Would you ever try to play a flute with your bottom? No, me neither, though I still struggle the more conventional way. Only ask because expert musicians have spent months making copies of instruments shown in a 16th century painting, hoping they would play.
Disaster! Though they look lovely the consensus is they're useless:"The racket that comes out is horrible. The trumpet has been coiled so many times it wouldn't play and the harp's strings do not give an octave, says the expert in charge, Andy Lamb. The hurdy-gurdy design is fundamentally flawed with a half-hearted buzzing noise and the lute can't be tuned without collapsing.
The experts at Oxford University were using Bosch's picture The Garden of Earthly Delights as their starting point. It shows hellish cruelty and depravity, which might have been a clue. The flute, which took weeks to make, is stuck into a sinner's bottom. "I can tell you that you can't play a flute like that, " reveals Mr Lamb, but he added " We are pushing the boundaries of music education an inch at a time." Absolutely, but not in that direction.
No comments:
Post a Comment