musical instruments in the metropolitan museum of art winternitz

7/28/2019 Musical Instruments in the Metropolitan museum of Art Winternitz

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Pleasing Eye &Ear Alike

Author(s): Emanuel WinternitzSource: The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Oct. - Nov.,1971), pp. 66-73Published by: The Metropolitan Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3258609 .

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Pleasing E y e & EarAlikeEmanuelWinternitzCuratorof Musical Instruments

Opposite,above:Twovinas, romIndia.Gift of AliceGetty,46.34.3,8Opposite,below:Mayuri peacock ute),fromIndia.TheCrosbyBrownCollection,89.4.163

A mottofrequently aintedonkey-board nstruments f the Renaissancesays:"Pleasingo earandeyealike."

This sumsuptwoaspectsnherentn musicalinstruments:heirfunctionasmachinesproducing rganizedound,andtheiraes-theticappeal o theeye,astreasures f art.TheMetropolitanMuseumpossessesafamous ollectionof 4,000musicalnstru-ments,of whichthe mainpart,TheCrosbyBrownCollection f Musical nstruments fAll Nations,wasdonated o theMuseumbetween1889and 1904.Numerous xhibi-tionsin thepastpresented egments fthiscollection, speciallyrom heEuropeansection.Now, forthefirst imeinmanyyears,asystematicallyhosenandrepre-sentative election rom heMuseum's ntirecollectionwill beplacedon exhibition.The choiceof instrumentsndthewaysofgrouping hempresented number fproblems ndalternatives,speciallyn viewof thevarious ypesof visitors obeexpected.Somewouldbeprofessionalmusicians;others,musicstudents,amateurs, istoriansof music,collectors, nd aymenntriguedbythebizarre rbeautiful hapes,or,asartlovers,bythe manifold ypesof decorationthatornamenthe instruments.Ethnologistsandethnomusicologistsouldbe interestedin therelationbetween heinstrumentsandthemanyother toolsproducedn thesamecultural rbit.Psychologists ndculturalhistorianswould ike toexplore hesymbolism f the instruments sed nreligious eremoniesn oldcivilizations,uchas thoseof India,Indochina, ndChina.Physicistsandhistorians f technology,again,wouldfocuson the functional spectsof the toolsof musicasmachines roducingcertain one colors.

How, then,shouldan exhibition atisfyandanticipatehesevarious astes,experi-66

ences, and interests? Many methods areavailable to the curator. One could stress thefunctional approachor the aesthetic appeal.One could group instruments into familiesof different sizes (as they were built in thehigh andlate Renaissance in Europe) toshow the evolution of technical construction,or one could combine instruments of differentkinds, such as wind and string and percus-sion, as they were traditionally played inensembles. The alternatives are infinite, andthe following illustrations will exemplify,better than words, the variety of approachesattempted in the present exhibition.

F or acoustical easons, tringednstru-ments require resonators- that is,hollow bodies that reinforce by theirresonance the sound of vibrating strings. Thevariety of the shapes of resonators isastounding. One striking example is themarouvaneor valiha from Madagascarrepro-duced on the cover. This instrument consistsof a tube of bamboo carryingtwenty wirestrings, their tiny sound greatly reinforced bythe palm-leafhood functioning as a resonator.Numerous other examples of resonatorsmade from naturalproducts are found allover the world. In India, for instance, thevina (technically a stick zither) has resona-tors made from gourds. The vina has a longhistory and countless varieties exist, of whichtwo are shown at the upper right. Three ortwo large gourds were first used; later, onlyone, the other being transformed into anartfully fashioned lute body.Sometimes the resonator is formed not bya naturalobject but by a sculpted hollowrepresentation of the body of an animal, as inthe mayuri (the Sanskrit word for "peacock")on the right, a bowed instrument thatoriginated as early as A.D. 500.

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Like many other instruments of theRenaissance and early baroque, stringaswell as wind, the deep-bodied,

many-stringedviols with their silvery, sub-dued sound were built in families reachingfrom high treble to bass, reflecting the earlierpractice of having the various voices of thechorus, from high soprano to low bass,accompanied by their instrumental counter-parts. The specimens illustrated below werenot all built at the same time, but have beencombined to impress on the visitor theprinciple of the instrumental family.

improvements, some long forgotten,originated during this fertile span of time.For instance, manyexperiments with meth-ods of coiling were made, designed tocompress a long tube into a compact andhandy form (below). Other experimentsconcerned extra loops of tubing for changingthe pitch (opposite). An important phasein this evolution was the "invention horn,"using interchangeable "crooks" added to themain body of the instrument to permitplaying in different keys. A short-lived ex-periment was the cor omnitonique, whichused a slide to select anyone of a perma-nently attached set of crooks. The final solu-tion was the invention of valves in theirvarious forms (piston, rotary,and others).Apart from their functional interest, theseinstruments are often of great visual appealas well.

Left: Family of viols. Clockwise, from left:bass viol, high treble viol, two treble viols,large tenor viol, and alto or small tenor viol.The CrosbyBrown Collection, 89.4.1343,948,949,946,2227,947Below: Hunting horn and orchestral horn.The CrosbyBrown Collection,89.4.2204,1105Opposite: Clockwise, from upper left:"Invention horn," valve horn, "cor omniton-ique," and hunting horn. The CrosbyBrownCollection, 89.4.1110,2196,2418,1118

The period from Bach to Wagner wit-nessedarapidevolutionof themechanics of brass instruments, fromthe naturalhorn and the natural trumpet tothe valve instruments. Numerous technical

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Frequently thesame raditionaltyleof decoration is applied to musical in-struments of quite different function,as it is to other tools of the same tribe.A simple example is found in instruments ofNew Guinea. There, the typical spiral pat-terns incised on the surface and intensified bywhite lime filled into the grooves, arefound on bull-roarers and on time markers

(left). The bull-roarer s a flat piece ofwood, whirled through the airby means of astring and spinning at the same time aroundits axis. The eerie noise, loud and frightening,that it produces is believed to be the voiceof the ancestors. The time marker,aspatula made of darkwood, is used by thenatives to mark time in their chants bystriking the palm of the hand. Apart fromthis musical function, it also is used to stirthe lime they mix with betel nuts, whichthey chew like tobacco.Often one single instrument partakesofmany different kinds of embellishments. Themagnificent spinettina (back cover), madein 1540 for Eleonora d'Este, the Duchess ofUrbino, presents a veritable catalogue offashionable styles of decoration prevailing atthe time: carving (as in the walls pro-tecting the ends of the keyboard, showing adragonintertwining its tail with that of adolphin, and a goat-footed, winged femalemonster riding on the dolphin's snout),subtle intarsia in wood and mother-of-pearl,certosina work, and painted arabesques-all absorbedinto one pleasing, homogeneousdecorative scheme. It also has an exquisitesoundhole rose made of several layers ofparchment in flamboyantGothic tracery(frontispiece).

An especiallyntriguing henomenonis the symbolic form of instruments,particularlythose in animal shape.One striking example in the FarEast is thewooden fish (mu yii in Chinese, mo kugyo inJapanese), actually a slit drum (the slit ison its underside), illustrated at the lowerright. It is hit with a long-shafted hammertomarkcertain moments in Buddhist andTaoist services. In most earlysocieties, thefish stands for water: water means birth andalso, because of the sea's periodic tides, issymbolic of the moon and of the recurrentcycles in a woman's life. And because of itsassociation with water, a fish-shapedinstru-ment would also be used in prayersfor rain.70

The little ball moving freely in the mouth ofthese drums has been connected with resur-rection myths, comparable to the Biblicalstory of Jonah,who survived being swallowedby the whale. Other drums vaguely retainelements of the fish body - so stylized,however, that the original shape of the fishretained in the mu yii is not easily noticeable.The ball between the jaws forms a clue forthe observer.The bat - according to folklore, the bringerof luck - often decorates the head of Chineseand Japanese lutes (upper right). Such batsrangefrom realistic representations to orna-mental versions resolving the animalbody intopatterns - some resembling butterflies, whileothers are seemingly free ornaments recog-nizable as bats only to the knowing eye.In Northwest American Indian art, wefind many examples of the reduction ofanimal depictions to semi-ornamentaldesignsin their characteristic linear idiom. Theillustration at the right shows one of theingenious stopped pipes traditional in theQueen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia(Haida tribe). Beneath the mouthpiece iscarved a bear, one of the totemic emblemsof the Haida, its snout, nostrils, teeth, eyes,and claws clearly discernible in spite of therestrictions of the available surface.

Left: Bull-roarerand time marker,from NewGuinea. The CrosbyBrown Collection,89.4.3625,767Right: Stopped flute, from British Columbia(Haida tribe). The CrosbyBrown Collection,89.4.2778Farright, above: Bats decorating the heads ofChinese lutes. The CrosbyBrown Collection,89.4.52; Bequest of MaryStillman Harkness,50.145.74Farright, below: Japanese slit drums. TheCrosbyBrown Collection, 89.4.1711,2838,72



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Overleaf:Still life of instruments rom the new AndreMertensGalleries orMusicalInstruments,photographed yLeeBoltin,andselectedandarranged y the Museum'sDesign Department.From eft: Chinese ute of the Mingdynasty,17thcentury,Bequestof MaryStillmanHarkness,50.145.74.Vina,fromIndia,Gift of Alice Getty,46.4.3.Germanhorn madeof pottery,18thcentury,The CrosbyBrownCollection,89.4.115.Norwegianhardangerele, 19thcentury,Gift of theUniversityof PennsylvaniaMuseum,53.56.4.Burmesehorn,The CrosbyBrownCollection,89.4.1752.Germanguitar,18thcentury,RogersFund,69.29

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