Keyboards

Let's face it, not the most riveting of topics, and to begin with I had no idea what I was going to conjure up for a blog about keyboards, typed using a keyboard obviously - only not the one illustrated below. That's just i-Candy. 

But with no football to worry about, a cold beer to hand and the blackbirds serenading in the back garden, I went on a web trawl - and there I chanced upon a reference to a fascinating article in the June 1922 edition of Science and Invention magazine that proposed the creation of an Olfactory Organ, an instrument that would create a series of orchestrated smells (as opposed to musical notes) according to a script played by a perfumist sitting at the instrument's keyboard. That'll do it, I thought, happily supping my Moretti, for you know how I love a wacky approach to the week's theme.

The invention described in the magazine was actually based on the theories of a 19th century French chemist and perfumier, Dr. Septimus Piesse. The good doctor often used music as a metaphor to explain how certain scents could work either together in harmony or to sound a discordant note. (By the way, let me drop a plug here for Patrick Suskind's brilliant novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.)

The amazing Olfactory Organ was envisaged to have arrays of atomisers with different scents linked to a keyboard, the pressing of each key dispensing a quantity of a different smell (or aroma if you prefer that word). It was proposed to map the rich and heavy scents corresponding to the deeper notes of the bass clef (don't ask me where they got 'cleff' from), with the lighter, more subtle scents corresponding to the treble register. The authors even made a stab at nominating what each of the scents should be, as documented below. It may be inferred that this keyboard only possessed 46 keys - 6 fewer than the number of natural notes (or white keys) on a standard piano, and not a hint of sharps or flats.

The article also carried a rather fetching illustration by Frank R. Paul showing how the Olfactory Organ might look in performance, in this case (see below) on stage in a theatre or concert hall, the perfumist playing merrily away and the sharp-nosed audience in evening dress (naturally) waiting to be wafted by waves of whatever the olfactory equivalent of a symphony or a lightshow is. Happy days.

As for the perfumist's art, the article hypothesises:

"Of course, the combination of these odours will create a smell entirely different from any of the individual qualities of the various perfumes and it is necessary that, in the soft, dreamy compositions, the odours blend harmoniously. Discords will have a decidedly unpleasant effect but inasmuch as the composers did not dwell upon discords to any great extent, the audience will be saved the rather unusual embarrassment of smelling disagreeable combination. Some music, would perhaps have to be changed and the odours carefully graduated so that in the smells wafted over the audience no particular perfume will predominate, except when the loud pedal, or rather, in these smell organs, the strong odour pedal is trod upon."

Nonsense, of course, (the Olfactory Organ was never built), but entertaining nonsense. And just imagine the critical notices it might have garnered. "Last night's performance stank!" "He got right up my nose!" "I've never smelt so much rubbish in my life!" It's a shame that Aldous Huxley hadn't read the Science and Invention article when he same to write Brave New World a decade later, for his Feelies provided the audience with sight, sound and touch but not smell. He missed a trick there.

This week's new poem is just a bit of throwaway silliness really, not even particularly related to any of the foregoing, but what the heck. I give you (subject to extension and/or improvement):

Mr Malaprop's Top Tips For A Happy Life

Wake up and smell the roses

Remember hope springs internal

Hang on to the skinny qua non

Try to maintain a sensual porpoise

Exorcise religiously every day

Never goad a sheep on a full stomach

Look after the penis, the pounds will follow

Always lurk on the right side of life

The key is never to be board.

Thanks for reading my craziness, S ;-)