See Beethoven’s Entire 9th Symphony Visualized in Colorful Animations

in Animation, Music | October 2nd, 2025

While report­ing on the Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test, the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane “asked a man named Sep­po, from the sev­en-hun­dred-strong Euro­vi­sion Fan Club of Nor­way, what he loved about Euro­vi­sion. ‘Broth­er­hood of man,’ he said — a slight­ly ambigu­ous answer, because that was the name of a British group that entered, and won, the con­test in 1976.” And the con­cept has a longer his­to­ry in Euro­pean music than that: Friedrich Schiller claimed to be cel­e­brat­ing it when he wrote his poem “An die Freude,” or “To Joy,” which Lud­wig van Beethoven adapt­ed a few decades there­after into the final move­ment of his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. Lat­er still, in 1972, that piece of music was adopt­ed by the Coun­cil of Europe as the con­ti­nen­t’s anthem; in 1985, the Euro­pean Union made it offi­cial as well.

In a sense, “Ode to Joy” is a nat­ur­al choice for a musi­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Europe, not just for its explic­it themes, but also for the obvi­ous ambi­tion of the sym­pho­ny that includes it to cap­ture an entire civ­i­liza­tion in musi­cal form.

Its com­plex­i­ty and con­tra­dic­tion may be eas­i­er to appre­ci­ate through these videos, which con­sti­tute a visu­al­iza­tion by Stephen Mali­nows­ki, cre­ator of the Music Ani­ma­tion Machine, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his ani­mat­ed scores of every­thing from Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons to Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to no. 4 to Debussy’s Clair de lune. As one of the most fre­quent­ly per­formed sym­phonies in the world, Beethoven’s 9th comes to us laden with a fair amount of cul­tur­al bag­gage, but Mali­nowski’s spar­e­ly ele­gant ren­der­ing lets us lis­ten while keep­ing our mind on the essen­tials of its struc­ture.

That struc­ture, as the view­ing expe­ri­ence empha­sizes, is not a par­tic­u­lar­ly sim­ple one. Though already deaf, Beethoven nev­er­the­less com­posed this final com­plete sym­pho­ny with lay­er after ever-chang­ing yet inter­lock­ing lay­er, draw­ing from a vari­ety of musi­cal tra­di­tions as well as pieces he’d already writ­ten for oth­er pur­pos­es. At its 1824 pre­miere in Vien­na, Sym­pho­ny No. 9 received no few­er than five stand­ing ova­tions, though over the cen­turies since, even cer­tain of its appre­ci­a­tors ques­tion whether the final move­ment real­ly fits in with the rest. Indeed, some even regard “Ode to Joy” as kitschy, an exer­cise unbe­com­ing of the sym­pho­ny as a whole, to say noth­ing of the man who com­posed it. But then, it’s unde­ni­able that Euro­pean cul­ture has since achieved heights of kitsch unimag­in­able in Beethoven’s day.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

“A Glo­ri­ous Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecsta­sy of Feel­ing Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Discover the Oldest, Weirdest Instrument On Earth: The Lithophone

in Music, Nature | October 1st, 2025

Sta­lac­tites hang tight to the ceil­ing, and sta­lag­mites push up with might from the floor: this is a mnemon­ic device you may once have learned, but chances are you haven’t had much occa­sion to remem­ber it since. Still, it would sure­ly be called to mind by a vis­it to Luray Cav­erns in the Amer­i­can state of Vir­ginia, home of the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ. As its name sug­gests, that attrac­tion is an organ made out of sta­lac­tites, the geo­log­i­cal for­ma­tions that grow from cave ceil­ings. Not long after the dis­cov­ery of Luray Cav­erns itself in 1878, its sta­lac­tites were found to res­onate through the under­ground space in an almost musi­cal fash­ion when struck — a prop­er­ty Leland W. Sprin­kle took to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion in the mid-nine­teen fifties.

“Dur­ing a tour of this world-famous nat­ur­al won­der, Mr. Sprin­kle watched in awe, which was still cus­tom­ary at the time, as a tour guide tapped the ancient stone for­ma­tions with a small mal­let, pro­duc­ing a musi­cal tone,” says Luray Cav­erns’ offi­cial site. “Mr. Sprin­kle was great­ly inspired by this demon­stra­tion and the idea for a most unique instru­ment was con­ceived.”

