Music stones go back a long way. Nobody knows how long, but it could well be that stone, along with bone, wood, reeds and grass, was one of the first materials used by humans with the intention of making sound. It is of course in the nature of the medium, being transient, that it’s not possible to know what sounds they were making in those far distant days. With visual images, whether they be petroglyphs carved into stone or cave paintings, the proof that they were produced is there to be seen with our eyes, but with sound the only evidence is circumstantial.

The oldest known musical instrument is thought to be a bone flute, possibly between 50 and 60,000 years old and its identification is based on the existence of a hollow piece of bone with holes in it, which has survived. There may well have also been flutes made from wood and reed flutes, but they have long since perished. Stone endures and the evidence that it might have been used percussively is found in markings on its surface: if there seems to have been repeated striking with no other explanation as to why that should have taken place, it might be deduced that the purpose was to make sound. Sounds produced in this way may have had a functional application, being used as a form of communication over distances, possibly for sending warnings, or perhaps incorporated into rituals or ceremonial occasions. The point at which any of these activities can be defined as music remains open to debate.

The purpose of Music Stones is not to trace, or speculate on the history of stone being used musically. Nor is it a survey of the way in which different cultures around the world have included the playing of resonant stone within their musical traditions. Rather, it is looking at how, in the modern era, a number of people have discovered the aural properties of stone, often unintentionally, and chosen to pursue the idea in a musical way. Some have done this quite independently, pursuing their own chosen path of travel, while others, having seen existing examples, chose to develop the idea in their own way. This is what happened in England in the 19th century with the formation of a series of so-called family rock bands.

Those responsible, all residents of the town of Keswick in Cumbria’s Lake District, built large instruments incorporating stone bars sourced from the local terrain and two of the resulting bands went on to have extraordinarily successful musical careers. The story being told here starts with those pioneers in Keswick and has continued to develop through to the present day in numerous locations. The question of why people should have chosen to make music from this unlikely material is one which lies at the heart of this investigation.

When struck together any two pieces of stone will make some kind of noise. In most cases it will be a dull thud, which according to most definitions would not be described as particularly musical. But some rocks will resonate with an attractive ring, reverberating in such a way that the sound continues, at least for a short time, before dying away and it is these resonating pieces of rock which have been utilised by certain cultures across the world and across time. Although there is no guarantee that a particular kind of rock will ring there are some types which are more likely to do so, with hard rock, for example, being generally more resonant than soft. It might be igneous, volcanic rock formed from lava, such as black granite or basalt, or one of the varieties of metamorphic rock, including slate and marble. Some kinds of sedimentary rock will ring, particularly limestone, whose hardness partly comes from being formed from fossils and shell fragments. Even among geologists there is a degree of uncertainty as to why it is that one piece of rock from a certain place will ring while a similar piece beside it will not.

The reason seems to lie in the condition of its internal structure. Although very porous rock may well not be hard enough to ring, being porous itself is not an impediment. As long as the outer wall of each pore is intact the sound vibration can travel, but if it is fractured, it will not. From the second half of the 20th century onwards, there has been a good deal of research supporting the belief that stone was used for musical purposes in prehistoric times. The unearthing of 11 large slabs of stone in Vietnam in 1949 which, on examination were judged to have been tuned for musical use, possibly thousands of years ago, was followed by further similar discoveries in the same country. An increased awareness of the part played by stone instruments in the musical history of some of Vietnam’s musical minority cultures has resulted in a revival of interest in the playing of stone instruments in the country, on a scale not found to such an extent anywhere else.

It goes without saying that musical instruments made from stone are not a common sight. They may date back to the neolithic period but what has happened to them since cannot rate as a great success story. There are good reasons for this, one self-evidently being one of weight, an instrument built from substantial pieces of rock highly being impractical to transport. Another factor is the limited feasibility of stone as a material to work with: other materials such as wood and later bronze proved to be far more malleable and thus suitable for making necessary refinements.

The general name given to a stone instrument, lithophone, is derived from the Greek words for stone and sound. There are those who insist that the word specifically applies to a set of tuned bars of stone, played with handheld beaters and that to call any musical instrument made of stone a lithophone would be the equivalent of calling any wooden instrument a xylophone. Whilst there is a case to be made for this, the history of language shows that logic does not always prove to be an effective decider on such matters. The remit of Music Stones, stretching as it does beyond such a tight definition, sidesteps the controversy by neatly excluding the word lithophone from its title.

The reason for the commonly experienced surprise and fascination upon seeing a lithophone for the first time seems to be more than just its novelty, but to lie in the nature of the material it’s made from. The associations we have with stone and the way we use the word metaphorically doesn’t tally with attributes generally associated with music: stone cold; stone dead; stone deaf; heart of stone. Stone is inanimate, lifeless, probably not something we would wish our music to be. Yet in the visual sphere we have long been fully aware of the potential of stone to be turned into things of beauty and profundity: architecture, jewellery, sculpture being common examples. These things are part of our world. But in them stone is no longer rough, visibly hacked from the landscape, it has been transformed into something else. And we do like our musical instruments to be things of visual beauty too: the subtle curves of a violin or a Les Paul guitar, the magnificence of a concert grand, the brazen flamboyance of a trumpet or trombone, or the sparkle of a drumkit. So a row of roughly hewn stone slabs doesn’t initially hold much promise, yet paradoxically that seems precisely why, when those low expectations are defied, the enjoyment is all the greater. It was the sheer amazement at the quality of music being produced, as familiar dance tunes and popular classics were played on rustic-looking stone slabs in English towns in the early 1840s, which led to the success of the family rock bands.

When stone first began to be employed in the playing of music may be impossible to pinpoint and remains a matter of conjecture, but we can perhaps be more specific about the first documented use of the term “music stones”. Peter Crosthwaite, while curator of the Crosthwaite Museum in Keswick, wrote in a memorandum: “On the 11th June 1785 Peter Crosthwaite found his first Music Stones”.

Having collected enough stones from the foot of the nearby Skiddaw mountain, he went on to assemble them into a musical instrument. It was his music stones, which he displayed and played in his museum, which later inspired Joseph Richardson to build his much larger lithophone and form the first of the family rock bands. From our standpoint in time, the difficulty of having to contend with the idea of rock bands being around in the 19th century is rather confusingly compounded by the fact that this term was not only applied to the group of musicians but also at times to the instrument itself.

Mike Adcock's Music Stones: The Rediscovery Of Ringing Rock is published by Archaeopress. You can read Katrina Dixon’s review of the book in The Wire 502. Pick up a copy of the magazine in our online shop. Subscribers can also read the review and the entire issue online via the digital library.