Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Movie in regards to the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument Designed to Deal with Psychological Sickness


What do you imag­ine once you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some type of whim­si­cal fur­ry beast with black and white keys for enamel, perhaps? A rel­a­tive of My Neigh­bor Totoro’s cat bus? Or perhaps you pic­ture a piano that con­tains sev­er­al caged cats who shriek alongside a complete scale when keys are pressed that slam sharp­ened nails into their tails. If that is your reply, you would possibly discover peo­ple sluggish­ly again­ing away from you at occasions, or gen­tly sug­gest­ing you get some psy­chi­atric assist.

However then, imag­ine that such a per­verse odd­i­ty was in use by psy­chi­a­trists, just like the 18th-cen­tu­ry Ger­man physi­cian Johann Chris­t­ian Reil, who—reviews David McNamee at The Guardian—“wrote that the gadget was intend­ed to shake males­tal sufferers who had misplaced the abil­i­ty to focus out of a ‘fastened state’ and into ‘con­scious conscious­ness.’”

So lengthy, meds. See you, med­i­ta­tion and man­dala col­or­ing books.… I joke, however appar­ent­ly Dr. Reil was in earnest when he wrote in an 1803 man­u­al for the deal with­ment of males­tal ailing­ness that sufferers might “be positioned in order that they’re sit­ting in direct view of the cat’s expres­sions when the psy­chi­a­trist performs a fugue.”

A baf­fling­ly cru­el and non­sen­si­cal exper­i­ment, and we’d rejoice to know it prob­a­bly nev­er happened. However the weird concept of the cat piano, or Katzen­klavier, didn’t spring from the bizarre delu­sions of 1 sadis­tic psy­chi­a­trist. It was sup­pos­ed­ly invent­ed by Ger­man poly­math and Jesuit schol­ar Athana­sius Kircher (1602–1680), who has been known as “the final Renais­sance man” and who made pio­neer­ing dis­cov­er­ies within the fields of micro­bi­ol­o­gy, geol­o­gy, and com­par­a­tive reli­gion. He was a seri­ous schol­ar and a person of sci­ence. Possibly the Katzen­klavier was intend­ed as a sick joke that oth­ers took severely—and for a really very long time at that. The illus­tra­tion of a Katzen­klavier above dates from 1667, the one under from 1883.

Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Movie in regards to the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument Designed to Deal with Psychological Sickness

Kircher’s biog­ra­ph­er John Glassie admits that, for all his undoubt­ed bril­liance, sev­er­al of his “actu­al concepts at present appear wild­ly off-base; if not sim­ply weird” in addition to “inad­ver­tent­ly amus­ing, proper, fallacious, half-right, half-baked, ridicu­lous….” You get the concept. He was an eccen­tric, not a psy­chopath. McNamee factors to oth­er, like­ly apoc­ryphal, sto­ries by which cats had been sup­pos­ed­ly used as instru­ments. Per­haps, cru­el because it appears to us, the cat piano appeared no cru­el­er in pre­vi­ous cen­turies than the way in which we taunt our cats at present to make them per­kind for ani­mat­ed GIFs.

However to the cats these dis­tinc­tions are imply­ing­much less. From their perspective, there isn’t a oth­er option to describe the Katzen­klavier than as a sin­is­ter, ter­ri­fy­ing tor­ture gadget, and those that would possibly use it as mon­strous vil­lains. Per­son­al­ly I’d like to present cats the final phrase on the sub­ject of the Katzen­klavier—or at the very least just a few fic­tion­al ani­mat­ed, stroll­ing, discuss­ing, singing cats. Watch the quick ani­ma­tion on the prime, by which Nick Cave reads a poem by Eddie White about tal­ent­ed cat singers who mys­te­ri­ous­ly go miss­ing, scooped up by a human for a “harp­si­chord of hurt, the cru­elest instru­ment to spawn from man’s grey cere­bral soup.” The sto­ry has all of the dread and intrigue of Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest work, and it’s in such a milieu of goth­ic hor­ror that the Katzen­klavier belongs.

The Cat Piano nar­rat­ed by Nick Cave shall be added to our listing of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Films On-line: Nice Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­males­taries & Extra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats within the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & Extra

Cats in Japan­ese Wooden­block Prints: How Japan’s Favourite Ani­mals Got here to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Artwork

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian based mostly in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness



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