A generic term for Membranophones played by a performer speaking or singing into them, and which alter the sound of the voice by means of a vibrating membrane. The word appeared in France during the 18th century as a fashionable term for a wide assortment of items; it first clearly indicated a membranophone in the Dictionnaire de Trévoux of 1752. The term Kazoo is also sometimes used in English. Mirlitons are classified as ‘singing membranes’ by Hornbostel and Sachs.
Three kinds of mirlitons may be distinguished. Representative of the simplest type, the ‘free mirliton’, is the device of a comb covered by paper, mentioned in 1511 in Arnolt Schlick's Spiegel der Orgelmacher and depicted as ‘pettine’ by Filippo Bonanni in 1722. The ‘trombetta di canna’, also described by Bonanni, is a tube of cane on which the wall is scraped thin to form the membrane.
Of more musical importance are the ‘vessel mirlitons’, in which the membrane is combined with a resonating body that intensifies the sound. Among these are the Eunuch-flute, described by Mersenne (1636–7), and the ‘bigophone’ (saxophone shaped), ‘cantophone’ (brass-instrument shaped) and kazoo developed at the end of the 19th century. The Danse des Mirlitons in Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (1892) refers chiefly to such mirlitons used as children's toys, but they were also played in vaudeville music and early jazz. The same principle is found in the nyâstaranga of India and Bangladesh, a small brass trumpet closed by a membrane, a pair of which is applied to the larynx as the performer hums and sings.
The third group comprises instruments which produce their own real sound but employ the distorting effect of a membrane. Mersenne suggested that organ stops could be equipped with a membrane. The ‘Flauto di voce’ or ‘Patent Voice Flute’ made from 1810 by the London flute makers Wigley & McGregor was a transverse flute in G with an additional membrane-covered hole; some music was written for it by James Hook. Adolphe Sax, in his third patent for the Saxophone (1880–81), described a membrane for special sound effects on the crook. The same principle, of a distorting sound effect which could be switched on and off in valved brass instruments, was patented by François Sudre in 1892 for his Sudrophone. Many African xylophones and harps, for example the chopimbila of Mozambique and the madimba of Zaïre (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), have membranes glued over openings in the gourd resonators. The Chinese Di flute is also a mirliton.
MersenneHU
A. Schlick: Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten (Speyer, 1511/R; Eng. trans. 1978)
F. Bonanni: Gabinetto armonico (Rome, 1722)
W. Altenburg: ‘Zur Kenntnis der Sudrophone’, ZI, xxvii (1907), 517–18
C. Welch: Six Lectures on the Recorder (Oxford, 1911)
C. Sachs: Real-Lexikon der Musikinstrumente, zugleich ein Polyglossar für das gesamte Instrumentengebiet (Berlin, 1913/R)
H. In der Gand: ‘Volkstümliche Musikinstrumente der Schweiz’, Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde, xxxvi (1937–8), 73–120
S. Marcuse: Musical Instruments: a Comprehensive Dictionary (New York, 1964, 2/1975)
B. Hopkin: ‘Mirlitons: Kazoos and beyond’, Experimental Musical Instruments, v/1 (1989), 4–8
MARTIN KIRNBAUER