk at Western-looking instruments compared to ones properly adorned with traditional woodworking design. This balance of novel and traditional is further complicated by performance practice, where creativity and differentiation from one’s guru and peers are paramount to becoming a renowned instrumentalist. As a tradition with an exceptionally high degree of improvisation, creativity is easy to witness in the performance hall, yet difficult to find in the workshop. Fine-grained analysis can only be derived from ethnographic and organological data, but the veracity of genesis narratives and claims to innovation can also be suspect. Visually, the slide-guitar has acquired many of the stylistic elements of traditional Indian classical instruments, most noticeably in the Devanagari symbols and decorative carvings that ornament the body of the guitar.6 Specialists who design patterns on other traditional instruments like the sitar, sarod, and veena often craft

146  André J. P. Elias

Figure 6.3 Hindustani slide-guitar being prepared for carving of traditional designs, ­Conchord Guitar Factory, Ultadanga district, Kolkata, India, 2016.

the slide-guitar’s detailed ornaments (Figure 6.3). Structural adornments add value, especially in a tradition that generally regards instruments as sacred. Since only a few decades ago the slide-guitar resembled a typical Western guitar with raised strings, these visual modifications are attractive additions that distance the object from its foreignness. The slide-guitar has acquired a new structure, with many additional strings that offer a timbral quality reminiscent of other traditional Indian classical instruments that have drone strings, such as the sitar or sarangi. These additional strings produce a shimmering sound through sympathetic strings that resonate when striking the main strings. Globally, this sound is recognized as Indian, although in the West it has also been associated with ‘other-worldliness’ and psychedelia from its early popularity in late 1960s American counterculture. The system of slide-guitar playing, which includes a slide implement and finger picks, allows the player to closely mimic melodic flourishes in tune with aesthetics based on vocal styles called gayaki. Largely through the efforts of musical experts in consultation with master luthiers like Bhaba Sindhu Biswas, the body structure and sound hole evolved in the 1990s, and a meticulous exploration of local tone-woods for Hindustani tonal aesthetics has continued since then, resulting in dramatic variations to structure and material composition. Symbolically, the Hindustani slide-guitar represents the intersection of, on the one hand, Indian innovation and, on the other, traditional music standards, obscuring any foreignness by taking on Indic visuals, sonic signatures, and Sanskrit names. A great variation of names gives a sense that each slide-guitar player is

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar 147 performing on an exclusive instrument, thereby enhancing their own uniqueness.7 Rather than competing solely on their performance merit, many slide-guitarists combine elements of style, playing technique, and personality with their conceptions of their customized instrument models. It is a new way of marketing Indian classical music, which emphasizes individuals who entangle their identities with their unique instruments. Featuring only slight variations, these inventions are a means for performers to tap into a spiritual and traditional dimension as a promotional tactic. While the slide-guitar’s numerous fancy monikers and structural configurations have made it difficult for the instrument to be accepted into ordinary music curricula—through which it might have been more widely disseminated— the names have allowed performers to create a spiritual and cultural aura around themselves and the tools of their trade. The aura and myth making Walter Benjamin’s notion of the aura can also help us understand the Hindustani slide-guitar’s evolution. The aura refers to the qualities of an object or person that are reconstituted via symbolic associations with a time period or even mythological era, filtered through a contemporary understanding that imagines an idealized past or future. The essence of something that references another time, the aura creates continuity with the present. To use an example from Indian pop music competitions, consider the efforts contestants make to exactly replicate the range, tonal quality, and expression of the legendary Bollywood playback singer Lata Mangeshkar. Across competitions such as Indian Idol, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, and Sing Dil Se,8 the ideal vocal style for women has consistently been an emulation of Mangeshkar’s resonant soprano, which has featured in over 27,000 recordings since the 1940s (Desai-Stephens 2017). Considered a benchmark in Bollywood song, to reference her in one’s own style is tantamount to connecting to an idealized, classical era in playback singing. Singers capable of achieving this ideal reconstitute the aura of this time in their own performance repertoire. The aura, while explained by Benjamin using visual symbolism, easily transfers to sound production, creating a reference to another time and place and generating either a sense of nostalgia or an aspiration for the future. As in the Lata Mangeshkar example, sound constitutes an aura based on timbres, melodies, rhythms, and lyrical content. Timbres that evoke tradition provide powerful sonic cues, appropriate for classical music performance. For example, adding sympathetic strings to the slide-guitar increases tonal sustain, elevating it from a light music instrument to a classical instrument. For a knowledgeable audience, melodies and rhythms in the form of famous compositions can reference the past grandeur of the mid-20th century golden age of Hindustani classical music. Lyrical content has been precisely articulated by the slide-guitars in a range of poetic song genres and film music that harken back to the 1930s–1960s and the development of modern cultural identities. The aura effectively encapsulates the relationship between history or mythology and present-day displays of performative innovation and invention.

148  André J. P. Elias In his analysis of visual representations, Benjamin emphasized the power of images to represent symbolic associations, particularly of modernity. Modernity is understood as part of late-capitalist ideology that promotes consumption of symbols and objects that are considered global and novel. The original symbol’s distance from the consumer imbues it with a sense of reverence or ‘magic’ that reflects an increase in symbolic capital. For example, the older an instrument seems, the more valuable it might be in the eyes of the consumer. The quality of ‘ancientyet-modern’ in the realm of Hindustani slide-guitar replicates itself with each new incarnation, becoming further legitimized by public acceptance as in the example of the most popular model, the mohan veena. In parallel, performers become more visible and famous when they promote traditional values that are popular in the public sphere, such as support of nationalist and religious events and movements. As such, Hindu-centric politics quickly become an ally of any performer willing to carry the torch of tradition, despite the actual newness of their medium of expression. Benjamin’s theorizing of the aura also implies that reproductions have an eroded value. Yet, as new technology and production standards are used to express traditional ideas, populations who value those ideas renew their interest. New theories about mass-media globalization point to the ‘recoding’ of the aura through a union of those magical, spiritual qualities that reveal technology’s power to reinterpret and represent cultural identity. Applying the aura’s reconstitution function to the highly modern, technological, and deeply spiritual representations in Hindu nationalist media, Sandeep Dasgupta writes that: The reactivation of the aura of the work of art in mass-mediated society is not the same aura as in antiquity or the classical age. However, this ­dimension is reinvigorated not by its proximity to a fixed time and place but rather by its relationship to the particular power relations within which it is re-embedded. It is in the reception of an artwork that the aura can be reactivated, as a result of the particular symbolic meanings that accrue to it and that are related to its subject matter and its mode of presentation at a specific historical moment. (Dasgupta 2006, 256) Dasgupta emphasizes the power structures that mediate the reactivation of the aura, elevated through public discourse to accrue additional symbolic capital. Just as mass media and technology can reactivate the aura of mythological stories, so each new incarnation of slide-guitar has the potential to reactivate the aura of ancient Indian slide-instruments like the vichitra veena or the gottuvadhyam. The invention of new instruments with characteristically traditional sounds breaks down the temporal distance from their traditional reference, enhanced by narratives of lineage and divine inspiration. Specialized names, structural adaptations, and brilliant playing have achieved this reactivation, resulting in the legitimization by Hindu dominant popular culture and politics. Power mediates the promotion and reception of revamped symbolism, establishing a connection to an idealized

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar 149 past that is politically and financially salient in the present. Hindustani classical music, as a field of cultural production, rarely experiences innovations like the slide-guitar because new musical mediums must contain the appropriate structural, sonic, and symbolic qualities. Elegantly explained by revised conceptions of the aura, the evolution and myth making associated with the Hindustani slide-guitar is intimately intertwined with developments in Indian culture, economics, and political life. Hindu nationalism and organological genesis With the economic liberalization of the early 1990s, India became one of the world’s fastest-growing economic powerhouses. Concurrently, the Bhāratiya Jānata Parishād and other right-wing Hindu political groups rose to national prominence, resulting in a broad reach for spokespeople of Hindu-centric Indian nationalism. The late 20th century, leading up to the election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, has arguably been just the beginning of a new golden age of Hinduism, both politically and culturally. It is no accident that the naming issue of Hindustani slide-guitars emerged right at this time. The ubiquity of new media and technologies employed to retell stories from the Hindu epics, including the Ramāyana and the Māhabhārata, reinforce new senses of Indian modernity and reactivate the aura of Hindu mythology. Indian-ness is being redefined away from the country’s pluralistic past and into a more monolithic Hindu religious unity. Following India’s rise in the global economy, this trajectory of consolidation, glorification, and modernization has surfaced in all aspects of Indian popular culture, promoting the reconstruction of a Hindu-centric Indian subcontinent. One strong indication of conservative Hindu dominance of political culture has been the revisionist histories imposed on the education system and a rampant antiintellectualism in public and academic discourse in India (Davies 2005; Sen 2005; Thapar 2014). These revisions, while rhetorically positioned against the epistemological damage done by Western historiographies, do their own work to privilege right-wing Hindu ideologies. One common strategy focuses on the genesis of South Asian cultural objects and ideas. This nationalist stream of historiography has been described as sanskritization (Srinivas 1952, 32) or indigenization (Mahbubani 2008).9 These problematic campaigns claim, for example, that the Indian subcontinent was the birthplace of the Indo-Aryan language and culture or that Islamic cultures did not contribute positively to the development of arts and culture in South Asia. Fantastic claims of populist demagoguery abound, such as ancient India pioneering cosmetic surgery (as evidenced by the Ganesha mythos),10 or that South Asia had flying machines as far back as 7000 BCE.11 Mythology has informed public discourse in a way that sanctions the reactivation of the aura for those who choose to tap into its power. In this sensationalist and nationalist climate, the guitar itself has been assigned Indian origins based on the linguistic construction from Sanskrit, where ‘gīt’ is translated as ‘singing’ or ‘song’, and ‘tār’ is translated as ‘string’.12 Given the common roots of the Indo-European family of languages, this translation may be

150  André J. P. Elias accurate, but the guitar’s Indian origins are unsubstantiated. More accurately, the tradition of South Asian slide-instruments, like the aforementioned vichitra veena and gottuvadhyam, inspired by the possibilities of Western guitar making, created the Hindustani slide-guitar, thus marking its origins unmistakably in modern India. Origins of the slide technique itself have also been claimed in the murky history of global exchange. This account joins other narratives from Hawaii (Clayton 2001; Hood 1983; Troutman 2013) and African American origins (Evans 1970; Handy 1944; Payne n.d.), made legitimate through unfalsifiability. The same ideology that claims Indian genesis of the slide-guitar resonates with the debate over Aryan and Sanskritic cultural origins, colouring the way the instrument is presented today as part of a culturewide movement to accommodate Hindu-centric ideologies into a modern Indian identity (Dhavalikar 2006; Witzel 2005).13 The Hindustani slide-guitar’s morphological and veena-nymic evolution can be observed in parallel with India’s political history, as the instrument symbolizes changes in the social and political landscape, cosmopolitan formations in urban centres, and—as a byproduct of generational changes in musical consumption—an increasingly connected and globalized economy. This timeframe of the late 20th century encompasses the different social, political, and economic climates in which the guitar, compared to other Western instruments in India, experienced functional, symbolic, and material or structural adaptation. When the violin and harmonium emerged in South Asia, what would become the nation of India was still under colonial control, and modern Indian culture was in the process of constructing its own sense of national identity. In contrast, by the time the slide-guitar entered Hindustani classical music, India had become sovereign, seen the rise of Hindu nationalist politics, and experienced economic liberalization. Without losing sight of the slide-guitar’s story in this web of theoretical perspectives and narrative building, the next section will emphasize the players, the audiences, and the instrument makers responsible for reconstituting the aura and enhancing the value of the Hindustani slide-guitar in today’s classical, fusion/world, and light music genres. The individuals I worked with in Kolkata and Jaipur have different aspirations for the future of their instrument, but many have resisted the tide of Hindu-centric revisionism and presented alternatives to the symbolic representation of the instrument. The Hindustani slide-guitar’s successful adaptation to Indian classical music has been a result of the efforts of pivotal innovators who reinvented the slide-guitar at a historical juncture in the late 20th century when both local and global markets were receptive to a new type of guitar hero. India’s guitar heroes What’s in a name? Why do labels and titles have such a profound effect on the success of a musical career? How much of a musical invention is marketing, or constituted from parts of a previous idea, or something truly novel? How do cultural values shape the process of innovation? These initial questions scribbled in my fieldwork notes were inspired by a performance I attended in 2010, at Jaipur’s

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar  151 Jawahar Kala Kendra, by the Grammy Award–winning Hindustani music maestro, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt. I interviewed Bhatt in 2014, when we discussed his inspiration for applying the slide technique to a Western steel-string acoustic guitar. While aware of the burgeoning folk and popular music tradition of Bengali slide-guitar making its way into mainstream Indian cinemas by the 1950–1960s, he directed me instead to the artistic traditions of Mughal miniature paintings, Rajasthani court depictions, and artwork that conveyed the mood of Hindustani classical music’s great melodic tradition of ragas and raginis. Among these artworks were images of ancient instruments, one of which was the ancient slide-instrument, the vichitra veena. Bhatt’s point was that he was inspired to play slide to connect with an ancient and regal past of Indic musical creativity. Hailing from a family of court musicians, Bhatt carried with him a legacy that reinforced a connection to tradition while simultaneously striving to create something new. Bhatt also described the years of experimentation, modifying the instrument, using different slide implements from bottles to batteries, and offering his ideas to different makers in the hope of creating an instrument that was not a modification but a creation, with Hindustani musical aesthetics imbued into its very design. It was in the 1980s, after a few prototype designs, that he finally met Kolkata-based luthier Bhaba Sindhu Biswas, who constructed for him an instrument with the necessary modifications and tonal peculiarities featuring additional drone and sympathetic strings typical of classical instruments. It was only in the early 1990s that Bhatt decided to name his instrument mohan veena, and soon afterwards he teamed up with the American musician and songwriter Ry Cooder to produce his breakthrough 1993 recording Meeting by the River, which earned him a Grammy Award. Bhatt’s wielding of the mohan veena under the spotlight of international recognition effectively began the race to invent and name instruments in the Hindustani classical tradition. Other senior players quickly conformed to the naming trend, including Barun Kumar Pal, who first played his hansa veena, constructed in Delhi by Rikhi Ram in the early 2000s. In Kolkata, Grammy-nominated maestro Debashish Bhattacharya developed his own slide-guitar models, including the chaturangui, gandharvi, anandi, and most recently the pushpa veena. Displaying savvy business acumen, he tightly controls the production of new instruments through his Trideb International company and is more engaged in the production of new instruments than any other player. Bhattacharya has meticulously crafted his image, founding the Indian International Guitar Festival (I.I.G.F.) in 2015, which featured great players from Hawaii, paid homage to Brij Bhushan Kabra, and compelled even his rivals to participate. Attending this event many years in a row, I was able to interview dozens of younger slide-guitarists and better understand how the naming trend has affected their community. Lineage remains a strong concern, as does devotion to the guru whose blessed status is wrapped up with the idea of invention. Bhattacharya openly discussed his ‘god-particle’ at a workshop in 2018, which accounts for his dazzling technique and his organological creativity. Players like him have raised the aesthetic, stylistic, and musical qualities of an instrument, yet the figures behind the structural and material adaptations of their instruments—that is, the makers—remain in the shadows.

152  André J. P. Elias

Figure 6.4 Bhaba Sindhu Biswas, Conchord Guitar Factory, Ultadanga district, Kolkata, India, 2016.

One goal is to bring attention to individuals who have faced erasure under the weight of patent battles and marketing narratives, especially master luthier of Conchord Guitars, Bhaba Sindhu Biswas (1955–2020) (Figure 6.4). He was a key figure in adapting the form and materials of the Hawaiian slide-guitar. Biswas’ fame grew through collaborations with practically all the famous performers of the Hindustani slide-guitar, and many would say he was tending the crucible at its invention. In his humble two-room workshop, dozens of specially named Hindustani slide-guitars were born. Almost all professional Hindustani slide-guitarists worked with Biswas, many to design their own custom slide-guitar to name, so that they might take on the aura of authenticity, creativity, invention, and tradition. Often this creative process was completely in the hands of Biswas, as designing new forms was his passion. Over six months in 2014–2015, I documented the organological details of his Hindustani slide-guitars, including measurements, wood qualities, design innovations, and essential materials. Bhaba Sindhu showed me numerous prototypes, from shapes that fused the guitar form with other traditional instruments, to totally experimental designs. At a local lumber yard in Ultadanga, he spoke to me of tone woods and precise material choices and curing techniques that were necessary to produce the appropriate tonal qualities and sustaining power of the instrument necessary for his customers. He also allowed me to document each step of building my own Hindustani slide-guitar, specific to my body size and playing preferences. This treatment was standard for his patrons, but such a narrative also detracts from the image many players desire. As the designer for most

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar  153 of the new successful Hindustani slide-guitar models, Biswas had no control over how his instruments were identified. Once he finished a new design, he moved on to the next project, blending his own ideas with the needs of his patrons. Young and wealthy performers caught on to the naming craze, which provided great business and allowed Biswas and his associates to produce more experimental designs and more intricately adorned visuals on the instrument. Names, novelty, and the new generation The hypercustomization of slide-guitars in India has posed many obstacles to younger generations of players looking to further their skills on slide instruments in the classical genre. The naming issue is at the crux of these new challenges. Bhatt’s and Bhattacharya’s instruments are recognized names, yet other instruments of this ilk, even those generically described as ‘Hindustani slide-guitar’, have not been as successful as the new monikers that reference traditionalism. My primary slideguitar instructor, Rhitom Sarkar, frequently criticized the naming trend, calling it a ‘gimmick’ for ‘cheap popularity’.14 Opposed to alternative names, he believes the instruments should all be called Hindustani slide-guitars when performed in the classical tradition. This is how it was before the 1990s, observable in liner notes to albums by both Vishwa Mohan Bhatt and Debashish Bhattacharya before the naming craze took off. Sarkar mused, ‘If I add one chikari string and the playing technique remains the same, does that mean I can call the instrument something completely different?’15 To Sarkar, the variations in names and string arrangements are merely small differences, and unique instrument names only create confusion, polarizing the field and discouraging young students.16 The naming trends and alliances that fragment the slide-guitar community provide the biggest concern for the new generation of slide-guitarists. Slide-guitarist Deepak Kshirsagar views the distinctions between the slide-guitar models as more symbolic than structural, adding up to nothing more than a promotional scheme that disadvantages players like him who don’t identify with the dominant lineages. Without a guru imparting their style and instrumental namesake, players like Kshirsagar struggle to gain recognition and performance contracts, especially as promoters frequently ask whether he plays mohan veena or chaturangui, to which he replies, ‘Hindustani slide-guitar’. The result is that the naming trend becomes much more attractive to players with no affiliation as they are often better off creating a new instrument of their own in the face of not having a slide-guitar guru to induct them into the supportive community and prestige economy that constitutes the guru-shishya parampara. Some players even talk about modern veena fatigue, as the naming trend floods the market with fancy monikers that lack substantive identification. While the slide-guitar is a comparatively young instrument in the classical genre, the lack of standardization has slowed its integration into conservatory curricula. A guitarist from Bangalore, Mallikarjuna Kolvi, discussed with me his frustrations with his educational aspirations, as he was advised to abandon the slide-guitar for a standard instrument like sitar, sarod, or violin. Despite petitions and searches for other programmes, Kolvi eventually gave up and took private lessons. Institutional

154  André J. P. Elias support is so rare that only one programme at Mangalayatan University, close to Aligarh, has a dedicated Hindustani classical slide-guitar pathway. The programme’s founder, Debasis Chakraborty, remarked that it was a conscious choice to standardize and harken back to a time when special names were irrelevant. A senior student of Brij Bhushan Kabra, Chakraborty recounted a conversation with his guru, asking him, ‘why don’t you name your instrument after yourself? So many of the younger players are doing it these days.’ Chakraborty suggested the brij veena, bhushan veena, kabra veena, and few others before Kabra stopped him to remark, ‘why confuse the situation? After all, it is just a modified slide-guitar.’17 Clearly, the naming trend is not only about performance skills but is also a way to highlight a players’ ingenuity and identity, along with projecting cultural, religious, and national characteristics. A well-known slide-guitar player, Prakash Sontakke, told me that given all the problems engendered by musicians naming their instruments after themselves, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt was an ‘unparalleled genius for first dubbing his slide-guitar the mohan veena’. To tap into the root of the tradition, yet avoid the scrutiny of the conservative gatekeepers of the Indian classical legacy, was key to reviving the entire field of Hindustani classical music. Innovation within tradition has become a new focal point for the longevity of the genre and traditional artists.18 The value of a name, as Sontakke proclaimed, ‘can make or break the career of a slide-guitarist’.19 The prestige of discovery, the supposed flash of genius, and the development of craft skills are all coveted characteristics within a modern performing arts economy. Inventors are central to this narrative because they focus their talents on products that become symbols of cultural development. The ability to create a new design for the slide-guitar and have it successfully played by and associated with a great artist is a rare historical circumstance, considering how often new instruments don’t survive the first generation. A major factor in the perseverance of Bhatt’s mohan veena and Bhattacharya’s slide-guitars is how they have cultivated a strong community around themselves and paid tribute to traditional forms of music with great skill and dedication. This level of creativity has raised the bar to a level that that is intimidating to young players who feel the pressure to be not only great performers, but also inventors. Conclusion The pantheon of Indian classical instruments has slowly expanded through the centuries, but few foreign instruments have become as fully adapted into the genre as the slide-guitar. With structural roots in both the Hawaiian slide-guitar and the classical instruments of South Asia, the names bestowed on each new model project a reconstituted aura with mythological characteristics. The Hindustani slideguitar’s modifications express a clear set of signifiers: not just modern, but also traditional; Western, but highly stylized with visually Indian aesthetics; and a decidedly postcolonial hybrid that has revived international interest in traditional Hindustani classical music. The instrument is a useful case study that defies polarities and simplistic categorization, inhabiting instead a heterogeneous conceptual

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar  155 and cultural space that crosses boundaries and defies the theoretical dichotomy of tradition and modernity which customarily inform contemporary understandings of Indian culture. As India rapidly develops, the Hindustani slide-guitar, more than any other instrument, represents the idea of traditional-modern by being a new, globally recognized product that signifies novelty, innovation, and invention while still operating in a traditional context. It is an object around which intricate promotion strategies, spiritual and nationalist narratives, and contemporary legal battles have become manifested, raising questions about ownership, intellectual property, and organology that are important themes in ethnomusicological research. Notes 1 Conversations between 2014 and 2016 with Siddhartha Banerjee, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, Debasis Chakroborty, Anup Dasgupta, Subhash Ghosh, Mallikarjuna Kolvi, Manish Pingle, Kuntala Roy, Rhitom Sarkar, and Poly Varguese emphasize the importance of Bhaba Sindhu Biswas’ skills and knowledge to create and maintain their instruments. See also http://www.vishwamohanbhatt.com/index.html or http://www.debashishbhattacharya.com/trinity-of-guitars.php (last accessed 30 May 2020). 2 https://scroll.in/article/706145/bridget-moe-the-last-link-in-a-sublime-musical-loopbetween-hawaii-and-india-passes-away (last accessed 30 May 2020). Further documentation about Tau Moe appears on the websites of prominent guitarists, Debashish Bhattacharya (http://www.debashishbhattacharya.com/hindustani-slide-guitar.php) and Bob Brozman (http://www.bobbrozman.com/taumoe.html) (last accessed 30 May 2020). 3 Probir Kumar De, personal communication, November 2015. 4 The following films feature slide-guitar parts that are often integral to the main themes of the films: ‘O Duniya Ke Rakhawale’ (Baiju Bawara 1952); ‘Chalo Dildar Chalo’ (Pakeezah 1972); ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ (Satyam Shivam Sundaram 1978); ‘Thande Thande Pani Se Nahana’ (Pati Patni Aur Wo 1978); ‘Mein Solah Baras Ki tu Satra Baras Ka’ (Karz 1980); and ‘Ishwar Satya Hai’ (Osho Rajneesh 2018). There are many more. 5 Debasis Chakroborty, personal communication, 2015. 6 Devanagari is the script used in many Indic languages, including Sanskrit and Hindi. 7 This naming phenomenon is reminiscent of brass and wind manufacturing in the mid19th century in France (see Haine 1985). 8 These are singing competition reality TV shows produced in Mumbai, India, featuring Indian music from film, folk, and classical genres. Indian Idol began in 2004 on Sony Entertainment TV, broadcast in India, now in its 11th season. Sa re ga ma pa is the oldest singing reality TV show starting in 1995. Having undergone many variations in theme and presentations, this show has always been broadcast in India on Zee TV and is now in its 33rd season. Sing Dil Se is an online singing competition now in its seventh season. 9 Mahbubani (2008, 131). Mahbubani discusses the rise of Asia and the return to ‘indigenous’ forms of knowledge and material production, in essence, the process of decolonization now that Asian countries have begun to participate in global power politics. 10 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/indian-prime-minister-geneticscience-existed-ancient-times (last accessed 30 May 2020). This article criticizes Modi for claims that cosmetic surgery existed in ancient India. 11 http://www.dawn.com/news/1155886 (last accessed 30 May 2020). 12 http://worldmusiccentral.org/2005/10/01/the-indian-origin-of-the-guitar/ (last accessed 30 May 2020). Thakur Chakrapani Singh claims origins of guitar form and function came from the ancient kacchapi veena. This origins claim is often repeated in the Indian slide-guitar community. 13 Dhavalikar (2006) presents the debate clearly as one between linguistics and archeology, drawing conclusions based on new archeological evidence that continues to be debated.

156  André J. P. Elias 1 4 Rhitom Sarkar, personal communication, 2014. 15 Rhitom Sarkar, personal communication, 2014. 16 This issue is not uncommon in the history of organology. As Hanslick commented in 1863: ‘Each proud father of a young brass instrument is particularly concerned to think up a new outrageous name. If there are ten new improvements invented for the common flugelhorn, or the ophicleide, so they are introduced into the musical world as ten new instruments, often under the most arbitrary and incomprehensible names. One finds in the catalogue of exhibited brass instruments, among others, the following: schwannenhorn, glyceide, euphonion, tritonikon, phonicon, trompettin, zvukoroh, baroxyton, sarrusophone, pelitticon, königshorns, helicon, and a half-dozen compounds including the name “Sax,” etc., etc. All these fabulous creatures could be easily brought under two or three more familiar designations’ (quoted in Cottrell, 2012, 102). 17 Debasis Chakraborty, personal communication, 2015. 18 https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/From-guitar-to-sarasvani/articleshow/19314932.cms (last accessed 30 May 2020). At the inauguration of the saraswani veena, Debu Chaudhuri proclaimed, ‘performing arts cannot survive without innovation, we will only be fossils of art in the absence of innovation, at the same time, we must also not forget tradition.’ 19 Prakash Sontakke, personal communication, 2015.

Bibliography Bakhle, Janaki. 2005. Two Men and Music: Nationalism in the Making of an Indian Classical Tradition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 2008. ‘Music as Sound of the Secular’. Comparative Studies in Society and ­History 50 (1): 256–284. Benjamin, Walter. 1927–34. ‘Little History of Photography’. In M.W. Jennings, M.P. Bullock, H. Eiland, and Smith G. (Eds.), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, vol. 2, 1927–1934. (507–530). Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Randal Johnson. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press. Chatterjee, Partha. 1989. ‘Colonialism, Nationalism and Colonialized India: The Contest in India’. American Ethnologist 16 (4) (November): 622–633. ———. 1993. The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Clayton, Martin. 2001. ‘Rock to Raga: The Many Lives of the Indian Guitar’. In Andy Bennett, and Kevin Dawe (Eds.), Guitar Cultures (179–208). Oxford: Berg. Cottrell, Stephen. 2012. The Saxophone. New Haven, CT: Yale UP. Dasgupta, Sandeep. 2006. ‘Gods in the Sacred Marketplace, Hindu Nationalism and the Return of the Aura in the Public Sphere’. In Birgit Meyer and Annelies Moors (Eds.), Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere (251–257). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Davies, Richard. 2005. ‘The Cultural Background of Hindutva’. In Alyssa Ayres and Philip Oldenburg (Eds.), India Briefing: Takeoff at Last? (107–140). London: Routledge. Desai-Stephens, Anaar. 2017. ‘Tensions of Musical Re-animation from Bollywood to Indian Idol’. In J. Beaster-Jones and N. Sarrazin (Eds.), Music in Contemporary Indian Film: Memory, Voice, Identity (76–90). New York: Routledge. Dhavalikar, M. K. 2006. ‘Archaeology of the Aryans’. Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute 87: 1–37. Du Perron, Lalita. 2002. ‘Ṭhumrī: A Discussion of the Female Voice of Hindustani Music’. Modern Asian Studies 36 (1): 173–193. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3876695

Carving an Indian Identity into the Slide-Guitar 157 Evans, David. 1970. ‘Afro-American One-Stringed Instruments’. Western Folklore 29 (4): 229–45. Elias, André J. P. 2017. ‘Vande Mataram: Constructions of Gender and Music in Indian Nationalism’. Asian Music 48 (2): 90–110. ———. 2020. ‘Man Yar Pyae U Tin and the Burmese Slide Guitar: Constructing and Deconstructing Narratives of Cultural Exchange’. Asian Music 51 (2): 27–58. Haine, Malou. 1985. Les Facteurs d’Instruments de Musique à Paris au XIXe Siècle: Des Artisans Face à l’Industrialisation. Bruxelles, Belgique: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles. Handy, William. C. 1944. Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. New York: Macmillan. Hanslick, Eduard. 1863. ‘Classe Xvi, Musikalische Instrumente.’ Österreichischer Bericht über die Internationale Ausstellung in London 1862. Vienna: J. Arenstein. Hood, Mantle. 1983. ‘Musical Ornamentation as History: The Hawaiian Steel Guitar’. Yearbook for Traditional Music 15, 141–148. Jones-Bamman, Richard. 2017. Building New Banjos for an Old-Time World. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Mahbubani, Kishore. 2008. ‘The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East’. New York: Public Affairs. Neuman, Daniel M. 1990. The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Payne, Rick. n.d. History and Origin of Slide Guitar in the Blues. http://www.guitarnoise. com/lessons/slide-guitar history – accessed 5/30/2020. Pollens, Stewart. 2017. Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Invention of the Piano. Cambridge University Press. Rahaim, Matt. 2011. ‘That Ban(e) of Indian Music: Hearing Politics in the Harmonium’. The Journal of Asian Studies 70 (3): 657–682. ———. 2012. Musicking Bodies: Gesture and Voice in Hindustani Music. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Sen, Amartya. 2005. The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity. London: Allen Lane Sontakke, Prakash. 2015. The Role of Hawaiian Guitar in the Present Context of Hindustani Classical Music – A Practical Analysis. PhD dissertation. Dharwad: Karnatak University. Srinivas, M.N. 1952. Religion and Society Amongst the Coorgs of South India. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Subramanian, Lakshmi. 2006. From the Tanjore Court to the Madras Music Academy: A Social History of Music in South India. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Thapar, Romila. 2014. ‘To Question or Not To Question? That Is the Question’. Social Scientist 42 (11/12): 3–16. ———. 2002. ‘Inventing History’. The Hindu (14 October). Troutman, John William. 2013. ‘Steelin’ the Slide: Hawai’i and the Birth of the Blues Guitar’. Southern Cultures 19 (1): 26–52. ———. 2016. Kīkā Kila: How the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Changed the Sound of Modern Music. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Weidman, Amanda J. 2006. Singing the Classical, Voicing the Modern. The Postcolonial Politics of Music in South India. Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press. ————. 2011. ‘Anthropology and the Voice’. Anthropology News 52 (1): 13. Witzel, Michael. 2005. ‘Indocentrism’. In Edwin F. Bryant, and Laurie L. Patton (Eds.), The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History (341–404). London and New York: Routledge.

