Paper from the NATHIST meeting in Seoul 2004
abstract

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, my name is Ulrike Stottrop. I am a geologist and since more than 20 years I try to explain to people the fascinating world of stones and the wonders of nature. I started work as a geologist at the Ruhrlandmuseum in Essen, Germany in 1984 and since 1985 I´m head of the geological department. I´m also director of the Mineral-Museum, which is part of the geological department of Ruhrlandmuseum. Before I start talking about "The sound of stones" I want to give you some explanations about and impressions of the museum I´m working for, because in this way I can explain how the idea to do an exhibition about "sounding stones" was born.

The Ruhrlandmuseum was founded in 1904. It is a regional museum of and for the industrial area "Ruhrgebiet". Today it contains the departments Geology, Archaeology, History, Photography and Education. We are located in the same building as the Museum Folkwang, a museum of art with international reputation. The concept of the permanent geological exhibition reflects this situation.

How do we do it? Our geological collection, with about 400.000 objects, is one of the best in Germany and the main attraction is the permanent exhibition, called "terra cognita", which opened 2001. On more than 1500 square meters the most important and outstanding exhibits, I call them the "crown-jewels" of our collection, are presented using basic principles: as documents of scientific conclusion, of aesthetical perception and of cultural interpretation. It is the aim of the exhibition to show the variety of possibilities to read and interpret the objects of nature.

From time to time, we offer our visitors very special guided tours through the "terra cognita" exhibition. My explanations are accompanied by musicians, and they interpret the exhibition in their own way. I´ll give you an example. In the entrance we present one of our biggest meteorites, just next to the spiral nebula of our galaxy.

The musician Julia Zanke -she was my guest-curator for "The sound of stones"- sits beside the meteorite, in her hand a copper cup. By striking the outer edge of the cup with a stick, she produces a certain tone. And then she starts humming a German nursery rhyme ...all our visitors know it...It´s called: Weist du wieviel Sternlein stehen? (Do you know how many stars are in the sky?)

When the last tone of her beautiful humming voice has disappeared then my part begins and I ask our visitors. Do you know how many stars are in the sky? And then I go to the spiral nebula, to show them a very very small spot, our sun...and planet earth is so small, that it can´t be seen ...and under the spiral nebula we qoute the words of the American astronaut Mitchell (Apollo 14) who, standing on the moon, describes in really lyric words the rising of the planet earth.

In another part of the exhibition where we present objects, which show us the dynamics of planet earth and the dynamics of life, Julia recites and performs a lyric and at the end she strikes along our stone-library with different types of granites, limestone, travertine.... And this sounds fantastic! That´s how the idea for the exhibition "The sound of Stones" was born.

We planned it for the Mineral-museum. As I told you before, the Mineral-Museum is part of the geological department. It was founded in 1984 and is housed in an old school building from 1856. The permanent exhibition shows "minerals of the world", local minerals, especially ore, and, since 2004, because of it´s great success, the interactive exhibition "The sound of stones". We started "The sound of stones" in 2003 as a special exhibition. I have to say that we only had a very, very small budget (3000.- €).

Our plan was to offer our visitors the opportunity to make their own experience with this special sound-character of stones and to tell them about the history of using rocks as musical instruments and about the sense, the meaning , the importance of sounding stones in cultural history.

The Historical Background

When we began to make our enquiries, we were astonished to find out that the use of resonant rocks seems to be as old as the history of man. The Pitt Rivers Museum of the University of Oxford published in 1997 a compendium by M.C. Fagg called "Rock Music". "Rock gongs" would specify the topic of the publication that embraces such apparently disparate fields as music, prehistory, ethnography and also a little bit of petrography much better.

Rock gongs are found world-wide and they are known to have been used since Upper Palaeolithic times. They are natural stones and are not artificially tuned. I quote M.C. Fagg: "They resonate when struck and show evidence of human use as so called idiophones. They seem to be of any shape or size. Several different notes can usually be obtained from a single boulder and resulting from percussion an abraded area may show on the edge of a rock; alternatively hollows or "cupmarks" are formed.". The compendium notes rock gongs from all over Africa, from Canada, USA, Brazil, Colombia, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, France, Guernsey, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Wales and Oceania.

Just a few examples:

- An example from Nigeria. The flake of granite is broken off the huge rock above. It sounds with a ringing tone delicate enough to be clearly audible when struck with the palm of the hand. The signs of use were extensive and they were patinated. (1956)

- Another example from Uganda: The gong is in the lower right hand corner of the rock. The big rock is covered with heavily weathered paintings.

A major problem to put rock gongs into their social context is that of dating. Many rock gongs are found close to paintings and engravings. But only a few remain in use at the present time. They are used for example for signalling, because the sound carries a considerable distance. Some are known to be used or have been used in initiation and circumcision rites or in farming ceremonies. And some resonant boulders are connected with rainmaking. And some are played to accompany singing and dancing, because they are excellent talking drums.

Artificial Musical Instruments Made of Stone

Beside the gongs we have so called lithophones. These are series of resonant, intoned stones, horizontally or vertically suspended and chromatically arranged.
In the cultural area of East Asia (China) chime stones are very famous and common. I quote M.C. Fagg: "They were integral elements in certain religious rituals and celebrations. It is the attribute of a "voice" which associates mystery with such rocks: the voice of the rock is believed to be the voice of an ancestor or other spirit with power to summon the supernatural, and as long as it is believed that inorganic nature is not dead, but may be the vehicle of power - the rocks may be treated with awe, even veneration."

