Singing Ringing Tree – A singing and ringing tree. The Singing Ringing Tree and Other Unusual Means for Making Music

Singing Ringing Tree – A singing and ringing tree.  The Singing Ringing Tree and Other Unusual Means for Making Music
Singing Ringing Tree – A singing and ringing tree. The Singing Ringing Tree and Other Unusual Means for Making Music

At the very top of the windswept Crown Point hill, overlooking the city of Burnley (UK), there is a three-meter musical sculpture “ Singing-Ringing Tree"(The Singing Ringing Tree).



At strong wind the sculpture, made in the shape of a tree, begins to emit a quiet, rich hum, covering several octaves at once.

“Tree” is configured in such a way that the sounds it makes do not disturb the idyll surrounding nature and do not scare animals.

The authors of the unusual sculpture were architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu.

Anna Liu says that the idea to create the Singing-Jingling Tree came to her after watching a popular children's television show of the same name in 1960.




“The Singing-Ringling Tree is rightfully considered the scariest children's program in the world. I remember watching with rapture another exciting story and shaking with fear. My imagination painted hundreds of unknown worlds that were inhabited by: gnomes, elves, dragons, beautiful princesses and brave princes,” says Anna. — When creating this sculpture, I tried to bring into it a piece of my fears, fantasies and experiences that watching “The Singing Tree” instilled in me. If you climb to the top of Crown Point on a windy evening and close your eyes, you will certainly be able to see a new amazing world.”

The sculpture “The Singing-Ringing Tree” is also known under another name - “Burnley’s Panopticon”. So unusual name appeared due to the fact that from the top of Crown Point a stunning panorama of the fair town of Burnley (UK) opens.




The material for creating this incredible sculpture was hundreds of galvanized steel pipes, laid out in the shape of a bizarre tree, bowing its metal branches under gusts of wind. Each tube has different diameter holes and rotated at a certain angle, so the “Singing-Ringing Tree” plays a different melody every time the wind strength and its direction changes.

"The Singing-Ringing Tree" was recognized by the Royal Institute of British Architects as the best sculpture of 2007 and was awarded national award“For Architectural Excellence” (National Award for architectural excellence).




The creation of Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu is one of 4 sculptures united under common name"Panopticons" (panopticons) and installed on the highest points of East Lancashire.

“Panopticons” are real “magnets” both for local residents, who began to go outside more often and take walks, and for tourists from all over the world.

“I encourage you to visit Crown Point on a summer evening when the warm breeze plays from the singing tree and carries a melodious hum throughout the area,” says local resident Mandy Mankof. — The sun slowly disappears behind the horizon and at a certain moment the whole world seems to fall silent! By listening, you will certainly be able to catch the quiet melody of the wind, like a mother’s whisper, which brings back memories of past love, friendship, devotion... youth. It is in such moments that you learn to appreciate life and understand how fragile and beautiful it is.”




The word "Panopticon" was coined by English philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham in 1875 to refer to a space or device that provides panoramic surveillance of prison inmates without their knowledge. Today, thanks in large part to the “singing tree,” the word panopticon is used exclusively to designate a place from which a panoramic view of a picturesque area opens.

At its core, the “Singing-Ringing Tree” is a giant wind organ consisting of many pipes of varying lengths and diameters of internal holes, due to which each of them has a unique sound. Sound production occurs as it passes through the tube air flow- wind.

Until 2006, on the site of the “Singing-Ringing Tree” sculpture there stood an old dilapidated telegraph building, making local residents nostalgic for the old days, when the city developed and prospered. Unusual sculpture helped breathe life into the city new life: Every year hundreds of tourists from all over the world come to Burnley to see with their own eyes the three-meter “tree organ” and listen to how the wind plays on it.

This amazing creation of Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu - the "Singing Ringing Tree" can be seen and heard on a hill in the Pennines of Lancashire. The height of the singing sculpture reaches three meters. The tree is made of galvanized steel pipes that produce melodious sounds with every gust of wind.

The song of the tree depends on which direction and with what force the wind blows. She can be tender, and sad, and even scary.



