With their hollow torsos and long necks, string instruments have long been perceived as an echo of the human silhouette. As early as the 13th century, the Persian poet Rumi compared the lute to the physical body, emphasising that, like the instrument’s hollow cavity, the body must be empty to produce spiritual melodies. But, judging by an upcoming exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, this resemblance extends far beyond strings.
Opening next month, Musical Bodies draws on instruments of all families and vintages: ancient Egyptian clappers chiselled into human hands; mid-20th century Nigerian drums etched with human faces; woodwinds designed to resemble sexual anatomy. Then there is an Aladdin’s cave of string instruments, each more voluptuous than the last, but none more so than the “Violino Harpa Forma Maxima” by 19th-century Czech luthier Thomas Zach — a Dalí-esque viola that encourages us, with its surreal, buttocks-like cheeks, to imagine the performer’s movement.
What emerges is a statement on our instinct to carve our own likeness into musical tools — an instinct that, according to the exhibition’s curator, Bradley Strauchen-Scherer, “you find across time, around the world, in high classical art culture, vernacular, popular or folk culture”. The reason? “The simple answer,” she says, “is that since the beginning of time, music has been central to human identity and human activity”.