- Here you can see the representation of a stand of chime stones, ching. (L. Picken: The Music of Far Eastern Asia; in Wellesz, E. (ed.), 1957: The New Oxford History of Music, Vol. I: 94, Plate 4) And when you look at the programme of ICOM 2004 Seoul, page 7, you can see a Korean stand of chime stones. It belongs to one of the 19 masterpieces of intangible heritages.

And here a late Ching representation that shows the making of chime-stones from the rocks of the Ssu River, described in the Shu Ching (Needham 1962: Science and Civilisation in China Vol. IV Fig. 310)

I quote a chant of Konei, the Emperor Yao´s court musician, from 2300 BC (Blades 1975:91):
"When I smite my musical stone - be it gently or strong,
Then do the fiercest hearts leap for joy, and the chiefs do agree among themselves
When you make to resound the stone melodious,
When ye touch the lyre that is called Ch´in,
Then do the ghosts of the ancestors come to hear."

The oldest complete lithophone in Europe was made in 1785 in the English Lake District. It can be seen in the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery and it seems that the inventor, Peter Crosthwaite, had seen or heard chime stones, as he worked for the East India Company and captained a frigate operating the Far East. He used local slates. More elaborate ones, known as rock harmonicas, were made later in the same area.

The most famous one is the rock harmonica from Richardson & Sons with five chromatical octaves. After 13 years of building it was finished in 1840 and it was played in two concerts in the honour of Queen Victoria. Lithophones with horizontal stones are still built in Europe today.

This historical background we present in a room with information plates and pictures. Here we also show a self-made pien ching.

And, compared to this, a very famous modern chromatical lithophone from Germany. It was conceived and produced for the stage performance of "Antigonae" by Carl Orff. It is made from Solnhofen limestone.

The Experimental Part of the Exhibition

Let me turn now to the most important part of the exhibition. We present basalt, limestone, granite, slate, sinter, marble - and thousands of bigger and smaller pebbles. All the stones we show are ordinary slabs and flagstones or pieces of them as they are used in the stone industry. They can be played with drumsticks or smaller stones, or - the pebbles - with your feet.

	- Pebbles to stomp in
	- Roof slates
	- Phonolith, a volcanic stone, 400000 years old
	- The rough surface of some kind of a plutonic rock
	- Sandpaper with different grain size
	- In the background pumice stone with a very soft and tender sound...
	- In the basket are various plates of granite, sinter, limestone and so on to make your own lithophones
	- This lady chooses only sinter. The different sizes make different, beautiful clear resonating sounds
	- These children rub stones against others
	- Well, I´ll have to explain this. We received these big quartz glass cups in different sizes from a German factory. The company produces silica crystals for the computer industry. With one knock you can produce a sound, the vibration of which can fill the room for minutes.
	- Children stomping in a rhythm

Being astonished about all the different notes you can hear, a lot of our visitors compare the stones and ask for the reason, that some rocks resonate when struck. And all in a sudden we are in a living dialog about the material:
Is it the physical texture of the rock together with it´s shape and size? What´s with the components of the rocks? Is the composition relevant or irrelevant? What´s the role of the grain size? Fine, medium and course grained stones are seen to resonate. The most important factor seems to be the crystalline structure. The position of the ringing rock is also important for increasing or damping the sound. It must be as free as possible to be able to vibrate.

The Sound of Stones in Music, Nature and Art

Many composers use this material in their work. Siegfried Saerberg and Thomas Zwerina, two blind musicians composed a modern score for the exhibition, called "Stone Rag - La Partitura Sulle Pietre" a composition for three or five bricks and piano in c moll. They performed it on the last day of the special exhibition.

Our planet is full of sounds that nature creates with its own stone instruments. Sounds, that belong to the geographical keynote of a landscape: the sound of stones in the waves pounding on the seashore, the rolling and rumbling of pebbles in a river, the howling wind blowing over the crest of mountains. The world is sound: with every grain of sand trickling to the ground, with every glacier shifting forward, with every rumbling and gargle bluster from volcanic activities.

To imitate these natural sounds of nature we created some objects:

A rocker filled with fine grained gravel
A big funnel hanging from the ceiling that was filled with sand that trickled out,
A wine cask filled with boulders
and pieces like a stone comb to blow on.

The highlight of our exhibition is a sculpture made by Elmar Daucher.

	Elmar Daucher is an artist, who first produces sculptures to be played percussive. You can see him here on one he called "Stone to Dance On".
	One day after a rain shower he walked through his outdoor studio and wiping the rain off from a sculpture like this. He discovered, that he can make the stone "sing" just by running the hand over it and causing it to vibrate.
	We have a smaller one in our exhibition and meanwhile Julia is able to play it in a breathtaking way. Hearing this "spherical" sound, basic instincts seem to be touched.

Modern compositions by Stefan Micus with and for the sounding sculptures from Elmar Daucher are part of a collection of "stone music" our visitors can listen to in a special "meditation room" Fig. For example ethno-music from Rapa Nui (Easter Islands) or electro-magnetical vibrations (changed so that we can hear them) from a pulsar in Cassiopeia A and from Miranda, the inner moon of Uranus.

Most of our visitors take one of the pillows to relax on the carpet. In the bed of gravel we present well rounded boulders from the Baltic Sea, a plate with ripplemarks, a ventifact and a stone with scratches of an glacier. Results of a geological process which made sounds in the moment it happened.

My Conclusion:

Normally a geologist can analyse minerals and rocks, but they can´t make their spirit tangible. Our exhibition demonstrates how the interdisciplinary approach can make intangible heritage come to life. And, in honour and thanks to our host country: Especially the Asian cultural approach to this topic helps us widen our horizon about the nature of rocks and stones.

Ulrike experiencing sound of stones
at the National Science Museum in Daejon during the conference.

March 2005