Since the mid 20th C. the materiality of pianos has been brought to audiences' attention by composers and performers. Prepared piano pieces, such as the John Cage and David Tudor collaborations, moved beyond the keyboard and into the frame itself, and the wide range of sounds found in touching, tapping and scraping the strings, pedals, wooden casing, etc. Works that treat the piano as an object—one with multiple histories, identities and associations—reached their logical conclusion in Annea Lockwood's Piano Transplants, which this book considers alongside other compositions and practices that involve some form of musical instrument destruction.

Part of the Art after Nature series, Hart and Schirmacher's brilliantly named Piano Decompositions is an appropriately light volume for what might appear to be a very niche topic—the performative destruction of musical instruments—but to which the authors bring weight through a new materialist history of the piano. Their core argument is found in their summing up of chapter three: "Experiments with burning and decaying pianos allow humans to see and hear the rest of the world more clearly, with human sound-making as part of that complexity". The book is the result of Hart's fellowship with Schirrmacher, and though the co-authorship is largely seamless, Hart makes a specific contribution through her hands-on experiments with a "harp transplant" in her garden.

The first chapter provides a historical overview of destroyed musical instruments, including fictional examples such as Jane Campion's film, The Piano, where the instrument is a symbol of cultural continuity and dominance, as well as the voice of its protagonist. The authors acknowledge the differences between spectacles, such as Pete Townshend smashing up a guitar onstage, and artworks such as Lockwood's that form connections between instrument and environment, but also how these similarly invoke complex reactions. Chapter two draws attention to the materiality of pianos using affordance theory to acknowledge how this large, ubiquitous and loud instrument changes as it moves through cultures, for example its use in Blues music, and its role in increasing the dominance of equal temperament tuning.

The subsequent three chapters discuss examples of how instrumental destruction plays out. Chapter three explores the differences between consensual, planned, artist-led destruction and destruction by oppressive regimes of musicians' tools of their trade. The authors note that musical instruments are not just things that make art, but are the art or media themselves, and also "honorary people" with vibrating bodies, meaning musicians and audiences identify strongly with them.

Chapter four delves into the specifics of Lockwood's three Piano Transplants: Piano Garden, Piano Drowning and Piano Burning, which are mentioned frequently throughout the book and feature on its cover. The authors describe and analyse video and audio recordings of various performances and attend a live Piano Burning. This is the only one of the three that can be witnessed as a whole, the other two being durational works that unfold over several years as pianos are left out of doors, undergoing gradual transformation.

Chapter five moves beyond the piano, with descriptions of other musical works, including Sabrina Vogel and Julia Adzuki's that integrate instruments with plants and weather; and author Hart's own practice of placing a celtic harp in her garden and noting its changes over time and its occupation by spiders and other species.

Though the use of "ecology" in the title is in keeping with current artistic concerns, insights from practicing ecologists would also be good to read here. The authors acknowledge that varnishes, lead, etc. would leach out from a decomposing piano into the environment, but this feels somewhat unresolved, with the symbolic ecology overriding practical ecological concerns about the long-term impact. Though Hart and Schirrmacher conclude that such (de)compositions "work as sites of imaginative ecological repair," I am unconvinced that, for example, an entomologist, would imagine a piano in a lake as a positive symbol.

This book covers a lot of ground, both theoretical and performative and pointed me towards many fascinating accounts, videos, and recordings, whilst drawing connections between literary and media theories and the material history of pianos. Hart and Schirrmacher acknowledge the vital and overlooked presence of the many broken, forgotten and decaying pianos in the world, making this book a useful addition to understandings of pianos and their musics.