Sway and listen
You are lying in a semicircular cradle shape, feeling protected as if you were in your mother’s womb, while string sounds resonate through the entire body. This is achieved by the unusual construction of the sound cradle, which makes it possible to actually be inside of the instrument’s resonance chamber. On the outside, strings are placed right and left to make the whole wooden body vibrate and thus also the person inside it, who is completely immersed in sound.
The design of the form is so reduced and durable that it can be used flexibly, stably and variably like hardly any other sound furniture or therapy instrument: as a cradle when lying down, as a dome or tunnel turned upside down, as a sound shower in a space-saving vertical position, or as a sound chair connected to a seat insert.
Idea of the Klangwiege
The initial idea for this piece of sound furniture arose from an encounter with Icelandic music therapist Eyolfur Melsted, who envisioned working with an instrument that made it possible to feel the prenatal world of experience and that appeals to both the sense of hearing and both the sense of movement and the tactile sense.
It is an instrument in which one can feel completely content, in which sounds are perceived vibro-acoustically with the whole body and in which one also gets an experience of movement through a gentle and slow sway.
The neurologically important right-left movement and vestibular stimulation should also be possible with the instrument.
Origin and manufaturing
Through the work of Caspar Harbeke and the Allton team this became a reality. Appropriate materials had to be found and special tools had to be developed. The best possible sound transfer to the body through unconventional instrument building techniques had to be found.
In our workshop, we make the sound cradle from laminated beech and birch veneer. They are available in four different lengths – suitable for all ages and applications from kindergartens, medical practices and clinics to retirement homes.
Since the award of the Klangwiege at the World Congress for Music Therapy in 1996, it has given hundreds of hours of unique healing to many people all over the world.
