As it happens every once in a while here on TIFI, sequential Historical Thursday posts will have a common thread running through them. This week is no exception, as it once again deals with an over-the-top device made using animals as the, well, instrument. For those of us not fully fluent in German, Katzenklavier translates to cat piano and it’s exactly what you think it is: A piano. Made with live cats.
No, this wasn’t an early form of the keyboard playing feline meme we’ve all come to love. The instrument’s construction is actually pretty simple. Cats are placed in a box behind the keys and ordered according to pitch. Their tails are stretched out and stuck underneath the keys, each of which has a nail attached. When a key is pressed the nail is driven – let’s hope lightly – into the end of the cat’s tail. Unless the feline is a masochist, it will meow in pain, creating a potentially ear-bleeding caterwaul.
The Katzenklavier has actually been mentioned by many notable writers, musicians and scientists over hundreds of years. It’s unknown who officially came up with the idea, but Jesuit priest and scientist Athanasius Kircher was the first to write it down back in the 17th century. It was even described as an early cure for ADD when a physician believed that such a strange instrument would capture people’s attention and force them to become more focused; curing them.
But before you hit the PETA speed dial I know you all have on your phones, note that this was just a theoretical device. Although there are allusions to built devices discoverd across Europe, there is no proof that one was ever created, and let’s hope it stays that way.
Pictures and Information courtesy of: The Guardian and Wikipedia.
As always, if YOU have an idea for a Historical Thursday, let me know at thereifixedit@gmail.com
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Actually, the Monty Pythons have built (and *used*) a mouse piano.
Ahh, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9nGyPz9uT0
Muppaphone time!
The Bells of St. Mary’s on mouse organ!
Thank you! I was sitting here thinking, Monty Python’s Mouse Organ.
Dip switches = mouse piano =)
http://www.allproducts.com/ee/lightcountry/Product-20091815380.html
I am SO making one of these!
You should totaly try it with men´s nuts. I assume, 2 football teams would be enough for a piano.
See U Next Tuesday
drive nails into their tails?!? How mean can you get?
At least it wasn’t a cord around their cojones.
In the 17th century?
Seriously horrible, is the answer.
Have you actually watched “The Cat Piano”? It is a very cool animated short film, about just such a device.
Here ya go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj4RBmU-PIo
And don’t forget Marvin Suggs and his amazing Muppaphones – same idea only more of a xylophone design. http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/The_Muppaphone
there is a short film with nick cave as narrator called the cat piano
quite good
i like the absurdity of the idea
Ahem: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sLNOhA7C2Q
If you hadn’t, I would’ve.
We use one of these except a .22 is used instead of a piano
wow. big man on campus…
hahahahahaha! That’s funny. I was just thinking someone should do that with your children.
Didn’t the Three Stooges have a modified version of one of these in one of their shorts?
i’ve never thought to go exploring in the 3 stooges’ shorts, to be honest.
Shep always struck me as the strange one. Never know what you’d find in his shorts.
*Shemp
Ah, there’s the clip I was searching for–Three Stoogies, Cats in a Piano. Not quite the same, but amusing enough.
Prince Charles is entertained by a cat organ in this clip:
Cat organ starts at 0:22
Here’s a post where I’d actually AGREE COMPLETELY with the pack of genetic defectives that populate ICHC comment threads and metamorphose into a mass of murderous mouth-breathing morons whenever something not TOTALLY 100% CUTE AND FLUFFY happens to a cat, and where are they? NOWHERE TO BE FOUND.
Sheesh.
And a blog entry about the Cat Piano would not be complete without this fantastic animated short film: http://vimeo.com/3985019
Phillee was faster, but I first had to re-watch the film
Here’s a post where I’d actually agree completely with the pack of genetic defectives that populate ICHC comment threads and metamorphose into a mass of murderous mouth-breathing morons whenever a cat is mildly inconvenienced, and where are they? Nowhere to be found. Sheesh.
Auf Wikipedia.de gefunden:
Das Katzenklavier besteht aus einer Reihe von in einem Gestell fixierten Katzen, deren Schwänze unter einer Klaviatur festgebunden sind. Unten an jeder Taste ist ein Nagel befestigt, wodurch die Katzen verzweifelt miauen, wenn die Tasten gedrückt werden. Die Katzen werden nach ihrer natürlichen Tonlage angeordnet. Das Geschrei der Katzen wurde auch „Katzenmusik“ genannt.
