fictophone

The editors at Public Domain Review are treated to the grand tour of the Museum of Imaginary Musical Instruments by its curators and invite us to tag along.
One might suppose that instruments never created either due to impracticality, impossibility or cruelty (there are sadistic specimens of an organ and a clavier that were to produce notes and chords from the torture of humans and cats respectively) would not have much truck with with reality or cultural currency, having not existed, but there is an interesting under-current championed by writers throughout several ages that use hypothetical horns, woodwinds and acoustic chambers as a philosophical lens and prevision all manner of things, from electronic music, music therapy and technological progress, just as much ones you’d encounter in the orchestra pit.