Piano burning

In 1968, New Zealand composer Annea Lockwood wrote a piece called Piano Burning.[21] The score specifies that the performer uses an upright piano that is beyond repair. In the composer's words,

Piano burning should really be done with an upright piano; the structure is much more beautiful than that of a grand when you watch it burn. The piano must always be one that’s irretrievable, that nobody could work on, that no tuner or rebuilder could possibly bring back. It’s got to be a truly defunct piano.[22]

She asks the performer to soak paper in lighter fluid, set it alight, and drop it into the piano. She also specifies that balloons may be attached, and the piano may be played for as long as the performer is able. Piano Burning is a part of her Piano Transplants series, which also includes Piano Drowning, Piano Garden, and Southern Exposure.[23][24]

Experimental trio Clipping performed a version of this composition as the closing track to their 2019 album There Existed an Addiction to Blood.[25]

Yōsuke Yamashita first performed on a burning piano in 1973, when asked by Japanese graphic designer Kiyoshi Awazu to be the subject in his short film, burning piano. 35 years later, at the age of 66, Yamashita re-watched the film and was inspired to repeat the performance. Dressed in a protective firefighter's uniform, Yamashita improvised on the burning piano during sunset on a beach in western Japan. He said of the experience,

I did not think I was risking my life but I was almost suffocating from the smoke that was continuously getting into my eyes and nose. I had decided to keep on playing until the piano stopped making sounds, so though I did not mean it but it ended up having a life-or-death battle between the piano and myself."[26]

The pianos used for both of Yamashita's performances were donated, decade-old broken ones.

Diego Stocco composed a piece called The Burning Piano, which is made up entirely of his recordings of a burning piano. Stocco began the burning process by pointing a butane lighter directly towards the strings and played single notes, and after the flame was extinguished he played with what remained.[27] He recorded the entire process and later rearranged samples to create the piece of music. The virtual instrument company Spectrasonics created a sample library called Omnisphere which includes a Burning Piano sample recorded by Stocco.

Michael Hannan's compositions have often involved pieces for pianos which have been altered in some way, including being set on fire. His 2003 Burning Questions, a radiophonic work commissioned by ABC Radio National, explored the "cultural politics of auto-destructive music" and included the sounds of a burning baby grand piano (with a microphone placed inside), the observers' reactions, and Hannan playing Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the piano immediately prior to setting it alight. According to Hannan:

The act of burning a piano [...] stimulates a strong emotional response from an audience. I became more interested in the crowd's response than in the sounds made from the piano itself.

The piano burning which forms the basis of the work had taken place on 2 October 1999 at Bellingen, New South Wales. The composer Barry Conyngham, one of the observers at the burning, was heard to remark that he found "burning a perfectly good microphone more sacrilegious than burning a piano."[28][29]

The destruction of musical instruments, often by fire, was a recurrent theme in Arman's work. Two of his most notable works involving piano burning were his 1965 Piano de Néron (Nero's Piano) and his 1966 Piano Flamboyant (Flaming Piano). The burning for Piano Flamboyant took place on the roof of Arman's atelier in Nice and was filmed for a documentary by Gérard Patris which was later broadcast on French national television. As with his other burnt instrument works, which also included violins, cellos, and guitars, the charred remains were then mounted on panels or enclosed in plexiglas. One of Arman's earliest works of piano destruction was his 1962 Chopin's Waterloo which took at the Galerie Saqqârah in Gstaad. On that occasion rather than burning the piano, the artist hacked it to pieces with an axe.[30]

Several of Chiharu Shiota's installations have featured a piano which she had set alight with the charred remains then displayed in an installation of black thread. As part of the 2011 MONA FOMA arts festival, Shiota set the piano alight on a street in Hobart, Tasmania. According to Shiota, the inspiration came from a childhood experience when she saw a charred piano amidst the ruins of a neighbour's house which had burnt down in the night.[31][32]

Douglas Gordon's 2012 video installation The End of Civilisation was centred on a burning grand piano placed in the isolated landscape of Cumbria on the border between Scotland and England. According to Gordon:

A piano started to represent for me the ultimate symbol of western civilisation. Not only is it an instrument, it's a beautiful object that works as a sculpture but it has another function entirely.[33]

The work, displayed simultaneously on multiple screens, consists of close-up film of the burning piano from the moment it is set alight until it is reduced to ashes juxtaposed with a second film which is a 360 degree pan of the Scottish Borders landscape surrounding the piano. After its premiere at the Tyne Theatre and Opera House in July 2012, The End of Civilisation was shown at the London 2012 Festival and toured as part of a Douglas Gordon retrospective in Tel Aviv followed by screenings in Venice, New York, and Berlin.[33]

Director and visual artist Jacob Reed's 2022 video for Philip Labes song something to believe culminates with the burning of the piano Philip has been playing throughout the song. The chorus of the song is about protestors who have performed self-immolation to protest climate change.