Beyond the Spectrum: Musical Masterpieces

I was at the MFA for the Beyond the Spectrum class. We were in this gallery of instruments. I like the sound of music, so I like this gallery.

In this gallery a lot of faces look at you. If you look at the way the instruments look, most of them look like they have a face. For example, this one looks like a mustache, but it is actually a bowl lyre from Uganda. This is a kind of string instrument. The music is amazing. It sounds like something that would be in Cuphead. You should listen to the music from it. It is beautiful.

In the next case this zither looks very uncomfortable to hold. There are two ginormous wooden balls on bottom of both ends. Unless they are hollow they must be very heavy. They could get eaten on the dragon part and then the tail would just swoop at their face. That would be very uncomfortable. It is so big that it is hard to take a picture of the whole thing. The zither makes a pleasant though very strange sound. I say it is strange because it is high, then it is low, then it is in between. It goes a little all over the place. It works together with the transitions. I don’t know how it works together, though it does.

Hey, diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle. The cow jumped over the moon. Except it wasn’t a cat. And it wasn’t a cow. It actually was this instrument and a peacock. This is an instrument shaped like a peacock and it has real feathers. I wonder if the peacock they took the feather from liked it; I doubt it was very happy. They don’t have music for this fiddle of the website to listen to, it probably was too fragile. I love this fiddle because it in the shape of a peacock and it reminds me of Hera (because Hera’s sacred bird is actually a peacock).

The Facts:

• Bowl lyre (ndongo)
  • Ganda people, 19th century
  • Materials: Wood, monitor lizard skin, goat hair, cowrie shells
  • Leslie Lindsey Mason Collection (17.2179)
  • Gallery 103D (Musical Instruments Gallery)
• Zither (rudra vina)
  • Murari Mohan Adhikari (Indian, 1934–2006), probably 1970s
  • Materials: Teakwood, calabash gourds, ivory
  • Museum purchase with funds donated by The Kittredge Foundation, Michael and Lisa Kittredge, Trustees (2005.591)
  • Gallery 103D (Musical Instruments Gallery)
• Fiddle (mayuri)
  • Possibly from Rajastan province, India, about 1800
  • Materials: Painted wood, goatskin, peacock feathers
  • Arthur Mason Knapp Fund (1983.411)
  • Gallery 103D (Musical Instruments Gallery)