As well as a concert hall, St Cecilia’s Hall houses a huge selection of over 400 historical musical instruments belonging to Edinburgh University. These include a wide variety of keyboards, strings and brass and some very strange instruments.  As part of Doors Open Day we enjoyed a talk about some of the developments in styles and heard some keyboards being played.
Things are not always as they seem – the gong at the back has been heard literally millions of time throughout the world in the last 80 years.  The tam-tam from China provided the sound for the opening of Rank Films but the person who seems to strike the gong did not hit the actual gong.  The sound on the gong was made by James Blades who also recorded the famous V-for-victory Morse code signal broadcast by the BBC during the Second World War.

The Chinese gong was used to produce the three resounding strikes heard at the start of many British films. In 1935 it provided the soundtrack to the opening sequence used by General Film Distributors, later known as Rank Film Distributors.  The gong on the screen was however, a papier-mache model.

It must be extremely difficult to play this very large Contrabass Serpent but it was played when St Cecilia’s Hall, purpose built in 1763 as a concert hall, was restored and renovated a couple of years ago.

This may be the only contrabass serpent ever made.  Its snake-like coils are 16 feet (almost 5m) long and it is sometimes known as ‘The Anaconda.’ Serpents were traditionally used to play the bass parts alongside church choirs, to help the bass singers sound more powerful……   made c 1840