to Gerd Rische

AEOLUS' LYRE
It is not an instrument, nor should it be looked at asp sculpture.

It does not like to fall in the arms of a jester and would not tolerate being exhibited at loud market places.

Listen to its changeful sound only when nobody else is listening: an audience would weary it.
You could use the violin bow on it, playing gently by touching it delicately with just a few bow-hairs; even more, do tear one of them and keep passing it over the bar transversely, along its lowest portion, near to the clamped end. If you would do this with continuous, concentrated action but with ever-changing rates of speed, as different from one to another as the incessantly changing rhythms of Nature, then you will be rewarded by a polished sound, that bears the flavour of remote lands.

A gentle breeze is enough to interpret its secret, violence drives it mad: hit it and you will get banal ringing tones in reply, like those which accompany the virtuous bourgeois' Sundays or those which announce his immoderate meals.

Should you be as insane as to try to get music from it, you will not be doing anything else but reproducing the noise of the sea and the breath.of the wind: you know well that we were not granted to interrupt their flowing...

Mario Bertoncini, January 19th, 1990