Musical Instruments and Moral Patient Status

I find it interesting that audiences comprised of non-professional musicians generally view musical instruments as deserving the same respect and potential beingness as professional musicians. I agree with Davies that this perception is more than the awareness of the monetary, historical, or artistic value of the instruments. Davies supplies us with the historical and ethical aspects involving human relationships with musical instruments. I wonder if there is also a neurobiological component contributing to the ability of people to meld with musical instruments. Levitin found that hearing a piece of music activates the same parts of a listener's brain as it does in the brain of a musician playing the piece. In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, a functional MRI was used to examine the effect of experience with a type of music on listeners' neural responses to the music. (Margulis et al. 2007. "Selective Neurophysiologic Responses to Music in Instrumentalists with Different Listening Biographies.") This study found that practice, training and experience develop a musician's ear and abilities. When violinists listened to the violin and flutists listened to the flute, they engaged many more areas of the brain related to sense of self, motor control and suppression of unwanted movements. They found “auditory self-relevance and expertise was a mechanism of perceptual-neural plasticity, and implicate neural tuning that includes and extends beyond acoustic and communication-relevant structures”. I believe this is neurophysiological evidence supporting the anecdotal evidence Davies presented that musicians’ have dissolved at least some of the boundaries between themselves and their instruments. However, I do not think this study can be extrapolated to include non-musicians.
I think the nature of our musical aesthetic includes social and ethical constructs born from neurophysiological responses to the vibrations of the sounds produced from all instruments, and includes all music producing beings.

My Question
Davies claims that “Musical instruments retain an autonomy and independence of the musicians who use them,” and that “the instrument extends the musician’s body and inner life.” Given that instruments possess an inherent pattern facilitating active partnership in the co-creation of music, should their creative potential be sufficient to ensure their freedom from abuse? Do musical instruments qualify for moral patient status?