Musical Bodies

Musical Bodies explores the overlapping worlds and blurred boundaries between bodies and instruments across 5,000 years of art and music history.

Whether we are tapping, clapping, vocalizing, or whistling, our bodies are musical instruments, and, in return, many instruments derive their form and decoration from the human body. Acting as powerful vehicles of identity, these objects complicate the notion of where bodies end and instrumental music-making begins.

This interdisciplinary publication features some 130 musical instruments and related works of art, including paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, manuscripts, and costumes. Instruments considered range from Ancient Egyptian sistra and Renaissance figural fiddles to Tipu Sultan’s mechanical organ in the shape of a tiger mauling a European soldier and the “symbol” guitar played by Prince.  

E. Bradley Strauchen-Scherer conceives of instruments as bodies and beings, first establishing the ways bodies and instruments interact and entwine and then exploring how instruments reflect identity, sex, death, and the afterlife. Drawing on musicology, organology, anthropology, art, literature, religion, pop culture, and mythology, Musical Bodies is a fascinating exploration of music, art, and the human condition. 

Details

• Authors: E. Bradley Strauchen-Scherer, curator in the Department of Musical Instruments, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
• Hardcover: 228 pages | 200 colour illustrations
• Date published: May 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9781588398130
• Dimensions: 27.5 x 23.6 cm