Musical Animals & Instruments

There are close cultural links between animals and musical instruments. Parts of animals, bones, teeth, horn, hair, skin, and gut have inspired humans to build instruments. Whether the first verifiable wind instruments made of gryphon vulture bones and mammoth teeth (Geissenklösterle, Hohle Fels and Vogelherd caves) were attributed a magical power to elicit living sounds from the dead animal again, eludes our knowledge. The construction of the instruments from the Aurignacian shows great care and—in the case of the instrument made of mammoth tooth—a striking craftsmanship. The famous statuette of the lion man from the Hohlenstein-Stadel in the Lone Valley, also carved from mammoth tooth, dates from the same place and period. As a mixed creature it reflects a world full of dangers, which humans wanted to banish and master. The strength of the animal is combined with the upright posture typical of man as a sign of consciousness.

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AN EXHIBITION

accompanying the XII. Symposium of the International Study Group on Music Archaeology (ISGMA) 25–30 September 2023, Little Gallery beneath Toscana Hall, Würzburg Residence

Conceived by a musicological seminar, summer 2023
Curation: Oliver Wiener with advice of Nancy Thym

The exhibition attempts to introduce the relationship between animals and instruments with 33 objects from the Würzburg Study Collection, 10 posters and a sound installation. — Early on, there was a cultural relationship between animal material, the form of instruments, their sound and a framework of mythical and symbolic interpretations of this relation. The exhibited objects try to show that these interpretative perspectives have not been lost to the present day. With the reflection on zoomorphism and the materials used in the construction of instruments, organology has also reached the center of ethical considerations in human animal studies.