The Follyphone.
The Follyphone appeared on stage in London during the fall of 1912 during orchestral concerts conducted by H.G. Pelissier, and all of the newspaper accounts from the time make it sound like an interesting prop to deliver a message about anticipation, elaborate planning, and ultimately disappointment.
From the Sept. 20, 1912 edition of the South Wales Echo:
The chief humour of the piece centred round the “Follyhpone.” It had stood all the afternoon in the orchestra, looking like a huge shower-bath swathed in grey, and was formally unveiled by its inventor, Mr. Lewis Sydney, when it stood revealed as a sort of Positive organ, with a great many stops, a device like a trombone valve working sideways, innumerable serpentine pipes, and a huge gramophone receiver atop, pointing to the stars, with a lid which opened a shut at the most inopportune moments.
When Mr. Pelissier, who conducted, called on Mr Sydney (who was manipulating it) for a great crash, it first made no sound at all, and then emitted a few tiny tinkles, which gave rise to one of the characteristic exchanges of repartee to which these gentlemen have accustomed us.
The Sept. 20, 1912 issue of the Daily Telegraph was similarly amused by the Follyphone’s absurdity.
The final Babel was glorious, evenn to Mr. Lewis Sydney’s magnificent “Follyphone,” a weird and wonderful creation of a kind of gramophone bell with missapen horns emerging, two keyboards, and no end of non-”speaking” stops. Right through this piece of delightful folly kept the audience in roars of laughter.
Fundamentally, it was a nod at the future, perhaps inspired by the big-F Futurist art movement that was emerging in Italy. It wasn’t too long before the Americans got wind of this silly contraption. The January 1913 issue of Popular Mechanics ran a photo of the set-up, calling it a “dreadful instrument.”
But Popular Mechanics understood that it might be something to keep an eye on for its Futurist inspiration: “It might, judging from the dreadful look of it, be an instrument for producing the ‘futurist’ type of music, which is so raucuous that nearly all who hear it are impolite enough to hiss.”
Whether the Follyphone was a true representation of Futurist music remains unclear, but whatever it was we know for certain it was ridiculous.
Source: Paleofuture