The Singing Tree stands at the highest point of the Crown Point hill, overlooking panoramic view to the city of Burnley. When the weather is sunny and there is no haze, you can see neighboring cities from there.



The singing sculpture was built in 2006. She is part of the Panopticons project. This project consists of four sculptures - the Atom house, the Colourfields path, the singing and sparkling Halo flying saucer and the singing and ringing tree Singing Ringing Tree. All sculptures are interesting because they sound in harmony with the sounds of the surrounding nature.



The Panopticons project was designed to personify West Lancashire, beautify the natural landscape and attract tourists to these picturesque places.



Not all the pipes that make up this tree are capable of making sounds; some of them are simply design elements.



The design of the Singing Tree contains 350 pipes of different lengths, and a total of $100,000 was spent on the construction of the sculpture.



The sculpture received its name in honor of the singing tree from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. The Singing Tree has received many awards, including Royal Institution British architects in 2007.

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N. Sladkov House Children's poems -- Fet A.A. --Krylov's fables --E. Uspensky --Miln A.A. --I.A.Bunin --Yakov Akim --Poems about the forest --Berestov V.D. --Pleshcheev A.N. --G. Sapgir --Turgenev I.S. --Poems about Winter --M.Yu.Lermontov --G. Graubin --Tvardovsky Alexander --Boris Zakhoder --Poems about mother --Poems about kindergarten--Poems about Spring --Sergey Yesenin --N.A. Nekrasov --Poems about autumn --Vasily Zhukovsky --Demyanov I. --Poems for children 5, 6, 7 years old --Poems about summer --Irina Tokmakova --Yunna Moritz --Poems for children 3, 4 years old --Kozma Prutkov --Viktor Lunin --Tyutchev F.I. --Konstantin Balmont --Daniil Kharms Children's stories --Marina Druzhinina --Irina Pivovarova --Mikhail Zoshchenko --YU. Koval --Nikolai Nosov --Astrid Lindgren --Ushinsky K.D. --Turgenev I.S. --V.Kataev --Charushin E.I. --K.G.Paustovsky --Chekhov A.P. - -Sergey Mikhalkov -Agniya Barto -Rybakov A. -Tolstoy L.N. -Valentina Oseeva -M.Yu.Lermontov -Mikhail Prishvin -Charskaya L.A. -V. Dragunsky --Arkady Gaidar --Vitaly Bianki --Zhitkov Boris --Vasily Shukshin --Valery Medvedev --Alexander Kuprin --Belov Vasily --Tamara Kryukova --Lev Kassil --Daniil Kharms --Vladimir Zheleznikov --Anatoly Aleksin - -Aksakov S. T. -Voronkova Lyubov -Vladimir Bogomolov -Sotnik Yuri -Vsevolod Garshin Fairy tales -Bazhov P.P. -Pushkin's tales -Odoevsky V.F. -Charles Perrault -A. Volkov --Chukovsky --Yu. Olesha --Tolstoy A.N. --The Brothers Grimm --Saltykov-Shchedrin M.E. --Russian folk --Dal V.I. --Marshak S. --Rudyard Kipling --Mamin-Sibiryak --Carroll Lewis --Milne A. A. - Winnie the Pooh --M. Plyatskovsky --Gianni Rodari --Suteev V.G. --N. Sladkov --Oscar Wilde --L.A. Charskaya --P. Ershov --Andersen G.H. --Fairy tales for kids --Evgeniy Permyak --Felix Salten. Bambi --Sofia Prokofieva --Garshin Vsevolod Children's music --Classical music for children. ---I.S. Bach ---A. L. Vivaldi ---V.A. Mozart ---P.I. Tchaikovsky ("The Nutcracker") ---P.I. Chaikovsky. "The Seasons" ---Johann Strauss ---Music of Day and Night ---Baby Einstein - Baby Bach ---Baby Einstein - Baby Beethoven ---Baby Einstein - Baby Mozart ---Baby Einstein - Holiday Classics -- -Baby Einstein - Traveling Melodies --Children's songs --Children's backing tracks --Children's song lyrics --Lullabies ---Lullabies for your baby ---Mom's lullabies ---Mom's lullabies (voice) ---Lullabies Sweet Dreams Tonight ---Sleepy Baby - lullabies Coloring Pages --Coloring pages for kids --Sofia the First --Funny Trains --Fairies: The Mystery of the Winter Forest --Monster High --Pocoyo --Samself --Tinker Bell --Star Wars/ Star Wars--Kim Possible --Moxie Girlz --Fairies: Legend of the Beast --Barbie and the Three Musketeers --Harry Potter --Shaun the Sheep --Paddington Bear --Home cartoon Crafts --Crafts from cones --Crafts from acorns --Crafts from shells --Crafts from eggshells--Paper Crafts ---Paper Dolls ---Paper Figures ----Disney Princesses ----Avengers ----Despicable Me ----Frozen --Plasticine Crafts --Crafts from natural materials--Crafts from salt dough--Crafts from plastic bottles A toy shop

This amazing sculpture, reminiscent of a tree, makes musical sounds when the wind blows. The Singing Tree grows in Great Britain in the Pennine Mountains. From where it is located, there is a wonderful view of the city of Burnley, Lancashire.

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4. The Singing Tree stands on the highest point of Crown Point Hill, offering magnificent panoramic views of Burnley. When the weather is especially good and there is no haze, you can even see neighboring cities from there.


5. The singing sculpture was built in 2006. It is part of the Panopticons project, which was sponsored by the North West Regional Development Agency and Lancashire Economic Partnership. The project consists of four sculptures - the Atom house, the Colourfields paths, the singing and sparkling flying saucer Halo and the singing and ringing tree itself, the Singing Ringing Tree.


6. The whole Panopticons project was intended to represent the regeneration of West Lancashire. The sculptures should decorate the natural landscape and attract tourists to these picturesque places.


7. The singing trumpets of the Tree are tuned so that the melody covers several octaves. Not all the pipes that make up this tree are capable of making sounds - some of them are simply structural elements.


8. Singing works have different lengths and holes, so they can produce sounds of different pitches.


9. The design of the Singing Tree contains 350 pipes of different lengths, and a total of 60 thousand pounds were spent on the construction of the sculpture.


10. The sculpture received its name in honor of the singing tree from the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. In 1957, a series for children was created in the GDR based on this fairy tale. The film was about a princess who said that she would marry the one who brought her a singing tree.


11. The prince in love had to turn to an evil dwarf for help, who made such a tree, but at the same time almost killed both the prince and the princess.


12. The film turned out to be very scary and colorful for its time, and was well remembered by many. In addition, he was colored, which was also an additional advantage then.




15. The Singing Ringing Tree sculpture has received many awards, including the Royal Institute of British Architects Award in 2007.

Don’t write, it will always turn out that the topic is not covered. People different countries They continue to invent new ones. Strange people, someone will say. So after all, their instruments turn out to be strange, matching the variability of the music itself.

In addition, with the development of tourism and the Internet, we are becoming more and more aware, if we want, of traditional, someone’s folk instruments that are unlike any other. Many of them may well be considered beautiful.

Wheel harp

The organist, also known as the gironda, also known as the hurdy-gurdy, has been known in Europe since the 12th century. At first it was large, the musician played, and his assistant turned the handle. Then the instrument became more compact, and wandering cripples and minstrels began to play on hurdy-gurdy wheels all around. The lyre's wheel, touching a dozen strings, makes the instrument hum monotonously, producing the so-called bourdon, or “drone.” Under it you can sing a gag that is not put on the notes.

The twentieth century, as we know, expanded the scope of gag in the universe. And it continues to expand along with the Universe. Musical sound enthusiasts decided to cross the hurdi-gurdi hurdy-gurdy with the harp. In 2013, an instrument called the “wheel harp” announced itself with dense polyphony.


Wheelharp is something strange at the intersection of hurdi-gurdi and harpsichord, both in appearance and sound. The instrument premiered at a festival in California. The wheel harp keyboard controls 61 strings, so the player can control what amounts to an entire string section of an orchestra. The tool is available in two versions, with different types keyboards.


The creators of the instrument write that they built it exclusively according to the sketches of the great Da Vinci. The drum with strings, however, is driven by an electric motor controlled by pedals. IN retail sales a modern electric organist, which rockers of the first half of the 70s would appreciate best, will cost between 10 and 12 thousand dollars.

Double-decker Hardingfele violin

To the sounds of this Norwegian national structure brides there walk down the aisle. The Hardingfele, or Hardanger fiddle, has been known in the land of rugged beauty since 1651, when a “two-story” stringed instrument was created by a master from the shores of Hardangerfjord. Since then, the hardingfele has taken the place of the ordinary violin in the southwest of the country, but in the rest of Norway everything is still the other way around.


The Norwegian model is an instrument of recognizable shape, but with a double set of strings; the Hardingfell has eight of them. The lower strings ring with a euphonious (or disgustingly creaky, depending on who you choose) sing-along when the musician moves the bow on the upper strings. Having decorated the sound of the instrument, the Scandinavians also triumphed it outwardly: an ordinary Hardingfele always looks twice as elegant as any violin or viola. After all, leading someone down the aisle means not sitting in the pit in the orchestra.


This is what a two-story violin from the homeland of the Vikings sounds like in skillful hands.

Singing, ringing tree

In England, in East Lancashire, they once let me fool around modern people art, and the result of their inspired self-indulgence was a quartet of artistic sculptural compositions called “Panopticons”. It includes landmarks of the 21st century - the egg-shaped, bronzed “Atom”:


Shining with LEDs, mowing under the UFO “Halo of Haslingden”:


Quite modest, more modest than meadow flowers, the grassland “Color Fields”:


And also the “Singing Ringing Tree”, in which the role of living, working capillaries of the trunk, branches and foliage is played by rails and pieces of galvanized steel pipes that are prone to humming:


This musical instrument plays with God's help, filling the caverns in the noise of nature with majestic pipes, matching the English meadows and swamps, performed by the maestro of the wind.


The construction of a giant flute tree made from pipes of different lengths and orientations was completed in 2006. The authors of the wind musical instrument are designers Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu. You can’t tour with it, but you can listen to the singing tree in a recording, or if you’re in Lancashire on a tourist visit:

Gamelesta and Sharpsicord

Norway, England... And here is another north for you, the most expressive in terms of relief and climate - Iceland. And the most expressive of the Icelandic women is the singer, poser and little muse Björk, daughter of Gudmund.


Trying to properly love all living things with the notes of her album “Biophilia”, the Icelandic alien demanded unusual expressive means not at all from a computer, but from wood, metal and other simple, “analog” gifts of nature. Arctic designer Bjorgvin Tomasson took part in the development of unprecedented and unheard-of means of sound production. Musical instrument, designed by him, sounds like a troika with bells in the design of the “hit” song from the album, called “Crystalline”.

Thomasson's instrument is a hybrid of Indonesian gamelan:


And the French celesta:


Without further ado, the inventor from Iceland called the chimeric instrument “gamelesta.” And this French-Asian creature works something like this:

There are quite a few recorded on the “Biophilia” disc, and among them there is only one that existed before the start of the project. This is a Sharpsichord, where all the letters except the first “sh” belong to the harpsichord, but the first syllable hints at poignancy and relevance.


The colossus is a large mechanical harp, the drum of which is powered by electricity from solar panels. The melody on the drum is changed by plugging or leaving empty the 11,520 holes on its perforated surface. The inventor of the sharpsicord, Henry Dagg, considers his creation to be something between a harp and a bass clarinet in sound.


The solar harp took 5 years to make; 90 thousand British pounds were spent on its creation. But the instrument could only play 90 seconds of music, and Mr. Dagg hid the Sharpsicord from prying eyes, never taking the bulky organ out of his home.

The appearance of a huge music box on stage with Björk unexpected breakthrough, solar battery received light quanta from the soffit. The instrument includes a keyboard for live improvisations on a theme specified by the pins. And if you add another live musician to the stage, you get to thinking:

Here's what happened with an environmentally friendly, very Gondry-looking mechanical harp from England in the 21st century, from Björk, who cleverly engaged Sharpsicord: