A friction idiophone. It is used on the stage and elsewhere to produce the sound of the wind. It consists of either a barrel framework covered with silk or coarse canvas which rubs against the slats as the barrel is rotated, or an electric fan in which the blades are replaced by lengths of cane. In each case a rise and fall in volume and pitch is gained by a rise and fall in the speed of rotation, and in the case of the barrel by a tightening and loosening of the fabric. The same subtleties of sound are not available with an electric wind machine, which has the further disadvantage of producing a low-pitched but discernible hum when the machine is turned on but not in use: the hum may be audible when the orchestra is playing pianissimo.
A wind machine is occasionally requested in orchestral scores, for example Strauss’s Don Quixote (1896–7), Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé (1909–12; as ‘eoliphone’), Milhaud’s Les choëphores (1915), Schoenberg’s Die Jakobsleiter (1917–22), and Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia antartica (1949–52), in which there is an instruction that the instrument be ‘out of sight’.
JAMES BLADES/JAMES HOLLAND