A glass harmonica, also known as a glass armonica, is a musical instrument made of glass. It was inspired the sound that can be produced running a wet finger around the rim of a drinking glass. This is how 18th-century street performers made music, varying the notes changing the amount of water in each glass.
Benjamin Franklin was the one who came up with the idea.
During the years leading up to the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin served as a liaison between several American colonies and England, their parent country, and it was while he was living in London that he heard music being made from glasses. He created the glass harmonica because he thought the tone was worthy of more than a novelty act. He invented a series of graduated bowls in 1761, with the pitch of the note varying according to the size of the bowl, eliminating the need for water in the bowls. The bowls could now be nested within one another, from smallest to largest, without having to be “right side up.”
Bowls on a Spindle (Bowls on a Spindle)
A glass harmonica, on the other hand, was a set of glass bowls tuned to specific notes and drilled with holes in the bottoms to allow them to be strung on a spindle. The spindle was placed in a cradle horizontally and connected to foot pedals. By operating the pedals, the player could turn the spindle — and thus the bowls — and control the speed at which the spindle turned.
The Way It’s Played
To make the individual notes, the player wet his or her fingertips and pressed them on the rims of the spinning bowls. Chords were formed pressing the rims of multiple bowls. Ethereal and angelic have been used to describe the music.
In the 1700s, there was a lot of popularity.
This instrument quickly gained a following in Europe. It featured music Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven, among others. As glass harmonicas became popular in genteel homes across Europe, glass blowers struggled to keep up with demand.
Myths about Illness
The rage, on the other hand, was short-lived. Many performers claimed that the music affected them emotionally, and Marianne Davies, a well-known glass harmonica player, ended her days in a mental institution, which many people attributed to her close association with the instrument. When early hypnotist Franz Mesmer began using the glass harmonica in his “mesmerism” demonstrations, the instrument inherited some of his bad reputation. Soon, both the playing of the instrument and the listening to its music were being blamed for a wide range of ailments.
It’s possible that players of the glass harmonica got lead poisoning from the glass, but the claims that simply hearing the music causes health problems are unfounded. Glass harmonica sounds are similar to Tibetan brass singing bowls, which are sounded rubbing a wooden rod around the rim. Singing bowls have been used in Tibet for hundreds of years for meditation and religious celebrations, so any negative health effects would almost certainly have been noticed.
Rebirth in the Modern Era
The glass harmonica fell out of favor, and it was no longer manufactured after 1820. It was revived in 1984 a Boston glassmaker named Gerhard Finkenbeiner, and some players used it in the early twenty-first century, particularly at tourist sites depicting colonial life. Electricity, not foot pedals, rotates modern glass harmonicas, and the bowls are made of pure quartz crystal.