7

Playing for God Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World Stewart Carter

Introduction With any religious sect, musical practices are to some extent an outgrowth of the sect’s religious beliefs.1 For the Church of the Moravian Brethren (Unitas fratrum), however, broader cultural influences have often outweighed religious factors in the development of their musical traditions, notwithstanding that music has always held a prominent place in their church. From its inception, the principal objective of Moravian brass music was to serve the spiritual needs of their close-knit congregational communities, but their musical practices were not immune to influences from their neighbors, initially in their early communities in Germany and later in settlements they established in other parts of the world as they engaged in their worldwide missionary endeavours. This chapter will focus on the Moravians’ use of brass instruments, which are to a large degree iconic of Moravian music. We shall see that one of the central functions of Moravian brass music was the playing of chorales, particularly for solemnizing deaths, but brass instruments also served their communities in other ways, both sacred and secular. The Church of the Moravian Brethren traces its origins to the Bohemian theologian Jan Hus, who was burned at the stake for heresy at the Council of Constance in 1415. In 1457, his followers in Moravia and Bohemia established a new ‘Protestant’ church, which attracted a substantial following. When Bohemia’s Protestant nobles were defeated by the armies of Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II at the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, Roman Catholicism became the official religion of the Czech lands, and Hus’ followers were forced to practice their faith in secret. In 1722, several of his adherents took refuge on the estates of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf in the Upper Lusatia region of Saxony, now in Germany. There they founded the village of Herrnhut, which remains to this day the administrative and spiritual centre of the worldwide Church of the Moravian Brethren. As the Brethren spread to other parts of central Europe and attracted new adherents, the sect took on a distinctly German cast, and from this point onward, the name ‘Moravian Brethren’ became something of a misnomer. Brass instruments in early Herrnhut Brass instruments appeared in Herrnhut shortly after the founding of the renewed church. Hans Raschke and Joseph Seiffert, who arrived from Moravia in 1727 and DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-13

Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World 159 1728 respectively, played both trumpet and horn, and Seiffert later played trombone as well. Christian David, one of the cofounders of Herrnhut, gave the following account of a Sunday service in 1729: Then the congregation comes together, and the brothers from Berthelsdorf join us. First three hymns are sung, accompanied by the organ, and the French horns [Waldhörner] are played. Then the Count [Zinzendorf] takes a verse from the Bible and gives a sermon about it. Finally this meeting … is closed with prayer. (quoted in Peucker 2006, 169) This early report of brass instruments from Herrnhut highlights one of their principal functions: to support congregational hymn singing (i.e., chorales). In May 1731, the Herrnhut congregation acquired a set of trombones and on 12 May of that year several villagers went to nearby Berthelsdorf to serenade Pastor Johann Rothe on his birthday with the new instruments. The context suggests that the trombones accompanied group singing––again, probably of chorales. On 4 June of that year, they played for the funeral of Rosina Schindler. [A]bout one hundred brothers and sisters proceeded together very orderly, first their band [of musicians?], and then all the sisters; then the brothers, three by three. First they sang Mein edler Geist and afterward Wie schön ist unsers Königs Braut, and at the interment, Die Seele Christi heilige mich— all to the accompaniment of trombones. (Bettermann 1937/38, 25) Here we have the earliest documentation of an iconic aspect of Moravian music: the use of brass instruments, particularly trombones, to solemnize funerals. Herrnhut’s new set of trombones probably included four different sizes of the instrument—soprano, alto, tenor, and bass—an ensemble ideally suited for accompanying four-part chorales, with each trombone doubling or replacing its corresponding voice part. This practice was followed by early Moravian congregations elsewhere in Europe and North America. The tradition of German town bands, or Stadtpfeifer, was quite strong in the German-speaking lands where the Moravian Brethren took root after 1722. Brass instruments were important components of these ensembles, and bands in the nearby cities of Bautzen, Görlitz, and Zittau may well have influenced musical practices in Herrnhut. In an era when there was little or no separation between church and state, the Stadtpfeifer served both civic and religious functions and thus played for various events, including important arrivals, church services, weddings, funerals, etc. The carrying power of brass instruments made them the perfect choice for playing outdoors, particularly from a city or church tower. It is worth noting that in his 16th-century German translations of the Bible, which Moravians certainly knew, Martin Luther translated some Latin terms for instruments in the Vulgate Bible—such as tuba, bucina, and sambuca—as Posaune. Thus for German-speaking Moravians, the trombone represented the voice of God.

160  Stewart Carter

Figure 7.1 The Moravians at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, an engraving by A. R. Waud, showing trombone ensembles performing as part of Moravian funerary rites (published in Harper’s Weekly, 18 April 1874, 346).

This association of brass instruments with the word of God, and by implication the afterlife more generally, extends beyond its significance for the Moravian Brethren. It can be seen in the works of several European composers from the 17th through the 19th centuries, possibly starting with Schutz’s 1664 oratorio Historia von der Geburt Jesu Christi, in which two trombones accompany the High Priest’s recitation of Isaiah’s prophecy of the coming Messiah. Further examples include Purcell’s Funeral Music for Queen Mary (1695), Handel’s ‘Dead March’ from Saul (1738), the graveyard scene in Mozart’s Don Giovanni (1787), as well as the famous trombone solo in his Requiem (1791), and Beethoven’s three Equali for four trombones (1812), two of which were heard at his own funeral in 1827. By the time of the Moravian migration to the United States in the 17th and early 18th centuries, the association of brass instruments in general, and trombones in particular, with funerary rites could be seen in various popular, religious, and artistic contexts. In early Moravian communities the association of trombones (or other brass instruments) with the death of a parishioner was often twofold: the announcement of death was intoned shortly after its occurrence, from the church steeple or other elevated location, while at the burial service they accompanied the procession from the church to the cemetery and played at graveside (RMNC 1:378) (see Figure 7.1). The Moravian liturgy book of 1757 codified the church’s death announcement: In places where the home-going of Brothers and Sisters is announced by trombones, this consists of the melody O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (‘O Sacred Head, Now Wounded’2), repeated twice. Between [these two

Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World 161 repetitions] a melody is played, from which one can recognize the choir [i.e., social group] from which [the deceased] has so mercifully been called home. (Das Litaneyen-Büchlein 1757, 227) Though the verses of all the chorales apparently were intended to be played rather than sung, the initial rendition of O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden related to the deceased, and the assembled faithful were to think of the text of the first verse, while during the second rendition the living were directed to think of another verse, which was intended to remind listeners of their own eventual demise (Das Litaneyen-Büchlein 1757, 227). Trombones were ideally suited for playing chorales because, unlike other brass instruments of the time, they were not limited to the notes of a single harmonic series. Brass instruments in the early Moravian communities of North America In 1732, the Moravian Brethren launched a worldwide missionary effort. Their first mission in North America was established in Savannah, Georgia, in 1735. In 1739, when this community was being dissolved, Peter Böhler reported in a letter to Herrnhut that General Oglethorpe, the colonial governor, wanted the Moravian trumpeter Johann Böhner to serve with his troops in the impending war between England and Spain. He further reported that: General Oglethorpe bought the brethren’s trumpets and horns and gave them ten shillings more than they requested. He positively wanted to persuade Brother Bohner [sic] to become his trumpeter, and promised him 110 shillings per month. When Toma Chachi [sic] was buried, he also wanted to pay the Brethren if they would play music, but they refused him.3 Moravian musicians had previously played for funerals in Georgia, but they refused to play for the funeral of Yamacraw Chief Tomochichi because he was not a baptized Christian (Peucker 2006, 178). Some of the Moravians who left Georgia relocated to Pennsylvania, where they were joined by other Moravians arriving from Germany. They founded settlements in Nazareth in 1740 and Bethlehem in 1741; the latter town became the spiritual and administrative center of the sect in North America. Trumpets and horns are mentioned in Bethlehem as early as 1744 (Hall 1967, 1:128–129) and on 20 November 1751, trumpets played a chorale to mark the death of a single brother: This afternoon in the single Brethren’s House Brother Martin Christensen departed to be with the Savior, and this passing was made known to the congregation for the first time by means of a stanza played by trumpets from the gallery on the [Single] Brethren’s House. (quoted in Hamilton 1942, 16)

162  Stewart Carter When Bethlehem acquired its first set of trombones on 31 August 1754, trombonists participated in the observance of a festival of the Single Brothers: In the afternoon around 5 o’clock … from the Gemeinsaal [meeting room] a choir of trombones played for the first time here in Bethlehem, which was heard by the entire community here with great enjoyment. (BMA, Single Brothers Diary, entry for 31 August 1754) On 6 November 1754, the Bethlehem trombones participated in their first funeral observance, marking the death of the infant Jacob Till (Hall 1967, 1:154). By this time, the trombone ensemble appears to have completely taken over the responsibility of announcing and solemnizing deaths in Bethlehem. There is a possibly apocryphal report that the sound of trombones in Bethlehem warded off an attack by Native Americans in the early morning of Christmas Day 1755. According to a local legend, the Indians interpreted the unfamiliar sounds as a sign that the Great Spirit was watching over the Moravians and they abandoned their attack: At four o’clock on Christmas morning the music of trombones from the roofterrace of the Brethren’s House ushered in the ‘great day’ so dreaded [because of the prospect of an Indian raid], the people arose and the night-watch went off duty. There is a tradition that the notes of that Christmas morning chorale, breaking the dead silence, was wafted into the startled ears of some lurking savages on the hill-side […] who were lingering near in the hope of yet applying a fire brand to some unguarded corner of the outer buildings […] and that the strange, sweet sound struck fear into their hearts, so that they slipped away into the woods in dread of some unearthly power guarding Bethlehem. Other Indians to whom the prowlers had spoken about this, afterwards told of it. (Levering 1903, 331) On 4 April 1757 Bethlehem’s Conferenz der jünger Coleggii (Board of Disciples) proposed the introduction of: a custom already current in the German Moravian churches, namely that of playing a distinctive hymn tune to announce the death of members of various Choirs. Tunes were chosen: for the Married People, O Gott du keusches Lämmlein; for the Single Brethren, Hörst du’s Aeltester!; for Single Sisters, Drinn singt die selige Assemble; for Widowers, [blank]; for Widows, Was macht ein Cruezluftvögellein; for Children, Ihr Kinder wo seyd ihr ohnfelhbar geborgen? […] When someone departs this life, the whole community will know at once to which Choir the departed had belonged. If the familiar Choir tune is played after the tune Nun wieder eins erblasset, etc. as is customary in Europe, and then the first tune is repeated, we will have in mind the words ‘Wenn mein Mund’. (quoted in Hamilton 1942, 20)

Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World 163 As was customary in Moravian communities well into the 19th century, brass instruments were owned by the community, not by the individuals who played them. This practice was also true of other musical instruments as well as other forms of property that served the needs of the congregation as a whole. This form of ownership was common during the years of the so-called ‘General Economy’, a form of communal living that existed in Bethlehem from ca. 1742–1762. Under the General Economy, all members of the community were assigned by sex and marital status to separate living groups, called ‘choirs’ (though they had nothing to do with singing). There was a single brothers’ choir, a single sisters’ choir, a widowers’ choir, and a widows’ choir. There were also separate houses for married people and for children who were beyond infancy. In these early years, the chief objective of the Moravians in America was missionary work among the Native Americans. No member of the community earned a salary, but everyone was provided with the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing. After 1762, the General Economy was dissolved in both Bethlehem and Herrnhut, and nuclear families were allowed to establish separate households. Some of the established ‘choirs’, however, continued to live together for many more decades. As musical instruments were generally played by men, the Single Brothers Choir often provided the community’s brass musicians. Prior to the completion in 1806 of Bethlehem’s Central Moravian Church, with its imposing steeple, brass instruments were frequently played from the belvedere of the Single Brothers’ House. Community ownership of musical instruments and other forms of property that served the congregation’s common needs also continued well into the 19th century, although, as noted below, individual ownership of musical instruments became more common as wind bands grew in popularity in the mid-19th century. Before 1845, Moravians in Bethlehem could not own land but had to lease it from the church, though they could own a house built on that land. Non-Moravians were not officially allowed to own land in Bethlehem until 1845, and similar practices existed in other Moravian communities in North America (Smaby 1988, 45). The use of brass instruments in Herrnhut, mentioned above, established a pattern that was followed in the early decades of many of the Moravian communities in America: horns and/or trumpets appeared first, followed by the establishment of a trombone ensemble. Trombones were used to celebrate birthdays, important arrivals, and festival days, and to solemnize burials, accompanying the singing of chorales in the open air. For Moravians, such al fresco services were not extraliturgical; they extended the liturgical space throughout their communities (Peucker 2006, 174). One of the indoor worship services that involved trombones and/or other wind instruments was the Watchnight Service, on 31 December. At the stroke of midnight, the instrumentalists interrupted the service, often in the middle of the pastor’s sermon, intoning the chorale Nun danket alle Gott. By the end of the 18th century, the sonorous tones of the trombone ensemble, wafting from the cemetery or the belvedere of the Single Brethren’s House, were a familiar element of the soundscape of Bethlehem and other Moravian communities. Trombones were also used for special occasions, as when George Washington visited Bethlehem, 25–26 July 1782 (Levering 1903, 515–518). One of their most

164  Stewart Carter

Figure 7.2 Members of the Bethlehem Trombone Choir, ca. 1867. From left: Charles Beckel, Jedediah Weiss, Jacob Till. Photo courtesy of Moravian Archives, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

important functions was to participate in the Easter Dawn Service in the cemetery (‘God’s Acre’). In the 19th century, the trombonists of Bethlehem would rise well before the Dawn Service and stroll through the streets of the town, awakening the parishioners with their chorales (Grider 1873, 18). As will be described later, this practice continues today in many Moravian communities. By the early 19th century, the number of trombonists in Bethlehem had grown. Lists of musicians active in the Bethlehem church 1812–1816 identify 16 trombonists, five of whom were youths (BMA, Verzeichniss der Saaldiener … und Musici bey dem Gemeine in Bethlehem). Among the boys in the 1812–1816 lists are Charles Beckel, Jacob Till, Jedidiah Weiss, and Timothy Weiss. Some 50 years later, three of these trombonists, who were still members of the Bethlehem Trombone Choir, posed for a photograph, with their instruments. The passing of Jedediah’s brother Timothy was honored by placing a fourth trombone on a hassock (see Figure 7.2). Brass instruments in other Moravian communities in Pennsylvania Bethlehem was the centre of the Moravian Church in America, but Moravians and their brass music spread to other areas of the eastern United States not long after their appearance in Bethlehem. Horns were reported in Nazareth, about ten miles north of Bethlehem, as early as 1745; trumpets, in 1751 (Hall 1967, 1:129). The Single Brothers of Christianspring, about two miles west of Nazareth, acquired trombones from Bethlehem in 1762, apparently the set originally purchased by Bethlehem in 1754. These men may occasionally have played for the Nazareth

Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World 165 congregation, which did not acquire its own trombones until 1785. The Nazareth trombonists appeared for the first time as they announced the death of Francis Lembke on 12 July of that year (Two Centuries of Nazareth, 58). The Moravian congregation in Lititz, Pennsylvania, some 65 miles southwest of Bethlehem, was founded in 1754. Following a familiar pattern, horns appeared in Lititz in 1762, with the first trombones arriving in 1771 (Steelman 1982, 4). The instruments came from Christianspring and thus were probably the Bethlehem set of 1754. An entry in Lititz’s Conferenz Protocoll for 9 November 1771 expresses the congregation’s doubts about the trombones: The four old trombones from Christiansbrunn [i.e., Christianspring] have now arrived. What use can be made of them that is beneficial and pleasing to the congregation but also innocuous and unobjectionable? The question also arose: Are the trombones in good repair and serviceable, as a choir of trombones ought to be? After, in this matter, all sorts of misgivings were expressed, it was agreed that we will keep them unused for the present. Also, we will select no [local] Brethren to play them until our [visiting] Brethren return from Wachovia. Then we will settle the entire matter with them. Should something more be done at that time, it should happen only with careful selection of the players and only with a liturgical beginning and introduction under reliable direction and constant supervision. (quoted in Steelman 1982, 4) Within the next few weeks the brethren who had journeyed to North Carolina, all of them church elders from Herrnhut, returned to Lititz. An entry of 2 December 1771 in the Conferenz Protocoll indicates that concerns about the use of trombones persisted and implies that church leaders wanted to relegate the instruments to liturgical use exclusively: By all means [the trombones] should be put to use, but not for general use. Rather, they will be used only on communion days, at funerals, and to announce a homegoing [i.e., a death]. Our beginning here depends only upon arranging it so that the Brethren who will play them are introduced to it in a liturgical way and will practice at regular times under constant supervision, for which direction Brother Grube was proposed. The Brethren who can be employed for it are Chri[s]t[ia]n Leinbach, Fockel, Dan[iel] Christ, and Christ[ian] Ebert. The resolution was that the inauguration of the trombonists and the revitalization of our choir of musicians here should occur during the presence here of our dear Brethren [i.e., the visitors from Herrnhut] with a lovefeast4 for all the musicians, namely—in addition to the four named above—Br[other] Joh[ann] Thomas, Tanneberger, Albrecht, and Tobias Hirte. (Steelman 1982, 4) The trombonist referred to as ‘Tanneberger’ was the distinguished Moravian organ builder, David Tannenberg.

166  Stewart Carter Moravian brass in North Carolina In 1753, Moravians from Pennsylvania established Bethabara, the first settlement in their newly purchased lands in North Carolina. As in most Moravian communities, the sounds of trumpets and horns preceded those of trombones. On 20 December 1753, settlers in Bethabara used a ‘horn’ (probably a wooden or animal horn) as a signal to lead home a member of the community who had lost his way (RMNC 1:80), and on 23 February 1754 a ‘Lovefeast was announced with our new trumpet, which we have made from a hollow tree, and no trumpet in Bethlehem has a better tone’ (RMNC 1:96). The Bethabara church diary for 22 July 1755 records that ‘for the first time at morning prayer we have used the trumpets which the last company brought with them from Pennsylvania’ (RMNC 1:134). In November of the same year, two more trumpets were among the effects brought by a group of Moravians arriving from Bethlehem. One of the latter group reported: [A]fter morning prayers we took up our last days journey toward the Wachau […]. From our party [Gottfried] Aust and [Carl] Opitz rode ahead, blowing on their trumpets […] and the Brethren of the Wachau were not slow to answer with their trumpets, and to welcome us from the peak of their new house. (RMNC 1:146) In 1772, the new community of Salem (now Winston-Salem), approximately six miles south of Bethabara, was established as the principal Moravian settlement in North Carolina. Around this time North Carolina Moravians abandoned the General Economy, though as in Bethlehem, some of the ‘choirs’ continued living in their own houses. They also began to be concerned about secular music, as expressed in a statement of 1 December 1772 by the Aufseher Collegium (Central Board): We think it would be well to abide by the recommendations of the Helfer Conferenz [Ministers Conference] concerning playing on Sunday. In connection with the subject of Sunday we desire to say that in business nothing ought to be sold on Sunday, nor charged, neither should work be taken in nor given out. Neither should the musicians play Minuets, Polonaises, Marches, or other worldly music, but rather confine themselves to Chorales. (RMNC 2:709) Hall regards the above statement as an important distinction between sacred and secular music on the part of the Moravians of Salem. He notes that the attitude expressed here may be related to the presence of two manuscript books of music for two horns or trumpets, undated but probably from around this time, in the Moravian Music Foundation in Winston-Salem, containing several minutes, polonaises, and marches, as well as many chorales (Hall 2006, 9−10).5 In 1784, the Moravians of Salem negotiated with Gottfried Weber, organist at Herrnhut, to purchase new instruments and music. Portions of this order still survive in the form of two natural horns, the bell of a trumpet, and part of a trombone

Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World 167 in collections in Winston-Salem, all made by Johann Joseph Schmied of Pfaffendorf, Saxony (today, Rudzica, Poland), a village not far from Herrnhut. This is the first known purchase by Moravians in America of instruments from members of the Schmied family, Johann Joseph and his son, Johann Simon. In all, 15 brass instruments (12 trombones in all four sizes, two horns, and one trumpet) made by them survive in Moravian-related collections in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland, and Ohio. All these were made between 1784 and 1804. In the first decade of the 19th century, Home Moravian Church in Salem acquired more instruments from Germany, this time from the village of Neukirchen (after 1858, Markneukirchen) in the Vogtland region of Saxony. Probably these instruments were purchased through the agency of Christian Gottlob Paulus of Bethlehem, who was originally from Neukirchen but had joined the Moravian Church during a sojourn in Neuwied, near Coblenz. Paulus was primarily a dealer in lumber and coal in Bethlehem, but he also dabbled in the music trade. He was the scion of a well-known clan of musical instrument makers in Neukirchen and was related through his sister to another instrument-making clan, the Gütters. It probably was Paulus who negotiated for Salem the purchase of two cornetts (Zinken), one curved and one straight, each bearing the stamp ‘GÜTTER/NEUKIRCHEN/1805’, the only instruments of their type known to have been used in North America prior to the 20th century (Carter 2001, 53−56; Carter 2002). Paulus probably also arranged for Salem to purchase a soprano slide trombone stamped ‘C.F. DUIRSCHMIDT/IN NEUKIRCHEN 1805’, now in the collection of Old Salem Museums and Gardens in Winston-Salem (Carter 2006, 108). As early as the second decade of the 19th century, there were signs of the ­increased use of wind instruments in Salem, quite apart from the activities of the Salem Collegium, yet initially still with a religious tinge. A report of 1 March 1815, relating to the general feeling of nationalistic spirit following the American victory in the War of 1812 (which ended only in 1814), states: The musicians did not fail to increase the rejoicing by playing appropriate melodies on the wind instruments, as they marched all over the town; then they stopped on the green Square in front of the chief buildings where most of the Br[ethre]n and S[iste]r[s] had gathered, and there in a true spirit of brotherly love and genuine thankfulness to the Lord they sang ‘Now Thank We All Our God.’ […] Then all present joined in singing a number of verses from the English Hymn Book, the musicians playing the accompaniment. (RMNC 7:3256) Just a few weeks later, in another outpouring of patriotism, a report states that: The day was noteworthy because of the solemn celebration which the President of the U.S. recommended as a festival of thanks and joy […]. At daybreak a solemn, thankful note was sounded by the playing of stirring melodies on the trombones and other wind instruments. (RMNC 7:3257)

168  Stewart Carter The previous two quotations offer a foretaste of two closely related phenomena in Salem: tension between church and town and the formation of a band with strong military overtones. The situation gained momentum in 1831 following a state order rescinding Moravians’ exemption from military service. According to Hall: The citizens of Salem realized that it was to their advantage to organize a volunteer militia company, complete with its own officers, regulations, and uniforms. An adjunct musical group capable of performing at company drills, parades, and special ceremonies—all to the enjoyment of the large crowds usually in attendance—was an absolute necessity. The constitution of these companion bodies, the Salem Light Infantry Company and the Military Musical Band, was the end result. (Hall 2006, 20) In 1850, Edward Leinbach introduced brass instruments into both the Military Band and the band of Home Moravian Church in Salem (Dunigan 2006, 43). In moving towards valved brasses, the musicians of Salem were following an international trend. By the 1840s, firms in America and Europe had turned almost exclusively to valved horns, trumpets, and cornets; valved trombones were also being made, though Moravian churches in America still preferred slide trombones (see Carter 2006). In 1862, some members of the Military Band and the church band became attached to the 26th Regiment of North Carolina Infantry. Most if not all of the band members were Moravians. A detailed account of the band’s activities survives in a journal kept by one of its members, Julius A. Leinbach, brother of Edward Leinbach. Throughout the war, the band played for parades and drills, gave concerts for the officers and troops, and provided entertainment for recruiting ventures. When the troops were engaged in battle, the band members assisted the regiment’s medics. In July and August of 1862, the band members were granted leave to return to Salem. A photograph of the band taken at this time (see Figure 7.3) shows the members holding valved brass instruments exclusively, though Edward Peterson, who joined the band after the photograph was taken, played slide trombone. We know from Julius Leinbach’s diary that he mourned the loss of the B-flat cornet that was taken from him when he was captured by Union soldiers in April 1865 (as discussed below), but in the photograph he holds an E-flat bass saxhorn. Harry Hall reports that the band members were looking forward to performing for their friends at home, but were hampered by the illness of several members: Painfully, the band’s first musical performance on this visit was in connection with the funeral of bandsman Bill Hall’s [fourth from the left in Figure 7.3] young son, Gustavius. After the customary death announcement from the church cupola, the band played appropriate chorales at the interment. (Hall 2006, 68)

Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World 169

Figure 7.3 The 26th North Carolina Regimental Band, home on leave in 1862. The band’s leader, Sam Mickey, is on the far left. Diarist Julius Leinbach is second from the right. Photo courtesy of the Moravian Music Foundation.

The 26th North Carolina Regiment and its band followed General Robert E. Lee into Pennsylvania, where in July 1863 Lee’s army was defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg. The band retreated south with Lee and surrendered to Union troops in April 1865. Julius Leinbach wrote in his diary on 5 April 1865: We […] determined to leave our retreat, cross the road if we could and if not give ourselves up as prisoners of war. Striking a little by road we followed it until it took us into the main road and right into a squad of the enemy. Our instruments were taken from us and that seemed to be the bitterest experience of all. I had learned to love my B-flat cornet more than all the rest of my few possessions and to see it go into the hands of another and know that I would never see it again was a very hard thing to endure. Sam [Mickey] had saved his silver E-flat [cornet] by putting it in his haversack and taking Henry [Siddall]’s B-flat [saxhorn], the latter having [Julius] Transou’s alto horn at the time, its owner being at home. The saddest reflection I had, and have, is that if I had done as Sam did, I could have saved my horn as well, as we were never searched at any time. (Hall 2006, 149–152) The band members were imprisoned for about three months before being released (Hall 2006, 155). Two instruments that once belonged to members of the 26th survive in the collections of Old Salem Museums and Gardens in Winston-Salem: Samuel Mickey’s E-flat cornet with three rotary valves, made by the Allen Manufacturing Company of Boston, which he purchased in Richmond in 1863 as a replacement for an instrument that had been lost or stolen; and an unsigned instrument with three rotary valves thought to be the bass saxhorn held by Julius Leinbach in the photograph in

170  Stewart Carter Figure 7.3. Leinbach left the instrument in Salem in 1862 in favour of a better one which a member of another band had discarded on the battlefield at Malvern Hill earlier that summer (Hall 2006, 151). Brass bands in Moravian communities in Pennsylvania Bands were also formed in Moravian communities in Pennsylvania in the first half of the 19th century, and as in Salem, many of the Pennsylvania bands of this era were either directly associated with military units or had distinct military overtones. As valved brasses became more popular in the 1830s and 1840s, all-brass bands became more common, though many bands had woodwinds as well. By 1817, Bethlehem had an ensemble known as the Columbian Band, which served as the band of the 97th Regiment of Pennsylvania Militia. On 26 June 1830, the citizens of Bethlehem were treated to the music of both the Columbian Band and one of the most famous bands in the United States, the State Fencibles of Philadelphia, an all-black ensemble directed by keyed-bugle virtuoso Francis Johnson. Four members of the Bethlehem Trombone Choir—Jedediah Weiss, Philip Weiss, Jacob Till, and Charles F. Beckel—performed with the Columbian Band on this occasion. Exactly how long this ensemble existed is not known, but in 1831 it had a competitor, the Bethlehem Guards Band. The exact dates of activity for the latter band are also uncertain. At some point in the 1850s, Charles Beckel’s son Louis began conducting another Bethlehem ensemble, variously known as the Bethlehem Brass Band, Beckel’s Brass Band, the Bethlehem Cornet Band, and Beckel’s Cornet Band. This civilian ensemble remained active in Bethlehem throughout the war (Hall 1967, 1:252, 268). In the Moravian community of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, some ten miles southwest of Bethlehem, Frederick Iobst formed a mixed wind band in 1828. The band probably became all-brass in the 1840s or 1850s. As the Civil War approached, the band split into two ensembles along party lines, one Whig, the other Democrat. Elements of the two factions reunited until the directorship of John Z. Iobst, son of Frederick Iobst, and 21 of them enlisted en masse in September 1861 as the band of the 104th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteers. It is likely but not certain that all the band’s members were Moravians (Hall 1966 vol. 1:256−263; Roberts et al.1914 1:603−604). Several valved brasses from the mid-to-late 19th century survive in Moravianrelated collections in Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Lititz, Pennsylvania, though it is not certain if any of them were used by brass bands, whether military or civilian; they may have been confined to church use. Nineteenth-century Moravian communities continued to acquire some instruments from Germany. Two undated slide trombones, an alto and a bass, now in the Moravian Museum in Bethlehem, were made by August Weber of Löbau, a town only 11 kilometers from Herrnhut. The Weber bass trombone is probably the instrument in the hands of Jedediah Weiss in the photograph in Figure 7.2. Three valve and two slide trombones made ca. 1885 by G. W. Voigt, Jr., of Markneukirchen survive in the collections of the Moravian Historical Society in Nazareth. But as the century progressed, Moravian churches in America began to turn more to domestic makers or dealers. Three slide trombones,

Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World 171 two sopranos (dated 1881 and 1898) and an alto (1881) made by the Boston Musical Instrument Manufactory survive in Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem. But by far the most widely represented manufacturer of brass instruments in Moravian collections in America is C. A. Zoebisch & Sons of New York, with 21 instruments in all, including 11 trombones, five saxhorns, two baritones, one cornet, one alto horn, and one flugelhorn. Zoebisch emigrated from Neukirchen in 1842, initially working in Nazareth for the guitar maker C. F. Martin, who was also a native of Neukirchen. It was probably during his time in Nazareth that Zoebisch joined the Moravian Church. Approximately five years later he relocated to New York, where he established his instrument firm. Zoebisch & Sons may have manufactured some instruments in New York, but they were primarily dealers, importing instruments from the Zoebisch family firm in Neukirchen. C. A. Zoebisch served for a time as treasurer of the Moravian Church in America (Carter 2006, 91, 101). After the war, activities by bands in Moravian communities resumed, but continued to evolve; in particular, ties to local churches were breaking down. The Salem Band resumed activities after members of the 26th returned home and remains active to this day, though it is now a community band of brasses, woodwinds, and percussion. Moravian brass in other areas of the Atlantic world Moravians took their brass instruments with them wherever they established lasting communities, not only in North America but also elsewhere. Seven Moravian mission communities among the Inuit people in northern Labrador had brass ensembles at various times in their history, with Nain and Hopedale being the most active. Missionaries left England for Nain in 1771 aboard the ship Amity, carrying ‘provisions for one and a half years, 131 guns and powder from the government, two surplices and a pair of French horns’ (Turner 2018, 37). Missionary Jens Haven described Easter services at Nain on 4 April 1776: [F]or the first time in Nain, Easter was celebrated in the traditional Moravian manner with the playing of French horns and the dawn service at the burial ground; this service, almost as much as the [first] baptism, had a singular effect on the Eskimos and helped maintain the enthusiasm and interest started in February. (quoted in Turner 2018, 37) A function unique to the Moravian bands of Labrador was their practice of greeting arriving ships with music, playing from small boats. In spite of a brief hiatus in the late 20th century, the reconstituted brass band of Nain is thriving today. Several photographs of brass bands in Labrador can be seen in Mark Turner’s article in the Historic Brass Society Journal, and a few early brass instruments survive from these communities, including an alto horn and a baritone horn made ca. 1900 by Edwin Koch of Markneukirchen, now in the collections of Memorial University in St Johns, Newfoundland (Turner 2018, 56–58; Turner 2018, personal communication).

