Overview

The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments is a guided tour through centuries of instruments that never existed. From ancient myths to futuristic media, these imagined devices appear in literature, theory, video games and art, at times echoing real instruments, other times pushing far beyond the bounds of technology. This book presents a wide-ranging collection of such creations, showing how they reflect changing ideas about sound, invention and the limits of the possible. At once a cultural history and a study of creative thought, it uncovers unexpected links between music, design and the human urge to make meaning through sound. These are not just fictional artefacts they are windows into what music might mean, even when it cannot be played.

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9781836391852

Table of Contents

Reviews

What an Arkestra, what a trip! Visiting (and revisiting) Loughridge and Patteson’s The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments immerses you in the sonic, visual and philosophical delights of “fictophones” from across space, time and astral planes. This slim encyclopedia is brilliant, hilarious and erudite – an ultra-evocative and hyper-resonant sextant for an age of sublime and demented machines. * John Tresch, Professor of History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice at the Warburg Institute, University of London * Hugely enjoyable and endlessly stimulating, The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments takes readers on a captivating journey through centuries of musical invention, both real and imagined. Every page is infused with deep scholarship and a palpable sense of wonder – a true celebration of music’s limitless possibilities. * Alexander Rehding, Fanny Peabody Professor of Music at Harvard University * Musical instruments exemplify the development of highly specialised and elaborate technologies, designed for mutual compatibility in collaborative contexts. In this fascinating book, Deidre Loughridge and Thomas Patteson uncover a quite different strata of invention in which speculative, impossible and deeply strange instruments live and function within the imagination. They demonstrate conclusively that, despite the dazzling range of existent instruments, there is in human culture an appetite for musical forms that cannot be heard. * David Toop, musician, writer and Emeritus Professor *

""What an Arkestra, what a trip! Visiting (and revisiting) Loughridge and Patteson’s The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments immerses you in the sonic, visual and philosophical delights of “fictophones” from across space, time and astral planes. This slim encyclopedia is brilliant, hilarious and erudite – an ultra-evocative and hyper-resonant sextant for an age of sublime and demented machines."" - John Tresch, Professor of History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice at the Warburg Institute, University of London ""Hugely enjoyable and endlessly stimulating, The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments takes readers on a captivating journey through centuries of musical invention, both real and imagined. Every page is infused with deep scholarship and a palpable sense of wonder – a true celebration of music’s limitless possibilities."" - Alexander Rehding, Fanny Peabody Professor of Music at Harvard University ""Musical instruments exemplify the development of highly specialised and elaborate technologies, designed for mutual compatibility in collaborative contexts. In this fascinating book, Deirdre Loughridge and Thomas Patteson uncover a quite different strata of invention in which speculative, impossible and deeply strange instruments live and function within the imagination. They demonstrate conclusively that, despite the dazzling range of existent instruments, there is in human culture an appetite for musical forms that cannot be heard."" - David Toop, musician, writer and Emeritus Professor ""The Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments makes tangible – and page-by-page, more fantastical and curious – the elusive question of what music is, and what we wish it could be."" - Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, Professor and Director of the Music Cognition Lab at Princeton University

Author Information

Deirdre Loughridge is professor of music at Northeastern University, Boston. Her previous books include Sounding Human: Music and Machines, 1740/2020. Thomas Patteson is a teacher, writer, and musician based in Philadelphia. He is the author of Instruments for New Music and cofounder of People's Music Supply.

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