For a revision of the reeds taxonomy (also in the light of some new discoveries)

I totally agree with the criticism put forth by André Schaeffner [1936] on the Hornbostel-Sachs system. According to Schaeffner the four classes are not hierarchically equivalent, since idiophones, membranophones and chordophones share a property that excludes aerophones: they are all solid body instruments, while in aerophones the vibrating body is gaseous. In addition, the class of idiophones, as it is now conceived, constitutes a sort of residual category, a storeroom of sorts in which the remaining objects are set, objects which do not fnd a place in any of the other categories. Let us now consider the objects which have encouraged these refections and on which my observations are based: membrane reed instruments. I have identifed two types: whole membrane reeds – percussion reeds – and split membrane reeds – which I have defned free. Te tornado, an instrument sold in the 1990’s and played in stadiums by Italian football fans, is a plastic cylinder made of two parts which ft together. Set on the opening that is closer to the player’s mouth is a larger cylinder covered with a synthetic membrane that sits on the edge of an interior cylinder. Te lower end of the cylinder, which slips over the tube, sits on the rigged edge in order to close the passage of air which, blown through a lateral hole, is forced to pass between the membrane and the edge of the internal tube, producing a vibration of the membrane and, consequently, the vibration of the air column inside the tube. Membrane clarinets, uncovered in Calabria by Enzo La Vena are composed of a cylindrical Arundo donax tube without fingerholes, where the terminal end is partially covered by a membrane in rubber (part of a kitchen glove) and held to the body of the instrument by an elastic. The membrane does not beat against an internal cylinder: the vibrations are free, which is to say that the vibrations are not interrupted by a rigid body (as in single reeds and the tornado), nor by a flexible symmetric body (as in double reeds). They are blown from the open extremity (the reed being at the terminal end), and therefore without a resonator: they are free aerophones. On the basis of the considerations put forth thus far, I propose a new articulation for idiophonic interruptive aerophones.