Frédéric Kastner
«pyrophon»

Frédéric Kastner’s father, Herny Dunant, was a great philanthropic visionary, founder of the Red Cross, and the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. The «pyrophon» continues in the tradition of his father’s commitment, but augmented now by a learned physicist’s knowledge of the natural sciences. The phenomenon of the «singing flames,» known since 1777, is used here for creating a totally new musical instrument: the burning, town gas in a series of glass pipes of varying lengths and thickness produces remarkable tones and light effects at the same time. By way of electric wiring, the flames are ignited and regulated directly through the pressure applied to the keyboard. Today the device is found in the Science Museum in London. The father became an important sponsor for his son’s invention, and, as a way of realizing his own visionary-philosophical designs, presented it in London (1875) as follows: «Here the modest harmonica chimique, the lumen philosophicum of the nature researchers has matured into a musical instrument in the form of the pyrophone; this pleasing result supports the idea that investigating the nature of sound will take man, if not as far as inventing music, at least as far as equipping this art with resources that will strengthen its power.»

([Henry] Dunant, «Description of M. Kastner's new musical instrument, the Pyrophone,» in: Journal of the Society of Art, 23 Feb. 1875, pp. 293-297, here 293) Cf. for the actual use of this effect: Volker Straebel, «Singende Flammen. Andreas Oldörps Arbeiten zwischen Experiment und Installation,» in: Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, no. 160, 1999. [http://www.straebel.de/praxis/text/t-flammen.htm]

Dieter Daniels