Pluriel-Hachette Pub., from photocopy; date unknown
translated by Francois Baschet
Cat Piano:
"What should we say about the cat piano? The idea that
such an instrument could have existed gives a lot to think
about, even if it was built on an experimental basis: a
piano where strings are replaced by cats, each of them
giving a different note.
"It seems that Father Kirchner, a German Jesuit of
the XVIIth century with an interest in musical things,
gave the first description of this weird and cruel
instrument.
"'Not long ago,' says he, 'an actor, as ingenious as
illustrious , built such an instrument to cure the
melancholy of a great Prince. He gathered cats of
differing size and therefore in the pitch of their voices.
He enclosed them in a basket specially built for this
purpose, so their tails, coming out through holes, were
held in tubes. He added keys with thin needles instead of
hammers, and installed the cats according to their voices
in such a way that each key would correspond to the tail
of an animal, and he put the instrument in a suitable
place for the pleasure of the Prince. Then he played it,
producing chords corresponding to the mewings of the
animals. Indeed the keys pressed by the fingers of the
musician, by trotting the tails of the cats, would enrage
the poor animals and make them scream with a high or low
pitch, producing a melody that would make people laugh or
even incite mice to dance.'"
(...) "Johann-Christian Reil, renowned neuro-anatomist
from Germany, mentions the cat piano (Katzenklavier) in a
list of therapies for mental illness, published in 1802.
He even specified that the patient has to sit 'in such a
way that he does not lose sight of the physiognomy and the
mimicry of the animals.'
Man-Tiger-Organ
From: From:mroberts@MIT.EDU (Martin Roberts)pages 72-73.
"Of all the noise instruments in history, one of the least
equivocal in its intent is Tipu's Tiger. Captured in
India by the British army after the defeat and death by
bullet and bayonet of Tipu Sultan in 1799, this large and
amazing object is now housed in the Victoria and Albert
Museum, London.
"The most succinct and evocative description was
written by an employee of the East India Company:
"'This piece of Mechanism represents a Royal Tyger in
the act of devouring a prostrate European. There are some
barrels in imitation of an Organ, within the body of the
Tyger, and a row of Keys of natural Notes. The sounds
produced by the Organ are intended to resemble the Cries
of a person in distress intermixed with the roar of a
Tyger. The machinery is so contrived that while the Organ
is playing, the hand of the European is often lifted up,
to express his helpless and deplorable condition.'
"John Keats saw Tipu's Tiger in the East India
Company's offices and later referred to it in a satire he
wrote on the Prince Regent: 'that little buzzing noise,
Whate'er your palmistry may make of it, Comes from a play-
thing of the Emperor's choice, From a Man-Tiger-Organ,
prettiest of his toys.'
"And when the tiger was first exhibited in the newly-
opened Victoria and Albert Museum, the public cranked the
handle to make it roar with such sadistic, joyful
frequency that students in the adjacent library were
driven half-mad by the distraction.
"In a technical analysis of the instrument, Henry
Willis speculated that 'the intended method of use for the
keyboard organ was to run the knuckles up and down the
scale to produce the effects of a screaming man being
killed by a tiger.' Because the design and materials
suggest a European rather than an Indian maker, Willis
suggested that the tiger and its victim were constructed
by either a malicious Frenchman or a renegade Englishman.
"But whoever made this wonderfully macabre sculpture,
Tipu certainly enjoyed it. He was obsessed with tigers,
for one thing; for another, as a Muslim whose wealth and
land had been plundered by the colonialists, he hated the
British. Reportedly, he used to circumcise them when he
took prisoners. His walls were decorated with scenes
depicting soldiers being dismembered, crushed by
elephants, eaten by tigers and other fates too obscene for
the British major who saw them to form a verbal
description.
"'Better to die like a soldier than to live a
miserable dependent on the infidels on the list of their
pensioned rajas and nabobs,' Tipu said at his last
military conference. Delicious irony: through the
preservation of imperial spoils, albeit mute and frozen in
the act of mauling within a glass case, the
objectification of Tipu's hatred endures."