Hat aben wohl nie existiert. Wobei, der menschliche Fundus an skurilen Ideen ist unergründlich…
So hab ich es in Erinnerung.
Man weiß nicht ob man erheitert oder angewidert sein soll.
Wahrscheinlich beides.
But with 9 cats, and 88 keys, how do you get any reasonably combination of notes? It seems highly not-useful… Perhaps it was the world’s first Rock-Band piano!
But you could play any combination of these 9 cats, giving 2 ^ 9 – 1= 511 possible sounds. But well, with 88 keys perhaps you could play 9 pure meows and 79 different chords.
Building a Katzenklavier is about as easy as herding baroque tenor cats.
Historical Thursday, I love you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj4RBmU-PIo and no, it is NOT a rick roll.
All the pictures depict far too few cats. (Probably because they were made-up, not depicting a real device). You need one cat per key, each yowling with a different pitch.
There’s an urban legend that a performance with a Latzenklavier was ruined when all the cats yowled at once, even without the key being pressed.
That’s hilariously messed up.
What a Catastrophe… what?! Someone had to say it!
Hey… wasn’t “Katastrophe” an episode of SWAT Kats: The radical Squadron?? and btw (I’m not a radical PETA crackpot!!) I hope the SWAT Kats will avenge this horrible creation! IMO, if my cat greets me with a purr, it just adds >9000 times of happiness to my day. Thats why cats are awesome!
Sometimes the meow-lody might be quite purrty.
There is a similar instrument that priests enjoy but it has choirboys instead of cats.
I found hitting their backs with a piano hammer works better as they kept moving their tails, also keeping them in place was a bit of a problem. Unfortunately when you hit a note you can never be sure if the cat is going to meow, hiss or (ocaisionally) purr. I got round the problem of the cats making noise when no key was hit my hooking up a small amplifier to each of the keys that turned on when a cat was struck. All in all I think the mouse organ is a better idea, if a little messier.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_organ
It has been invented AND used on British TV at New year:
It’s cheating a little bit, using squeeze toys instead of live cats.
My English teacher showed the class this animation my senior year, super sad.
never mind this, Cat yodeling is better, easier, and not painful for the cats! Annoying, yes, but painful, no.
^awesome
This is the image that comes into my head whenever I hear the songs from “Jingle Cats”. I know that in reality it’s just synthesized cat meows from an electric keyboard or something like that, but still . . .
Do you know how hard it is to find properly tuned cats?
It’s better to do like the Scots and stuff the beast under your arm and play it by biting its tail.
Just one of the many reasons the ASPCA and PETA were founded.
Well, folks have beat me to the Cat Piano short, as well as the Muppaphone and Mouse Organ…
I’ll point out that John Cage (of 4’33″ fame) had a piece titled ‘Mice with tin taps on their feet inside a piano’ – pretty much as advertised. He was a big fan of random chance in music.
It should be noted that the Katzen Klavier was an instrument of torture with the cats’ tails fixed in placed and pain inflictewd when keyes were struck ~ piano / clavier etc are percussion instruments!
Why would someone torture cats? People were tortured as punishment for bad things (where “bad” is defined by whoever was in power), because people can reason. You can’t take a few hours to put a cat into this machine and then tell it why you’re whacking it on the tail, though; all it’ll get from that is that people / you suck. There’s no correction from that. Torturing a person (without killing them, obviously) could well serve as a deterrent from that person doing stuff in the future, though.
My point? There’s a valid (albeit questionable) point in torturing people, wheras torturing animals is just sadistic behavior. Making a piano out of cats, while messed-up in a very special wayway, probably wasn’t intended primarily to torture cats but rather to entertain people. The intent would’ve been ambivolence to the cats, as opposed to explicitly exhibiting benevolence or malevolence.
First it is cats, then before you know it, they will have created a human piano.
Oh wait, it’s been done
http://movieclips.com/2BTg-the-adventures-of-baron-munchausen-movie-berthold-runs-to-austria/
Starts at 1:24
There is a scene in Baron Munchausen where the sultan plays a human organ it stabs people every time you hit a key!