
Kyushu University’s Faculty of Design is pleased to announce the 6th concert in the series “Music and the Non-Human”.
The public is welcome and we look forward to seeing you.
Date&Time: Monday 24 February 2025 (public holiday), 16:00
Venue: Recording Studio, Acoustic Special Building, Ohashi Campus, Kyushu University
*Free of charge (limited to 50 people)
18th century Europe. What did thinkers of this period think about being ‘human’? It is interesting to examine this through the harpsichord as an instrument. This period was the harpsichord’s heyday, as well as its swansong. Some Enlightenment thinkers and scientists, such as Denis Diderot, defined the harpsichord as a ‘mirror of man’ and considered it to embody the human ‘spirit’; the harpsichord’s outer box was the human ‘body’ and the strings were its ‘nerves and muscles’; its ‘esprit’ (soul), the sound produced by the resonance between the outer box (body) and the strings (nerves and muscles). In other words, humanity itself was generated through the resonance of nonhuman elements. When this instrument and its player are of ‘one mind’, one can sometimes feel the sensation of being transformed into a mysterious hybrid, like a centaur that is neither human nor instrument. It is certain that the players and composers of the time were trying to transcend the ‘human realm’ through the harpsichord. The harpsichord became, in the hands of Bach, an instrument that embodied faith through music, and in the case of Rameau and Couperin, a canvas for a phenomena beyond the unspeakable material world. From a certain point of view, the harpsichord may have been just another piece of furniture in the 18th century, but from a slightly different perspective, it seems that this instrument was valued as a portal to another dimension beyond the human world. It is difficult to put into words, but this recital is an attempt firstly to dialogue with the humans of the past through the harpsichord, as well as to make contact with the other dimension they were searching for.