172  Stewart Carter One of the earliest Moravian missionary efforts was on the Caribbean island of St Thomas. Johann Böhner, who played trumpet in Savannah in the late 1730s, tried unsuccessfully to establish a church music ensemble there in 1742. There is today a trombone choir at the New Herrnhut Moravian Church on St Thomas as well as brass ensembles associated with a few other Moravian churches in the Caribbean (Peucker 2006, 178). In the late 19th century, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen, a Moravian organization based in Bethlehem, began mission work among the Native Americans of southern California. In 1911, Pastor Arthur Delbo started a trombone choir at the Martinez Indian Mission on the Salton Sea southeast of Palm Springs, with instruments supplied by friends in Bethlehem. A 1911 photograph of the Martinez Trombone Choir shows five Native Americans holding two soprano trombones, an alto, a tenor, and a bass (see Figure 7.4).6 Since the Moravians’ original purpose in coming to America was to convert Native Americans, it is ironic that the only known instance of Native Americans playing brass instruments in a Moravian context occurred more than a century and a half after the initial arrival of Moravians in North America.

Figure 7.4 Native American trombonists in the Martinez Trombone Choir in 1911 (Proceedings of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen, 1911, frontispiece).

Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World 173 Moravian brass in the 21st century Moravian brass music is a living tradition. The Bethlehem Trombone Choir, the oldest continuously operating musical ensemble in the United States, is still going strong. Now called the Bethlehem Area Trombone Choir because it serves five Moravian churches in the city, the ensemble still plays frequently from the belfry of Central Moravian Church. This once all-male ensemble now includes women as well (Schweitzer 2004, 20−21). The ‘trombone choir’ of the Moravian Church in Lititz, Pennsylvania, is actually a mixed brass ensemble; the recently revived Lititz Collegium Musicum occasionally uses a serpent on the bass line of choral works, partly in deference to the presence in the church’s instrument collection of a serpent, stamped ‘H G GÜTTER/BETHLEHEM/PENN’.7 Several Moravian churches in the Winston-Salem area today have bands of woodwinds and brasses, with members ranging in age from preteens to retirees. A few trombone choirs are distinctly Moravian but not connected to a specific church. Such ensembles exist today in Madison, Wisconsin, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The Bethlehem Area Trombone Choir still gathers at 2:00 a.m. on Easter morning for breakfast at Central Moravian Church before boarding buses to play at various locations in the city. After returning to the church, the trombonists join the choir and organist for an opening chorale, then proceed to the cemetery for the remainder of the service. In 2019, 15 trombonists played for the Easter Dawn Service, with soprano, alto, tenor, and bass slide trombones, as has been the custom for 265 years (Kemmerer 2019). In Winston-Salem, the bands of the 11 churches of the so-called Salem Congregation awaken their respective parishioners with chorales in the middle of the night. As daybreak approaches, six of these bands play antiphonally as attendees walk along the route leading from Home Moravian Church to God’s Acre. Finally, more than 200 musicians from all the bands gather in the middle of the cemetery to play for the Dawn Service (Salzwedel 2021, personal communication). In WinstonSalem, a church band still interrupts the New Year’s Watchnight Service at the stroke of midnight, playing Nun danket alle Gott (Rothrock 2019). In 2018, 174 Moravian brass players gathered in Winston-Salem for the Third Unity Brass Festival of the Worldwide Moravian Church. The performers, ranging in age from six to 92, came from Germany, Denmark, South Africa, Canada, Switzerland, and the United States (Salzwedel 2019). Conclusion Moravian brass music is unique in several respects. The Unitas fratrum was the first religious sect in America to use brass instruments systematically, and they were pioneers in the use of the trombone, an instrument which, apart from Moravian sources, is not mentioned in any known American documents prior to 1800. Moravians were also unique in using soprano, alto, tenor, and bass sizes of trombones to play four-part chorales. Their communities were tight-knit but closely connected to other Moravian towns scattered along the Eastern seaboard. These communities shared music and instruments with other communities,

174  Stewart Carter passing along instruments to younger congregations. Their traditions of brass music derived originally from European sources, but by the 19th century they were much more ‘American’ in their instruments, repertoire, and the relationships between their music-making and political and social trends in America. But their use of brass instruments in general, and trombones in particular, ­illustrates important points about the global transmission of musical instruments and the manner in which they circulate as components of broader cultural flows, in this case as part of the distribution of Moravian religious communities around the Atlantic Ocean. While the instruments originally employed were grounded in the technologies of 16th-century central Europe, the later evolution of valve technology (again initially in Europe) also impacted performance practices in Moravian communities elsewhere, demonstrating the ongoing two-way exchange of music technologies between the Old and New Worlds. The uses to which the instruments were put also illustrate how musical practices were transmitted concurrently with the instruments employed, albeit that both were adapted or amended in new cultural contexts. The relationship between the Moravian ensembles and their Stadtpfeifer antecedents––playing from city or church towers, the associations with important arrivals, weddings, and so forth––all have their roots in central European practices that were transmitted to the Atlantic World. In particular, the association of the trombone with the voice of God, the afterworld, and funerary rites remained characteristic of Moravian practice in their new homes and, indeed, was further developed there. This not only evidences European associations surrounding the instrument that were already in place prior to the Moravian migration, but it also aligns the trombone and its players with musical specialists in other cultures, who are similarly given distinctive and/or liminal positions within their communities because their musical activities bring them into contact with the spirit world. Bibliographical abbreviations: ABU:  Herrnhut, Archiv der Brüder-Unität. BMA:  Bethlehem, PA, Moravian Archives MMF:  Bethlehem, PA and Winston-Salem, NC, Moravian Music Foundation RMNC:  Records of the Moravians in North Carolina (see Bibliography) Notes 1 I wish to thank the following individuals for their generous assistance in the preparation of this article: David Blum, Donald Kemmerer, Nola Reed Knouse, Thomas McCullough, Paul Peucker, Donna Rothrock, and Erik Salzwedel. 2 English translation by J. W. Alexander (1830), verse 1: O sacred Head, now wounded, / with grief and shame weighed down, / Now scornfully surrounded / with thorns, Thine only crown; / O sacred Head, what glory, / what bliss till now was Thine! / Yet, though despised and gory, / I joy to call Thee mine. Verse 2: Be Thou my consolation, / my shield when I must die; Remind me of Thy passion / when my last hour draws nigh. / Mine eyes shall then behold Thee, / upon Thy cross shall dwell, / My heart by faith enfolds Thee. / Who dieth thus dies well.

Brass Instruments of the Moravian Brethren in the Atlantic World 175 3 ABU, R. 14.A Nr.6.3., 710–713. 4 A lovefeast is a uniquely Moravian service, combining prayers and hymn singing with a simple meal, as depicted in Figure 7.1. 5 These manuscripts have been published in a modern edition as The Moravian Brass Duet Book, 2 vols. (Tarr and Glover 1976). 6 Although the reservation in 1911 was known as the Martinez Indian Reservation, this group of native Americans is today officially known as the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians. 7 Heinrich Gottlob Gütter, nephew of Christian Paulus, arrived in Bethlehem in 1817, where he joined the Moravian Church and established a thriving business in musical instruments. Like his uncle, Heinrich Gütter used his Moravian connections to further his music business (Carter 2001).

References Baines, Anthony. 1976. Brass Instruments: Their History and Development. London: Faber. Bettermann, Wilhelm. 1937/38. ‘Wie das Posaunenblasen in der Brüdergemeine aufkam’. Jahrbuch der Brüdergemeine 33: 24–26. Carter, Stewart. 2001. ‘The Gütter Family: Wind Instrument Makers and Dealers to the Moravian Brethren in America’. Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society 27: 48–83. ———. 2002. ‘The Salem Cornetts’. Historic Brass Society Journal 14: 279–308. ———. 2006. ‘Trombone Ensembles of the Moravian Brethren in America: New Avenues for Research’. In Stewart Carter (Ed.), Brass Scholarship in Review: Proceedings of the Historic Brass Society Conference, Citè de la Musique, Paris 1999 (77–109). Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon. ———. 2012. The Trombone in the Renaissance: A History in Pictures and Documents. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon. Das Litaneyen=Büchlein nach der bey den Brüdern dermalen hauptsächlich gewöhnlichen Singe-Weise von neuen revidirt, und in dieser bequemen Form ausgegeben von dem Cantore Fratrum Ordinario. 4th ed. Barby, 1757: n.p. Dunigan, Philip. 2006. Three Bands from Wachovia: Their Music and their Confederate Service’. In Nola Reed Knouse (Ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh Bethlehem Conference on Moravian Music (39–46). Winston-Salem, NC and Bethlehem, PA: Moravian Music Foundation. Grider, Rufus, A. 1873. Historical Notes on Music in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania from 1741 to 1871 (Vol. 4). Moravian Music Foundation Publications, 1957. Hall, Harry H. 1967. ‘The Moravian Wind Ensemble: Distinctive Chapter in America’s ­Music.’ Ph.D. dissertation, 2 vols. Nashville, TN: George Peabody College for Teachers at Vanderbilt University. ———. 1985. ‘The Columbian Band: Bethlehem Moravians in the Early Nineteenth Century Pennsylvania Militia’. Journal of Band Research 20 (2): 40–49. ———. 2006. A Johnny Reb Band from Salem: The Pride of Tarheelia. Revised edn. Raleigh: Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources. Hamilton, Kenneth G. 1942. Church Street in Old Bethlehem. Bethlehem, PA: Moravian Congregation. Rpt., ed. and updated by Bernard E. Michel. Bethlehem: Moravian Congregation, 1988. Lane, G.B. 1992. ‘Brass Instruments Used in Confederate Military Service During the American Civil War’. Historic Brass Society Journal 4: 71–86. Levering, Joseph Mortimer. 1903. A History of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, 1741–1892. Bethlehem, PA: Times Publishing Co.

176  Stewart Carter Peucker, Paul. 2006. ‘The role and development of brass music in the Moravian Church’. In Nola Reed Knouse (Ed.), The Music of the Moravian Church in America (168–188). Rochester, MN: University of Rochester Press. Records of the Moravians in North Carolina (RMNC). 1922–2006. 13 vols. to date. Raleigh: North Carolina Historical Commission/State Department of Archives and History. Roberts, Charles Rhoads, Rev. John Baer Stoudt, Rev. Thomas H. Krick, William J. Dietrich. 1914. History of Lehigh County Pennsylvania and a Genealogical and Biographical Record of its Families. 2 vols. Allentown, PA: Lehigh Valley Publishing Co. Schweitzer, Vangie Roby. 2004. Tuned for Praise: The Bethlehem Area Moravian Trombone Choir, 1754−2004. Bethlehem, PA: Central Moravian Church. Smaby, Beverly. 1988. The Transformation of Bethlehem’s Economy: From Communal Mission to Family Economy. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Steelman, Robert. 1982. ‘The First Trombone Choir of Lititz’. Moravian Music Journal 27: 4–6. Tarr, Edward H. and Stephen L. Glover (Eds). 1976. The Moravian Brass Duet Book, 2 vols. Nashville, TN: The Brass Press. Turner, Mark David. 2018. ‘A Short History of the Moravian Bands of Northern Labrador’. Historic Brass Society Journal 30: 37–62. doi: 10.2153/0120180011003. Various Contributors. 1940. Two Centuries of Nazareth: 1740–1940. Nazareth, PA: Nazareth Bi-centennial. Personal Communications Kemmerer, Donald. 2019. McCullough, Thomas. 2021. Rothrock, Donna. 2019. Salzwedel, Eric. 2019, 2021. Turner, Mark David. October 2018.

Instrumental Interlude #4 The Fluid Piano Geoffrey Smith

Figure #4 The Fluid Piano, invented by Geoffrey Smith, incorporates microtonal ‘Fluid ­Tuning’ mechanisms that enable each note on the instrument to be tuned individually by precise microtonal intervals either before or during performance. It thus frees the piano from its usual associations with the tempered scales of the Western classical music tradition and offers the opportunity to engage with the scales, modes, and tuning systems of music cultures around the world. Bespoke tuning systems are also possible. The instrument was developed between 1997 and 2009. Credit: Geoffrey Smith

DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-14

178  Geoffrey Smith Everything began for me with the drums from age 11, and with a passion. I started having drum lessons and performing. I listened to and studied great drummers such as Joe Morello, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, and Tony Williams. At the age of 12, I was given as a present the book Percussion Instruments and Their History by James Blades. In this, I saw a photograph of a cimbalom, which is a hammered dulcimer from particular East European countries: Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Romania. This was the first time I’d seen any type of hammered dulcimer. When I saw this picture of the cimbalom, to me it looked like a drum with strings. I saw somebody striking strings instead of skins. It was fascinating, and that fascination stayed with me. That was really the beginning of the journey that over many years eventually led to the invention of the Fluid Piano because I started working with hammered dulcimer makers. At that time, I wasn’t really aware that the hammered dulcimer was the precursor to the piano. Obviously, looking at the invention of acoustic keyboards, it was the harp that developed into the harpsichord and the hammered dulcimer that developed into the piano. But when I started playing the hammered dulcimer, I didn’t play it in a traditional way because of my experience as a drummer. Immediately I was experimenting. I realized that traditional hammered dulcimer hammers are not ergonomic. I wanted to transfer the vast range of rudiments from drumming on to the hammered dulcimer. This would not have been possible if I had restricted myself by using traditional hammers. So I had some hammers made that were more like drumsticks, and then I started exploring the hammered dulcimer. I gradually became more interested in different designs and also developed an awareness of indigenous hammered dulcimers around the world. That then led to an interest in tuning, and I started to see the difference in tunings between hammered dulcimers from other countries and cultures. In this country, lots of people don’t know the hammered dulcimer. You can’t study it at music college. I had to go my own way, which was good for me. I was forced to do my own thing. I had this massive diatonic hammered dulcimer built by some instrument makers in Leeds, and then microtonal Fluid Tuning mechanisms were fitted to that instrument retrospectively. This hammered dulcimer therefore became the Fluid Dulcimer. Once I started being able to use this instrument in my work as a composer and performer, I could then explore my own bespoke tunings, changing the tuning on the Fluid Dulcimer for each project. This was a crucial phase in terms of what led to the idea of the Fluid Piano. I was able to use the Fluid Dulcimer in combination with my diatonic and chromatic hammered dulcimers in very demanding projects where I would be changing tunings between compositions. I was so happy with this creative process and methodology and got such good responses to the music I created and how I used that instrument, it confirmed to me that the principle worked. It wasn’t just a theoretical idea because I could see that this instrument I had invented, this Fluid Dulcimer, worked in composition and performance. That was revelatory. The next crucial step was when I was listening to Persian music. Some people confuse the santur with the santoor. The Persian santur is of course a very different instrument to the Indian santoor, and it’s tuned very differently. The Indian santoor

The Fluid Piano 179 is a much more recent instrument in comparison to the Persian santur, which goes back a long way. Many people argue that the hammered dulcimer began in Iran and then spread round the world and redefined itself in different cultures. In Iran, the Persian santur has a massive status as an instrument. While undertaking research to prepare a PhD proposal, I became aware that when the Western piano was being imported into Iran in the 19th century, Iranian musicians were obviously forced to retune it manually so that they could use Persian dastgahs, which include microtones. That was when I thought, ‘Hang on a second, I’ve got this Fluid Dulcimer. The dulcimer is the precursor to the piano. I’ve got these microtonal Fluid Tuning mechanisms on it. I’ve used it in practice. I’ve composed and performed on the Fluid Dulcimer professionally. I know it works. Is it possible to use these microtonal tuning mechanisms for a new design of acoustic piano?’ A seminal experience for me was working in Japan with a contemporary ballet company where I had to compose and perform a two-hour solo score using my chromatic hammered dulcimer for three pieces and the microtonal Fluid Dulcimer for four pieces. I alternated between the two instruments during the performance and the Fluid Dulcimer had to be retuned live because it required various microtonal tunings for its four pieces. But the dance couldn’t pause while I was retuning, so I created improvised compositions that were integrated with the retuning. The principal dancer from the ballet company improvised a performance alongside each of these ‘retuning’ improvisations. In rehearsal, these improvisations and the corresponding ballet were seen primarily as necessary transitions from one microtonal tuning to another, in preparation for the next composition performed on the Fluid Dulcimer. However, the transitions became a very significant part of the whole ballet. These episodes were very well received by the audience. Then I started to think about the concept of Fluid Tuning as a principle. I started to think, ‘Well, this is a positive principle that could in theory be applied to any and all instruments by whatever means’. Although the piano keyboard itself is a great thing, the restrictive tuning was the problem. Why should it be so restrictive? So the journey began, trying to raise the money, trying to make the Fluid Piano a reality. It was a hard journey because I would have meetings with people and they’d say, ‘I just don’t think this is going to work, for technical reasons’. Then of course I would find that very disheartening, but it never really affected me deep down because I’d done all this creative work with the Fluid Dulcimer which audiences had responded to very positively. I knew it was technically possible because I knew how the mechanisms worked. The next chapter was trying to make it become a physical reality, having had the idea but also having that deep understanding that this does work. The invention happened in three stages. The first stage was the Fluid Dulcimer, as I’ve mentioned. This was built by Oakwood Instruments, which was already making a range of traditional folk instruments, including diatonic hammered dulcimers. The first step was to build this giant extended diatonic hammered dulcimer. Looking back, from Oakwood’s point of view, it was extremely difficult because

180  Geoffrey Smith the tuning mechanisms weren’t integrated with this instrument from the beginning. Oakwood said, ‘We’ll do those retrospectively.’ But then to fit the mechanisms retrospectively was extremely difficult. Although it was very challenging and complicated, it worked. The instrument was successfully completed. The Fluid Dulcimer needed a tubular steel frame inside it for tuning stability because of the amount of string tension. It’s similar in size to a cimbalom and a very heavy instrument to transport. It’s the only one that’s ever been made. The next instrument maker I worked with was an early keyboard maker and restorer called Malcolm Rose. He built a one-note piano with a Viennese mechanism. The hammer action position is reversed. It was constructed in a relatively simple way, but it showed that the mechanism worked. This was the very first Fluid Piano, and because it only had one note, that is, one key, it was easy to carry and transport. I showed the single-note Fluid Piano to various people, but they would often say, ‘Oh no, that won’t work in a complete full-sized piano’. Because of this negativity, I backed off for a while. I paused on the journey. But I was thinking, ‘It is complicated, but it’s not that complicated.’ But I’d learnt through direct experience as a composer and a performer that the issue was cultural, more than anything. I’d be meeting people, and they weren’t only being sceptical about it from a technical point of view, they’d have opinions to do with the tuning, such as, ‘What is the point of that? Why would people want to do that?’ Subsequently I contacted various other early keyboard makers, and these ­included an instrument maker called Christopher Barlow, who was positive about the project, so we worked together, and he built the complete Fluid Piano. The reason I focused on early keyboard makers––and this is crucial––is that for a new acoustic Fluid Piano to be made, it had to be based on a fortepiano, because of the lower string tension. You can’t do it with a standard modern piano because the tension is too high. And the fact that the Fluid Piano has a lower string tension doesn’t just make the application of Fluid Tuning possible; it also means that when you retune it, you change the timbre and therefore the character of the instrument. The character of the Fluid Piano is continually redefined by each musician who works with it. And if you look at the vast majority of non-Western string instruments, they tend to have lower string tension than a Western piano. That also becomes important for the Fluid Piano when working with other instruments. One of the great things about the Fluid Piano is that you can retune to instruments which use non-Western tunings. The principles of the Fluid Tuning mechanisms are the same across the Fluid Dulcimer, the one-note Fluid Piano prototype, and the full Fluid Piano prototype. In the full prototype, the mechanism became more sophisticated and refined so that it was more effective and ergonomic. Having the Fluid Dulcimer and the one-note Fluid Piano prototype for reference proved to be invaluable in the construction of the complete Fluid Piano prototype. Also, for a full Fluid Piano to function effectively, it became clear that each Fluid Tuning mechanism needed to be adjustable so that the downward bearing pressure of each mechanism could be regulated by musicians.

The Fluid Piano 181 To develop the invention, I managed to secure funding from Arts Council ­ ngland. I couldn’t have funded it myself because I don’t come from an affluent E background. The initial response to the Fluid Piano was great. It’s been a very positive response from all the musicians who have played it. In terms of me being able to get the idea across and promote it, this was initially dependent on getting some very good international media coverage combined with having numerous videos on the Fluid Piano YouTube channel. As a consequence, I have been contacted by many people from around the world who have invited me to give seminars and lectures about the invention or have proposed artistic collaborations. For example, one such project resulted in the wonderful Fluid Piano album by the gifted Indian musician Utsav Lal.

Instrumental Interlude #5 The Pikasso Guitar Linda Manzer

Figure #5 Linda Manzer is a Canadian luthier who has produced, in addition to numerous flat-top acoustic guitars, a range of innovative multistringed harp guitars. Her instruments are played by some of the world’s top guitarists. Perhaps the most well-known is the 42-string, three-necked Pikasso guitar, made for and regularly used by Pat Metheny.

In high school, I was a big fan of folk music, and I went to a concert in Toronto and saw a lot of really great folk singers, including Joni Mitchell. She was playing a dulcimer, which is an Appalachian lap instrument with three or four strings. I was quite fascinated with it. I wanted one of these instruments, so I went to the Toronto Folklore Centre to buy one. It cost $150, which was out of my price range. I was a teenager, and I didn’t have that much money. The fellow at the store talked me into buying a kit, so it was half-made and semi-assembled. I actually thought I couldn’t finish it, but he argued with me, so I ended up buying the kit, going home, and making it, and I was thrilled with how this object that I’d created came to life when you put strings on it. It was this magic moment. DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-15

The Pikasso Guitar 183 I pursued a career in art college, but I kept finding myself in the woodworking shop, doing instrument making. I was going to art college, I was playing guitar, I was making dulcimers, and I realized I needed to focus on one thing only, in order to be good at that one thing. I chose instrument making, not really knowing very much about it. I sought out a teacher and I found Jean-Claude Larrivée, probably the only person in Canada who could have taught me or took on apprentices. And he was this amazingly skilled, masterful builder. In 1974, I basically called him, wrote him, and bugged him until he hired me. Larrivée only made flat-top guitars, but there was this book we had with an article about an arch-top guitar maker, James D’Aquisto. I didn’t think much about it until, when I was now independent with my own workshop, I got a phone call from James—Jimmy—D’Aquisto. We started talking, and he invited me to a shop in Long Island to visit him, which I eventually did. Then he offered me, first, to study with him, and then an apprenticeship, which I didn’t accept because I was too far into my own career at that point to start working for another guitar builder. But I studied with him, off and on, for about six months. That’s how I learned arch-tops. That was in 1983–1984. It’s much more difficult to make arch-tops because you have to carve a lot of wood. A flat-top guitar is a flat piece of wood, whereas an arch-top is more like a violin or a cello. The other thing about the arch-top is—especially at that time—its purpose was changing. Originally the arch-top guitar was designed to cut through the sound of big bands. It was this rhythm instrument that was just played chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk. The idea was that it should be really loud. Over time, when people started plugging their guitars in and they didn’t need them to be loud; they could just turn up the dial, and the arch-top was transformed into this completely different instrument. I started working with Pat Metheny, who asked me for particular sounds. For instance, he asked me if I could make a little guitar. Then he asked me if I would make a guitar with a lot of strings on it, which resulted in the 42-string Pikasso guitar. Then he would come up with ideas, like, ‘Can you make a guitar that buzzes like Charlie Haden’s bass?’ or, ‘something that sounds like a sitar?’ Once he got my brain going, I started coming up with ideas. I knew that whatever I came up with, he would embrace. Even if it wasn’t exactly what he’d asked for, it would be different enough. It would trigger in him some kind of musical adventure. He was looking for different sounds because he was looking for a more diverse musical palette. Originally, when he asked me to add lots of extra strings when we started designing the Pikasso, I thought what he meant was strings parallel. But the fingerboards would have been insanely wide, and it would have been really hard for him to reach all of those strings. But then, when I asked him, he said, ‘No, I mean all over the place’, and he did a windmill motion with his hands. That’s when I understood that he wanted them in all different directions, which was wild. I was not that well known at the time, but I was fearless. I didn’t really have anything to lose. Also, I’m working with one of my favourite musicians on the planet, who’s given

184  Linda Manzer me the go-ahead, so it allowed me to think of anything. He’s open-minded. He likes to push the envelope, and he was happy to have somebody to go along and push the envelope with him. His attitude was really positive about anything I did, so that’s a really incredibly good work environment to go into. Really, my biggest obstacle was me. How far could I go? And technically, what could I do? We got the general concept of strings going in different directions, and then I would send him drawings. I had a lot of questions for him because I was really tailoring it to what he was asking for. What he wanted was a bunch of different types of sounds on the guitar, and then we decided we were going to have one neck in the middle of all of it that, that was normal, so he had a place to go back to—he had an escape route back to ‘normal’ if he needed it. But for the rest of it, I could go nuts. There were three other sections besides the normal neck. Each one of them has a very distinct sound. That was my goal, to give him as much acoustic variety as possible. I had no idea, really, how strong it had to be, but I had to guess, and that’s when I had to trust my intuition. There are approximately 200 pounds of pressure on a normal steel-string guitar, pulling at the neck, trying to yank the neck up and rip the bridge off. Multiplying that times four string sections, all crisscrossing, I estimated about 1,000 pounds of pressure on the whole guitar, in different directions. I had to design something that would withstand that pressure, so internally there’s a latticing series of cobwebby braces that tries to support the instrument structurally without choking it. At the time, the guitar-building world was extremely conservative. One of the things I did, for instance, on the Pikasso, which was blasphemy, was that I changed the thickness of the sides. Usually, they’re parallel. But I squeezed it under the arm and widened it on the knee so the top leaned back, so that when you’re peering over, trying to see what you’re playing, when you’ve got all these strings crisscrossing, you had a bit of an aerial view. For years, I didn’t tell people I’d done that, because I thought I’d get booted out of guitar-making school or the guitar-making world for doing it. Then eventually I started claiming it because it was cool to actually have come up with this thing, the Manzer Wedge. I started getting credit for it. But if you look back past the last 100 years, the further back you go, the more wild some of the instruments are. You probably couldn’t really string them up now. They’d probably explode, some of them, but certainly there was no shortage of adventure! I get asked about gender quite a bit. I think that the fact I was female made me noticeable, but the guitar-making world is very progressive. It’s filled with musicians and artists, so they are more likely to embrace the gender issue. When I was working for Larrivée, there were about five or six apprentices, but my gender wasn’t an issue. Obviously, it was noticed that I was the only female, and I was definitely breaking ground. But I always had the support of my guitar-making peers. I was just really lucky that I was in a very good, supportive environment when I started out. I’ve heard of other women who didn’t have such welcoming arms into the field as I did. Maybe, because I had two older brothers, I was feisty. I was used to kicking the door in to play with them.

