Abstract
Organology, the study of musical instruments, has traditionally concentrated on the documentation of instruments: their history, roles in culture, and classification. However, as post-modern, feminist, and post-colonial perspectives have questioned some of the assumptions inherent in historiographical, ethnographic, and positivist endeavours because of their part in reproducing hegemonic ideologies, re-thinking organology and thus developing a richer account of musical instruments has become an urgent task. With this regard a queer perspective in organology, in particular informed by Judith Butler’s theories of “gender trouble,” is crucial in agitating normative beliefs, values, and attitudes that underpin notions of instrumental identity, interaction, and meaning. A queer organology becomes especially significant in the critical engagement with musical instruments like those invented by the British composer, performer, and inventor Hugh Davies (1943-2005), and in particular his entirely found, amplified, new musical instruments. This is because the challenges to traditional instrumental ontologies, the “instrumental trouble” that these instruments pose: reveal the boundaries of conventional organological approaches and methodologies, which are unsuitable in capturing their full significance. Deploying Butler’s concepts of recognition, performativity, and subversion in their study can thus represent an effective strategy in the development of a coherent critique of Davies’s instruments, but also in offering an opportunity to further the understanding of the fundamental importance that musical instruments play in the articulations of music, as part of what may be called an “instrumental turn.”
Highlights
Organology, the study of musical instruments, has traditionally concentrated on the documentation of instruments: their history, roles in culture, and classification
With this regard a queer perspective in organology, in particular informed by Judith Butler’s theories of “gender trouble,” is crucial in agitating normative beliefs, values, and attitudes that underpin notions of instrumental identity, interaction, and meaning such as those expressed by Michael Praetorius in his 1619 book Syntagma Musicum in which he claimed that “musical instruments may be described as the ingenious work of able and earnest artisans who devised them after much diligent thought and work, fashioned them out of good materials and designed them in the true proportions of art, such that they produce a beautiful accord of sound”
A queer organology becomes especially significant in the critical engagement with musical instruments like those invented by the British composer, performer, and inventor Hugh
Summary
In a 1974 publication titled New and Rediscovered Instruments, David Toop (b. 1943) acknowledged the existence of a “small, though expanding, group of individuals of widely differing backgrounds who are commonly involved in the making of new and rediscovered musical instruments” (1974: 3). 1939); new instruments have been devised using the -emergent electronic technology, such as the Ondes Martenot and the Theremin among many others; the practice of sound sculpture developed considerably, blurring the boundaries between lutherie and fine art practices, for example in the work by the Baschet Brothers or Max Eastley; Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995) theorised a “pseudo-instrument,” a perceptual construct that framed sounds that were heard as originating from a common source, while Douglas Kahn spoke about “conceptual instruments,” instruments that are “impossible to construct, or whose sound is impossible, or both” (1990: 17). In this context questioning the very “fact” of an instrument may become an even more resonant and significant task than a musical one
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