Speaking Instruments

It has been generally accepted that in music the use of the voice preceded that of instruments. This view is not based on any document, for the material evidence of the use of instruments is much older than any vocal tradition. Rather, it is based on the obscure belief that music is a natural expression, and that the use of the voice is more spontaneous than the use of any musical tool. In fact, there is no reason to say that musical instruments are a more recent artifice than the voice. The use of musical tools is now substantiated in the animal world, and not only have exchanges between the two vocal and instrumental domains always existed, but numerous cases of hybridisation have been documented since the beginning of time. The sacred voice of the masks of Greek tragedy or Africa, and its profane descendants of the kazoos and Polichinelle, show that the musicality inherent in all speech on the one hand, and the articulatory possibilities of sound instruments on the other, make it possible to create intermediate realisations between the more specific uses of speech and instrumental music.