The Pikasso Guitar 185 When I started, there was no shortage of any woods. We just blew through all sorts of species that are now considered endangered. It wasn’t even on our radar that, for instance, Brazilian rosewood would become one of the highest rated in the list of CITES endangered species.1 I remember a wood vendor more than 30 years ago telling us that eventually it would be hard to find the woods we make guitars with. None of us believed him because it was just so plentiful. But then the industry grew, and our numbers grew, and consumption increased, and the shortages happened. But in fact, making a musical instrument is the highest-value use of a tree. For instance, a tree used to make guitar wood would garner the most financial gain for the person chopping up the tree. A couple of pieces of wood to make a guitar top could easily fetch over 100 bucks. If they were turned into shingles, or cedar was turned into shingles, that same wood product would be worth 50 cents. I estimate in my lifetime I’ve consumed probably five or six trees at most. There are two ways that woods have depleted. One is the huge number of guitar makers and large companies just cranking out guitars. But also, the woods are used for panelling homes, or boardrooms, or something like that, so the shortage of wood isn’t caused by us, but we are the figurehead that has been blamed for it. I think guitar makers are at the forefront of trying to replenish the woods, but we’ve got some pretty tough competition in the wood-consuming world that we have no control over. I can no longer use Brazilian rosewood because of the shortage. I actually happen to have some that I bought years ago that is grandfathered and completely legal, but I support conservation and I support alternate materials. I probably have enough wood that I don’t have to think about it too much, because I buy my wood decades before I ever get around to using it, so I have enough wood to see out my career. I’ve also used ‘windfall’—a tree that has fallen down naturally. Bruce Cockburn’s guitar is made from such wood. ‘If a Tree Falls in the Forest’ was played on the guitar I made for him. The top was actually from a log that rolled up on the beach in Vancouver Island that had broken away from a logjam that was probably being towed to Japan. It rolled through the ocean, ended up on the beach, and somebody found it. I was invited to cut out a chunk and got 18 guitar tops out of it. That was 40 years ago, and I have seven of those tops left. I was really happy to use that. Every tiny step in the right direction helps. Note 1 CITES is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Part III

Reframing History through Instruments

8

Arcadian Tones The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel Deirdre Morgan

Introduction Icons of music and monarchy are omnipresent in contemporary Austria. At ­Vienna International Airport, classical music is piped through speakers, and grocery stores throughout the city stock the ubiquitous Mozartkugeln: chocolate balls with a golden wrapper bearing a portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart’s legacy continues to draw tourists to Salzburg, while the waltzes of Strauss Sr. and Jr. symbolize Viennese culture at the height of its powers. For others, the enduring musical image of the Austrian Alps is the singing Von Trapp family, as they were depicted in the Broadway musical The Sound of Music (1959) and the subsequent film adaptation of the same name (1965).1 Austrian musical tropes abound in the popular imagination: yodelling, brass ‘oompah’ bands, dulcimers, fifes and drums, and button accordions mix with visions of string quartets, pianofortes, and orchestras. Despite the reification of ‘art’ and ‘folk’ culture as distinct categories, the Austrian musical landscape defies this binary. Philip Bohlman, in the preface to The Music of European Nationalism, observes that art and folk music in Europe are both constructions of nationalist discourse: Much of the attention given to nationalism and music, it follows, has been devoted to art music, especially traditions of national opera, or to composers who plumb folk music in a small nation that wishes to resist the hegemony of a larger nation or empire […]. That other invention of European musical discourse, ‘folk music,’ provides the counterpart for identifying and exploiting the national in music. Folk music becomes the property of the nation and the language of national discourse, but only after it is collected and anointed as a canon, the product of age and the icon of agelessness, as a manifestation of the classical. (Bohlman 2004, xxiv) The proliferation of art music forms based on folk dances (waltzes, mazurkas, rondos, tarantellas) points to a profoundly discursive relationship between art and folk culture in European music. As Bohlman sees it, the collection and canonization of folk music has made it, in a sense, classical. During the transition from the DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-17

190  Deirdre Morgan Baroque to the Classical style, the focus on ‘easily assimilable melody’ saw many folk tunes and instruments crossing into art music territory (Federhofer and Suppan 2001, 228). This trend continued into the Romantic period, which saw the development of the Viennese waltz (made famous by Johann Strauss, Jr.) using musical source material derived from Austrian and German folk song and dance genres (Ländler, Steirer, Deutscher). This cross-pollination and fusion are also evident in the contemporary Maultrommel revival community, where musicians draw upon diverse repertoires and genres to create a virtuosic personal style. This approach, I discovered, was part of a tradition stretching back more than 200 years. Since my first forays into researching jew’s harp traditions worldwide, the Austrian Maultrommel has been a recurring theme. In the scant literature about jew’s harps, references to the ‘golden age’ of central European virtuosos abound. In the early 1980s, American musicologist Frederick Crane founded the first jew’s harp journal, and in its first issue he suggested that the instrument was experiencing a golden age similar to—but more globally significant than—the one that had taken place in central Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Leonard Fox’s 1988 book The Jew’s Harp: A Comprehensive Anthology, the first English language monograph on the instrument, opened with a dedication ‘to the memory of Karl Eulenstein, last and greatest virtuoso of the Jew’s harp’, and consisted mainly of Fox’s translations of German-language articles on the subject. Austrian Maultrommel players have been present at every major jew’s harp festival I have attended in Europe and Russia and have dazzled crowds with their hallmark technique: switching rapidly between multiple jew’s harps tuned to different keys (and often held together by clamps) in order to expand the range of available harmonics. After speaking with Austrian players at these events, I was intrigued by the fact that they self-consciously viewed themselves as revivalists of the ‘golden age’ of 18th- and 19th-century jew’s harp virtuosos—albeit with plenty of room for individual expression and artistic innovation. This interest solidified when I attended the Seventh International Jew’s Harp Congress in Yakutsk, Russia, in 2011, and participated in a ‘World Virtuosos of the Jew’s Harp’ competition. One of the medals went to Austrian Maultrommel player Albin Paulus for a medley combining fragments of Mozart, the Electric Light Orchestra’s hit 1979 single ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’, an Austrian yodel, and an Austrian folk tune, which he performed on four jew’s harps using a technique that was nearly 200 years old. The win was well deserved: Paulus’ performance was simultaneously contemporary and humourous while also coming across as completely traditional. This chapter, then, is about the role of playing technique in the cultural study of musical instruments. Methodologically, it models an ethnographic-historical approach to musical instrument research, in which encounters with primary sources, material objects in museums, and iconographic depictions of instruments are equally as important as extensive participant observation and interviews with present-day musicians in the field. I examine Maultrommel playing techniques through visual artwork, historical sources, archival recordings, and ethnographic accounts, and trace the lineage of two different styles of playing. I explore the golden age

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 191 of virtuosos and examine the processes that precipitated the instrument’s fall into obscurity shortly thereafter. I then look at the instrument’s resurgence in the 1990s, exploring how contemporary players situate themselves within musical discourses of hybridity and the avant-garde. In recent years, social histories and ethnographies of musical instruments have been on the rise. The draw of instrument-focused research lies in the mobility and representative potential of instruments as objects: they permeate borders fluidly and take on new contexts everywhere they go, adapting to cultural identities. They demonstrate how, to borrow a phrase from Bruno Latour, ‘Technology is society made durable’ (Latour 1991, 103). Allen Roda’s appeal for a ‘new organology’ (2007), which he later developed and termed ‘materialist musical ethnography’ (Roda 2014), proposed investigations into the social, cultural, and physical relationships between humans and instruments. What interests me with this particular Austrian case study, and with jew’s harp research in general, is the saliency of style as an analytical parameter in musical instrument research. In this chapter, I argue that understanding the lineage of playing techniques paves the way for deeper understanding of music communities, particularly revival communities that situate themselves in relationship to the past. Further, my intention is to encourage more comparative, cross-cultural studies of playing technique from researchers who are themselves players of the instruments they study. Though my ethnographic research on the Maultrommel thus far has focused on present-day Austria, the tradition is part of a larger shared culture that spans the Alpine regions of Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, and South Tyrol (Italy). For this reason, several of my collaborators noted the limitations of studying the ­Maultrommel from a purely Austrian perspective and were hesitant to lay sole claim on what they saw as a larger, transnational tradition. My fieldwork was centred largely in the Bavarian-speaking regions of Vienna and Upper Austria, where much of the present-day Maultrommel activity takes place. This is not to suggest a lack of jew’s harp activity elsewhere; rather, my fieldwork focused primarily on the regions that have produced the major players and instrument makers associated with both the Austrian Maultrommel community and the international jew’s harp revival. As a result, much of the material in this chapter is not confined to the modern nation of Austria and includes the former Habsburg-ruled territories of central Europe. Jew’s harps are found in many cultures around the world and are known by over 1,000 different names in local languages and dialects. ‘Maultrommel’ is the most commonly used name in the Upper German language and translates roughly as ‘mouth drum’. In Switzerland, the jew’s harp is known as ‘Trümpi’, and in northern Italy, ‘ribebe’. In the Austro-Bavarian dialect, the instrument is known as ‘Brummeisen’, which literally means ‘growling iron’. Several of my collaborators pointed out that the word ‘Maul’ in German refers to the mouth of an animal, like the English words ‘snout’ or ‘muzzle’. Because of this association, Maul also used as a derogatory term for the human mouth, as in ‘trap’ or ‘gob’. Maultrommel, then, has a deprecating connotation that the English translation ‘mouth drum’ conceals.

192  Deirdre Morgan This rich variety of appellations is relatively straightforward until we turn to the English term ‘jew’s harp’. This name is something of a mystery and remains controversial for several reasons. First, the instrument has no connection with Jewish culture. It is also not a harp, but that part of its name follows the common pattern of naming the jew’s harp after a more familiar instrument. The earliest written record of the term dates to the 15th century: a 1481 document lists instruments as both ‘jue harpes’ and ‘jue trumpes’ (Wright 2015, 44). Wright (2015) offers a definitive historical examination of the instrument’s various English names and spellings, demonstrating that ‘jew’s harp’ predates later versions such as ‘jaw harp’ or ‘juice harp’ by several centuries. The name’s connection with Jews, whether intentional or not, has led many people to assume a derogatory connotation. Competing theories as to the origin of the name and disagreements about its use remain unresolved, both in academia and the general public. Whether the earlier terms ‘jue harpes/trumpes’ had anything to do with Jews is unknown, but the instrument’s contemporary E ­ nglish name(s) have indeed been occasionally used in derogatory ways.2 Dissatisfaction over the English name has resulted in several attempts to change it over the years, though outside of specific jew’s harp revival communities, none have been widely adopted in mainstream culture. As readers will note in some of the passages that follow, the Scottish term ‘trump’ was used preferentially by jew’s harp scholar Frederick Crane (see Crane 2003), though its contemporary associations with the USA ex-President Donald Trump have seen it decline in popularity. In this chapter, I use the local Austrian variant ‘Maultrommel’ when speaking of that specific tradition, and the original English term for general contexts. I use a lowercase j to dispel associations with Jewish culture, while still preserving the most widely used pronunciation and spelling in English language research. Ultimately, no matter which term is used, there will always be some explanation required. An in-depth exploration of this issue can be found in Morgan 2017, 61–67, and Wright 2015, 37–53. The Alpine style The earliest iconographic depictions of jew’s harps in Europe date from the 14th century. From the beginning, the instrument is frequently shown in recurring themes: in the hands of young people, angels and cherubs, jesters, peddlers, peasants, and in pastoral scenes. In the first depictions of Austrian jew’s harp players, it is clear that only a single instrument is used, held by one hand and plucked by the other. The earliest of these is a plate from the extensive woodcut print The Triumph of Emperor Maximilian I by Hans Burgkmair (ca. 1516–1519), which depicts the emperor’s court jester Guggeryllis playing a jew’s harp (see Figure 8.1). The work, an impressive piece of royal propaganda, portrays a fictional procession of carriages bearing everyone from nobility to peasants. One plate, titled The Fools, shows Guggeryllis sitting on the back of a carriage, playing a large jew’s harp amidst a group of grotesque figures. This illustration links the instrument and

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 193

Figure 8.1 Detail from Burgkmair’s The Fools, from Triumph of the Emperor Maximilian I. (Courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum.)3

its player with both the rustic and the absurd, connotations which have persisted throughout the instrument’s life and continue in its contemporary Austrian contexts, as I will discuss later. The pastoral associations of the Maultrommel are also well evidenced by the Austrian sculpture Boy with Jew’s Harp as an Allegory of Summer (ca. 1750), by Johann Christoph Ludwig Lücke (ca. 1703–1780). The work is part of a series depicting children in various poses as allegories of the four seasons.4 The nude boy playing the jew’s harp is covered by a leafed branch that curls up from the ground, suggesting a strong association between the instrument, youth, and nature. Depictions of players with a single jew’s harp continue through centuries of artwork until the present day, and the soloistic and single-handed playing technique remains the most common worldwide.5 Yet visitors to Austria today will more likely witness a distinct and unusual Maultrommel technique: virtuosic jew’s harp players hold several Maultrommeln at once, sometimes multiple instruments in each hand, and switch rapidly between them.6 This style is known as Wechselspiel, which translates roughly as ‘alternating technique’. It is ubiquitous among Austrian Maultrommel players and is used in all styles of music where the instrument is found, from traditional folk through rock to art music. It is, for instance,

194  Deirdre Morgan the signature technique of the comedic avant-garde Austrian duo Maul und Trommelseuche, whose name, a play on the word Maultrommel, translates as ‘Mouth and Drum Disease’.7 But how did this unusual technique come about? To answer this question, we must return to the historical sources. While Austrian artworks of the 16th and 17th centuries feature players holding a single instrument, jew’s harp depictions in the 18th century begin to indicate a new development: the playing of two jew’s harps simultaneously. Coined the ‘Alpine style’ by jew’s harp scholar Frederick Crane, this technique predates the Wechselspiel technique used by contemporary players (see Crane 2003: 98–99). The Alpine style involves holding only two instruments to the mouth at the same time and playing them simultaneously without removing either. The two jew’s harps are normally tuned to two different keys, usually representing the tonic and dominant or subdominant of the tune. By the end of the 19th century, representations of the Alpine style were firmly embedded in pastoral scenes from the region, as evidenced by an 1896 sculpture by Giacomo Ginotti, which clearly depicts two instruments being played simultaneously without being switched or removed from the mouth (see Figure 8.2). The Alpine style of using two Maultrommeln was also associated with the practice of courtship, known as ‘Fensterln’ in the Austro-Bavarian dialect. Fensterln,

Figure 8.2 Detail of Ginotti’s sculpture of a young woman playing two ribebe in the Alpine style, in Valsesia, Italy. Photograph: Alberto Lovatto. Used with permission.

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 195

Figure 8.3  Serenade, by Johann von Lederwasch. © Steiermärkisches Landesarchiv Graz.

which translates loosely as ‘windowing’, is a rural courtship tradition in which a young boy serenades his beloved at her window. The earliest visual evidence of the tradition is the 19th-century painting Serenade (1813), which unmistakably shows two Maultrommeln being played in the Alpine style (see Figure 8.3). This work is by the Upper Styrian painter Johann von Lederwasch, from an 1813 manuscript published by S. N. F. Knaffl, documenting Upper Styrian folk life. In the 18th century, Empress Maria Theresa (1717–1780) was said to have banned the practice of Fensterln on the basis of its immorality. Ilka Peter’s 1953 book on Fensterln suggests a decline in the practice from the 1930s onwards (Haid 1999, 60). Yet archival materials confirm the persistence of the Maultrommel Alpine style well into the 20th century (see Schüller 2004, 58, 61, 62, 73; Deutsch and Walcher 2004, 160–161). At the Vienna Phonogrammarchiv, on a 1928 wax cylinder recording by Karl Klier, we hear three tracks by Leopold Einhirn of Alt-Aussee.8 The sound quality is very poor, but the notes specify that Einhirn is playing two Maultrommeln. Further, a photograph of the recording session shows Einhirn playing two instruments simultaneously in the typical Alpine position. A 1987 recording from Styria held at the Austrian Folk Music Archive confirms this: the trademark sound of the simultaneous Alpine-style technique can be detected by a characteristic overlapping between two fundamental pitches tuned a fifth apart. The two different fundamental pitches (drone tones) denote the presence of two separate jew’s harps with different tunings. Both instruments can be heard at the same time because instead of playing one instrument and then removing it to place the second instrument at the mouth, the Alpine-style player holds one instrument

196  Deirdre Morgan in each hand, placing the left-hand instrument on the left side of the mouth, and the right-hand instrument on the right side of the mouth. The player then uses a finger from the right hand to pluck the left instrument, and vice versa, alternating between plucking one instrument and then the other, without removing either instrument from the mouth for the entire duration of the piece. This is the only known jew’s harp technique that involves playing two instruments at the mouth at the same time, instead of putting one up to the mouth and then moving it away to put the next one to the mouth. Thus, the Alpine style is the only technique that produces the unique overlapping of the drone tones, a phenomenon created when the most recently plucked note of the first instrument continues to resonate in the player’s mouth cavity as they pluck a note on the second instrument (and so on). The technique is challenging, and the effect is mesmerizing. These sources suggest that there were two coexisting streams of Maultrommel tradition from the 18th until the 20th century: the single Maultrommel technique, which probably emerged first, and the more technically advanced Alpine style, historically associated with courtship. Yet Peter and Haid both mention that Maultrommel was not the only instrument used in Fensterln: later on, harmonicas and even accordions were employed as well (Haid 1999, 61). Peter reports a 1947 interview, which recounts that: The group of young men wanders to the bedroom window, they knock quietly on the pane, one of the boys plays the trump [Maultrommel] or mouth organ [harmonica], then the rhymes are murmured in short intervals, in a muffled voice. (Peter 1981, 178, quoted in Haid 1999, 62) Haid points out that ‘in many cases the mouth organ was used to replace the older instrument’, and that ‘the main idea that led to the invention of the mouth organ probably stemmed from the trump’ (1999, 61). How, then, did the modern Wechselspiel style of three or more jew’s harps emerge? For this, we must examine two concurrent phenomena during the 18th and 19th centuries: the rise of jew’s harp virtuosos, and the proliferation of free reed instruments in Europe. The rise of the virtuosos Although Empress Maria Theresa’s Roman Catholic reign was associated with a time of increased religious fervour and intolerance throughout the Habsburg monarchy, her anti-Fensterln policy seems to have had little impact on the Maultrommel’s survival. In fact, it was during this era that the instrument reached the height of its popularity. The first known Maultrommel virtuoso was Father Bruno Glatzl, a monk at the Benedictine monastery in Melk, Austria. In 1764, Emperor Joseph II had just been crowned in Frankfurt, and on the journey back to Vienna the royal party stayed at the Melk monastery, where they were fêted and entertained by the residents of the abbey (Crane 1998, 64). There they were treated to a virtuosic Maultrommel performance by Father Glatzl. In the prior’s diary, it is recorded that

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 197 he played before His Majesty ‘on two Jew’s harps. Namely, he played the Primus and the Secundus both at once, making from the notes minuets, concertos and a thousand other fine artistic things’ (Kirsch 1982, 11). From this account, we can deduce that Glatzl was performing in the Alpine style. It is not clear whether Glatzl performed solo or in an ensemble on this occasion. However, Crane suggests that ‘it is likely that Glatzl was accompanied in a least part of his repertory by Father Caspar Ebner (1719–1777), a player of the mandora, a member of the lute family’ (Crane 1998, 64). The organist at Melk at this time was Johann Georg Albrechtsberger, a composer who is best known as one of Beethoven’s teachers. Albrechtsberger was in attendance at the concert and was so impressed by Father Glatzl’s ability to play on two jew’s harps that he went on to compose at least seven concerti for jew’s harp, mandora, and chamber ensemble between 1765 and 1771. Only three of these survive (E Major, F Major, and D Major). Written in the galant style, the concerti reflect the growing interest in folk instruments, songs, and melodies in the 18th century, as Kirsch (1982) also notes. The Albrechtsberger concerti also contain an important musical enigma: the Maultrommel parts were composed for jew’s harps in several different keys, requiring the use of four to seven instruments and marking a dramatic departure from the two-instrument Alpine style. How exactly was the player meant to negotiate such demands? While two instruments could be managed by an accomplished player of the Alpine style, it is physically impossible to hold more than two jew’s harp’s to the mouth simultaneously. Therefore, these pieces would have demanded tremendous technical innovation from the player, who would have had to play one instrument at a time, quickly moving it away from the mouth in time to play the next instrument, and switching extremely quickly between multiple instruments in order to play complex runs and passages. Did Bruno Glatzl himself ever attempt these pieces, which had been inspired (if not commissioned) by him? The complexity of Albrechtsberger’s written jew’s harp parts suggests that the composer did not play the instrument and thus his composition was unfettered by technical concerns about what was or was not possible for the Maultrommel soloist. Whatever the case, the expanded technical demands of Albrechtsberger’s pieces may have planted the seeds for the multiple jew’s harp Wechselspiel or ‘changing technique’ in use today. The gradual transition from two-instrument Alpine-style playing to using multiple jew’s harps happened over the course of several decades. After Glatzl, a stream of jew’s harp virtuosos continued to appear well into the 19th century. Like him, many used the Alpine technique (associated with Fensterln) in their performances. The popularity of the Maultrommel benefitted from the aesthetic shift to German Romanticism and its lionization of nature and the pastoral. The virtuoso Franz Paula Koch (1761–1831) was famous for turning out the lights while he played, creating an environment in which deep listening and meditation were encouraged. One of Koch’s private concerts was immortalized in Jean Paul Richter’s novel Hesperus (1795), which describes the performance in supernatural terms (note that the German terms Mundharmonika [mouth-harmonica] and Harmonika [harmonica]

198  Deirdre Morgan both referred to the jew’s harp at the time. Today both terms refer to the modern free reed wind instrument known in English as the harmonica or mouth organ): The sweetest sounds that ever flowed over human lips as consonants of the soul began to well forth from the trembling mouth-harmonica [jew’s harp] […] Victor looked into the still, black air before him, which a few minutes ago had been filled with hanging-gardens of tones, with dissolving air-castles of the human ear, with diminished heavens, and which now remained a naked, black firework-scaffold. But the harmonica [jew’s harp] soon filled this darkness again with meteorological apparitions of worlds. (Richter, quoted in Fox 1988, 25–26) Koch’s concerts attracted many artistic luminaries, and his practice of providing guestbooks for his audiences to sign generated four remarkable volumes of Romantic poetry and prose praising his abilities, including entries from the German literati of the day. ‘The soul finds its Arcadia again in these tones’, writes Richter again, in 1800 (quoted in Fox 1988, 156). That same year, Herder proclaims: ‘Harmonious spirits of the air resound in the ear, approaching from afar and departing in these fluting tones’ (quoted in Fox 1988, 157). Goethe’s 1820 entry thanks Koch ‘for the pleasure of an evening rich in tones’ (quoted in Fox 1988, 157). Note how all three entries mention ‘tones’, endowing Koch’s playing with an enchanting quality. Despite the glamour surrounding Koch and his imitators, an 1816 article by Heinrich Schiebler critiqued the limitations of playing in the Alpine style with two jew’s harps: For a long time, however, it has been played in the same manner—especially in Piemonte—namely, with two Jew’s harps […]. Since Herr K. [Koch] and Herr T. [Teichmüller], like the Piemontese, only played on two Jew’s harps simultaneously (and without a special device it is not possible to alternate more of them quickly enough), they could not change over into other keys. (Scheibler, quoted in Fox 1988, 87) Yet even the 18th-century virtuosos were exponents of the rural Alpine style of playing, a technique far removed from the flashy modern Wechselspiel style of switching rapidly between multiple jew’s harps used today (see Figure 8.5). The attitude of Schiebler’s passage indicates that by the 19th century, the Alpine style of playing only two instruments was beginning to be viewed as somewhat restrictive. Schiebler’s mention of a ‘special device’ that would enable players to switch quickly between multiple jew’s harps was a sign of things to come. The death of the drone While Maria Theresa’s threat to the Maultrommel did little to abate its popularity (and perhaps even encouraged it) during the 18th century, musical tastes began to shift. Throughout the Middle Ages, drone instruments had been popular and

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 199 prevalent across Europe (see Deutsch 1981). In an interview, Austrian bagpipe and Maultrommel player Albin Paulus noted that the drone began to disappear in 18thcentury central European music as the ability to modulate became increasingly desirable (June 2014, Vienna). Paulus cited the early 19th-century dominance of the popular Straussian waltz as marking the ‘death’ of instruments like the bagpipe, hurdy gurdy, and jew’s harp. He also conjectured that the modern Wechselspiel technique on the Maultrommel had arisen from the pressure to modulate quickly to different keys in order to play the popular music of the era, including waltzes. ‘The death of drone music’, he explained, ‘was the beginning of the multiple jew’s harp technique.’ An 1837 lithograph by the German artist Robert Lecke depicts this transitional moment in with striking clarity, in a portrait of the Tirolean Maultrommel player J. L. Daburger in midperformance (see Figure 8.4). He is dressed in Tracht (traditional costume) and holds a Maultrommel in each hand, while several more lie on the table in front of him. This work may be the earliest evidence of an emerging Wechselspiel (changing) technique: Daburger is clearly holding one instrument in each hand and switching back and forth between them, one at a time, rather than holding them both to his mouth and playing them simultaneously to create an overlapping drone effect. The Maultrommel on the table suggests he may be switching between instruments

Figure 8.4 Robert Lecke’s portrait of J. L. Daburger, G-Z 2566, © Münchner Stadtmuseum, Sammlung Graphik/Gemälde.

200  Deirdre Morgan in various keys, putting one down and picking another up as he moves through the tune. While the Alpine style limited its player to two keys (usually the tonic and dominant keys of the tune), the Wechselspiel’s rapid switching between multiple keys allowed a player to create a sense of multiple chord changes or modulations throughout a piece, in line with the popular music of the time. Developments in musical instrument design and production in the early 19th century further impacted the jew’s harp’s popularity. Acousticians and instrument builders began experimenting with vibrating substances, particularly metal springs and reeds. Howarth (1961, 319), Wayne (2009, 236), and others have suggested that European instrument builders were influenced by free reed mouth organs from East Asia and ‘from modifications of plucked idiophones such as the Jew’s harp’ (Wayne 2009, 235). There is no evidence of a direct connection at this time, as these instruments would have been in Europe long before the 19th century. Still, the physical parallels between the tongue of the jew’s harp and the vibrating reeds used inside the new generation of free reed instruments (including the harmonica, the concertina, and the accordion) are noticeable, and acoustically related. In all cases, a free reed is attached on one end within a close-fitting frame. On jew’s harps, the unfixed end is set into motion by directly plucking it with a finger. In the case of harmonicas, concertinas, and accordions, multiple reeds are enclosed within the body of the instrument and the unfixed ends of the reeds are activated through breath or bellows-driven airflow. In all free reed instruments, the air turbulence created by the reed passing back and forth between the close edges of the frame generates a pitch. With the jew’s harp, this ‘fundamental’ pitch is then modified inside the player’s mouth cavity, with the player changing the shape and size of their resonator in order to isolate different partial frequencies/overtones generated by the fundamental. In other words, a biphonic ‘drone and melody’ (or fundamental and overtones) texture is created as the fundamental pitch can be heard droning beneath the overtones at all times. In harmonicas, concertinas, and accordions, each vibrating reed generates a fundamental pitch that is amplified by fixed resonators within the body of instrument itself. With these modifications, the ‘drone and melody’ texture created by the jew’s harp and the player’s mouth cavity was abandoned in favour of emphasizing diatonic or chromatic rows of multiple fundamental pitches, thus facilitating modulation and making it easier to change keys. This aesthetic and functional shift from using multiple fundamental pitches for melodic purposes rather than the overtones of a single fundamental pitch was perhaps the single largest shift in the jew’s harp’s usage in Europe. Concurrent with the age of acoustic experimentation and the age of industrialization, the 19th century also saw the production of musical instruments change from being largely the domain of smaller cottage industries to in some cases being dominated by large-scale factory manufacture. New instruments could be manufactured relatively quickly and distributed to consumers across the continent and beyond. In the Germanic world, the small, portable harmonica now joined the Maultrommel in the category of Hosensackinstrumente, literally ‘trouser pocket instruments’. The growing popularity and availability of the harmonica challenged the jew’s harp’s status as the pocket instrument of choice. Though somewhat larger and bulkier,

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 201 the harmonica provided several advantages over its predecessor. First, its tone was louder and its timbre clearer than the jew’s harp, which meant it could be better heard both as a solo instrument and in an ensemble. Second, the range of tunings available on the new free reed instruments meant that, unlike the jew’s harp with its reliance on a single fundamental pitch and its series of just overtones, they could play equaltempered scales and dispense with the drone (and just intonation) entirely. In response to these developments, Heinrich Scheibler invented a device called the Aura in 1816, a circular clamp that allowed a player to hold up to five jew’s harps in each hand. Using several jew’s harps tuned to different keys, scales, and effects could be produced which widened the instrument’s range. The Aura also raised the number of jew’s harps that could be played in quick succession from two to ten (Scheibler in Fox 1988, 87–88). The device found its greatest advocate in the jew’s harp virtuoso Dr. Wilhelm Ludwig Schmidt, who in 1840 wrote a treatise promoting it as a musical instrument in its own right (Schmidt quoted in Fox 1988, 97). Although Schmidt was the Aura’s biggest fan, even he could see that by then the jew’s harp was already in decline, conceding that, ‘the sound of the Jew’s harp is, in relation to contemporary instrumental music, like a sigh which dies away unheard in the storm’ (Schmidt quoted in Fox 1988, 99). Though the Aura never caught on in its time, it certainly influenced the techniques of the later Maultrommel virtuosos. The Bohemian virtuoso Friedrich Kuhnert is said to have used Scheibler’s Aura to play 16 tuned jew’s harps in his performances (Fox 1988, 69). This may have influenced the unusual playing style of Karl Eulenstein (1802– 1890), the last and the most famous of the Maultrommel virtuosos. Eulenstein was known across Europe and Britain for performing on up to 16 jew’s harps in a single piece. Instead of using a device like Scheibler’s Aura, Eulenstein’s method was very close to that of J. L. Daburger’s technique in Figure 8.4. He would lay all 16 instruments out on a table in front of him, and quickly pick one up while putting another one down at the same time (Eulenstein 1988, 211). Shortly after his death, an anonymous obituary in the Musical Times described Eulenstein’s success in securing an English patron and dazzling audiences in London: Under the aegis of the Duke of Gordon he appeared in London in the year 1827, and attracted such attention that he speedily became one of the musical lions of an age by no means wanting in lions or lionesses. Unlike [Koch], however Eulenstein was not content with two jew’s harps. He contrived to play on no less than sixteen and the effects which he produced are described by contemporary critics as ravishing in the extreme. (Anonymous 1890: 398–399) Unfortunately, the mastery of this technique cost him dearly, and his teeth became so badly damaged that he was forced to stop playing in 1834, marking the end of an era (Fox 1988, 28). He lived out the rest of his life as a guitar teacher in Germany. While the obituary above notes that Eulenstein was sufficiently well known in his day to warrant an entry in Grove’s dictionary, it also ridicules his jew’s harp virtuosity, listing it with other examples of ‘perverted talent’, including ‘a man

202  Deirdre Morgan who used to rap out tunes on his chin with his fist in such a way as to be distinctly audible in a small concert room’; ‘those who extract music from coffee-pots or fireirons or hair brushes’; and whistlers, banjo players, and those who play the nose flute (Anonymous 1890: 399). The author’s tone is consistent with the discourse surrounding ‘serious music’ that had developed over the course of the 19th century, declaring that ‘when a man remains wedded to the jew’s harp or the banjo, no matter how brilliantly he may play it, it is because he lacks that inseparable concomitant of genius–the faculty of taking pains on a worthy object’ (Anonymous 1890: 399). Yet this particular writer’s distaste is not representative of Eulenstein’s legacy more broadly. In Austria, Eulenstein’s idea of playing multiple jew’s harps, along with Scheibler’s concept of attaching jew’s harps together by means of clamps, would become widely adopted by Maultrommel revivalists and facilitate the Wechselspiel technique that is widely used today. The 2001 publication of Eulenstein’s autobiography, Meine musikalische Laufbahn (My Musical Life) demonstrates the resurgence of interest in his career and techniques at the turn of the 21st century. Today, he is a household name among jew’s harp enthusiasts worldwide. Yet, after Eulenstein’s cessation of jew’s harp performances in 1834, only a few virtuosos of lesser status stayed active until around 1850, at which point the instrument entered a dormant period of roughly 100 years, until the revivalist activities of the 1960s. The rebirth How did the Maultrommel come to be reembraced as an instrument worthy of virtuosity in the late 20th century? As is often the case with music revivals, much of the influence can be attributed to a single, well-connected individual with activist intentions (Bithell and Hill 2014, 10), notwithstanding that successful music revivals must ally support from grassroots networks and/or institutions. The most influential jew’s harp revivalist of the postwar era was the Bavarian musician and broadcaster Fritz Mayr. A folk music presenter with Bayerischer Rundfunk (Bavarian Radio), Mayr became interested in the preservation and revival of Bavarian folk traditions in the 1960s. Aware of both the Alpine style and the former virtuosos who had used multiple jew’s harps, Mayr and his brother Helmuth developed their own style of Wechselspiel: first using two instruments concurrently in the Alpine style, then later progressing to using four instruments held together in pairs by wooden clamps, a simplified and more functional approach to rapidly changing between keys than Scheibler’s Aura device had attempted nearly 150 years earlier. Mayr describes the progression from Alpine style to Wechselspiel: We Mayr Brothers enjoyed playing on two jew’s harps, and discovered that a guitar and string bass provided a nice accompaniment for Maultrommel music as well. Other musicians became interested in this technique, and new Maultrommel players began to appear. Perhaps this was also attributable to our construction of a device in the early sixties which could connect two Maultrommeln together. (Mayr and Mayr 2009, 21; translated by the author)

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 203

Figure 8.5 Christoph Schulz, of the Austrian duo Maul und Trommelseuche, performing a contemporary Wechselspiel technique using six instruments in his right hand. Photograph: Bakó Mihály. Used with permission.