Con­cep­tion was one thing, but exe­cu­tion quite anoth­er: it took him three years to locate just the right sta­lac­tites, shave them down to ring out at just the right fre­quen­cy, and rig them up with elec­tron­i­cal­ly acti­vat­ed, key­board-con­trolled mal­lets. For the tech­ni­cal­ly mind­ed Sprin­kle, who worked at the Pen­ta­gon as a math­e­mati­cian and elec­tron­ics sci­en­tist, this must not have been quite as tedious a labor as it sounds.

The result was the biggest, the old­est (at least accord­ing to the age of the cave itself), and arguably the weird­est musi­cal instru­ment on Earth, a litho­phone for the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry’s hero­ic age of engi­neer­ing. You can see the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ in the video from Ver­i­ta­si­um at the top of the post, and hear a record­ing of Sprin­kle him­self play­ing it below that. In the video just above, YouTu­ber and musi­cian Rob Scal­lon gets a chance to take it for a spin. View­ers of his chan­nel know how much expe­ri­ence he has with exot­ic instru­ments (includ­ing the glass armon­i­ca, orig­i­nal­ly invent­ed by Ben Franklin, which we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture), but even so, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play a cave — and to make use of its sur­round sound avant la let­tre — hard­ly comes every day. Here we have proof that the old, weird Amer­i­ca endures, and that the Great Sta­lacpipe Organ is its ide­al sound­track.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Archae­ol­o­gist Play the “Litho­phone,” a Pre­his­toric Instru­ment That Let Ancient Musi­cians Play Real Clas­sic Rock

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Saturday Night Live & They Got Banned from the Show (1981)

in Comedy, Music | October 1st, 2025

Punk rock has a robust tra­di­tion of gross-out, offen­sive comedy—one car­ried into the present by bands like Fat White Fam­i­ly and Diar­rhea Plan­et, who may not exist were it not for Fear, an unsta­ble L.A. band led by an obnox­ious provo­ca­teur who goes by the name Lee Ving. Like fel­low L.A. punks the Germs, Cir­cle Jerks, and Black Flag, Fear gets cred­it for pio­neer­ing a Cal­i­for­nia punk sound known for ado­les­cent brat­ti­ness and a total lack of pre­ten­sion to any kind of art­ful­ness or cool.

Like many of their peers, Fear rose to promi­nence when Pene­lope Spheeris fea­tured them in her 1981 punk doc­u­men­tary The Decline of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, Part I. But before that sem­i­nal film’s release, Fear was dis­cov­ered by John Belushi, who first caught the band on a local L.A. music show called New Wave The­atre in 1980. He tracked down Ving, who tells Rolling Stone, “we had a cou­ple of beers and became fast friends.” At the time, Belushi was at work on his com­e­dy Neigh­bors with Dan Aykroyd and con­tract­ed the band to record a song for the film (his last before his death in 1982).

The film’s pro­duc­ers, Rolling Stone writes, “were appalled” by the song “and refused to use it,” so to make it up to Ving and com­pa­ny, Belushi pushed to have the band booked on Sat­ur­day Night Live on Hal­loween, 1981. The result­ing per­for­mance has become leg­endary for what hap­pened, and what didn’t, and led to Fear becom­ing, says Ving, “one of the esteemed mem­bers of the per­ma­nent­ly banned.” You can watch a clip above of the band play­ing “Beef Boloney” and “New York’s Alright if You Like Sax­o­phones” (intro­duced by Don­ald Pleas­ance), and just below see Ving in a clip from an inter­view show dis­cussing the ill-fat­ed gig.

Belushi stage-man­aged the band’s appear­ance, striv­ing for authen­tic­i­ty by bring­ing into the stu­dio what Ving calls “an actu­al punk rock audi­ence rather than just Mr. and Mrs. Mis­souri.” (That audi­ence includ­ed now-leg­ends Ian MacK­aye of Minor Threat and Fugazi, mem­bers of New York hard­core band the Cro-Mags, and Tesco Vee of the Meat­men.)  The result­ing mosh pit was noth­ing out of the ordi­nary for the typ­i­cal punk show. But, unsur­pris­ing­ly, “the real audi­ence at Sat­ur­day Night Live was scared to death,” says Ving, “They didn’t know what was hap­pen­ing with all the may­hem.”

Dur­ing the riotous pro­ceed­ings, SNL pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol “got hit in the chest with a pump­kin,” some equip­ment was dam­aged, and dur­ing the final song, “Let’s Have a War,” an audi­ence mem­ber grabbed the micro­phone and yelled out “F*ck New York!” The pro­fan­i­ty freaked out NBC, who cut the broad­cast short and shelved the footage for sev­er­al years. The New York Post lat­er quot­ed an unnamed NBC tech­ni­cian as say­ing, “This was a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion. They went crazy. It’s amaz­ing no one got killed.” The paper also quot­ed a fig­ure of $400,000 for dam­ages to the Rock­e­feller Cen­ter set.

But as Bill­board report­ed two weeks lat­er, the fig­ure was total­ly erro­neous (sup­plied to the Post by Ving as a prac­ti­cal joke, as he says above). “We had to pay $40 in labor penal­ties. That was the extent of it,” said SNL spokesman Peter Hamil­ton. As for the shock to view­ers, it seems the net­work received “all of 12 com­plaints” after the broad­cast. Ving him­self found the over­re­ac­tion ridicu­lous, and NBC’s long shelv­ing of the footage—only recent­ly made avail­able in a trun­cat­ed version—a humor­less mis­take. “They seem to be… los­ing the sense of humor about the whole idea,” he told Rolling Stone, “I had a sense of humor at the whole idea of start­ing Fear. It was extreme­ly humor­ous to me, and I think John saw that humor.”

Indeed he did, but Belushi’s appre­ci­a­tion for Fear’s antics was ahead of its time. Now we can see, at least in part, what all the fuss was about. And we can also final­ly hear the long-shelved sin­gle for Neigh­bors that Belushi record­ed with the band.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

The Birth of the Blues Broth­ers: How Dan Aykroyd & John Belushi Start­ed Intro­duc­ing a New Gen­er­a­tion to the Blues

Sat­ur­day Night Live’s Very First Sketch: Watch John Belushi Launch SNL in Octo­ber, 1975

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

 

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Musician Plays the Last Stradivarius Guitar in the World, the “Sabionari” Made in 1679

in Music | September 30th, 2025

Last night, while the home team lost the big game on TVs at a local dive bar, my noisy rock band opened for a cham­ber pop ensem­ble. Elec­tric gui­tars and feed­back gave way to clas­si­cal acoustics, vio­lin, piano, accor­dion, and even a saw. It was an inter­est­ing cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tion in an evening of cul­tur­al jux­ta­po­si­tions. The sports and music did­n’t gel, but an odd sym­me­try emerged from the two bands’ con­trast­ing styles, to a degree. The instru­ment above, on the oth­er hand, would have fit right in with the sec­ond act, whose old world charm would sure­ly find a place for a 1679 guitar—one craft­ed by the leg­endary mas­ter luthi­er Anto­nio Stradi­vari, no less.

If you know noth­ing at all about music or musi­cal instru­ments, you know the name Stradi­vari and the vio­lins that bear his name. They are such cov­et­ed, valu­able objects they some­times appear as the tar­get of crime capers in the movies and on tele­vi­sion. This Stradi­var­ius gui­tar, called the “Sabionari,” is even rar­er than the vio­lins. The Stradi­vari fam­i­ly, writes For­got­ten Gui­tar, “pro­duced over 1000 instru­ments, of which 960 were vio­lins.” Yet, “a small num­ber of gui­tars were also craft­ed, and as of today only one remains playable.” High­ly playable, you’ll observe in these videos, thanks to the restora­tion by luthiers Daniel Sinier, Fran­coise de Rid­der, and Loren­zo Frig­nani.

In the clip just above, Baroque con­cert gui­tarist Rolf Lisl­e­vand plays San­ti­a­go de Mur­ci­a’s “Taran­tela” on the restored gui­tar, whose sonorous ring­ing tim­bre recalls anoth­er Baroque instru­ment, the harp­si­chord.

