Abstract
The Taiwanese horned fiddle is a new member of the huqin (bowed-string instrument) family. Several components of this instrument are taken from the gramophone, such as the P-shaped tube and the horn (bell). The invention of this instrument may be related to Japanses colonial rules. Later, the development of the Taiwanese horned fiddle was related to the characteristic timbre. The horn not only results in directional effects of sound radiation, but also emphasizes a formant at 1.8 kHz. Due to this formant, the timbre of the Taiwanese horned fiddle hardly fuses with other musical instruments. Through historical and acoustical investigations of this musical instrument, the present study provides an application of the biological notion “exaptation”(preadaptation) in the field of organology.