In 1982, Mayr released a recording of two of the Albrechtsberger concerti with the Munich Chamber Orchestra.9 This was widely played on Austro-­ Bavarian airwaves and reached a number of listeners who went on to form the vanguard of the Maultrommel revival. Albin Paulus is one of those inspired to pick up the Maultrommel after hearing Mayr on the radio. Describing him as the most important Maultrommel pioneer of the 20th century, Paulus considered Mayr’s reconstruction of the Wechsel technique to be, ‘A very big step. Maybe the genius step’ (June 2014, Vienna). Mayr’s influence cannot be overestimated: he was an innovator with institutional ties, and his connections and position of influence allowed him to disseminate his vision for the Maultrommel across the Alpine regions. The Mayr brothers produced performances and recordings and also published tutors and songbooks for the Maultrommel (1990 and 2009). ­Today, virtually all contemporary players in Bavaria, Switzerland, and Austria trace the lineage of their technique to Mayr, and his influence remains a dominant narrative in the revival. Mayr’s influence is consistent with a marked increase in the publication of jew’s harp books, articles, and audio recordings, particularly in Europe and North America from the late 1960s onward.10 This generation of enthusiasts paved the way for what was to come and contributed the first wave of serious studies and commercial recordings of the instrument. This loose, global network of individuals began to crystallize into a social group with revivalist intentions in the 1980s. This was

204  Deirdre Morgan largely due to the efforts of American music professor Frederick Crane, who created an informal and irregular academic journal devoted entirely to the jew’s harp. From the beginning, Crane’s sense of humour around the endeavour was evident: he named his publication Vierundzwangsteljahrsschrift der Internationalen Maultrommelvirtuosengenossenschaft, or VIM for short. The name translates roughly as ‘The Semimonthly Publication of the International Society of Jew’s Harp Virtuosos’, a play on the famously long titles of German academic publications. Originally, Crane’s ‘International Society of Jew’s Harp Virtuosos’ was intended as joke, as no such organization existed at the time. In 1982, Crane published the first issue of VIM. In it, he suggested that a new generation of jew’s harp virtuosos was on the rise, and that the instrument was experiencing a golden age, perhaps even more significant—and unquestionably more widespread—than the one that had taken place in central Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1984, Crane organized the first International Jew’s Harp Congress in Iowa City. The event was small and attended by ‘a hard core of 21 dedicated Jew’s harp types’ (Crane 1982, 86), but the publicity from it, and reports on it in ensuing volumes of the journal, spread the concept of the international jew’s harp festival far and wide. While the event may have drawn some curious onlookers from the general public, it proved that jew’s harp aficionados from around the globe were eager for a forum in which to meet and share their skills and knowledge. Further, they were willing to travel great distances for the opportunity. By the late 1980s, global jew’s harp activity was on the rise. In July 1991, seven years after the first festival, the Second International Jew’s Harp Congress was held in Yakutsk, Sakha Republic, just five months before the official collapse of the Soviet Union. By coincidence, Austrian jew’s harp player Franz Kumpl happened to be in Yakutsk doing humanitarian work at the same time as the 1991 Congress was being held. Kumpl, who always travelled with a Maultrommel in his pocket, noticed festival signs around the city and decided to investigate. The Congress participants were delighted to discover Kumpl was Austrian, and had grown up not far from Molln, the Upper Austrian village that has been a major centre of jew’s harp production in Europe since the 17th century. Seizing the opportunity, Yakutian jew’s harp player and festival organizer Ivan Alexyev suggested that Kumpl should form a community in Austria. He agreed, and upon his return began organizing events. Kumpl’s efforts united the Maultrommel community over the next several years and brought together many of the people who are part of it today. This resulted in the Third International Jew’s Harp Congress being hosted in Molln, Austria. Frederick Crane, who was in attendance, noted that, ‘The round tent for the performances reminded me very much of the shape of a yurt […] the traditional dwellings of so many interior Asian peoples who are very familiar with the trump [jew’s harp]’ (Crane 1999, 115). The connection was an apt one, as many visitors from central Asia attended this Congress, demonstrating the significant growth of jew’s harp activities in those regions since the 1991 congress in Yakutsk.

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 205 Concurrent with the central Asian influences on Austrian players in the 1990s, the proliferation of ‘world music’, fusion, and electronic dance music genres in that decade also had a lasting impact. The 1998 congress highlighted the growing interest in using the Maultrommel in experimental and avant-garde music. Festival co-organizer Manfred Russmann’s band Mollner Maultrommler, founded in 1992, is a prime example of the musical eclecticism that had begun to manifest in the Maultrommel revival. Russmann studied the Wechsel technique with Fritz Mayr, and also learned from avant-garde Swiss jew’s harp player Anton Bruhin. The band’s varied repertoire and instrumentation reflects this hybridity, and they play both folk tunes and original pieces in unusual arrangements, describing their genre as ‘Alpine-Ethno’. Though Austria was influenced by the popular musics of America and Britain, a distinct domestic pop scene had begun to evolve in the 1980s (Larkey 1992). The Austrian rock duo Attwenger, for instance, is part of the vanguard of contemporary Austrian pop (Austro-pop, New Volksmusik, and Alpine Rock) in which the Maultrommel has sporadically been used. These genres were marked by a hybrid blending of pop, rock, and punk with local folk and classical references. Hubert von Goisern is a major artist in the Alpine Rock genre; with his band die Alpinkatzen (the Alpine Cats), he is known for combining Austrian folk music elements like the button accordion and yodeling with rock and world music. He also occasionally plays a Maultrommel during concerts.11 A 1993 article in Billboard magazine reports on the growth of the domestic recording industry in Austria, listing von Goisern’s album sales as a sign of locals ‘eschewing Anglo-American pop’ (Schreiber 1993). Returning to present-day virtuoso Albin Paulus, we find a multi-instrumentalist who specializes not just in jew’s harps but in European drone instruments more broadly, and who personifies Alpine hybridity. Paulus is a member of Hotel Palindrone, a quartet that has been playing music with the same personnel since the late 1990s. As its name suggests, the group emphasizes early European drone instruments like bagpipes, jew’s harps, bombardes, hurdy gurdy, and nykkelharpa, which it combines with yodeling, accordion, fiddle, electric bass, saxophone, bouzouki, beatboxing, and synthesizer. Hotel Palindrone is connected to the pan-European folk revival and has pioneered the bal folk (French folk dance) scene in Vienna. The band’s repertoire encompasses Austrian folk dances, Haydn, rock, and original compositions, and the group describes its music as ‘Austrigenous’ (a portmanteau of Austrian and indigenous). The Maultrommel was Paulus’ first instrument, and in the late 1990s he began to make a conscious effort to reinterpret Albrechtsberger’s works. The intense technical demands of the pieces, which require rapid changes between jew’s harps in multiple keys, necessitated the use of the Wechselspiel technique. Instead of using Scheibler’s Aura or Eulenstein’s tabletop technique (both problematic in their own right), Paulus successfully employed the wooden clamps developed by the Mayr brothers in the 1960s. He recorded the Albrechtsberger concerti in 1998, 2003, and again in 2009, the latter with the Baroque Ensemble de Limoges.12 In an interview, Paulus was clear that while Mayr’s recordings had opened his eyes to the

206  Deirdre Morgan instrument’s possibilities, he had independently developed his own interpretations of Albrechstberger’s pieces: I never met [Mayr], and I never tried to play like him. I wanted really to start from the beginning. And the thing was, I started to play the concert[i] before I bought Mayr’s first CD. (interview, June 2014, Vienna) Paulus’ experience highlights the autodidactic nature of much jew’s harp study, as well as the impact of recordings. The influence of the first commercial jew’s harp recordings in Austria in the 1990s parallels the timeline of the Norwegian jew’s harp revival, which also gained traction that decade through the circulation of archival recordings of traditional munnharpe playing that were distributed through a network of enthusiasts (see Morgan 2018). Wolf Janscha, another active member of the Maultrommel scene, describes learning how to play the jew’s harp from recordings. However, he gradually became more interested in creating his own style and repertoire: Over the last 20 years, I think the most important aspect in the jew’s harp community in Austria is to check out new ideas. We have such a mighty tradition: the changing technique [Wechselspiel], folk music, and classical […]. But because Austria is so small, we are always thinking beyond our borders. And we cannot make our land bigger, only our minds. (interview, June 2014, Vienna) Janscha feels confident adapting a wide range of melodic and rhythmic material to his style and is more interested in composing and arranging than he is in being a traditional Austrian Maultrommel player. He draws on ancient Greek modes; Turkish and Arabic repertoire; and Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music from Europe. Recently, he has played jew’s harp with the group Supersonus, a quintet in which early music meets overtone instruments and overtone singing. Janscha has also collaborated with another Viennese jew’s harp player, Bernhard Mikuskovics, an overtone specialist who has played in solo and group projects. He works with a range of instruments, including jew’s harps, flutes such as the ney and fujara, didgeridoo, and various techniques of overtone singing. Paulus, Janscha, and Mikuskovics are all multi-instrumentalists rooted in drone traditions. Bohlman (1996, 73) notes that, due to their association with medieval Europe, ‘drone-producing instruments have considerable importance in revivals,’ and these three artists use them to operate within the nexus of the early, folk, and world music movements. Haines (2014, 83) describes how Early Music enthusiasts borrowed liberally from contemporary folk traditions, as well as classical Arabic music. Yet while antiquarians aimed for the restoration of old things to a former— and sometimes imagined—pristine state, the Maultrommel revival is contemporary in its acceptance of musical fusion and technical innovation. Reconstructing the archaic Alpine style of playing has not been the focus of this revival, despite the

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 207 fact that it is the oldest technique associated with and unique to Austria. Instead, the current revival finds its inspiration from the later Wechsel techniques, which were heralded through the paradigm-shifting technical demands of the Albrechtsberger concerti, and further shaped by the growing emphasis on individual virtuosity in performance and harmonic modulation in composition that evolved over the course of the 19th century. Conclusion The central European Maultrommel virtuosos of the 18th and 19th centuries pushed the technical and creative boundaries of their time and propelled the instrument across the boundaries of folk and art music. Likewise, many contemporary Austrian players have focused not on historical preservation but on developing their own sound and style. Today, the Wechsel technique is alive and well, but virtually none of the contemporary Maultrommel players use the Alpine style, a testament to the selective power of a music revival to write its own history. The modern Wechsel technique has been enshrined as a marker of national identity, and Austrian Maultrommel players are a popular mainstay at international jew’s harp festivals today. The Maultrommel revival is based on a conscious recreation of the golden age of the jew’s harp that flourished between 1760 and 1850, and the modern Wechsel technique is a reworking of 18th- and 19th-century developments on the jew’s harp, reimagined for the 20th century. The 100-year hiatus of jew’s harp virtuosos, from roughly 1850 to 1960, was the result of a new generation of mass-produced free reed instruments which overtook the jew’s harp in volume, tuning, and versatility. The reemergence of the Austrian Maultrommel in the 1960s parallels the renewed interest in jew’s harp traditions in other countries, particularly Norway, and was influenced in part by folk revival movements and postwar interests in particular forms of musical heritage. Meanwhile, throughout the rise, fall, and rebirth of the Maultrommel, the Alpine style of playing survived quietly in rural areas. Though archival materials show that the Alpine style has been a virtually unbroken tradition since at least the 18th century, Austrian revivalists have largely ignored it. Instead, they perform a contemporary style of Wechselspiel, which they unanimously view as the ‘true’ Maultrommel tradition. One of the Austrian revival’s projects has been to register the Wechsel technique on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Applications were submitted for both the Wechsel technique and the Austrian jew’s harp manufacturing tradition. Both bids were successful and were added to UNESCO’s list in 2012.13 Interestingly, it was the Wechsel technique itself that was chosen to represent the Maultrommel tradition. Musical genres and repertoire were not specified, demonstrating that the Maultrommel community identifies with the innovative, pluralistic approaches encompassed within the Wechsel style. The choice to register a playing technique, rather than a musical genre, suggests that it is the style itself, and not the musical content, that is taken to be the most important identifier of this tradition.

208  Deirdre Morgan The Austrian revival necessitates an expanded definition of musical artefacts. Where other revivals focus on tangible objects like old instruments, archival recordings, or musical canons, the Maultrommel tradition encompasses orally/aurally transmitted gestures and actions such as style and technique. These intricate movements—the way a player negotiates the maneuvering between several jew’s harps in multiple keys, the types of objects a player may acquire or build to attach multiple jew’s harps together to facilitate rapid movement, the variety of hand-tomouth patterns, and methods of plucking a player develops to work with the idiosyncrasies of their own grip, posture, and bodily dimensions—all offer valuable perspectives about the workings of this musical tradition. This perspective echoes John Baily’s explorations of how musical instruments are manipulated by—but also physically act upon—their players (see Baily 1977). In other words, any instrumental tradition is a two-way negotiation between human and object. The real substance of the Maultrommel tradition, then, is not what can be heard on a recording, observed in a still portrait or a sculpture, or deduced from a written account of a past performance. The Maultrommel revival is a tradition in motion, a personal challenge for each player to come up with their own solution to the same problem: how to move quickly between several small, metallic, and not very ergonomic objects that need to be brought to and from the mouth in rapid succession. These gestural artefacts, when considered within combined historical and ethnographic frameworks, deepen our understanding of how musical instruments connect with the body and how music revivals connect the past with the present. Notes 1 Though based on the true story of the Von Trapps’ singing career, escape from the Nazi regime, and subsequent migration to the United States, the sanitized Hollywood version of the story is virtually unrecognized in Austria. 2 See Wright (2015, 42) for examples of satirical and antisemitic usages in the British press. 3 ‘Triumph of the Emperor Maximilian I’, Victoria and Albert Museum, accessed 30 August 2021, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O675756/triumph-of-the-emperormaximilian-woodcut-maximilian-i-holy/. 4 ‘Imperial Porcelain Manufactory Vienna: Boy with Jew’s Harp as an Allegory of ­Summer’, Liechtenstein: The Princely Collections, accessed 30 August 2021, http:// www.liechtensteincollections.at/en/pages/artbase_main.asp?module=browse&action= m_work&lang=en&sid=87294&oid=W-112201020435123. 5 In Southeast Asia, single jew’s harps are sometimes played by two players in a courtship duet, and in the 20th century, traditions of ensemble playing (with more than two ­players) have developed in Siberia and Bali. 6 This technique is clearly demonstrated by the Styrian folk music group Stubaier Freitagsmusig. See ‘Stubaier Freitagsmusig: Wirthausmarsch’, YouTube, Heinz Fechner, 20 November 2013, accessed 30 August 2021, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=YkoQTzBFgqw. 7 ‘Maul und Trommelseuche в магазине ‘Белые Облака’, YouTube, jewsharper, 20 July 2011, accessed 30 August 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6c1MP9nIfsM. 8 See tracks Ph 3227, Ph 3228, and Ph 3229 (Various Artists 2004). 9 Mayr, Fritz, Dieter Kirsch, and the Munich Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Hans Stadlmair. 1982. Johann Georg Albrechtsberger: Concertos for Jew’s Harp, Mandora, and Orchestra. Munich: Orfeo, C 035 821 A. Compact disc.

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 209 10 For books, articles, and dissertations, see Adkins (1974), Boone (1972), Crane (1969 and 1972), Dournon-Taurelle (1975), Dournon-Taurelle and Wright (1978), Grove (1978), Ledang (1972), Leipp and Wright (1967), Pugh-Kitingan (1977), Simon (1977), and Tsukada (1977). Notable jew’s harp performing and recording artists during this period included John Wright (UK/France), Fritz Mayr (Bavaria), and Mario Ruspoli (Sicily). 11 ‘Hubert von Goisern-Suah as in others in 2011’, YouTube, fritz51255, 29 December 2011, accessed 30 August 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFYs2BxC2us. 12 Quatuor Mosaïques, Ensemble Baroque de Limoges, Christophe Coin, and Albin Paulus. 2009. Entre Ciel et Terre: Johann Georg Albrechtsberger. Solignac: Laborie Classique. 13 ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage: Jew’s harp playing in Austria’, Austrian Commission for UNESCO, accessed 30 August 2021, https://www.unesco.at/en/culture/ intangible-cultural-heritage/national-inventory/news-1/article/jews-harp-playingin-austria.

Bibliography Adkins, C.J. 1974. ‘Investigation of the Sound-Producing Mechanism of the Jew’s Harp’. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 55: 667–70. Anonymous. 1890. ‘Perverted Talent’. The Musical Times and Singing Class Circular 31 (569): 398–99. Baily, John. 1977. ‘Movement Patterns in Playing the Herati Dutar.’ In John Blacking (Ed.), The Anthropology of the Body (275–330). London and New York: Academic Press. Bithell, Caroline, and Juniper Hill. 2014. ‘An Introduction to Music Revival as Concept, Cultural Process, and Medium of Change’. In Caroline Bithell and Juniper Hill (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival (3–42). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bohlman, Philip V. 1996. Central European Folk Music: An Annotated Bibliography of Sources in German. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. ———. 2004. The Music of European Nationalism: Cultural Identity and Modern History. New York: Routledge. Boone, Hubert. 1972. ‘Bijdrage tot de geschiedenis van de Mondtrom, voornamelijk in de Nederlanden’. Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments Bulletin 2: 112. Crane, Frederick. 1969. ‘The Jew’s harp as an Aerophone’. Galpin Society Journal 21: 66–69. ———. 1972. Extant Medieval Musical Instruments: A Provisional Catalogue by Types. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. ———. 1982. ‘Editorial’. Vierundzwansigsteljahrschrift der Internationalen Maultrommelvirtuosengenossenschaft 1: 5–9. ———. 1985. ‘The International Jew’s Harp Congress 1984.’ Vierundzwansigsteljahrschrift der Internationalen Maultrommelvirtuosengenossenschaft 2: 85–95. ———. 1998. ‘Triumph of the Tenth Muse.’ Vierundzwansigsteljahrschrift der Internationalen Maultrommelvirtuosengenossenschaft 7: 63–79. ———. 1999. ‘Memories of Molln ‘98.’ Vierundzwansigsteljahrschrift der Internationalen Maultrommelvirtuosengenossenschaft 8: 114–127. ———. 2003 A History of the Trump in Pictures: Europe and America. Mt. Pleasant, IA. Deutsch, Walter (Ed.). 1981. Der Bordun in der Europäishen Volksmusik. Vienna: A. Schendel. Deutsch, Walter, and Maria Walcher. 2004. Idiophone und Membranophone. Vienna: Verlag des Osterreichischen Museums fur Volkskunde.

210  Deirdre Morgan Dournon-Taurelle, Geneviève. 1975. ‘La Guimbarde’. PhD dissertation. Paris: Université de Paris X. Dournon-Taurelle, Geneviève and John Wright. 1978. Les Guimbardes du Musée de l’Homme. Paris: Institute d’Ethnologie. Eulenstein, Karl. 1988. ‘Eulenstein’s Musical Career,’ edited by Fanny Roodenfels. In Leonard Fox (Ed.), The Jew’s Harp: A Comprehensive Anthology (160–211). Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. ——— 2001. Meine musikalische Laufbahn, edited by Gunther Emig. Heilbronn: Stadtarchiv Heilbronn. Federhofer, Hellmut, and Wolfgang Suppan. 2001. ‘Austria: Art Music, Pre-Classicism and Classicism’. The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians 2: 228–229 (2nd ed., edited by Stanley Sadie). London: Macmillan. Fox, Leonard (Ed.). 1988. The Jew’s Harp: A Comprehensive Anthology. Translated by Leonard Fox. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. Grove, Theodore Charles. 1978. Jaw’s Harp Music of Papua New Guinea’s Kalam People— the gwb. PhD dissertation. San Diego: University of California. Haid, Gerlinde. 1999. ‘The Trump and Eroticism.’ Vierundzwansigsteljahrschrift der Internationalen Maultrommelvirtuosengenossenschaft 8: 60–66. Haines, John. 2014. ‘Antiquarianism and the Institutionalization of Early Music.’ In C ­ aroline Bithell and Juniper Hill (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Music Revival (73–93). O ­ xford: Oxford University Press. Howarth, James. 1961. ‘Free Reed Instruments’. In Anthony Baines (Ed.), Musical Instruments Through the Ages (318326). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Kirsch, Dieter. 1982. ‘Liner Notes to Johann Georg Albrechtsberger: Concertos for Jew’s Harp, Mandora, and Orchestra’. Translated by Avril Watts. Munich: Orfeo. Klier, Karl M. 1956. ‘The Jew’s Harp’. In Leonard Fox (Ed.), The Jew’s Harp: A Comprehensive Anthology. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. Larkey, Edward. 1992. ‘Austropop: Popular Music and National Identity in Austria’. Popular Music 11 (2): 151–185. Latour, Bruno. 1991. ‘Technology is Society Made Durable’. In John Law (Ed.), A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology, and Domination (103–131). London: Routledge. Ledang, Ola Kai. 1972. ‘On the Acoustics and the Systematic Classification of the Jaw’s Harp’. Yearbook of the International Folk Music Council 4: 95–103. Leipp, Emile, and John Wright. 1967. ‘La guimbarde’. Bulletin du Groupe d’Acoustique Musicale 25: 1–25. Mayr, Fritz and Helmuth Mayr. 1990. Musizieren auf der Maultrommel. Manching: Musikverlag Preißler. ———. 2009. Musizieren auf der Maultrommel (inklusive CD). Manching: Musikverlag Preißler. Morgan, Deirdre. 2017. Speaking in Tongues: Music, Identity, and Representation in Jew’s Harp Communities. PhD dissertation. SOAS, University of London. Morgan, Deirdre. 2018. ‘Cracking the Code: Recordings, Transmission, Players, and Smiths in the Norwegian Munnharpe Revival’. Ethnomusicology Forum 27 (2): 184–212. Pugh-Kitingan, Jacqueline. 1977. ‘Huli Language and Instrumental Performance’. Ethnomusicology 21: 205–232. Roda, Allen. 2007. ‘Towards A New Organology: Material Culture and the Study of Musical Instruments’. The Material World Blog, November 21. http://www.materialworldblog. com/2007/11/toward-a-new-organology-material-culture-and-the-study-of-musicalinstruments/

The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of the Austrian Maultrommel 211 ———. 2014. ‘Tabla Tuning on the Workshop Stage: Towards a Materialist Musical Ethnography’. Ethnomusicology Forum 23 (3): 360–382. Schmidt, Wilhelm Ludwig. 1988. ‘The Aura or Mouth-Harmonica Presented as a Musical Instrument’. In Leonard Fox (Ed.), The Jew’s Harp: A Comprehensive Anthology (97–152). Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press. Schreiber, Manfred. 1993. ‘Locals Increase their Share by Eschewing Anglo-American Pop.’ Billboard 105 (49): GSA2. Schüller, Dietrich (Ed.). 2004. Liner notes to Sound Documents from the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, The Complete Historical Collections 1­ 899–1950. Series 8: Austrian Folk Music (1902–1939). Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. OEAW PHA CD 22. CD. Simon, Artur. 1977. ‘Feldforschungen im ostlichen Hochland von West-Irian (Neu-Guinea)’. Mitteilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Musik des Orients 14: 91–94. Tsukada, Kenichi. 1977. ‘The Jew’s Harp and the Origin of Triadic Singing in Primitive Peoples: A Comparative Study of the Bunun Tribe (Formosan Mountains) and the Dani Tribe (Irian Jaya Highlands)’. Master’s thesis, Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music. Various Artists. 2004. Sound Documents from the Phonogrammarchiv of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, The Complete Historical Collections 1899–1950. Series 8: Austrian Folk Music (1902–1939). Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. OEAW PHA CD 22. Three Compact Discs. Wayne, Neil. 2009. ‘The Invention and Evolution of the Wheatstone Concertina’. The Galpin Society Journal 62: 235–262. Wright, Michael. 2015. The Jews-Harp in Britain and Ireland. Farnham: Ashgate.

9

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities The Makers’ Perspective Jenny Nex

Introduction In 18th- and 19th-century Britain and Ireland, London was the centre of musical instrument making, with only a few makers located in the provinces, mainly in larger cities and towns such as York, Dublin, and Edinburgh (Boalch 1995, 693–695, 704, 711). Even in these centres, London-made instruments were sold through music shops and specialist dealers. By exporting their products all over Britain and beyond, as well as sending out workers to tune and maintain instruments, London makers were at the centre of a musical instrument trade that shaped musical practice far beyond the city’s boundaries. This chapter shows how three firms active in London between 1760 and 1820 positioned themselves within what was, even at this time, a marketplace differentiated by price and quality: Erard targeted the top end of society with expensive harps; Christian Clauss’ English guittars were less costly and aimed at a broader market including aristocratic and aspiring middle class customers; while the firm of Longman & Broderip, by making and dealing in a wide range of instruments, alongside publishing and selling printed music and offering a range of musical paraphernalia, shows how the practice of commercial diversification could be used to appeal to a mass market both in London and further afield. Focusing on the customer bases and financial activities of these companies helps us to understand better the commercial behaviours of musical instrument makers at this time, and illustrates how examining the economic history of such firms can reveal broader cultural patterns pertaining to musical production and consumption. Instrument manufacture and social class The 18th and 19th centuries saw major changes in British society and manufacturing, particularly in the development and application of new technologies and new sources of power (Floud and McCloskey 1994). This was the period when various forms of industrialization expanded notably, with working practices changing alongside a shift from rural to urban living (Berg 1994, 6–7). It was also a time of political upheaval, notably coming to a head during the American Revolutionary War, the revolutionary troubles in France, and the Peninsular War in Spain, all of which impacted on British life between 1775 and 1815, although none of DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-18

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities 213 these conflicts was fought on British soil (Rudé 1972, 231, 243). Society itself was changing. Newspaper production and a coffeehouse culture led to more people engaging with everyday politics; public and private museums began to open, such as the British Museum in 1753; scientific thought as we would recognize it today, built around empirical processes, was established; and the pursuit of wealth in a capitalist economy became the goal for many (Porter 2000). These broader societal changes naturally impacted the working practices of some musical instrument makers. Powered machinery and factory production began to transform what had hitherto been a craft-based industry, albeit with different rates of adoption from different makers. Both product innovation—developing markets and new audiences for particular goods—and process innovation— changing the way objects were made—arose from new processes of mechanization, division of labour, or centralization of workplaces. Changes in manufacturing frameworks were accompanied by developing economic structures, and these too impacted on the ways in which musical instruments were made, sold, and bought. In the 18th century, a ‘culture of credit’ arose that relied on mutual trust and the belief that both individuals and companies were solvent on paper, even if they did not have cash in hand to make payments. As Smail points out with reference to the textile industry, ‘credit was so important in the eighteenth-century economy; merchants and manufacturers simply had to give and receive credit in order to engage in business’ (Smail 2003, 317). Credit became increasing complex, particularly when bills of exchange were used. These bills were in essence promissory notes covering the required amount with added interest to be paid at a specified later date. However, the bills themselves were used as surrogates for cash and were passed on along supply chains until they became due (Evans 1983, 120–122). By this time, the person holding the bill may have had no relationship with the original supplier and therefore would have no knowledge of the latter’s financial standing, leading to potential problems when payment was demanded. In addition, firms that had little or no cash in hand often resorted to taking short-term loans to pay the workers on a weekly basis (Evans 1983, 120). Businesses would at times offer reduced prices for cash payments or require cash payments for specific services such as instrument tuning in order to generate the cash required for immediate use.1 Musical instrument production is an integral part of human music-making and is thus embedded within the cultural fabric of the contexts in which instruments arise. Cultural preferences, including preferences for particular instruments, are in part developed as a result of each person’s position within their culture and thus frequently associated with upbringing and life experiences. This concept, known as habitus, was particularly developed by Pierre Bourdieu and involves individuals having a ‘set of dispositions which generates practices and perceptions’ (Bourdieu 1993, 5). Class and gender are central to this argument, and both these characteristics impact musical preferences and, by extension, the activities of musical instrument makers. Bourdieu notes, for example, that learning to play a musical instrument requires both the aspiration to develop and display such skills and the financial resources to support these aspirations (Bourdieu 2010, 68).

214  Jenny Nex Bourdieu further argues that cultural consumption can be divided into three categories of taste: ‘Legitimate taste’, that of the dominant class; ‘Middlebrow taste’, that of the middle classes, often comprising intellectuals; and ‘Popular taste’, that of the largest group of society with the least education (Bourdieu 2010, 10). In Bourdieu’s view, music and musical instruments are particularly revealing of taste categories. As he puts it, ‘nothing more clearly affirms one’s “class”, nothing more infallibly classifies, than tastes in music […] there is no more “classifactory” practice than concert-going or playing a “noble” instrument’ (2010, 18). Raymond Leppert concurs with Bourdieu that musical instruments, as well as being soundproducing objects, are visual and spatial representations of the music we prefer and therefore of the groups to which we belong, even when they are silent (Leppert 1993, 8). Financial capital is also important since the flaunting of wealth is achieved partly through overt displays of ‘taste’. Bourdieu also raises the issue of the relationship between those supplying the market and those purchasing marketable goods (Bourdieu 2010, 228–241). There is a complex interplay between supply and demand, with neither side functioning in isolation. Thus, instrument makers can focus their attention on a specific type of consumer, such as those with legitimate taste, middlebrow or popular taste, or all three. They can also choose to sell types of instrument already well known to customers, or create new products that address a desire for novelty or for changes that move in a particular direction. Some lead the way in transforming taste, while others satisfy existing interests. Furthermore, there is a variety of approaches to diversification, ranging from those firms that focus on a single product to the firms that offer a wide range of goods to their customers. The three case studies offered in the remainder of this chapter illustrate different aspects of the relationships between instrument makers and their customers, and the broader social contexts in which these relationships were situated. All three firms were based in London, a hub of musical instrument making at this time. Instrument making required a wide range of raw materials which would have been available due to London’s importance as a port and trading centre. Also, there were enough people living in London to provide the workforce of individuals skilled in the different crafts needed, including carpenters, woodturners, metalworkers, engravers, and gut manufacturers. Furthermore, London was the centre of polite society, as well as including a wide cross section of social groups, so there was a high concentration of potential customers close at hand (Ball and Sunderland 2001, 20–21). The firms under consideration were all offering novel products to their customers that were nevertheless always grounded in the familiar. Large harps were already played in aristocratic circles, but Erard’s patented modifications gave the firm the opportunity to promote a new mechanism; English guittars were also readily available, but the addition of a piano action provided Clauss’ instruments with their unique selling point; and Longman & Broderip offered such a wide range of items that there would most likely always be something that customers would not previously have seen. The firms all addressed middle- to high-end customers to a greater or lesser extent, although harps were exclusively aimed at those with high financial standing––those with ‘legitimate’ tastes––and Longman & Broderip’s

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities 215 second-hand instruments would have made certain items accessible to those with less financial capital. As will be shown, although their financial behaviours were superficially similar, a more detailed examination reveals variations that led to quite different outcomes. Erard and the harp The firm of Erard established its London branch in the 1790s as an outpost of their main concern in Paris that had been founded between 1770 and 1775 (Adelson et al. 2015, vo1. 6). The firm’s head, Sébastien Erard, remained largely in Paris with occasional visits to London, while his nephew Pierre was responsible for daily operations in Britain. The company made both pianos and harps, developing their models to address concerns relating to volume, speed of repetition, and compass, the latter in terms of extending the keyboard in pianos and of adding all chromatic notes to the harp (Griffiths 2001; Nex 2011b). Since both harps and keyboard instruments were expensive and desirable, Erard was focused on the high-end market. Here, female amateur musicians formed the main customer group. As large instruments that could be played with elegance and with no facial distortion, keyboard instruments and harps addressed the needs of aristocratic women to portray femininity through music and controllable behaviour. We can glean information about the customers who purchased harps from the surviving company ledgers held at the Royal College of Music in London (RCM 497). These volumes are organized according to the serial number of the harps and include varying amounts of detail, with more as the 19th century progressed. Taking harps sold in 1812 as an example, the information is minimal. This is the first year that Erard’s double-action harps were sold. Single-action harps, invented over 100 years previously, enabled players to raise the pitch of each string by a semitone, making more keys available to the player. The double action enabled an additional raising of the pitch by a second semitone, making harps fully chromatic instruments. We know from the ledgers whether the instrument had a single or double action, the date when the instrument was allocated to a customer, the customer’s name, and sometimes a location or more detailed address. From this we can see that, in this particular year, 64% of the customers listed were female and 36% were male. Of course, this statement is bald and requires consideration. One fundamental question which it is not possible to answer fully is whether the named individual was the person who ordered the harp, was paying for the harp, or would be playing the harp. It is possible that some of the men were intending to play the harp themselves, but given that the harp was largely seen as an instrument intended for domestic use by female performers, and played professionally by men (with some notable exceptions), it seems likely that most of the amateur players would be female. There are 28 customers listed with aristocratic titles (Duchess, Marchioness, Countess, Viscountess. Lady, Sir, and Esquire), compared with 101 referred to as Mr, Mrs, or Miss and six gentlemen from the military and the church. Even though the majority of the customers were untitled, they were presumably of some social

216  Jenny Nex and financial standing since single-action instruments cost around £84 and doubleaction harps as much as 120 guineas (£126).2 Even the single-action price would have been far out of the reach of middle- and low-income earners, with an agricultural labourer earning around £42 per year (Williamson 1982). The largest group of purchasers listed is formed of unmarried and untitled women, comprising 41 of 135 individuals (30%). Since no address or additional information is included, it is often not possible to be certain of individual identities or their social rank: thus Miss Roberts (harp 1452), Miss North (harp 1478), and Miss Jones (harp 1531) are likely to remain obscure. However, in some cases it has been possible to identify the individual concerned, such as harp 1387, purchased by Miss Homfray of Russell Square. The Homfray family was involved in fashionable London society. Part of their affluence came from the iron industry, highlighting the importance of business prowess as well as aristocratic birth for elevated social standing in the early 19th century. Miss Homfray’s father Samuel (1762–1822) was chief promoter of the Glamorgan Canal, manager of the Penydarren ironworks, developer of the ironworks at Tredegar, High Sherriff of Monmouthshire, and MP for Stafford (Matthew and Harrison 2004, vol. 27, 892–894). Her mother Mary Jane (née Morgan) was daughter of Sir Charles Gould Morgan of Tredegar, demonstrating that landed property remained of importance in society. Certainly, the Homfrays were not afraid of modernity (exemplified in the new double-action harp mechanism) as Samuel was involved with the world’s first steam-driven locomotive, constructed by Richard Trevithick at Penydarren in 1804. Thus the combination of landed gentry represented by Mrs Homfray and industrial success achieved by her husband provided both the financial wherewithal and the appropriate social milieu for the acquisition of harp 1387 when it left Erard’s workshop. Two bankers acquired harps, namely Sir Thomas Baring of London (harp 1425) (Matthew and Harrison 2004, vol. 3, 834–847) and Ichabod Wright of Mapperley, near Nottingham (harp 1470),3 the latter possibly for the use of one or more of his ten daughters. Individuals and families involved in the military include Sir Roger Curtis, (harp 1409), who had a long and distinguished career as a naval officer, notably during the French and American revolutionary wars alongside Nelson. Since it seems unlikely that a 66-year-old admiral played the harp, it was probably purchased for either or both of his two daughters (Matthew and Harrison 2004, vol. 14, 778–779). A number of professional musicians purchased instruments either for themselves or for their pupils. These include François Dizi (1780–1847), who became one of the foremost harpists as a composer, performer, and teacher in England (Lade 2001); Mr Lanza, presumably the pianist and composer Francesco Lanza (1783–1862) or his brother Gesualdo (1779–1859), a composer and singing teacher (Bussi and Esposito 2001); Miss Krumpholtz, one of the harp-playing daughters of harpists, teachers, and composers Annemarie or Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz (Tuháčková et al. 2001); and members of the Mayer (or Meyer) family, including Phillipe-Jacques (1737–1819) and his two sons Philippe-Jacques, Jr (d London, 1841) and Frédéric-Charles, all of whom were eminent composers, teachers, and players of the harp in London (Zingel 2001).

