Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Movie in regards to the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument Designed to Deal with Psychological Sickness

What do you imag­ine if you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some sort of whim­si­cal fur­ry beast with black and white keys for enamel, perhaps? A rel­a­tive of My Neigh­bor Totoro’s cat bus? Or perhaps you pic­ture a piano that con­tains sev­er­al caged cats who shriek alongside a whole scale when keys are pressed that slam sharp­ened nails into their tails. If that is your reply, you may discover peo­ple sluggish­ly again­ing away from you at instances, or gen­tly sug­gest­ing you get some psy­chi­atric assist.

However then, imag­ine that such a per­verse odd­i­ty was in use by psy­chi­a­trists, just like the 18th-cen­tu­ry Ger­man physi­cian Johann Chris­t­ian Reil, who—stories David McNamee at The Guardian—“wrote that the machine was intend­ed to shake males­tal sufferers who had misplaced the abil­i­ty to focus out of a ‘fastened state’ and into ‘con­scious conscious­ness.’”

So lengthy, meds. See you, med­i­ta­tion and man­dala col­or­ing books.… I joke, however appar­ent­ly Dr. Reil was in earnest when he wrote in an 1803 man­u­al for the deal with­ment of males­tal unwell­ness that sufferers may “be positioned in order that they’re sit­ting in direct view of the cat’s expres­sions when the psy­chi­a­trist performs a fugue.”

A baf­fling­ly cru­el and non­sen­si­cal exper­i­ment, and we would rejoice to know it prob­a­bly nev­er befell. However the weird thought of the cat piano, or Katzen­klavier, didn’t spring from the bizarre delu­sions of 1 sadis­tic psy­chi­a­trist. It was sup­pos­ed­ly invent­ed by Ger­man poly­math and Jesuit schol­ar Athana­sius Kircher (1602–1680), who has been referred to as “the final Renais­sance man” and who made pio­neer­ing dis­cov­er­ies within the fields of micro­bi­ol­o­gy, geol­o­gy, and com­par­a­tive reli­gion. He was a seri­ous schol­ar and a person of sci­ence. Perhaps the Katzen­klavier was intend­ed as a sick joke that oth­ers took critically—and for a really very long time at that. The illus­tra­tion of a Katzen­klavier above dates from 1667, the one beneath from 1883.

Kircher’s biog­ra­ph­er John Glassie admits that, for all his undoubt­ed bril­liance, sev­er­al of his “actu­al concepts in the present day appear wild­ly off-base; if not sim­ply weird” in addition to “inad­ver­tent­ly amus­ing, proper, mistaken, half-right, half-baked, ridicu­lous….” You get the thought. He was an eccen­tric, not a psy­chopath. McNamee factors to oth­er, like­ly apoc­ryphal, sto­ries by which cats have been sup­pos­ed­ly used as instru­ments. Per­haps, cru­el because it appears to us, the cat piano appeared no cru­el­er in pre­vi­ous cen­turies than the best way we taunt our cats in the present day to make them per­type for ani­mat­ed GIFs.

However to the cats these dis­tinc­tions are imply­ing­much less. From their viewpoint, there isn’t a oth­er solution to describe the Katzen­klavier than as a sin­is­ter, ter­ri­fy­ing tor­ture machine, and people who may use it as mon­strous vil­lains. Per­son­al­ly I’d like to offer cats the final phrase on the sub­ject of the Katzen­klavier—or not less than a couple of fic­tion­al ani­mat­ed, stroll­ing, speak­ing, singing cats. Watch the brief ani­ma­tion on the prime, by which Nick Cave reads a poem by Eddie White about tal­ent­ed cat singers who mys­te­ri­ous­ly go miss­ing, scooped up by a human for a “harp­si­chord of hurt, the cru­elest instru­ment to spawn from man’s grey cere­bral soup.” The sto­ry has all of the dread and intrigue of Edgar Allan Poe’s greatest work, and it’s in such a milieu of goth­ic hor­ror that the Katzen­klavier belongs.

The Cat Piano nar­rat­ed by Nick Cave can be added to our record of Free Ani­ma­tions, a sub­set of our meta col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Motion pictures On-line: Nice Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­males­taries & Extra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats within the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & Extra

Cats in Japan­ese Wooden­block Prints: How Japan’s Favourite Ani­mals Got here to Star in Its Pop­u­lar Artwork

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

Josh Jones is a author and musi­cian based mostly in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness