13.6

//Source(s): LES MEDECINES DE LA FOLIE by Dr. Pierre Morel and Claude Quetel// 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 //Source(s): David Toop, OCEAN OF SOUND: AETHER TALK, AMBIENT SOUND AND IMAGINARY WORLDS (London: Serpent's Tail, 1995):// 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."
 * Dead medium: Cat Piano and Tiger Organ Cat Piano**
 * From: kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey)**
 * From: From:mroberts@MIT.EDU (Martin Roberts)**