New strings and water-driven music

An influence may come from the past, from a culture, or from a machine. Before you read, list what you think could change how music sounds or how it is made. Then sort the museum's two cases under your list.

A small boat carries a courtly scene, then breaks its silence with moving hands and a whistle: this is al-Jazari's account of the musical boat. ² An upper reservoir supplies a small tipping bucket, which empties onto a scoop-wheel, and the turning axle moves rods connected to the performers' hands. ³ The detailed section describes four performers: two tambourine players, a harpist and a wind-instrument player. ³ According to the text itself, the harpist's fingers move above the strings without touching them. ⁴ A separate path admits water to a vessel, displacing air into a whistle. ⁴

The author begins with a commission from someone he could not disobey, then explains that he found no way to supply water to or discharge it from the boat, choosing an internal arrangement. ⁵ The record does not identify the commissioner by conjecture, though it gives al-Jazari's general context as Artuqid service at Amid. ⁶ The record of his life says that his book was commissioned by Nasir al-Din Mahmud. ⁷ The records preserve no other statement of why he wanted a musical boat.

The account of Ziryab's fifth string is told by al-Maqqari, who wrote much later. ⁸ Dwight Reynolds shows how Maqqari assembled older voices into an idealized portrait of one artist. ⁹ The record therefore gives a broad ninth-century setting, not a year, day or court session for the change. ¹⁰ Its photograph shows a much later Cleveland instrument, not an oud surviving from his court. ¹¹

One case is an extra string on an old oud, the other a boat whose moving hands play without touching the strings. Which of the two do the records show changing what a listener hears, and which what a listener sees, and how can you tell?

• Al-Jazari's musical boat: the reservoir, the bucket and the whistle, and what Hill could not explain.
• Ziryab's reported fifth oud string: the account, its late source and the scholar who examined it.
• Al-Jazari: the engineer, his service at Amid and his book.