Stone Tools
By:
August 19, 2010
If only these stones could speak.
When confronted with the mineral kingdom we often supply both sides of the conversation; from our perspective, stones speak too slowly to hear, more slowly even than trees.
But perhaps they can sing.
A lithophone is a xylophone made of rocks. But not just any rocks will do. It takes a certain kind of metamorphosis to reach into our velocities; radical translation requires unusual internal complexity.
Today, master percussionist Evelyn Glennie premieres a special lithophone made from rocks of the Lake District in the UK; housed, appropriately enough, in Brantwood, John Ruskin’s house. Ruskin himself had his own DIY version, taking two sticks to his “special rocks.” Of course developing a relationship with the Other requires adjustment on our part too —Glennie notes that it will take many hours of “literally living” with the instrument to learn its tones. And its silences.
This video is not that instrument, but it is a lithophone, and features Tom Kaufmann playing what might be its central songline: