Piano Decompositions

The Ecology of Destroyed and Decaying Instruments

Heidi Hart, Beate Schirrmacher

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English

University of Minnesota Press
06 January 2026

Theory of art; Installation art; Ethics & moral philosophy; Environmentalist thought & ideology

Series: Art After Nature

Examining musical instrument destruction through an ecological and intermedial lens

Musical instruments are typically seen as objects both used and maintained with ritualistic care. But what happens when they're tossed from homes in mudslides, burned during ecstatic parties, or waterlogged by pop stars in viral videos-and how do these elemental interactions transform the way we see and play instruments? Piano Decompositions asks what happens when we let go of controlling musical instruments. What kind of meanings start to sound when instruments are moved out of the protected cultural space and engage with their surrounding elements?

Heidi Hart and Beate Schirrmacher trace the history of destroyed and decaying pianos, both sorting them within the realm of artistic violence against instruments and following their return journeys into water, sand, and soil. They parse the artistic vision of Annea Lockwood, whose iconic burning, drowning, and decaying Piano Transplants presented a novel means of drawing attention to the increasing threats of climate change in the 1960s and '70s. Turning to instruments made from found materials and others played collaboratively with wind and water, they demonstrate how human sound making is entangled in the more-than-human world.

Showing how the piano can transform conversations around the Anthropocene and environmental destruction, Hart and Schirrmacher find the instrument to be a potent creative and ecological force, a medium to connect with environments in an explorative, attentive way. Piano Decompositions unearths new ways to relate our concepts of curiosity, pleasure, and music to the natural world.

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By: Heidi Hart, Beate Schirrmacher
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 203mm, Width: 127mm, Spine: 8mm
Weight: 198g
ISBN: 9781517919375
ISBN 10: 1517919371
Series: Art After Nature
Pages: 160
Publication Date: 06 January 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Toward a History of Decomposing Pianos 2. Piano as Medium, Material, and Representation 3. Destruction, Decay, and Entangled Bodies 4. Media and Material Transformations 5. From Damage to Salvage: Instruments for Listening Coda: Re-membering Notes Index

Heidi Hart is an independent arts researcher and guest instructor at Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies. She is author of several books, including Climate Thanatology: Companioning What Remains; Music and the Environment in Dystopian Narrative: Sounding the Disaster; and Hanns Eisler's Art Songs: Arguing with Beauty. Beate Schirrmacher is associate professor in comparative literature at Linnaeus University and member of the Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies. She is coeditor of Truth Claims Across Media and Intermedial Studies: An Introduction to Meaning Across Media.

Reviews for Piano Decompositions: The Ecology of Destroyed and Decaying Instruments

""A timely and sensitive inquiry into the role of destruction and decay in artistic practice. Pivoting around Annea Lockwood's Piano Burning and Piano Drowning artworks, the authors weave a critical account of what it means to denaturalize musical instruments by setting them in motion with fields that include sound art, critical posthumanism, media ecology, and new materialism. Vital reading for scholars, students, and practitioners working with a sonic sensibility across disciplines.""--Mark Peter Wright, University of the Arts London