Clap your hands. Tap a foot. Whistle. It doesn’t even have to be a tune.
It’s all musical, and it all comes from the human body. The body, in turn, has inspired the shape of instruments for as long as they’ve existed, an observation that made the curator Bradley Strauchen-Scherer curious.
“So many instruments specifically reference the human body in their form or in their decoration, across cultures, from folk culture to pop culture to classical culture,” said Strauchen-Scherer, who works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s department of musical instruments. “What’s going on here?”
That simple question eventually led to the exhibition “Musical Bodies,” which opens at the Met on Sunday. The show contains objects from several thousands of years of history: paintings and prints, fashion and sculptures, and, of course, instruments. Connecting them all, Strauchen-Scherer said, is an exploration of “the human condition through the lens of music.”
“Often we think about music as a very specialist thing,” she said. “Sometimes it gets branded as being elitist. But when we look at why people make music across time, it’s in our DNA. It’s absolutely fundamental to human survival.”
Much of the exhibition makes that point through music that visitors can hear for themselves. Below are five examples.
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