Music: Petrophonist Troxell

Professor Edward L. Troxell, who is Connecticut's State geologist and teaches geology at Hartford's Trinity College, last week proudly exhibited the latest results of a lifetime spent thinking about rocks: a xylophone made of stone. The idea came to him on a trip through Virginia's Shenandoah Caverns when his guide produced a beautiful, clanking tone by striking a stalactite across the middle.

Fired with enthusiasm, Professor Troxell started looking for resonant rocks, found an ideal deposit of them in a 200-million-year-old lava bed atop Avon Mountain near his home in Hertford. Toting a load of particularly clangorous cobbles home with him, Professor Troxell set them in a row, chipped them into tune with the aid of a chisel and a 10¢ pitch pipe. When he was through, he had a complete C Major scale three octaves long.

A stickler for scholarship, Professor Troxell realized he couldn't call his rocky instrument a xylophone (xylon is Greek for wood). After considering "lithophone" and "petroeuphonium," he decided to call it simply a petrophone.

No virtuoso, Petrophonist Troxell confines himself principally to scholarly renditions of such well-known compositions as Chopsticks, but occasionally rattles off a more ambitious classic. Says he: "People are impressed when I say I can play the Largo from Dvorak's New World Symphony, but, you know, that is really very simple."

Quotes of the Day »

Get & Share
BISHOP THOMAS TOBIN, Rhode Island's top Catholic leader, rebuking U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who was barred from receiving communion because of his pro-choice stance
For use in rail of Articles page or Section Fronts pages. Duplicate and change name as necesssary to distinguish.

Time.com on Digg

POWERED BY digg

Quotes of the Day »

Get & Share
BISHOP THOMAS TOBIN, Rhode Island's top Catholic leader, rebuking U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who was barred from receiving communion because of his pro-choice stance

Stay Connected with TIME.com