Mystery surrounds musical set of stones going on show in Yorkshire

Musical stones, like a set which will be played today at Cliffe Castle Museum in Keighley, were very popular with the Victorians - but few survive today.The 22 stones, which make up the lithophone, were crafted out of a rock called hornfels in the nineteenth century.The museum's curator Heather Millard says the instrument, which is similar to a xylophone or a glockenspiel, sounds "slightly supernatural...definitely disconcerting".The musical properties of rocks have been exploited from ancient times. Archeologists have found evidence of ancient humans using rocks, boulders, and cave stalactites and stalagmites as percussion instruments.In 1785 Peter Crosthwaite, founder of the Keswick Museum, found six tuned bars in a river near Skiddaw, in the Lake District.Arguably it was a stonemason Joseph Richardson, also born in Keswick, who brought the musical possibilities of stones to international attention. He built a huge lithophone, at huge personal cost over 13 years, nearly driving his family into poverty.He went on to tour Europe as The Rock, Bell and Steel Band with his sons - and even performed at Buckingham Palace, at Queen Victoria's command. One newspaper reported that the lithophone produced sounds "of exquisite sweetness and melody".There is some mystery around the Cliffe Castle set of musical stones, as it’s not yet known who made them.They were given to the museum in 1906, by Henry Phillipson, who was the museum curator at the time.Ms Millard thinks the Victorians loved lithophones as they were a novelty - "they didn't necessarily sound like anything else". People like the famous art critic and geologist John Ruskin had one.Ms Millard said: "We think it could be a sister set to one in the Metropolitan Museum in New York."They have a set which are very similar which for me is quite fun - Cliffe Castle has lots of American and New York links as the owner was married to a Roosevelt."To celebrate the opening of the exhibit, people are invited to a free recital and informal talk at the museum from 2pm to 3pm.They'll find out more about musical stones and hear four new compositions performed by musician Polly McMillan.The pieces were written especially for the instrument by local composers Ben Crick, Ben Gaunt, Flori Maunders and Heider Nasralla.Cliffe Castle was the home of Victorian millionaire and textile manufacturer, Henry Isaac Butterfield.The Neo-Gothic building, a showpiece of international art and French decoration, was funded by the Butterfield family's industrial empire, which included wool textile mills and a shipping business that took British goods to Europe, America and China.