So unique and unusu­al is the ten-string Stradi­var­ius Sabionari that it has its own web­site, where you’ll find many detailed, close-up pho­tos of the ele­gant design as well as more music, like the piece above, Ange­lo Michele Bar­tolot­ti’s Suite in G Minor as per­formed by clas­si­cal gui­tarist Krish­na­sol Jiménez, who, along with Lisl­e­vand, has been entrust­ed with the instru­ment for many live per­for­mances. Owned by a pri­vate col­lec­tor, the Sabionari very often appears at lec­tures on restora­tion and con­ser­va­tion of clas­si­cal instru­ments, as well as in per­for­mances around Europe. You’ll find on sabionari.com many more videos of the gui­tar in action (like that below of gui­tarist Ugo Nas­truc­ci impro­vis­ing), links to exhibits, descrip­tions of the chal­leng­ing­ly long neck and Baroque tun­ing, and a sense of just how much the Sabionari gets around for such a rare, antique instru­ment.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Sci­en­tists Can’t Recre­ate the Sound of Stradi­var­ius Vio­lins: The Mys­tery of Their Inim­itable Sound

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

What Makes the Stradi­var­ius Spe­cial? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Sopra­no Voice, With Notes Sound­ing Like Vow­els, Says Researcher

Watch Price­less 17-Cen­tu­ry Stradi­var­ius and Amati Vio­lins Get Tak­en for a Test Dri­ve by Pro­fes­sion­al Vio­lin­ists

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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A Tour of the New David Bowie Archive Featuring 90,000 Artifacts from His Life & Career

in Museums, Music | September 25th, 2025

With the tenth anniver­sary of David Bowie’s death com­ing up ear­ly next year, more than a few fans will have their minds on a pil­grim­age to mark the occa­sion. Per­haps with that very time frame in mind, the V&A East Store­house in Lon­don has just opened the David Bowie Cen­ter. Run by the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um, to which Bowie left an archive of about 90,000 of his pos­ses­sions, this new insti­tu­tion will show a few hun­dred of those arti­facts at a time, and even make a range of them avail­able on request to vis­i­tors. As for what exact­ly is in there, Jes­si­ca the Muse­um Guide makes a brief sur­vey of the Bowieana cur­rent­ly on dis­play in the video above.

Some of the fea­tured objects, like the suits Bowie wore in his videos for “Life on Mars?” and “Let’s Dance” or the crys­tal ball he held aloft as Jareth the Gob­lin King in Labyrinth, may well be rec­og­niz­able even to casu­al Bowie appre­ci­a­tors. Longer-term fans will sure­ly rec­og­nize the out­landish but ele­gant Kan­sai Yamamo­to-designed cos­tumes that visu­al­ly defined per­son­ae like Zig­gy Star­dust and Aladdin Sane, the Alexan­der McQueen-designed Union Jack frock from the cov­er of Earth­ling, and per­haps even the met­al angel wings Bowie donned onstage dur­ing the high­ly ambi­tious but much-derid­ed Glass Spi­der Tour of the late nine­teen-eight­ies.

Going deep­er, there’s also the Sty­lo­phone, a kind of toy elec­tron­ic instru­ment from the late six­ties, that Bowie used on “Space Odd­i­ty” (and had to repur­chase on eBay); the much more pro­fes­sion­al-grade EMS suit­case syn­the­siz­er giv­en to him by Bri­an Eno, which he used on the “Berlin tril­o­gy” albums they made togeth­er; the per­son­al deck of Oblique Strate­gies, co-cre­at­ed by Eno, that shows signs of inten­sive use in Bowie’s own cre­ative process; his cor­re­spon­dence with Let’s Dance pro­duc­er Nile Rodgers (a cura­tor of the Bowie Cen­ter’s cur­rent exhi­bi­tion), about their sec­ond album Black Tie White Noise; and mate­ri­als from Omikron: The Nomad Soul, the com­put­er game to which he con­tributed music as well as a dig­i­tized per­for­mance in the late nineties.

The col­lec­tion that Bowie donat­ed to the V&A already came care­ful­ly orga­nized and cat­a­loged, which shows a metic­u­lous­ness uncom­mon to rock stars, and a delib­er­ate­ness about not just cul­ti­vat­ing his pub­lic image at any giv­en cul­tur­al moment, but also active­ly curat­ing the mate­ri­als of his own his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive. It seems Bowie always had one eye on the past: his own, of course, but also more dis­tant eras, rich with dis­used aes­thet­ics to revive and make his own. The oth­er eye he kept on the future, espe­cial­ly as the inter­net was grow­ing into a cul­tur­al force. The David Bowie Cen­ter has his per­son­al notes on the sub­ject, which include a ref­er­ence to BowieNet, the inter­net ser­vice provider he found­ed around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um. BowieNet is now long gone, of course, but Bowie’s lega­cy — espe­cial­ly now that it’s been insti­tu­tion­al­ly enshrined and made so acces­si­ble to the pub­lic — will out­last us all.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream David Bowie’s Com­plete Discog­ra­phy in a 19-Hour Playlist: From His Very First Record­ings to His Last

The Art Col­lec­tion of David Bowie: An Intro­duc­tion

Behold The Paint­ings of David Bowie: Neo-Expres­sion­ist Self Por­traits, Illus­tra­tions of Iggy Pop, and Much More

Meet the Mem­phis Group, the Bob Dylan-Inspired Design­ers of David Bowie’s Favorite Fur­ni­ture

David Bowie Is: The First Major Exhib­it Ded­i­cat­ed to Bowie Spans 50 Years & Fea­tures 300 Great Objects

The Musi­cal Career of David Bowie in One Minute … and One Con­tin­u­ous Take

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How Erik Satie Invented Modern Music: A Visual Explanation

in History, Music | September 10th, 2025

Once you hear Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1, you nev­er for­get it. Not that pop­u­lar cul­ture would let you for­get it: the piece has been, and con­tin­ues to be, rein­ter­pret­ed and sam­pled by musi­cians work­ing in a vari­ety of gen­res from pop to elec­tron­ic to met­al. In ver­sions that sound close to what Satie would have intend­ed when he com­posed it in 1888, it’s also been fea­tured in count­less films and tele­vi­sion shows. It’s even heard with some fre­quen­cy in YouTube videos, though in the case of the one from The Music Pro­fes­sor above, it’s not just the sound­track, but also the sub­ject. Using an anno­tat­ed score, it explains just what makes the piece so endur­ing and influ­en­tial.

Upon “a sim­ple iambic rhythm with two ambigu­ous major 7th chords,” Gymnopédie No. 1 intro­duces a melody that “floats above an aus­tere pro­ces­sion of notes,” then “moves down the octave from F# to F#.” With its lack of a clear key, as well as its lack of devel­op­ment and dra­ma that the orches­tral music of the day would have trained lis­ten­ers to expect, the piece was “as shock­ing as the dance of naked Spar­tans it was meant to evoke.”

The melody makes its turns, but nev­er quite arrives at its seem­ing des­ti­na­tions, going around in cir­cles instead — before, all of a sud­den, swerv­ing into the “minor and dis­so­nant” before end­ing in “pro­found melan­choly.”

Despite music in gen­er­al hav­ing long since assim­i­lat­ed the dar­ing qual­i­ties of Gymnopédie No. 1, the orig­i­nal piece still catch­es our ears — in its sub­tle way — when­ev­er it comes on. So, in anoth­er way, do the less rec­og­niz­able and more exper­i­men­tal Gnossi­ennes with which Satie fol­lowed them up. In the video above, the Music Pro­fes­sor pro­vides a visu­al expla­na­tion of Gnossi­enne No. 1, dur­ing whose per­for­mance “soft dis­so­nance hangs in the air” while “a curi­ous melody floats over gen­tle syn­co­pa­tions in the left hand” over just two chords. The score comes with “sur­re­al com­ments”: “Très luisant,” “Du bout de la pen­sée,” “Pos­tulez en vous-même,” “Ques­tionez.” Satie is often cred­it­ed with pio­neer­ing what would become ambi­ent music; could these be pro­to-Oblique Strate­gies?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Eric Satie’s Most Famous Pieces: “Gymno­pe­die No. 1” and “Gnossi­enne No. 1”

Lis­ten to Nev­er-Before-Heard Works by Erik Satie, Per­formed 100 Years After His Death

The Vel­vet Underground’s John Cale Plays Erik Satie’s Vex­a­tions on I’ve Got a Secret (1963)

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

Japan­ese Art Instal­la­tion Lets Peo­ple Play Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” As They Walk on Social­ly-Dis­tanced Notes on the Floor

How Erik Satie’s “Fur­ni­ture Music” Was Designed to Be Ignored and Paved the Way for Ambi­ent Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Discover the 100-Year-Old Self-Playing Violin, One of the Most Complex Music Players Ever Made

in Music | September 9th, 2025

At the 1910 World’s Exhi­bi­tion in Brus­sels, Lud­wig Hupfeld unveiled the Phono­liszt-Vio­li­na, an instru­ment once dubbed “the eighth won­der of the world.” A lead­ing mak­er of auto­mat­ed instru­ments in Ger­many, Hupfeld built a com­pa­ny that pro­duced every­thing from phono­la push-up play­ers to play­er pianos. In 1907 he cre­at­ed his most famous inven­tion, the Phono­liszt-Vio­li­na. It fea­tured three ver­ti­cal­ly mount­ed vio­lins, each with a sin­gle active string, played by a rotat­ing bow of 1,300 horse­hairs. Mean­while, pneu­mat­ic bel­lows pressed the strings accord­ing to per­fo­rat­ed rolls. And a play­er piano could accom­pa­ny the vio­lins. Sold in upright home and com­mer­cial mod­els, the Phono­liszt-Vio­li­na enter­tained patrons of upscale hotels, restau­rants, and cafes, before grad­u­al­ly fad­ing into obso­les­cence. The Win­ter­gatan video above, along with the Wel­teMax video below, will give you a nice intro­duc­tion to one of the most com­plex music play­ers ever made.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

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Hear the First Masterpiece of Electronic Music, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge

in Music | September 3rd, 2025

Karl­heinz Stock­hausen appears, among many oth­er cul­tur­al fig­ures, on the cov­er of Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. His inclu­sion was more than a trendy ges­ture toward the Euro­pean avant-garde; any­one who knows that path­break­ing elec­tron­ic com­poser’s work will notice its influ­ence on the album at first lis­ten. Paul McCart­ney him­self went on record with his notion that assum­ing the alter egos of the title would allow him and his fel­low Bea­t­les to branch out both cul­tur­al­ly and intel­lec­tu­al­ly in their music, incor­po­rat­ing pas­tich­es of Ravi Shankar, B. B. King, Albert Ayler, the Doors, the Beach Boys, and indeed Stock­hausen, whose Gesang der Jünglinge had already inspired “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” on Revolver.

Lit­er­al­ly “Song of the Youths,” Gesang der Jünglinge was an ear­ly work for Stock­hausen, who com­posed it in 1954, when he was still a PhD stu­dent in com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bonn. Inspired by not just his tech­no­log­i­cal inter­ests but also his devout Catholi­cism, he decid­ed to cre­ate a mass for elec­tron­ic sounds and voic­es, with the intent to debut it at Cologne Cathe­dral. (Leg­end has it that he was rebuffed by reli­gious author­i­ties, who insist­ed that loud­speak­ers had no place in a house of wor­ship, but sources dis­agreed on whether he actu­al­ly sought their per­mis­sion in the first place.)

He drew its words from a pas­sage of the Old Tes­ta­ment sto­ry of three boys cast into the fire by King Neb­uchad­nez­zar for their refusal to wor­ship a gold­en idol and kept unharmed by the praise to God they sang amid the flames.

In Stock­hausen’s high-tech ren­der­ing, the boys are rep­re­sent­ed by the voice of twelve-year-old Josef Protsch­ka (who would grow up to become an acclaimed vocal­ist in his own right), and the fire by a col­lage of elec­tron­ic sounds. Though the com­poser’s manip­u­la­tions, part design and part chance, the human and mechan­i­cal halves of the piece become one: Protschka’s vocals break apart and reform into frag­ments of lan­guage nev­er before heard, and the arti­fi­cial­ly gen­er­at­ed tones bend uncan­ni­ly toward the sound of sung vow­els. All this, to say noth­ing of its play­back in five-chan­nel sound in a time when stereo was still a nov­el­ty, would have sound­ed deeply, even dis­turbing­ly unfa­mil­iar to the audi­ence at Gesang der Jünglinge’s pre­miere — and its impact prob­a­bly had­n’t been much dimin­ished by the time of the 2001 per­for­mance above. Stock­house­n’s music may have been after the shock of the new, but it also faced the eter­nal.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Karl­heinz Stockhausen’s Great Heli­copter String Quar­tet, Star­ring 4 Musi­cians, 4 Cam­eras & 4 Copters

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

Hear Karl­heinz Stockhausen’s Pio­neer­ing Com­po­si­tions for Music Box­es

A Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Brand­ed Car: A Play­ful Trib­ute to the Ground­break­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er

“Tomor­row Nev­er Knows”: How The Bea­t­les Invent­ed the Future With Stu­dio Mag­ic, Tape Loops & LSD

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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