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities 217 From the 1807–1809 workshop accounts, we know that the Erard company usually paid harpists and teachers a commission of 12 guineas (£12 12s) for each harp sale they generated. Other professional harpists were allying themselves with Erard’s new double-action harp in what appears to have been an exercise in mutual promotion. By highlighting their performances on the new style of harp, performers could put themselves ahead of those still using single-action instruments, while mentions in the announcements for and reviews of such performances brought Erard’s name to the fore. For example, we see in May 1814 that Henry Horn was using the harp to play Steibelt’s rondo The Storm to great acclaim, with both his skills and ‘Mr Erard’s admirable invention’ being praised together.4 Also, the three Misses Elouis combined the harp with the piano in their concerts in Edinburgh in 1821, although while the advertising referred to Erard as the maker of the harp, the piano maker did not receive the same recognition, demonstrating that the name of Erard was particularly notable at this date.5 These surviving workshop accounts enable us to glean an idea of the ongoing expenses of a medium-sized specialist firm. Although the data are incomplete or at best lack useful detail, they can offer some idea of the nature of financial outlay and the structure of financial behaviour in 1807–1809. Over the two years, the monthly expenditure does not appear to form any consistent or repeating pattern. In general, though, expenditure seems to peak in April and again in the three months from August to October. This suggests that instrument making was focused in the period after the London season when fewer customers needed repairs to or supplies for their harps since they were away from London. Workers could therefore focus on replenishing the stock of completed instruments ready for sale during the next season. A comparison with the income received over the period could prove helpful in establishing whether there were indeed seasonal fluctuations in activity. However, there are three ways of extracting income detail from the ledgers. First, the sales section covers theoretical income based on when instruments were ‘purchased’ by customers, often on credit. Second, this same section offers information that was added when payment was actually received for these purchases, which could be as much as a year later and was either in cash or as a draft or credit note from a bank or other party. Third, and perhaps most reliably, a separate section of accounts listed under ‘Received’ gives another set of data. Cross-referencing the additions to the sales section with the ‘Received’ section shows that payments were sometimes, but not always, noted in both places. Although these three data sets give different overall results, the general picture is of a peak in around May/June and another around December/January. The 21st of June (Midsummer) and 25th December (Christmas) were two of the quarter days which regulated the financial and employment year, so it may be that customers settled their accounts around these times. Alternatively, the July peak may be a result of people settling their bills before they left London for the country. The income section also demonstrates that while sales of associated items were part of the firm’s business, harp sales comprised almost 90% of their income in 1808. This underlines the extent to which Erard relied on instrument sales: the company had very little by way of alternative income streams which it might rely on if sales were low.

218  Jenny Nex Some idea of how Pierre managed the London accounts and juggled loans and income between various sources can be seen in the surviving letters between the London and Paris branches. The collateral of a collection of important paintings that Sébastien had brought together at his French residence, the Château de La Muette, seems to have been a useful underpinning to the firm, and a number were sold in 1832 when funds were needed by the firm (Adelson et al. 2015, vo1. 10). Also, a good ‘credit rating’ gave lenders confidence that they would indeed be repaid in due course. For example, in September 1814 Pierre wrote to his uncle: This morning I saw your close friend Mr Breguet who gave me £150, which along with the £200 from Mr Dumergue will help us to get through the week. (Adelson et al. 2015, vol. 2, 549) However, in April the following year he was not so positive, stating that: I have not been able to pay the rent of £150. I could not send anything to Mr Lepard, who has received only £195 on the bill for £400 that came due 24 months ago. I requested a month’s delay from Phillips for the £192 that was due on the 4th of this month. Yesterday I could not pay my debt of £98 that I had taken in order to pay Bourdelain. So today we are behind on about £500 and as the coming months are very busy I would be very uncomfortable if the important deadlines were not to be reserved for the Fauntleroys, whose kindness is my only hope. (Adelson et al. 2015, vol. 2, 549) John Bourdelain is recorded as a merchant based at 26 Jewry Street, Aldgate in 1822 and was still in London in 1839. The Fauntleroys (or Fauntelroys) were a family of bankers, Henry taking over from his father in 1807. This shows that Erard was borrowing from established banks as well as individual merchants who were willing to invest their surplus funds in entrepreneurial firms. Erard also demonstrates the problems faced by many merchants: while the firm may be solvent on paper, having cash in hand with which to pay pressing debts is a different matter: You are in the black to the order of £35,000. But such is the nature of the objects that make up your assets that for the moment there are no reserves, only sums to receive from good debtors and the harps that if we are lucky can be sold for cash. (Adelson et al. 2015, vol. 2, 612) It was of fundamental importance to Erard and others like them that their creditors believed that they would be repaid, otherwise insolvency or bankruptcy could follow. The situation was neither unique to instrument makers nor to one

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities 219 level of society, but reflected a general economic stagnation in the country. As Erard reported: Nothing is more difficult than to obtain payments at this time in England. The people of the high society with whom you generally deal all give you the same excuse, that their [tenants] do not pay them. (Adelson et al. 2015, vol. 2, 644) The Erard company archives thus illustrate patterns of income and expenditure for a business that was largely focused on the construction of one type of instrument, an instrument frequently associated with the higher social echelons of British society. As a result, we mostly see the old landed families together with successful merchants, bankers, and manufacturers who had sufficient finances to afford luxury commodities such as a harp, and who possessed a particular type of enculturation in which familiarity with classical music was deemed to be an important part of life, particularly female life. In Bourdieu’s terms, this class would see themselves as displaying ‘legitimate tastes’. This social group had access to funds that were provided by short- and medium-term loans from merchants and banks; they also had valuable assets behind them that provided guarantees for lenders and, by extension, potential financial security for the firm itself. Erard could provide an instrument to an individual yet defer payment in the knowledge that the customer’s financial standing, inextricably linked to their social status, was most likely secure. Clauss and the English guittar Christian Clauss was also a specialist maker, focusing mainly on the English guittar, a type of wire-strung cittern.6 The main selling point for Clauss’s instruments was a patented miniature piano mechanism built into these instruments, which were fleetingly popular in the 1770s and 1780s. The firm was much smaller in scale than Erard’s, and their market was somewhat different from that of the harp maker. Clauss’ instruments were much less expensive to make and to buy (Poulopoulos 2011, 573–575) although they were still aimed at an educated amateur audience. Clauss’ business was supported financially by the goldsmith and jeweller Joseph Levy, who agreed to supply the £300 required to start construction and trading in 1783. However, the relationship between the two partners deteriorated and culminated in legal arguments and eventually Clauss’ bankruptcy in 1787.7 Most of the company’s income came from instrument sales, although Clauss was rather more diversified than Erard: as well as instruments and strings, the firm sold wood, music, music stands, tuning forks, cases, and ‘sundries’; they altered the tuning systems, added piano mechanisms to certain instruments, replaced fingerboards, and both hired out and sold pianos. Most of our information about the firm’s activities comes from the court case brought by Clauss against Jacob Levy in 1786. The surviving documents include accounts from June 1783 to June 1786 which provide useful data for analysis.8 Accepting that the data can only be used to gain a general impression, the picture is one with an emphasis on the sale of

220  Jenny Nex guittars (62%, £993) and pianos (21%, £334). A relatively large ‘unknown’ section (£133) mostly relates to money coming in ‘on account’, that is, customers settling their outstanding bills, but there is usually no detail concerning the nature of the bill. However, it does at least tell us that Clauss & Levy were dealing in both cash and credit. Very little structure can be seen in the monthly pattern of income, other than an overall increase with monthly variations from June 1783 until around April 1785, followed by a similar decline until the end of the accounts. Months which saw a high income in one year seem to have seen a comparatively low income in another year. Even when considering the London season (broadly, February to July), we see no real distinction between ‘in season’ and ‘out of season’, with overall income totals of £806 and £820 respectively. These figures are surprising in being not only very similar, but also because the slightly higher number is for the ‘out of season’ period. This implies that Clauss’ instruments were of less significance for those who departed from London and of more significance for those who remained in the capital all year than is the case for Erard harps. This matches with the relatively high proportion of customers who were not ‘of title’, suggesting that the English guittar was more of a universal instrument than the harp. Clauss’ pianoforte guittars seem to have cost 7 guineas (£7 7s) to normal customers, much less than even single action harps. In addition, and partly as a result, Erard’s saw an income of almost £9,000 in 1808, compared to Clauss & Levy’s £557 in 1784 and £721 in 1785, showing that the two firms were operating at different levels. Turning to the demographics of Clauss’ customers, the records show that of the 340 entries relating to named customers, 60% are male and 40% are female. The social standing of customers can be considered through examining their titles. Female customers fall into three groups: Lady, Miss, and Mrs. Overall, 16% are titled and 84% untitled. The situation for male customers is more complex and includes a wider range of titles: Baron, Duke, Earl, Lord, Sir, Esquire, Sergent, Captain, Major, Major General, Mr, Dr, and Dean. Among these customers, 29% appear to have had the aristocratic, military, or educational standing indicated by such titles, with the remaining 71% using Mr. As well as private individuals, a number of Clauss & Levy’s customers were music shops: dealer and publisher Mr Bremner purchased three guittars; Corri & Co paid their bills in 1784 and 1785; and Longman & Broderip settled a bill of £28 15s 9d in 1786. The distribution between genders and across titles is interesting when compared with what we know about usual players of English guittars. According to Charles Burney, writing in Rees’s Cyclopaedia in 1819: About 50 years ago, [the guittar’s] vogue was so great among all ranks of people, as nearly to break all the harpsichord and spinet makers […]. All the ladies disposed of their harpsichords at auctions for one-third of their price, or exchanged them for guitars; till old Kirkman, the harpsichord maker, after almost ruining himself with buying in his instruments, for better times, purchased likewise some cheap guitars and made a present of several to girls in milliners’ shops, and to ballad singers, in the streets, whom he had

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities 221 taught to accompany themselves, with a few chords and triplets, which soon made the ladies ashamed of their frivolous and vulgar taste, and return to the harpsichord. (Rees 1819, vol. 1, 7, ‘Guitarra’) Burney uses the expression ‘all the ladies’, which suggests a female bias. Therefore, it would appear that the balance of players was on the female side (at least in amateur circles), and the likelihood is that many of the male customers were purchasing instruments for their female relatives. Burney’s anecdote also illustrates how the market position of instruments can be inflected by their association with particular social groupings. The larger section of the accounts relates to expenditure. Although some costs are always listed separately, such as payments made to a journeyman (a skilled worker who was not yet experienced enough to be a master in his trade), other items purchased appear in different combinations, so it is not possible to isolate them. For example, although fingerboards are often purchased on their own, they are also bought together with wood or varnish, so it is not possible to extract a total expenditure on fingerboards alone. Something of a pattern can be seen when superimposing the four years. Expenditure was always low in December, and after a rise in January it then declined in both February and March before rising again towards the end of the London season, when it remained fairly consistent in 1783 and 1784 but dropped right off in 1785. Thus, while the income, as noted above, was not influenced by the season, the expenditure appears to have some correlation with the busier months in London. This may suggest that more materials were being bought towards the end of the season and in the ‘out of season’ months in order to replenish the stock of instruments ready for sale in the spring. The accounts also show that Clauss & Levy were among a group of instrument makers, including Longman & Broderip, who believed that advertising was important. Other makers, including Erard, very rarely utilized the public press, instead relying on word of mouth. The amount spent on advertising remained fairly constant. April 1785 saw a much higher amount than any other month, due to ‘Two Advertisements in an Irish Paper’ and ‘For Translating an Advertisement into Dutch and Two Advertisements Inserting’. This direct advertising in foreign newspapers demonstrates Clauss & Levy’s international aspirations. There is also an increase in the number of notices placed in London papers in April 1785, the highest amount being for advertisements in The London Gazette. On consulting the Gazette,9 one finds adverts describing the instrument as well as promoting the patent. A final clause is also helpful in indicating that Clauss anticipated that the instruments should last for about 20 years. Over the three-year existence of the firm, Clauss & Levy saw an overall profit of £180 3s 6d, amounting to an average of £60 1s 2d per year. We have very few statistics from other companies with which to compare this, although we do know that in 1791 Broderip had an annual salary of £136 10s and Longman £409 10s.10 Many other smaller tradesmen earned about £40 (Picard 2000, 55),11 so £30 each for Clauss and Levy is a respectable amount for a new firm with a very specific output.

222  Jenny Nex The accounts wind down in 1787 with the final entries dating from June of that year. The court’s decision in Levy’s favour may have been disastrous for Clauss, as can be seen from subsequent events. Had they managed to put aside their individual differences, the firm could have become moderately successful, as the English guittar was very popular at this time. Instead, after their disagreement was formally closed, it seems that Levy returned to his work as a goldsmith while Clauss was forced into bankruptcy,12 possibly as a direct consequence of needing to find £50 to settle with Levy. It is to be presumed that not long after this, Clauss moved to New York, where he is next found in 1788 working in the piano trade (Clinkscale 1993, 67). This court case and associated documentation have been useful in providing an example of a small firm’s accounts. These enable us to gain an idea of workshop practices, links between makers, and the overall financial situation of the firm over a three-year period. Although there is relatively little time when the firm was a stable, going concern, it nevertheless has shown the use of a journeyman and external workers in combination with the master and an external financier, all of whom could theoretically have worked together to make the business a success. Instead, though, we have a paradigmatic example of one of the ways firms could tear themselves to pieces and at least one of the partners finding themselves facing bankruptcy. Longman & Broderip: the mass market approach Longman & Broderip were based in the London area of Cheapside from the 1760s, with additional premises in the Haymarket and Tottenham Court Road, from where they developed markets in the City and the West End, across Great Britain, and as far afield as Jamaica and India. They sold a wide array of products, including instruments and sheet music, and accessories such as strings, music paper, mouthpieces, tuning hammers, and novelty items. Examples include a collection of Cotillons (country dances) printed on playing cards,13 while in 1788, they advertised a fan on which was printed the names of the subscribers of each of the boxes in the Opera House.14 These items were probably aimed at the higher end of society, notably customers who attended balls and the opera. The firm also sold second-hand instruments, making what would once have been expensive items more accessible to customers of lower incomes. Their adverts include long lists of items, such as: Steel Forks for tuning Harpsicords, Spinnets, Violins, Guitars, &c. Harpsicord and Spinnet Hammers Crow and Raven Quills Desks for Harpsicords New invented portable Music Desks Rosin Boxes, Wood or Ivory Mutes, Brass, Box or Ivory Mouth-Pieces for French Horns or Trumpets, Brass or Ivory Mouth-Pieces for German Flutes Pens to rule Music Paper Ruled Books of all sizes Ruled Paper of all sorts Bows for Violins, Kits, Tenors, Violoncellos, and Viol de Gambos Bridges for Violins, Kits, Tenors, Violoncellos, Viol de Gambos, Guitars, &c. Pegs, or Pins and Tail Pieces for ditto Hinges and Locks for Harpsichords and Spinnets Reeds for Bassoons, Hautboys, Clarinets, Vaux-humanes and Bagpipes Cases for Reeds, all sorts Cases for Flutes and Hautboys Cases for Violins, Violoncellos and Guitars […].

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities 223 The following year, a further notice demonstrates that the firm was importing harps from France (Nex 2011a, 32), thus providing instruments for those customers with high financial and cultural capital. As well as their tuning and maintenance service, in 1782 they opened a musical circulating library that offered subscribers ‘every publication, ancient and modern, that England, France, Holland, and Germany have produced, or may in future’.15 The firm employed workers in a range of different ways, amounting, according to The Times, to ‘several hundred workmen of different denominations’.16 They had their own direct employees, including shopmen, tuners, apprentices, porters, and packers, as well as relationships of various kinds with other instrument makers. For example, piano maker Christopher Ganer received regular payments from Longman & Broderip. The records of Ganer’s account with Drummonds Bank show that over a period of six years from 1779, he received a total of £1,680 3s.17 It is not clear whether Ganer was an outworker, i.e., he was using materials supplied by Longman’s and paid only for his time, or a supplier of completed instruments, but he did have his own warehouse and workshop at 47 Broad Street, suggesting that he retained a high degree of independence (Whitehead and Nex 2014). We know more about the relationship between Longman’s and the firm headed by Thomas Culliford. In 1786, Culliford and his partners bound themselves by contract to Longman & Broderip to supply £5,000 of instruments per year. This included harpsichords and pianos but probably also a range of other instruments. Culliford’s used workshops in Longman & Broderip’s premises but also their own workshops in other locations, so the delineation between the two firms is not precise (Nex 2004). Longman and Broderip’s specific roles within the firm remain unclear, although Longman had served his apprenticeship with John Johnson, an instrument maker and publisher, so he could have learnt a range of useful skills (Nex 2011a, 12). Despite the success of their business over nearly three decades, Longman & Broderip ultimately succumbed to financial difficulties brought on by the widespread economic depression of the 1790s. Longman, in particular, seems to have borrowed large sums of money,18 and, while this helped to create an expansive business empire, when the cash crisis of the mid-1790s hit London businesses, Longman was not able to pay his dues. Longman & Broderip suffered bankruptcy in 1795, but the firm was still viable, so it was bought out by two groups of musicians and makers (Nex 2011a). Some of the problems faced by Longman & Broderip can be seen in their advertisements and in the various court cases in which they were involved. Although they had previously operated successfully within the credit system, in the 1790s Longman & Broderip tried to avoid the problem of too many customers owing them money: To prevent the trouble and difficulty attending the collecting of cash due for tuning, and the frequent disputes respecting the same, it is humbly presumed that Ladies and Gentlemen cannot be offended if payment is required at the time, by the Tuner, except of those who agree by the year.19

224  Jenny Nex Longman’s own borrowing related mainly to his neighbour on Cheapside, a china seller named Thomas Hodgson.20 Ultimately, Longman’s debts came to a total of £9,221 2s 4d, of which he planned to pay off about £1,000 per annum. However, Longman found himself unable to fulfil this commitment and instead offered Hodgson a share in the business. Matters became more complicated when Hodgson died and his partner Payler Donaldson, who inherited the debt, filed for bankruptcy. As creditors came forward, the financial situation for Longman & Broderip deteriorated until May 1795, when they appeared in the Registers of Commissions of Bankruptcy,21 initially with two suits brought against them. Two additional suits brought by Culliford, Rolfe & Barrow soon followed.22 It was decided that the five assignees for their case23 would assist Longman & Broderip in continuing to run the business, as this would be of most benefit to the creditors.24 On 13 November 1795, Longman and Broderip were committed to the Fleet debtors’ prison, where they remained until their release on 2 November 1796.25 From this point, the business was divided into two, with Broderip working from the Haymarket shop and Longman taking Cheapside and Tottenham Court Road.26 Finally, in November 1798, the business was sold in these same two parts. Broderip carried on his side with a new partner, Charles Wilkinson, Jr, who brought finances with him (Kassler 2011). Longman’s side was bought by a group of men including John Longman (James’ brother), Muzio Clementi (musician; see Rowland 2004 and 2011), Frederick Augustus Hyde (music publisher), and Frederick William Collard (piano maker). John Longman became involved to maintain his brother’s interest in the business. James was to continue to work for the firm, receiving £200 per year. Unfortunately, James’ financial problems were not solved by these arrangements. Further debts led to him being readmitted into the Fleet on 26 January 1803, reportedly owing a total of some £460.27 After a further nine months in prison, Longman fell ill on 8 November and died three days later.28 His death was announced in the Gentleman’s Magazine, where a longer obituary notice also appeared: [Longman’s] finances […] were affected by the common misfortunes of the Continent. Mr. Longman, who, according to his own account, had £70,000 owing to his establishment in Cheapside, Tottenham Court road, &c. was compelled to have recourse to a statute of bankruptcy, a remaining contingent of which immured him in the Fleet prison, where, borne down by the severe pressure of ‘a wounded spirit’, he was suddenly seized with a pleuritic complaint, which terminated in his dissolution.29 If Longman’s claim that he was owed £70,000 is accurate, then his remaining debt of £3,879 7s 11d to Hodgson seems relatively small. The main problems in this case appear to relate to a lack of available cash with which to pay off immediate and pressing debts. The difficulties in foreign trade brought on by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars would have impacted on Longman & Broderip as they had an international market. Furthermore, the 1793 financial crisis and British recession in 1797 (Rudé 1971, 228) would have reduced their domestic trade.

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities 225 As a result, a business which was apparently thriving was instead floundering due to financial uncertainly below the surface. It is difficult to gain any overall idea of Longman & Broderip’s customers since the firm’s archives do not survive. We are offered glimpses by individuals such as the gentleman composer John Marsh, whose diaries include mentions of his dealings with them. The Cheapside premises seem to have been not only a shop and series of workshops and warerooms but also a place for social gatherings. On 25 June 1791, Marsh was invited to dinner, after which Mr Snow played the piano and Jonas Blewitt the organ, the latter instrument being positioned ‘in a recess behind the sideboard’ (quoted in Robins 1998, 487). On another occasion, Marsh attempted to watch the Lord Mayor’s Show process along Cheapside but was disappointed to find that Longman & Broderip’s was already crowded. These occurrences show not only how musicians were entertained but also how instruments were used within the premises, partly for entertainment but presumably also for promotional purposes. The range of services and items for sale demonstrate that Longman & Broderip were trying to attract as wide a customer base as possible. Through their constant advertising in newspapers, Longman & Broderip made their offer visible to potential customers. The firm grew into probably the largest music suppliers and instrument makers in London in the last quarter of the 18th century. However, Longman’s financial dealings and apparent lack of control over his borrowing led to the company’s financial collapse and initial bankruptcy, after which the business was reinvigorated as two separate divisions in the early 19th century. Conclusion Although the late 18th and early 19th centuries offered great possibilities and opportunities for musical instrument makers, it was also a period of risk taking, culminating in success for some and disaster for others. The musical marketplace was wide and varied, so companies could address separate parts or the whole, as their products and own practices dictated. Although the three firms discussed in this chapter included among their clientele high- and middle-brow customers due to the association of some types of music (and instruments) with education and financial capital, none of the makers discussed came from an upper-class background. James Longman was the youngest of four boys in a family of clothworkers from Somerset in the southwest of England. Francis Broderip was from the same county and was also the youngest in his family, his father being employed as the organist at Wells Cathedral (Nex 2011a, 10–11, 19–20). The Erard family were from Strasbourg and were skilled in wood-based crafts, Sébastien’s father being a church furniture maker (Adelson et al. 2015, vol. 1, 4–5). Erard’s status grew in part through his contacts with aristocrats in France, but these connections became dangerous during the revolutionary troubles, with Sébastien only narrowly escaping the fate of many of his Parisian contemporaries (Adelson et al. 2015, vol. 1, 49–51). Christian Clauss’ origins are rather more obscure, but Libin suggests in the article in the New Grove Dictionary that Clauss was born in Stuttgart, Germany, a city with a thriving

226  Jenny Nex musical scene that had strong traditions in violin and piano making (Libin 2001; Stiefel 2001). It was therefore not their own social position at birth that determined the markets they addressed, but rather the status and exclusivity that their product or products held with the nonprofessional musicians who formed the bulk of their customers. The culture of credit proved to be useful to firms such as Erard, where there was ongoing trust between the creditor and the debtor. The short-term loans which Erard was able to obtain based on a sound business enterprise, the growing popularity of the harp, and collateral assets in the form of a collection of valuable paintings enabled the firm to work through its financial difficulties. However, other firms, notably that of Longman & Broderip, although working within this same overall economic context and selling examples of the same types of instruments among their much wider catalogue, found themselves entangled in large networks of debt and instability, and were forced into bankruptcy when their credit ran out and they had no cash with which to pay their pressing debts. The examples of Erard, Clauss & Levy, and Longman & Broderip all demonstrate that the musical instrument– making industry was supported by finances from elsewhere. While a few large firms were able to generate sufficient income not to need external assistance, many other companies borrowed either in the long term for fixed capital or in the short term for circulating capital, without which funding they simply could not continue to operate. Financial backing for all three firms typically came from merchants and bankers either through partnership, short-term loans, or medium-term investments. All three firms also faced bankruptcy, although the outcome for each individual was different. These examples therefore demonstrate that, although the different market sectors did shape the businesses to some extent, the more significant factor affecting the financial success and longevity of all three firms was the financial behaviour and business acumen of their managers. Musical instruments and their associated paraphernalia were available to a wide cross section of society, with different instrument types invested with contrasting levels of cultural capital. More desirable instruments such as the harp were thus able to command higher prices and required greater levels of financial capital for their acquisition. Makers such as Erard specifically addressed a focused market sector, while others, such as Longman & Broderip, targeted a wide range of customers with their products. Musical instruments and their makers therefore confirm Bourdieu’s theory that music is one of the strongest classifiers of taste and marks a distinction between those of different social classes. But this is not necessarily an indicator of business success or corporate longevity. While some makers focus their attention on those with ‘legitimate taste’, such as harps, others look to different places within the musical marketplace. The relationship between the consumers and producers is close, with changes in taste and in the products being offered transforming one another directly or indirectly (Bourdieu 2010, 228). Makers offer innovations to the market which are either rejected or adopted; these can become normalized for shorter or longer periods of time until another change is desired by either side. Those with financial backing and sound business skills are able to set strong foundations on

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities 227 which they can build their success for many years. In contrast, those who are less careful with their finances, or who have disputes that are financially draining, can find themselves facing bankruptcy. Therefore, perhaps the most important factor that determines the longevity of a musical instrument maker is not the social standing of the firm’s customer base, although that undoubtedly plays a part, but rather its ability to manage its finances appropriately. Notes 1 Longman & Broderip notices in The Star, Monday 23 April 1798 and Wednesday 25 January 1792. 2 Single-action harp 1372, 1811. A double-action second-hand harp advertised in 1817 originally cost 120 guineas (The Morning Post, 19 May 1817). 3 www.ianwright.me.uk/people, consulted August 2010. 4 The Morning Post, 19 May 1814. 5 The Caledonian Mercury, 21 March 1821. 6 The English guittar is referred to as both the guitar and guittar at this time. The type including a piano mechanism is referred to variously as the keyed, pianoforte, or fortepiano guitar or guittar. 7 The London Gazette, 31 July 1787. 8 The National Archives: Public Record Office (hereafter TNA: PRO) C12/154/35, Clauss v Levy, 1786. 9 The London Gazette, 26 April 1785. 10 TNA: PRO C12/178/48, Smith v Longman, 1791. 11 Based on Joseph Massie’s statistics of average family incomes, compiled in 1759. 12 The London Gazette, 31 July 1787. 13 The British Library Ms K.1.c.26. 14 The Times, 9 January 1788. 15 London Courant Westminster Chronicle and Daily Advertiser, 21 March 1782. 16 The Times, 31 January 1788. 17 Drummonds Bank Customer Account Ledgers, preserved in the archives of the Royal Bank of Scotland plc. 18 TNA: PRO B1/93. 19 The Star, 25 January 1792. 20 TNA: PRO B1/94, 1797–1798, 111–114. 21 The London Gazette, 23 May 1795. 22 TNA: PRO PRIS1/16; TNA: PRO PRIS2/73. 23 TNA: PRO B1/93, 68–73; TNA: PRO C13/33/13. 24 TNA: PRO E112/1771/5631. 25 TNA: PRO PRIS10/52; TNA: PRO PRIS3/5. 26 TNA: PRO E/112/1787/6238. 27 TNA: PRO PRIS 1/26, 49; PRIS 2/88. 28 Corporation of London Records Office, Guildhall, Prison Inquests, 12 November 1803. 29 The Gentleman’s Magazine, 1803.

Bibliography Adelson, Robert, Alain Roudier, Jenny Nex, Laure Barthel and Michel Foussard (Eds). 2015. The History of the Erard Piano and Harp in Letters and Documents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baileys British Directory, or Merchant’s and Trader’s Useful Companion. 1785. 2nd edition, 4 volumes. London: William Richardson.

228  Jenny Nex Ball, Michael and David Sunderland. 2001. An Economic History of London, 1800–1914. London & New York: Routledge. Berg, Maxine. 1994. The Age of Manufacturers 1700–1820, 2nd edition. London & New York: Routledge. Boalch, Donald H. 1995. Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord 14401840. 3rd edition, edited by C. Mould. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2010. Distinction, A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. 2nd edition. London, & New York: Routledge. Bussi, F., & Esposito, F. (2001) ‘Lanza Family’. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 27 May. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630. 001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000016005. Calhoun, Craig (Ed.). 1992. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press. Clinkscale, Martha Novak. 1993. Makers of the Piano 1700–1820. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, Eric J. 1983. The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain 1783–1870. London & New York: Longman. Floud, Roderick and Deirdre McCloskey (Eds). 1994. The Economic History of Britain since 1700. vol. 1, 1700–1860. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Griffiths, Ann. 2001. ‘Erard’. In Stanley Sadie, (Ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, vol. 8 (276–79), 2nd edition. London: Macmillan. Gunn, Simon. 2006. History and Cultural Theory. Harlow: Pearson. Habermas, Jürgen. 1961. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kassler, Michael, 2011a. ‘Broderip & Wilkinson’. In Michael Kassler (Ed.) The Music Trade in Georgian London (95–124). Farnham: Ashgate. Lade, J. (2001). ‘Dizi, François Joseph’. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 30 Apr. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630. 001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000007882. Leppert, Richard. 1993. The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body. Berkeley, CA, Los Angeles, CA, and London: University of California Press. Libin, L. (2001). ‘Dodds & Claus’. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 8 Jun. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630. 001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002218988. Matthew, H.C.G. and Brian Harrison (Eds). 2004. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mokyr, Joel (Ed.). 1999. ‘Editor’s Introduction’. In The New Economic History and the Industrial Revolution (1–127). 2nd edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Mokyr, Joel. 1994. ‘Technological Change, 1700–1830’. In R. Floud and D. McCloskey (Eds), The Economic History of Britain since 1700, 2nd edition. Volume 1, 1700–1860 (12–43). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nex, Jenny. 2004. ‘Culliford & Co: Keyboard Instruments Makers in Georgian London’. Early Keyboard Journal 22: 7–48. Nex, Jenny. 2011a. ‘Longman & Broderip’. In Michael Kassler (Ed.) The Music Trade in Georgian London (9–93). Farnham: Ashgate. Nex, Jenny. 2011b. ‘Erard’s Double Action Harp: the Early Years as Seen Through the London Stock Books’. In Robert Adelson (Ed.), Catalogue of the Exhibition Erard et l’invention de la harpe modern, 1811–2011 (16–23). Nice: Musée du Palais Lascaris.

Musical Instruments as Traded Commodities 229 Picard, Liza. 2000. Dr Johnson’s London. London: Phoenix Press. Porter, Roy. 2000. Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World. London: Penguin Books. Poulopoulos, Panagiotis. 2011. The Guittar in the British Isles 1750–1810. PhD Dissertation. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Rees, Abraham. 1819. The Cyclopaedia or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature. London: Longman, Hurst, Reed, Orme, & Brown. Robbins, Derek. 2000. Bourdieu and Culture. London, Thousand Oaks, CA, & New Delhi: Sage. Robins, Brian (Ed.). 1998. The John Marsh Journals. Sociology of Music Series No. 9. Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press. Rowland, David. 2004. ‘Clementi’s Early Business Career: New Documents’. In Richard Bösel and Massimiliano Sala (Eds.), Muzio Clementi. Cosmopolita della Musica. Atti del Convegno Internazionale in Occasione del 250° Anniversario della Nascita (1752–2002) (49–59). Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni. Rowland, David. 2011. ‘Clementi’s Music Business’. In Michael Kassler (Ed.) The Music Trade in Georgian London (125–57). Farnham: Ashgate. Rudé, George. 1971. The History of London: Hanoverian London 1714–1808. London: Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd. Rudé, George. 1972. Europe in the Eighteenth Century: Aristocracy and the Bourgeois Challenge. London: Phoenix Press. Smail, John. 2003. ‘The Culture of Credit in Eighteenth-Century Commerce: The English Textile Industry’. Enterprise and Society 4: 299–325. Stiefel, E. (2001). ‘Stuttgart’. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 8 Jun. 2021, from https://www. oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/ omo-9781561592630-e-0000027040. Tuháčková, A., Pohl, C., Zingel, H., Jackson, B., & Rempel, U. (2001). ‘Krumpholtz Family’. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 27 May. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline. com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e0000015591. van Krieken, Robert. 1998. Norbert Elias. London & New York: Routledge. Whitehead, Lance and Jenny Nex. 2014. ‘The Insurance of Musical London and the Sun Fire Office 1710–1779’. The Galpin Society Journal LXVII: 181–216. Williamson, J.G. 1982. ‘The Structure of Pay in Britain, 1710–1911’. In Paul Uselding (Ed.), Research in Economic History 7 (1–54). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press. Zingel, H. (2001). ‘Meyer, Philippe-Jacques’. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 27 May. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630. 001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000018552.

10 Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection in the Long 19th Century Trevor Herbert

Introduction As I sauntered about the streets of Glasgow, I saw the new guard marching to relieve the old, their band playing a cheerful air. This being the first military band I had ever heard, I was quite charmed with it, and followed, unconsciously taking the step and holding up my head. A military enthusiasm instantly seized me, and I felt as if a soldier’s life was the only station for which nature had designed me. (Howells 1964, 13) This recollection is found in the autobiography of Alexander Alexander; the ­illegitimate son of a wealthy merchant, he was abandoned and rendered homeless as a child. He attributed his passage to a better life to this one experience in 1801: a chance encounter with the sight and sound of a military band in a public space. It may have been the first time he had heard any form of coordinated instrumental music of such scale; there is a hint to that effect. Marching bands of music were important in 19th-century society: they could confer legitimacy on public events, change moods, and stimulate patriotic sentiments through their sonic and visual impression. For many at that time, they provided an experience that was a welcome intervention in the routines of normal life. Their potential to draw crowds, promote patriotism, and increase military recruitment—the effect that worked so strongly on Alexander Alexander—was recognized throughout Europe. Consequently, national projects to improve military music occupied the hearts of many governments and not just the military itself. These projects caused unprecedented shifts in the infrastructure of musical commerce because band instruments, with relative suddenness, constituted a massive proportion of the musical instrument market. Players in military bands outnumbered those in civilian professional music-making by a significant margin. An estimate of their number in Europe was made in 1889 in the first edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Vol. IV. s.v. ‘Wind Bands’) by the German-born bandmaster Jacob Kappey. Kappey’s calculation was based on his own knowledge and ‘reports from bandmasters of each country’. He excluded bands of ‘smaller battalions’, bugle and DOI: 10.4324/9780367816070-19

Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection 231 trumpet corps and bands stationed in the colonies as well as those ‘not authorised by the state’. He concluded that there were more than 1,385 bands in Europe and made the very conservative estimate that there were just over 51,000 soldiers who were serving as bandsmen. Though military band musicians were often skilled in other families of instruments, the military band has usually been a formulation of wind, brass, and percussion. Its instrumentation has never been standardized, even in countries where standardization was attempted, but this has never hindered its recognition as a distinct performance species. Its configuration was a persistent topic of debate in the 19th century, especially the extent to which newly invented instruments could contribute to the purposes for which such bands existed, but there was always a paradox: despite such attention to detail, the instinctive perception of the military band has always been the product of its entirety rather than its parts. Put somewhat differently, it is the band, rather than its individual items of apparatus, that at any given time or place is recognized as ‘the instrument’. Critically linked to this idea is the performance ethic inherent in all military bands. They are primarily executive rather than creative or interpretive: each is imbued with those core values of precision and perfection inherent in the military itself. These aspects have been overwhelmingly powerful and are part of the cultural transmissions that have been, and remain, central to their purpose. The idea of ‘the band as the instrument’ has greater substance with respect to the military band than to other groupings for which similar claims may be made, because of the unique circumstance that led to the development of bands of music within military units. It is with such matters in mind that this chapter, though it also deals in part with individual instruments and with one band that was not strictly of ‘the military’, is primarily concerned: the idea of the military band as an entity and how it has related to society. My intention is to consider how collections of musical instruments brought together in the form of military bands have responded to the social and cultural roles for which they were intended. The culture of military bands Despite its prominence in the musical life of most countries, the cultural status of the military band has been inconsistent since the introduction of its modern form in the late 18th century. The causes are interesting and cast light on European cultures more generally. Repertoire has not been a major factor, for leaving aside functional forms such as marches and the small category of related forms associated with drills and rituals, the core repertoires have changed very little.1 In most countries, the music played by military bands has, in the main, been transcriptions of popular music and derivatives of art music or operatic repertoires. It is tempting to consider military bands as just a manifestation of popular music worthy of limited attention because, like other forms of popular music, they serve only as

232  Trevor Herbert a form of musical ephemera. Even their prominence in rituals of state could be categorized in such terms. But this is true neither in modern times nor in the period of this chapter. Three factors have made them distinct from all other forms of music-making and influenced their cultural position. Firstly, and despite the various different forms in which they appear, it is realistic to think of military bands in a singular way because each exists at the behest of a common mediating agency— a branch of a state’s military. As such, and implicitly, they represent something other than just themselves—their modus operandi is neither free, nor confined to, the independent musical expression of their practitioners. Secondly, most military band performances are given in open and usually accessible spaces: streets, parks, parade grounds, and so on—places where their availability for listening and for the public gaze is unhindered by barriers of social class, age, or gender. Furthermore, for much of the time, the audience they address is that serendipitous group recognized as so important in social history and often referred to as ‘the crowd’. Thirdly, and with equal frequency, their visual impact, their manner of deportment and presentation, is both inseparable from, and consistent with, the way they sound: military bands whether on the march or performing on a public bandstand, are components of a choreography of representation that is defined for them by their military status. The key qualities in this process are military precision, order, and adherence to prescribed or less formal but commonly understood presentational protocols. Military bands are one of the ways the military, as an arm of state, expresses itself, and this in turn impacts on the social interactions with which they engage. It is no accident that military bands in their modern form developed in the later 18th century, at a time of global political change when traditional hierarchical social structures were being moderated. New spheres of power adopted revised modes of political and diplomatic expression—ways in which they could convey authority and a sense of stability, and enlist popular appeal, through diplomatic communication not only with foreign powers but also with their own people (including their own armies). It is in this idea that we find the origin of the modern diplomatic term ‘soft power’, which can be explained as processes in which cultural rather than more aggressive persuasions are deployed for strategic benefit. In many countries, military music was developed precisely, and with a sense of urgency, with these objectives in mind.2 This offered international sales opportunities that companies such as Couesnon sought to capitalize on (see Figure 10.1). Military musical instruments The term ‘Military Musical Instruments’ gained currency in Britain from the late 18th century. George Astor of 79 Cornhill in the City of London, a maker and purveyor of musical instruments and related accoutrements, was among those to routinely employ the term. For example, on Saturday 6 August 1788, he placed an advertisement in the Star and Evening Advertiser that informed ‘Officers of His Majesty’s Army, and the Public in General’ that he had

Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection 233

Figure 10.1 A centrefold image (the original in vivid colour) from the catalogue of the Couesnon company at the 1900 Paris Exhibition. It shows military bandsmen of the world in their distinctive national uniforms converging on the company’s premises. (Royal College of Music.)

‘always for sale a large assortment of Military Musical Instruments of every description’ which could be made available ‘at an hour’s notice’. The instruments cited were: Best Clarionets (sold by the pair) Best Bassoons (also by the pair) Trump Tops to Bassoons3 Concert Horns Ditto with slides Serpent, with case Cymbals Tambourine, with Bells Bass Drum The wording was carefully fashioned: the adjective ‘musical’ carried a nuance that was more than decorative. Until the late 18th century, the instruments used in the European military were limited to trumpets, bugles, fifes, and drums (and in some cases, bagpipes). They were employed primarily for their

234  Trevor Herbert practical utility: they sounded signals, beat time for the march and enacted prescribed roles in formal drills.4 In some countries, they were also designated places in the predetermined formations used on the battlefield. In Britain, only trumpets and drums were formally part of the army establishment and accommodated as such in government funding. Consequently, the rules that defined their presence and conduct were enshrined in the central reference source for all military personnel, The Kings/Queen’s Regulations for the Army.5 In the late 18th century, and largely in imitation of continental practice, especially in German-speaking countries, the officers of elite London regiments introduced ‘bands of music’ for their entertainment in mess rooms. The officers were entirely responsible for their financial support through a ‘band fund’ to which all commissioned officers were required to contribute. This method of funding endured for the greatest part of the 19th century even after an accommodation for bands of music was formally introduced by the War Office. Players of instruments of signal (sometimes called ‘instruments of command’) were distinguishable from ‘bands of music’ by what they did and how they did it: trumpets and drums were embraced in the formal military structures, and their duties and by definition their repertoires were functional, learned by rote and retained in memory. ‘Bands of music’, on the other hand, were usually sponsored privately by regimental officers. Members of bands of music were musically literate because they performed an expanding repertoire. This is why Astor (who also acted as an agent for German immigrant musicians) specified ‘military musical instruments’ such as clarinets, bassoons, and serpents and specifically ‘Concert horns’ and ‘Concert trumpets’, to distinguish them from signalling instruments. Because early bands also incorporated exotic janissary elements, he also advertised ‘tambourines with bells’ as part of his stock.6 From the late 18th century, two additional roles became increasingly important. One concerned the utilization of military bands as social and dance bands. At a time when such bands were relatively small and modelled on the Harmoniemusik ­formulation, they played a repertoire, usually in duple time, which equally usually had a quasimartial character, but it functioned as dance music. Typically, such pieces were based on formulaic melodic lines reminiscent of trumpet calls and based on the lower partials of the harmonic series (see Figure 10.2). This version of the military trumpet idiom, which in art music often constituted a musical ‘topic’ (Monelle 2006), was here employed with less subtlety to pander to the voguish popularity of the military in the social lives of the higher classes, and it is interesting that in Britain many of the regimental or militia ‘marches’ published for this purpose incorporated a keyboard part for no reason other than to extend the business model to the lucrative domestic keyboard market. Second, and for largely similar reasons, military marching with music became more common. This type of musical display was, in Britain at least, introduced not by the state but at regimental level, but its popularity was soon evident. It brought conspicuous and colourful credit to regiments to the extent that many came to regard their bands as elements of regalia.

Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection 235

Figure 10.2 ‘A Favorite Short Troop’ (ca. 1795) by C. F. Eley, bandmaster of the Coldstream Guards. Such pieces were published, used as dance music, and incorporated a keyboard arrangement aimed at the domestic keyboard market. The market for such pieces was national and substantial because of their popularity in the provinces and shires, where they were performed by militia bands.

Instrumentations Despite Kappey’s valiant efforts, it was difficult to calculate accurately the number of men and boys who were, at any time in my period, employed in military bands. This challenge impacts on our understanding of the instruments that were used. By the early 19th century, there were prescribed limits on the size of military bands in several countries, but these strictures were persistently and wilfully obscured in the sources that would normally yield accurate information. In Britain, for example, ‘Bandsman’ was not a rank, it was a designation of the duties of an enlisted soldier. Such designations were entirely at the pleasure of regimental officers, so there was ample scope to disguise the real size of bands. There is, however, abundant evidence of regiments having very large bands of music. British bands had up to 70 players, and Kappey had information on bands of over 80 players in Germany. It follows that in the early 19th century there was an unprecedented need for a new source of supply of players. Regiments in B ­ ritain and elsewhere often employed foreign civilian bandmasters, but the instrumentalists came from the lower levels of society, sometimes trained up

236  Trevor Herbert quickly as boy recruits. In Britain, many were enlisted from orphanages, their destinies determined for them from childhood. Their training as musicians was provided through instruction in the most literal sense (Herbert and Barlow 2013, 139). This was a new category of musician: working-class, musically literate, probably technically competent, not conditioned by long exposure to refined musical repertoires, and always willing to be led. The precision and discipline that came to characterize the performance style of military musicians was undoubtedly aided by the instinctive acquiescence of such players to the orthodoxies with which they were presented. Early in the 19th century, the focus for instrument makers was centred on improvements to clarinet design and the development of a bass instrument that would produce a fuller sound than either the bassoon or the serpent in outdoor settings.7 But the focus soon shifted to brass instruments. Existing brass instruments had limitations that could be compensated only though the deployment of skills such as hand-stopping and clarino techniques that were difficult to execute in florid or rapid passages of music or to learn quickly. The historical reality of this point has been obscured by the fact that so many works of the canonical virtuosic Baroque and classical repertoire feature trumpet and horn writing that demanded such skills: the players for whom such music was written were rare and exceptional. The musical limitations of natural brass instruments and the extent to which they were locked in to traditional military styles is apparent in the repertoire of early military bands, where treble lines allocated to multiple clarinets show a near-identical idiomatic pattern to what would be expected from natural trumpets employing just the harmonic tones between H2 and H8. An expansion of the expressive potential of military music could not have occurred without new technologies, new performance techniques, new types of musical instruments, and new modes of production and distribution capable of facilitating greater capacity, cost-effectiveness, and speed of supply. The outline story of brass instrument innovation in the 19th century is summarized in Table 10.1. Each introduction was initially aimed at providing an instrument which was chromatic across the greatest part of its range by means of a mechanical device, but this outline obscures critical nuances: it is important to avoid seeing the story in strictly linear terms. While some keyed brass instruments had a relatively short life, others, especially the keyed bugle and ophicleide, flourished for an important and substantial period at a significant stage when both valve and key systems were favoured simultaneously. Players of keyed instruments were reluctant to desert well-developed skills for new types of technology; one wonders whether they could see the point of doing so. Valves became the most important and lasting type of mechanization of brass instruments, but not until the middle of the century; early models were imperfect and had limited distribution. It was the ingenious designs emanating from the Paris workshop of Adolphe Sax that provided a resolution of the main technical and musical challenge that had occupied many minds during the first half of the century: the design and consistently successful manufacture of brass instruments capable of maintaining a true intonation across the entire chromatic spectrum irrespective of their size and nominal

Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection 237 Table 10.1  Outline description of brass instruments incorporating mechanical devices that were in use between the late 18th and late 19th centuries8 Instrument

Voice

Origin and Use

Trombone

Alto, tenor, bass (soprano had limited distribution).

Keyed trumpet

Treble, built in several sizes.

Slide trumpet (‘the chromatic trumpet’)

Treble built in several sizes.

Keyed bugle (also known as the Kent bugle or the Royal Kent bugle)

Treble built in several sizes.

Bass horn

Bass

Ophicleide

Bass

Valved instruments: cornet, tuba, saxhorns, etc., and valve versions of orchestral brass instruments (trumpet, horn, trombone)

Eventually applied to all sizes, but initially to treble instruments.

Widely used from the mid-15th century, but with some exceptions (notably Austria and parts of Germany) the instrument fell out of use in the late 17th century. Many believed it to be an entirely new instrument when it was revived almost 100 years later. Had a short lifespan in the late 18th century. It is disproportionally famous because of the canonical status of trumpet concertos written for it by Haydn (1796) and Hummel (1804). Invented in the very late 18th century in London by Thomas Hyde and primarily associated with a group of elite London professionals. Though there were some precedents for the basic design, the instrument was patented in London in 1810. It was the most widely used military treble brass instrument before the mid-19th century. An upright serpent (bass cornett) to which finger holes and keys were added. Several versions were introduced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The instrument had a relatively short lifespan, mainly in Britain, but it was important in the period when it flourished. Patented in Paris in 1821, it was the bass member of the keyed bugle family and the main bass brass instrument before the tuba was perfected. Used widely in orchestral music and military and brass bands until ca. 1870. The first patent for a valve brass instrument was registered in Germany in 1818, but many more followed. The challenges were to design valve instruments that functioned efficiently (especially in respect of intonation) and to apply valves successfully to instruments of all sizes. An instrument called the bass tuba was introduced in Germany in 1839, but the breakthrough came in 1844 with the introduction of the saxhorn family. Since the 19th century, nomenclatures of the various members of the family have been used inconsistently.

238  Trevor Herbert pitch. The instruments of Adolphe Sax were to be widely imitated and were the basis for amateur bands, but valve technology was initially aimed at the military music market. Indeed, the entire Sax endeavour would not have achieved success without the demand created by the military and the financial benefits that flowed from it. Paris was not the only European centre in which major initiatives were being taken to improve military music. In Britain, a ‘Military Music Class’ (from 1887 called the Royal Military School of Music) was founded in 1857 on the outskirts of London at Kneller Hall,9 to provide a consistent and centrally defined quality for military bands by ensuring that all bandmasters would be serving soldiers (rather than foreign civilians) and would pass through a programme of study that ensured a shared understand of instruments and their idioms. Critically, from 1859, through the distribution of tuning forks, the institution defined and monitored a common pitch standard at A = 452.4 Hz for the entire British army. In 1838 in Prussia, Wilhelm Wieprecht was commissioned to reorganize military music into a form that would be replicated across the entire Prussian band network and eventually across all states of the German Empire. In France, attempts to formulate and reorganize military music were yet more animated. A government commission was established under the presidency of the soldier-diplomat General Rumigny, with a membership that included the musicians Spontini, Auber, Halevy, Adam, Onslow, and Carafa, to consider the future of French military music. Matters were brought into conspicuous focus in April 1845 when a comparison of traditional and modern instrumentations was held at the Champ de Mars, Paris. This event has been detailed in several publications (e.g., Horwood 2003), but the story in brief is that a band made up of traditional instruments, formulated and led by Michele Carafa, was matched against another led by Adolphe Sax, formed around instruments the latter had recently developed. It was in effect a public contest that measured professional and popular perceptions of musical instrument combinations and their potential for national representation. The instrumentation of the two bands is given in Table 10.2, from which it is obvious that the central comparison was between tradition and modernity. Carafa’s instrumentation included cornets and ophicleides, but otherwise his configuration was based on instruments that had been in circulation for at least a century. Their idioms were well known and were the subjects of established performance orthodoxies; most were taught in the orchestration classes at the Conservatoire and through published instruction books. On the other hand, the greatest number of Sax’s instruments carried little or no such historical baggage; several had been patented less than five years previously. The evidence of the transitionary stage of brass instruments is evident in that both Carafa and Sax chose to use some instruments in both their traditional and valve versions (Carafa the horn and Sax the trombone). However, the striking difference is the contrasting visions of what a military band should be like. It was the Sax combination that gained favour, and this could be seen as the commencement of a new cultural era for military bands. The new instruments were of the saxhorn and saxophone families. Saxophones, which initially had an uneven

Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection 239 Table 10.2  I nstrumentation of bands configured by Carafa and Sax, 22 April 1845. The Commission determined that each band was to be configured of 45 players. On the day, and for reasons that have not been convincingly explained, the Sax band was two or three players short of what was arranged (see Horwood 2003, 72) Carafa

Sax

Piccolo Clarinet in E♭ Clarinet in B♭ Oboe Bassoon Hand horn Valve horn Cornet Trumpet Trombone Ophicleide Percussion

1 1 16 4 4 2 2 2 3 2 4 4

Woodwind Brass Percussion

26 15 4

Piccolo Clarinet in E♭ Clarinet in B♭ Saxophone Soprano saxhorn in E♭ Contralto saxhorn in B♭ Tenor saxhorn in E♭ Baritone saxhorn in B♭ Bass saxhorn in B♭ Contrabass saxhorn in E♭ Cornet Trumpet Valve trombone Slide trombone Percussion

1 1 6 2 2 4 4 2 2 4 2 6 2 2 5 10 30 5

take-up (Cottrell 2012, 123–125), were employed in lower proportion than were saxhorns, but they still probably enhanced both the sonic effect and the visual spectacle. The instruments in both families shared important qualities that were directly relevant to what was to become a core musical purpose of the military band: though differences in their nominal pitch caused them to have different sizes, each voice of the instrument (alto, tenor, and so on) possessed a family resemblance in both sonic and visual terms. Each was designed with military practicalities in mind with a wrap (the overall shape into which an instrument’s tubing is configured, including the angles that join straight and curved sections) that was intentionally ergonomic; for example, the valves on each brass instrument (except the valve horn) could be operated with the three most dextrous fingers of the right hand and could be played with equal practicality when its performer was stationary, on the march, or mounted. The events in Paris contributed significantly to the development of a broad international consensus about the constitution of military bands, and progressed a general understanding of ‘military musical instruments’ and by implication how they differed from wind instruments that were components of the orchestra. The distinction was both practical and cultural. Instruments could be categorized as ‘military’ if they were routinely used in military bands even if they were also used in the orchestra. This definition is not as loose and nebulous as it might appear, because the sonic utility of instruments in military bands was centred not on their idiomatic individuality (as is the case with orchestral instruments), but on the way they functioned in groups as part of the broad palette of sound that was routinely

240  Trevor Herbert regarded as the core of any given band. The idea of modernity was always important: military bands embraced and were products of the latest technological innovation, orchestras generally less so. Even in the first quarter of the century, the military band was a site of experiment: the keyed bugle, the bass horn, and to an extent the ophicleide were conceived for roles in military music. It is interesting to note that when valves were added to the three major classes of orchestral brass instruments (horn, trumpet, and trombone), each was given a wrap that retained their traditional appearance and the posture needed when performing on them. Even the long version of the valve trombone imitated the wrap of the slide instrument. This purely visual quality may have eased the adoption of valve trombones as the instruments of choice in the Vienna Court Opera Orchestra between ca. 1835 and 1883 (Herbert 2006, 185). Military bands and the ‘martial paradigm’ In most countries during the 19th century, the military was a key agency in the dominant social structure. Military bands benefitted from the status implied by its association, but equally they were both subjects and agencies of the cultural values it issued. Myerly has characterized the cultural influence of the military as amounting to a ‘martial paradigm’ which: displayed an idealized model of organization that was projected as a vision, and as a result it tended to aid in the imposition of social control on civilian society—whether enforced or voluntary—in a wide variety of contexts […] the appeal of the military model played a significant role in spreading the army’s servile values throughout British society, promoting and advertising the adoption of ‘military values’ far beyond the military subculture. (Myerly 1996, 12) The forces to which Myerly refers had been apparent from the later 18th century, but in the 19th century, as the idea of standing armies and large powerful navies became more established and entrenched in cultural structures, they gathered pace and took on a more developed meaning. The growth of national militaries was a product of geopolitical forces, but corresponding cultural factors that flowed into society were also powerful and evident at an everyday level, two of which had relevance to military bands. The first concerned a feverish preoccupation with the way soldiers looked and were choreographed. Uniforms became more ornate and representative of the regiments they represented, and along with this went the adoption of the practice of marching in step. Early attempts at its introduction were rejected in some countries (including Britain) because it was thought to appear unmanly and to resemble dancing, but the practice was universal by the start of the 19th century and was soon utilized with music in new and enhanced forms of military display. The second development came a little later and emphasized the role of military bands as an agency for public education in spaces where crowds had easy access.

Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection 241 This initiative was based on the idea that the presentation of suitable music to the masses, conveyed in the orderly and disciplined tone of the military itself, would educate and inspire moral order. The idea was consistent with the concept of ‘rational recreation’ in which cultural products were distributed from the higher to the lower classes in the hope that they would function to displace the threat of social disorder caused by increasing urbanization and other factors perceived to be weakening the traditions that maintained social stability.10 The military was ideally placed for this task, especially as one of the constituencies that was especially targeted were soldiers themselves. Albert Perrin, who published an influential pamphlet on the reorganization of military music in France (Perrin 1863), regarded this as a core mission for military bands. He argued that military bands were not of ‘less esteem’ in times of peace than in war, because they had the power to ‘engender respect and love for the military’ (Perrin 1863, 6), an idea that gained increasing currency within military music establishments: Regimental bands are able to do good service, both military and social, in creating and developing a taste for innocent and intellectual enjoyment, and agreeable recreation for the soldier as well as for the people […]. The military bands of France, Belgium and Prussia have been influential in withdrawing entire populations from rude and vulgar pleasures, and cruel sports, by making them love and cultivate the civilising art par excellence—music. (Perrin 1863, iv) One of the most careful explanations of how this mission could be achieved is found in the writing of Carl Florian Mandel, a German-born musician responsible for the teaching of music theory and arranging at Kneller Hall. In 1859, he published his Treatise on the Instrumentation of Military Bands (Mandel 1859) in which he set out and illustrated a scheme that would be influential on the use of military bands across the British Empire. It attempted to create a shared understanding of the idioms of instruments and outlined protocols for their use. It was primarily aimed at bandmasters of the British army, each of whom, from 1857, was required to pass through the training programme of Kneller Hall. Evidence of its effectiveness can be found in the instrumentation exercises of the School’s students that are deposited in its archives.11 Mandel’s book is important for what it says about the art of transcription, but it also positioned the role (and by inference the comparative status) of military bands in music culture more generally. Mandel’s view was clear and pragmatic: he believed that the orchestra and vocal music ‘always has, and always will produce the most elevating impression, and is alone that which forms, improves, and perpetuates really artistic taste for music’. He believed that military bands ‘belong to the public in general’ and that music for military bands should ‘consist merely of arrangements of universally known and popular operas, songs, and other compositions’ (Mandel 1859, 3). This, of course, aligns with the rational recreation idea, but Mandel’s position was practical rather than ideological. He was intimately familiar with the standard orthodoxies of the orchestration manuals but was also alert to the ‘invention and improvements to

242  Trevor Herbert wind instruments, especially valved wind instruments’, that were making military and orchestral formulations distinct. With the status he had designated for military bands in mind, he provided a systematic scheme for the way the instruments of the orchestra and singing voices could be imitated. Predicated in Mandel’s scheme was an understanding that military bands should contain an appropriate collection of wind and brass instruments, but also—to the greatest extent possible—each of the range of voices in which those instruments were made. His argument was that each pitch voicing carried unique colours and other nuances that were essential for perfect imitation; for example, he explained the tonal qualities of clarinets with reference to several different sizes of the instrument, and even suggested the most effective means of imitating the natural trumpet (referred to as the ‘plain trumpet’) that was used in orchestras before the 19th century. This precision of musical voicing was matched by an equally important preoccupation held by other commentators with styles of presentation: that the very sight of military musicians should convey and inspire a sense of order and perfection. Jacob Kappey emphasized this in his treatise on military bands: Appealing to the masses by the performance of bright sounds, by the pomp of military spectacle and discipline, and backed by a little innocent swagger, a military band materially enhances the attractions of military life and induces many of the multitude to enlist into their country’s service. The power of a popular melody, when well played by a band, is so well known as scarcely to need illustration; yet, if such be wanted, take as an instance the ‘Marseillaise’, a tune which led the French nation to their conquests. (Kappey 1894, 94) J. P. Sousa, Americanism and the ‘sacralization of culture’ The ‘bright spectacle’ to which Kappey referred was enacted with careful and disciplined choreography by military bands throughout Europe and eventually the USA. In 1872, a World’s Peace Jubilee was held at Boston, Massachusetts. Its declared purpose was to celebrate the ending of the Franco–Prussian War, but it gained broader diplomatic importance. It was organized by the Irish-American conductor Patrick Gilmore. Bands from major European countries had been invited, and all were given rousing receptions. One commentator described the Band of the Grenadier Guards under Dan Godfrey as providing ‘such a scene as cannot be described. Would that agents of English and American Governments, and the entire Geneva Court could have witnessed it. They would have learned what is the popular feeling of England towards America’ (The Advocate of Peace, 3/43, 1). The exposure of the best European military bands to American audiences further elevated interest in large-scale wind instrumental music, which was already gaining popularity in the country. In September 1892, Gilmore, by then conductor of the 22nd Regiment Band of New York, died suddenly in St Louis. Almost immediately, the New York impresario David Blakely approached John Philip Sousa

Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection 243 to form a civilian band under Blakely’s management. The Blakely archives at the New York Public Library evidence the speed and urgency with which the J. P. Sousa Band was assembled, with the finest instrumentalists brought from around the country. The Sousa band should be regarded as something of a phenomenon: it became the most important and celebrated instrumental group in the US, and one of the most important institutions in America’s musical history. It was also an icon for American cultural nationalism. It was a civilian concert band, but it replicated the key principles that had typified European military music for most of the 19th century. The instrumental lineup was distinctive (see Table 10.3). In its first year (1892), it usually had 48 members; in 1926 it had 76, but this signifies fluctuation rather than an upward trend. The interesting feature is the balance of instruments. There was always an emphasis on woodwind, because of Sousa’s preference for the leading treble voice to be provided by multiple clarinets. It is the addition of yet more clarinets and saxophones that accounts for increases in the overall size of the band. Compared to military bands of the mid-19th century, Sousa’s instrumentation was relatively regressive: his aim was not to imitate the orchestra, but to present the wind band as an alternative version of it. Indeed, the term ‘symphonic wind band’ was probably invented by Sousa, and if not, he was equally probably the source for its inspiration. His understanding of instrumental idioms and his strategy for their deployment was based on the idea that wind instruments when combined on Table 10.3  Sousa’s instrumental configurations. The years chosen are intended to convey only an impression, but they include the band profile for the European tour of 1900 and world tour of 1911. Variations of total numbers could have several causes, but the overall proportions of brass and wind are fairly consistent12

Oboe/Cor anglais Bassoon Flute/piccolo Clarinet in E♭ Clarinet in B♭ Alto clarinet Bass clarinet Saxophone Cornet /trumpet Flugelhorn French horn Euphonium Trombone Tuba/sousaphone Percussion Harp Woodwind Brass Total

1892

1897

1900

1905

1911

1915

1922

1927

1931

2 2 2 2 12 1 1 3 6 0 4 2 3 3 3 1 25 18 47

2 2 3 1 14 1 1 3 6 1 4 2 3 3 3 1 27 19 50

2 3 4 2 16 2 2 5 6 2 4 2 4 4 3 1 36 20 60

2 2 4 1 14 1 1 5 6 1 4 2 3 4 3 1 30 20 54

2 3 3 1 15 1 1 3 6 0 4 2 4 4 3 1 29 20 53

2 2 4 2 18 1 1 5 8 0 4 2 5 6 3 1 35 25 60

3 3 4 0 21 1 2 8 8 0 4 3 5 5 3 1 42 25 67

2 3 6 0 23 1 1 8 8 0 4 2 4 5 3 1 44 23 67

2 2 4 0 14 1 1 4 7 0 4 1 4 3 3 1 28 19 49

244  Trevor Herbert this scale could provide a ‘multiplicity of quartets’ (Bierley 2006, 248). He understood the sound world of the large wind band as an infinitely adjustable palette of contrasting and complementary groups of families of instruments. He jealously guarded the uniqueness of his instrumentation: none of his concerts were ever recorded, and though his marches were widely and successfully published, the instrumentation given in the scores never replicated those heard in his live concerts or studio recordings. While Sousa’s band was made up of civilians, the martial paradigm was omnipresent, conspicuous, and flaunted. The players (all male) appeared in quasimilitary uniforms with the emblem of the American eagle on their caps. Sousa’s concert dress bore the trappings of an officer, with medals emblazoned conspicuously across his chest. Like his European counterparts, he upheld a mission to disseminate fine music to the masses, but he was more overtly populist. His repertoire contained transcriptions of the type that were typically played by European military bands, but he also included novelty pieces and dramatic musical interludes or tableaux, many representing historic events, some containing moral or heroic sentiments. On foreign tours, he also included ragtime, which he confusingly but persistently referred to as ‘native American music’. There were always vocal soloists, but these were presented alongside soloists from the band, such as the cornetist Herbert Clarke and the trombonist Arthur Prior, who gave dazzling virtuoso performances of solos which had little merit beyond their capacity to accommodate gratuitous technical acrobatics. It was the efficiency of the Sousa product that made the major impression. ­Recurrent in the reviews of his concerts were references to discipline, order, instrumental balance, and the perfect control that Sousa exercised over his players. He told a reporter of the London Daily Express that he knew exactly what each of his musicians was doing ‘every second or fraction of a second I am conducting’ because each is ‘doing exactly what I make him do’ (Harris 1983, 37). This level of control inspired awe and led to one reviewer to make the link to military perfection explicit: To be able to command men is a gift possessed by comparatively few, and the great general is no more difficult to discover than the great conductor. The strict discipline that promotes a wholesome respect for the commander as well as the always essential esprit du corps, is as necessary in maintaining a musical organization as it is in promoting the efficiency of a fighting body. (Detroit Tribune, 6 April 1899, JPS 944–923) Just as European states had enlisted military bands as diplomatic agencies at home and abroad, Sousa’s mission (genuinely felt), as well as his business case, was based on the promotion of America. This acted powerfully and effectively in world tours through visual impact and programme design. For example, his marches, many of which had titles redolent with American symbolism, were mostly given as encores––there were nine such encores at the Royal Albert Hall concert during his 1901 world tour, with much patriotic gesturing such as the unfurling of flags at the sounding of ‘The Stars and Stripes Forever’. Sousa saw his concerts as explanations

Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection 245 of America and the high moral and patriotic ideals to which it allegedly subscribed. The reception of these sentiments within the USA was equally powerful, but its texture was different. The main American audience for Sousa’s music, especially after the Great War, was a demography defined not by place or class but by generation and a shared circumspection about the unfolding of a future in which fault lines in the cultural structures to which they had so passionately subscribed were becoming increasingly visible. The Sousa band, and Sousa himself, provided an iconic product upon which this audience could reflect with sanguine nostalgia. The American historian Neil Harris (1983) has described this as ‘a culture of reassurance’ and argued persuasively that it played an important part in the establishment of a shared sense of nationhood in the opening decades of the 20th century. But a different cultural movement with related aims had also been active in America from the 1880s. It sought to establish agencies and institutions that mirrored those of the more ancient European centres, in which the highest levels of artistic expression could be appropriately enshrined and articulated. In this period came the lasting establishment of America’s opera houses, symphony orchestras, and other cultural edifices. Lawrence Levine (1988) has described this as the ‘sacralization of culture’: a process in which a dominant cultural hierarchy asserted itself and in which authenticity of genre became prized above all else. In the presence of such agencies and institutions, the wind band in both its military and civilian forms could be measured with a new transparency. An ancillary aspect of all this was the emergent categorization that Levine terms ‘highbrow’ and ‘low-brow’. Despite all intentions and achievements in the previous century, it was for the latter category that military and wind bands were destined. Conclusion Military bands have been largely ignored in the standard histories of Western music. This is regrettable, because at several points in the past they have been agents for change; they prompted the invention of new or improved musical instrument designs, caused an unprecedented increase in the supply of professional players, and provided one of the most important expansions of the music business. There are other ways in which they have been important that fall outside the scope of this chapter but are equally worthy of consideration: for example, the extent to which the military legacy contributed to the mass development of amateur instrumental music, the longer-term and widespread impact of military music training institutions, and the many themes linked to colonization and postcolonization that impinged on the dissemination of Western music culture and, through evolutionary and hybrid stages, on new species of local music (see, for example, Reilly and Boucher 2018, and Boonzajar Flaes 1993). These topics beg a cultural approach because they contribute to a story that is not fully contained within the military: at almost every stage it spills, as cultural agencies tend to do, into wider orbits of society. Manifestations of this are often obvious, as is the case, for example, with the Sousa band (and later the American high school marching band network), where the military metaphor was adopted not for decorative reasons but as a rigorously

246  Trevor Herbert enacted and powerfully generating structural device. There are also themes that may be more subtle but no less profound; for example, the multiplicity of ways that military bands have been listened to and how their sight and sound has impacted on the human condition and especially on ‘the crowd’ Within the military itself, of course, the ‘martial’ is not a metaphor: it is a fundamental, practical, and aesthetic environment within which instrument production and music-making have been embraced. The idea of ‘the band as the instrument’ is tenable because, despite the recurrent and forensic interest given to instrumental configurations, it is the band that resides in the common consciousness, just as it is the choir and the gamelan rather than the elements of which they are constructed that listeners store in their lexicons of understanding. This can be said with considerably less surety of orchestral music and other groupings where a body of canonical works routinely focus, and rely on the exposure of, individual parts and their interplay. Military bands, irrespective of their differing formulations, conform to an orthodoxy of type which has seldom tolerated transgressions of a sort that endanger or obscure the way they are publicly understood. It is this predictability of effect that creates their distinctiveness and ultimately their appeal. Progress to this level of understanding occurred by evolution and with irregular pace, but the military band was not fully responsible for the development of its own identity: its identity emerged from the functions and roles to which it was assigned. When it was told to march, it marched; when it was told to educate or entertain, it did so with equal precision. Like all good soldiers it acquiesced to its obligations with the greatest perfection it could muster. This was consistent with the martial paradigm: a set of values transmitted in support of an ideology that was widely shared by the dominant class. Its favourable reception by less elevated social groups is evidenced, for example, in the amateur brass band movement, which conspicuously imitated military dress and many of its protocols: it owed its remarkable success to the development of a local and national contesting network which was based entirely on performance accuracy and exactitude. However, it would be wrong to interpret this as mere submission, a signifier that the military band as a species was devoid of organic development. The ‘martial paradigm’ idea emerged from a general consideration of the place of the military in societies. In the context of this chapter, it should be understood in aesthetic terms with aesthetic products—the military band being one such example. A further caution should be signalled about any simplification of the extent to which the military and the states they served, directly and purposely, imposed their power to fashion this process. I have suggested in this chapter that military bands were deployed at the behest of states to further their own strategies, and this is undoubtedly true because there is incontrovertible evidence that there were times when they were so deployed. But it did not take long for a cultural momentum to be liberated by the bands and gain consensus: this developed into a common set of performance values that can be seen as akin to a hegemony in which the main agencies of influence included military musicians, their officers, the mass of ordinary people who experienced them, and other emergent cultural forces that affected 19th-century societies as a whole.

Military Musical Instruments and the Culture of Perfection 247 Notes 1 In some countries, a dedicated and original repertoire emerged, but it has seldom been more than a part of the repertoire performed. 2 The Paris Conservatoire has its origins as an institution formed expressly for the improvement of the musicians of the National Guard. Further examples are given in Herbert and Barlow, 2013. 3 ‘Trump tops’ were metal attachments in the shape of trumpet bells for bassoons. They were commonly used in the 18th century, but few specimens have survived. 4 Before the 18th century, the marching of troops was less formally managed than it was to become. Marching in step was not introduced in Britain until the later 18th century and was accepted with reluctance. Previously troops marched to the beating of a drum, the speed of the beats being calculated by a ‘pummel’ (weighted rope). This allowed an estimate to be made of the time it would take to move a body of men from one place to another, but even if fifes were used in this process it was for the utility of the march rather than for public display. 5 The King’s/Queen’s Regulations for the Army has its origins in the Regulations and Instructions first issued for the Royal Navy in 1731. Eventually regulations were issued separately for each of the services. New editions were issued as necessary; for example, when important new regulations or amendments came into force. 6 Janissary bands were wind and percussion ensembles that originated in the Ottoman Empire and were imitated widely in military bands from the late 18th century. The appeal of Turkish percussion instruments and the highly decorated uniforms of their performers (often black) played to the taste for the exotic that was in favour at that time. 7 See also Hoeprich 2008, ch. 11. 8 This very broad summary is intended as no more than as a snapshot. Details of all the instruments and technologies mentioned are given in Herbert et al. (2019). 9 In this chapter, I use ‘Kneller Hall’ as a shorthand for this institution. 10 For ‘rational recreation’, see, for example, Herbert 2000, 32–33 11 Many excellent examples of military band arrangements are held in the Royal Military School of Music Archives. At the time of writing, the British Army has announced closure of the Kneller Hall facility, but full details of the arrangements to replace it have not been issued. 12 The data source is Bierley 2006 (251–252), which includes the complete series from 1892 to 1931 with additional helpful contextual information.

References Bierley, Paul Edmund. 2006. The Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Boonzajer Flaes, Rob. 1999. Brass Unbounded: Secret Children of the Colonial Brass Band. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute. Cottrell, Stephen, 2012. The Saxophone. London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Harris, Neil. 1983. ‘John Philip Sousa and the Culture of Reassurance.’ In Newsom, Jon (Ed.) Perspectives on John Philip Sousa (11–41). Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Herbert, Trevor (Ed.). 2000. The British Brass Band: A Musical and Social History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2006. The Trombone. London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ———. 2016. ‘Carl Florian Mandel and the production, consumption and status of “military” brasswind instruments in the 19th century’ in Libin, Laurence (Ed.), Instrumental Odyssey: A tribute to Herbert Hyde (59–73). Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon.

248  Trevor Herbert ———. 2019. ‘Public military music and the promotion of patriotism in the British provinces c.1780–c.1850’. Nineteenth-Century Music Review 17 (3): 427–444. Herbert, Trevor and Helen Barlow. 2013. Music and the British Military in the Long Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Herbert, Trevor, Arnold Myers and John Wallace (Eds.). 2010. ‘Music for the Multitude: Accounts of Brass Bands Entering Enderby Jackson’s Crystal Palace Contests in the 1860s’. Early Music 38: 571–84. Herbert, Trevor, Myers, Arnold and Wallace, John (Eds.). 2019 The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Brass Instruments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hoeprich, Eric. 2008. The Clarinet. London and New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Horwood, Wally. 2003. Adolphe Sax 1814–1894: His Life and Legacy. Baldock: Egon Publishers. Howells, John (Ed.). 1964. The Life of Alexander Alexander, Written by Himself. (Edinburgh: 1830). London: Hutchinson. Kappey, J. A. 1894. Military Music: A History of Wind-Instrumental Bands. London: Boosey & Co. Levine, Lawrence W. 1988. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mandel, Charles. [1859] A Treatise on the Instrumentation of Military Bands: Describing the Character and Proper Employment of Every Musical Instrument Used in Reed Bands. London: Boosey & Sons. Monelle, Raymond. 2006. The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press Myerly, Scott Hughes.1996. British Military Spectacle from the Napoleonic Wars through the Crimea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Perrin, Albert. 1863. Military Bands, and Their Re-Organization. Translated by Arthur Matthison. London: Hodson & Sons. Reilly, Suzel A. 2018.. The Routledge Companion to the Study of Local Musicking. Brucher, Katherine (Eds.). New York: Routledge.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures. Accordion Crimes (Proulx) 119, 133 Actor–Network Theory 20 adaptation 144–147 Adler, Guido 7 Afghanistan 80–81 Agricola, Martin 5 Agrimákis, Dimitris 101, 101 Aixalá, Xavier 43 Albrechtsberger, Johann Georg 197, 205, 206, 207 Allen, Aaron 36, 51 Amanullah, King 80 Americanism 242–245 American Jazz Museum (AJM) 122, 128, 129, 134 analogue synthesis 57, 60, 61, 64, 70 Ancient Musical Instruments in 1941 (Bessaraboff) 9 Andersen, Hans Christian 133 anthropology 89 The Anthropology of Music (Merriam) 89 ‘Anthropology of Musical Instruments’ 91 Appadurai, Arjun 5, 20, 91, 93 Arcadian Tones 189–192; Alpine style 192–196; death of the drone 198–202, rebirth 202–207; virtuosos 196–198 Aristotle 18 Ârkestrâ-ye Melli 78 The Art and Times of the Guitar (Grunfeld) 18 Artigues, Antoni 40 Audio System Synthesizer 59 Aura 147–149, 201

Baily, John 16, 59, 85–87, 208 Bakhtin, Mikhail 134 bağlama 103 Ballester, Josep 45 balloon effect 44 Barad, Karen 68 Baring, Sir Thomas 216 Barlow, Christopher 180 Barthes, Roland 133 Basie, William ‘Count’ 122 Bates, Eliot 4, 11, 15, 20, 21, 66, 92, 120, 133, 134 Beckel, Charles 170 Becker, Howard S. 47 Benjamin, Walter 147, 148 Bennett, Jane 20, 66, 119 Berliner, Paul 22, 93 Bessaraboff, Nicholas 9 Bestard, Pere 37 Bethlehem Trombone Choir 164 Bhattacharya, Debashish 151, 153 Bhatt, Vishwa Mohan 140, 151, 153, 154 Bierley, Paul Edmund 247 Billboard magazine 205 Blacking, John 86n1, 89 Blades, James 178 Blanc, Toni 38 Boas, Franz 3 Bode, Harald 59 Bohlman, Philip 189, 206 Böhner, Johann 161, 172 bolbol 83 Bourdelain, John 218 Bourdieu, Pierre 21, 24, 144, 213, 214 bouzoukis 104 Bowie, David 135

250 Index brass instruments 158–175, 236, 237, 238–240, 242; in Herrnhut 158–161; Moravian communities 161–165 Bruhin, Anton 205 Burgkmair, Hans 192 Burney, Charles 220, 221 Burton, John 23 Busani, Elizabeth 64 Canyelles, Arnau 42 Carafa, Michele 238, 239 Carlos, Wendy 68 Carter, Chris 70 Chadabe, Joel 11 Chakraborty, Debasis 141, 154 Chatterjee, Partha 142 Chernoff, John Miller 93 Church of the Moravian Brethren 158 Clauss, Christian 212, 214, 219–222, 225 Clayton, Martin 143 Cleaver, Emanuel 128 Clifford, James 121 Cockburn, Bruce 185 collecting cultures 2–5 Coltrane, John 129 Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments (Kartomi) 92 conventional historiographies 57 Cooke, Peter 17 Coolidge, Calvin 15 Crane, Frederick 190, 192, 194, 197, 204 critical organology 57–59 Crow, Bill 127 Culliford, Thomas 223 culture: capital 144–147; exchange 140–141; integrity 46, 49, 50; preferences 213; of reassurance 245; sacralization of 242–245; sustainability 49–51 Curtis, Sir Roger 216 Cyclopaedia (Rees) 220 Czerny, Carl 13 Daburger, J. L. 199, 199, 201 Dankworth, John 125, 130 D’Aquisto, James 183 Darwin, Charles 6 Dasgupta, Sandeep 148 David, Christian 159 Dawe, Kevin 4, 36, 59, 120, 133 death of the drone 198–202 Delbo, Arthur 172

Delbourgo, James 5 De Léry, Jean 2, 4 De Organographia (Praetorius) 5, 6 de Souza, Jonathan 13 Devanagari 155 Dhavalikar, M.K. 155 Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Grove) 230 digital instruments 61 displaying instruments 3–4, 94, 103–104 Dizi, François 216 Doubleday, Veronica 14, 18, 19, 58, 86n1 Dournon, Geneviève 93 Downey, Greg 59 drone and melody 200 drum 111 dutâr 74 economic liberalization 149 ecosystems 47 Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning 120 Ehrlich, Cyril 19 Eley, C. F. 235 English guittar 219–222, 227 Erard, Sébastien 215–219, 225 ethico-onto-epistemology 68 ethnic whiteness 16 ethnomusicologists 90, 93 ethnomusicology 6 Eulenstein, Karl 190, 201, 202, 205 Euro-American organology 1 Eurorack 55–56 experiencing instruments 94–98 ‘A Favorite Short Troop’ (Eley) 235 feeling analogue 54–70; critical organology 57–59; cultures 65–68; design 62–65; resynthesizing synthesis 59–62 Feld, Steven 19, 89 Fensterln (Peter) 194, 195 Floyd, Pink 60 Fluid Dulcimer 178–180 The Fluid Piano 177, 177–181 The Fools (Burgkmair) 193 Foucault, Michel 10, 13 Fox, Leonard 190 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 21 Galpin, Francis 7 Galpin Society 9 Ganer, Christopher 223

Index  251 Geertz, Clifford 121 Gell, Alfred 91 gender 143 General Economy 163 Gentleman’s Magazine 224 Ghirardini, Cristina 24 Ghosh, Bikram 140 Gillespie, Dizzy 126, 127 Gillet, Émilie 64 Gilmore, Patrick 242 Ginotti, Giacomo 193, 194 Glatzl, Bruno 197 Goisern, Hubert von 205 Grafton 10265 119; American jazz museum 129; life of 128–132; story of 121–125, 124 Graham, Robert 129 Gremberghe, Joran van 63, 64 Grunfeld, Frederic 18, 19 Gütter, Heinrich 175 habitus 213 Haines, John 206 Hall, Bill 168 Handbook for the Collection of Traditional Music and Musical Instruments (1981) (Dournon) 93 Harris, Neil 245 Hartley, L.P. 5 Hawaiian slide-guitar 140–141 Herati dutâr: learning to play the 82–85; modernity 80–81; music 80–81; musicians 81–82; process of transformation 77–79; 14-stringed 77; ‘the pearl of Khorasan’ 74–75; two-stringed 76; types of 75–77 Herbert, Trevor 247n8 Hesperus, 1795 (Richter) 197 Hindu nationalism 149–150 Hindustani slide-guitar 139, 144–147, 146, 150, 153, 154 Historic Brass Society Journal (Turner) 171 Hodgson, Thomas 224 Hoeprich, Eric, 247 Hood, Mantle 8 Hornbostel, Erich von 6, 7, 9, 10 Hornbostel–Sachs (H–S) 7, 8, 23, 57 Horn, Henry 217 Howarth, James 200 Howe, Robert 23 How Musical Is Man?, 1973 (Blacking) 89 Hus, Jan 158 hypercustomization 153

Indian identity 138; aura 147–149; classical music in 142; gender roles in 143; Hawaiian slide-guitar 140–141; Hindu nationalism 149–150; Hindustani slide-guitar 144–147; India’s guitar heroes 150–153; myth making 147–149; organological genesis 149–150; voice of Saraswati 141–144 indigenous theory 99 Ingold, Tim 91 instrumentations 235–240, 239 instruments: of Adolphe Sax 238; band as 231, 246; configuration 243; displaying 103–104; experiencing 94–98; making 49–51, 100–103; making-revival 40–48; placing 98–100; traditional 145; value of 141 interpretive flexibility 60 intra-action 68 Iobst, Frederick 170 Iobst, John Z. 170 Jaeger, Scott 62, 64, 68 Janissary bands, 247 Jenkins, David 4 jew’s harp 191, 192, 198, 200 The Jew’s Harp: A Comprehensive Anthology (Fox) 190 Johnson, Francis 170 Jones-Bamman, Richard 133 Jones, JaFran 19 Joseph, Johann 167 Journal of Material Culture (Sage) 90 Kappey, Jacob 235. 230, 242 Kartomi, Margaret 7, 22, 92 kesbi 82 Kirsch, Dieter 197 Klier, Karl 195 Knaffl, S. N. F. 195 Kneller Hall, 247 Koch, Franz Paula 197, 198 Kolvi, Mallikarjuna 153 Kshirsagar, Deepak 153 Kuhnert, Friedrich 201 Kumpl, Franz 204 Kvifte, Tellef 11, 12 Larrivée, Jean-Claude 183, 184 Latour, Bruno 20 Lecke, Robert 199, 199 Lederwasch, Johann von 195 legitimate taste 214, 219, 226

252 Index Leinbach, Edward 168 Leinbach, Julius 168, 169, 169 Lemonnier, Pierre 91 Leppert, Raymond 214 Leppert, Richard 17 Levering, Joseph Mortimer 162 Levine, Lawrence 245 Levy, Joseph 219 Libin, Laurie 22 Life magazine 15 Llaneza, Natalia 48 London Daily Express 244 London’s Natural History Museum 2 Longman & Broderip 222–225 Longman, John 224, 225 Lopate, Philip 121 Luther, Martin 159 lyra 99, 100, 102 Lysloff, René T. A. 9, 10 magical power 99 Mahbubani, Kishore 155 Mahillon, Victor-Charles 3, 7 Make Noise Maths 54, 55, 70 making instruments 100–103 Malcolm Rose 180 Mallorcan bagpipe 35–37 Mandel, Carl Florian 241, 242 Manel, Pep 46 Manners, Brian 14 Manzer, Linda 182 Marcus, George E. 121 Maroig, Joan 46 martial paradigm 240–242, 246 Martin, C. F. 171 Martinez Indian Reservation 175 Massat, Tomeu 46 Massey Hall 125–128 mass market approach 222–225 material culture 92 materialist musical ethnography 191 Matson, Jim 9, 10 Maultrommel 96, 190–209; rebirth 202–207 Mayr, Fritz 202, 203, 205 McShann, Jay 122 Melody Maker 125 Merriam, Alan 22, 81, 87, 89 Metheny, Pat 183 Mickey, Samuel 169 middlebrow taste 214 military bands: culture of 231–232; martial paradigm 240–242 military musical instruments 232, 239 ‘Military Music Class’ 238

Miller, Daniel 91 Miller, Mark 127 mimicry 141 Mingus, Charles 126 mitata 99 modernity 80–81, 148 Modi, Narendra 149 modular synthesis 57 Moe, Tau 140, 141 Mohammad, Amir 84–85 Mohammad, Gada 83–85 Mohammad, Paindeh 79 Montagu, Jeremy 23, 24 Moog, Robert 59, 60 Moore, Sally Falk 90 Moravian brass: of Atlantic world 171–172; in North Carolina 166–170; in Pennsylvania 170–171; in 21st century 172 Moravians at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 160 Morey, Joan 40, 41, 41, 42 Morgan, Deidre 12, 45, 192 Morgan, Edwin 120 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 189 musical artefacts 3 musical instruments 1–24; and the body 12–13; concept of 92; as cultural symbols 13–17; display of 3; instrumentalizing gender and power 18–20; manufacture 212–215; and material culture 20–22, 89–105; metonymic display of 4; military 230–247, 232–235; morphology of 1, 21; rise of collecting cultures 2–5; science of classification 5–9; shape of 18; shop 104; as traded commodities 212–227 Musical Times 201 musicians: amateur 82; kesbi 84; urban 82 The Music of European Nationalism (Bohlman) 189 musicology 23 Myerly, Scott Hughes 240 myth making 147–149 Nercessian, Andy 14 ‘new instruments for musical expression’ (NIME) 11, 68 The New (Ethno)musicologies (2008) (Stobart) 23 Nora, Pierre 122 Northern, Kris 70

Index  253 Oakwood Instruments 179 object biography 120 Oler, Wesler M. 9 Olsen, Dale 93 Olson, Harry 59 organological genesis 149–150 An Organological Study (Bessaraboff) 9 organology 9, 22–23, 138; critical 57–59 The Origin of Species, 1859 (Darwin) 6 Oxford English Dictionary (Schaeffner) 10 Pal, Barun Kumar 151 Paluskar, V. D. 143 pardeh râsteh 75 Paris Conservatoire 247 Parker, Charlie 122, 126, 127, 128, 134. 130 Pasler, Jann 3 Pasqualini, Hannes 64 Paulus, Albin 203. 199, 205, 206 Paulus, Christian 175 pa yin 7 pedagogy, lineage of 145 Pegg, Carole 13, 21 Peirce, Charles Sanders 14 Pendergast, Thomas 122 Percussion Instruments and Their History (Blades) 178 Perrin, Albert 241 Peter, Ilka 195, 196 Peterson, Edward 168 The Pikasso Guitar 182–185 Pinch, Trevor 59, 60 placing instruments 98–100 Plato 18 popular taste 214 Powell, Bud 126 Praetorius, Michael 5 process innovation 213 product innovation 213 Proulx, Annie 119–120, 133 Racy, Ali Jihad 1 Raschke, Hans 158 Rees, Abraham 220 Reich, Steve 11 resynthesizing synthesis 59–62 Rice, Timothy 22 Richter, Jean Paul 197, 198 Roach, Max 126 Robinson, Harold 132 Roda, Allen 92, 191 Rognoni, Gabriele Rossi 22, 23 Rolando, Tony 57

Roseman, Marina 19 Rotger, Josep 35, 36, 38, 41, 42, 44–50 Rothe, Johann 159 rubâb 75 Rubio, Pep Toni 41–43, 45, 47, 48 Russmann, Manfred 205 Sachs, Curt 6, 7, 9, 12 sacralization of culture 242–245 Sarkar, Rhitom 153 Sax, Adolphe 3 Schaeffner, André 9, 10 Scheibler, Heinrich 198, 201, 202, 205 Schindler, Rosina 159 Schmidt, Dr. Wilhelm Ludwig 201 Schneider, Andreas 56 Schulz, Christoph 203 Schütz, Alfred 160 secularism 143 Seiffert, Joseph 158, 159 Sennett, Richard 91 Serenade (Lederwasch) 195 shauqi 84 Simon, Johann 167 Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) 70 Singh, Thakur Chakrapani 155 Sloane, Hans 2 Smith, Geoffrey 177 social class 212–215 The Social Life of Musical Instruments (2012) (Bates) 120 The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Social Perspective (Appadurai) 20 Sonevytsky, Maria 16 Sontakke, Prakash 154 Sound and Sentiment (1982/1992/2012) (Feld) 89 Sparke, Penny 124 Spiller, Henry 19 spring 111 Stadtpfeifer 159, 174 Stiegler, Bernard 58 Stobart, Henry 17, 23 Stone, Ruth 92 string 111 Stumpf, Carl 6 Syntagma Musicum (Praetorius) 5 Tannenberg, David 165 theory of signification 14 Theresa, Maria 195, 196, 198 timbral body music 13 The Times 223

254 Index Titon, Jeff Todd 51 Tix, Guillem 40 traded commodities 212–227 Treatise on the Instrumentation of Military Bands (Mandel) 241 Trevithick, Richard 216 The Triumph of Emperor Maximilian I (Burgkmair) 192 Trocco, Frank 59, 60 Trump, Donald 192 Trump tops 247 Tucker, Joshua 58 Tugores, Miquel 38, 39, 42 Turner, Mark 171 21st-century instrument 48–49 26th North Carolina Regiment 169, 169 ‘Vande Mataram’ 140 Varela, Anton 43 violinization 102 Virdung, Sebastian 5 virtuosos 196–198 voice of Saraswati 141–144 Voigt, G. W., Jr. 170

Wade, Bonnie 17 Waksman, Steve 16, 18 Washington, George 163 Wayne, Neil 200 Weber, Gottfried 166 webs of significance 1 Webster, Ben 122 Weidman, Amanda 142 Welk, Lawrence 16 Wilde, Oscar 133 Wilkinson, Charles Jr. 224 Williams, Vivien 18 Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, 1988 (Geertz) 121 Wright, John 192 xeremies 36–40 Yaybahar 109, 109–112 Young, Lester 122 Zinzendorf, Nicholas Ludwig von 158 Zoebisch, C. A. 171