Glass harmonica

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Franklin's glass harmonica, ~ 1776
Glass harmonica ( Unterlinden , Colmar )
Contemporary glass harmonica from the workshop of Sascha Reckert, frame Martin Hilmer

The glass harmonica is a grater idiophone developed by Benjamin Franklin in 1761 , which occupied an outstanding position in the history of music, but is largely forgotten today. The instrument consists of glass bells of different sizes, pushed one inside the other , which rest on a common horizontal shaft, which in turn can be set in rotation by a pedal. The musician touches the edges of the bell with moistened fingers to generate the sound. The pitch range of the chromatically tuned glass harmonica is two and a half to four octaves . One variant is the piano harmonica , which is equipped with a keyboard and mechanism for painting the glasses.

Sound generation

There are two well-known ways of eliciting sounds from drinking glasses: by striking the top or by rubbing with moistened fingertips. Striking glasses for musical purposes has certainly been in use for as long as there has been glass. Many sources document such idiophones made of glass primarily in the oriental region. One of the earliest records of European musical instruments made of glass can be found in 1492 by Franchino Gaffurio .

Forerunner of the glass harmonica

Deliciae physico-mathematicae , 1636

The first known full musical instrument made of glass is listed in the inventory of the Ambras Castle collection in Innsbruck in 1596 : Alois Primisser described "ain Instrument von Glaswerch" in a beautifully decorated small box with a chromatic range of three octaves and a third (F – a ″ ).

Even Athanasius Kircher described in 1673 in his new reverb and Thonkunst a "glass game". The shape of the water-matched glasses shown would allow actuation by rubbing; The arrangement and small number of glasses, however, suggests an experimental arrangement rather than a specific musical instrument.

The first clear evidence of sound generation with rubbed glasses can be found in 1636 by Georg Philipp Harsdörffer in his Deliciae physico-mathematicae .

The playing technique used by Carl Ludwig Weißflock in 1731 is unclear . His "piano of exquisite glasses through three octaves, whereupon he could express piano and away without any dampening" had at least so impressed the Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst that he hired Weißflock as court musician for life at the Zerbst court.

In 1732 Johann Gottfried Walther mentions a “glass game” (French verre - glass) in his Musicalischen Lexicon under the keyword “Verrillon” and mentions the Silesian Christian Gottfried Helmond as a virtuoso . In 1738 Johann Philipp Eisel also reported on a "Verrillon" in his Musicus autodidactus . In Bohemia, the glass games were manufactured as verrophones into the 20th century and offered in catalogs.

Walther and Eisel only refer to chipped glasses, although the generation of sound through friction had long been known and the glasses generally had better and better material qualities.

Irrespective of this, the Irish Richard Pockrich first distributed the Musical Glasses in Dublin and later throughout Great Britain. Pockrich's Angelick Organ , invented in 1741 , is later found in The Real Story by John Carteret Pilkington . Pockrich was a very versatile personality when he began his concert career at the age of 40: he temporarily owned a brewery that later went bankrupt, had a large goose farm, developed - mocked by the navy at the time - unsinkable iron ships, devised wings for human flight , was twice unsuccessful candidate for parliament and taught playing on his glasses.

The most famous of Pockrich's many imitators is Christoph Willibald Gluck , who came to London in 1745 . In addition to the increased news about the public appearance of music glasses artists, he announced on April 23, 1746 in the General Advertiser a concert with a new composition on 26 water-matched glasses accompanied by a chamber orchestra in the Little Haymarket Theater in London. Like Pockrich, he used the two possible playing techniques of rubbing and striking the glasses and promised - in enthusiastic exaggeration - to be able to do everything that was possible on a violin or a harpsichord. Judging by the amount of the entrance fee, he played in front of a very select audience. He repeated this concert in 1749 and 1750 at Charlottenborg Palace near Copenhagen , thereby making an important contribution to the recognition of musical glasses as an instrument.

One of Pockrich's students was Ann Ford , who published Instructions for playing on the Musical Glasses in 1761 , probably the first school work for glass instruments. On October 27th, 1761 she played the first traditional duo for two musical glasses with a Mr. Schumann, one of Pockrich's many imitators.

History of the glass harmonica

The Invention 1761

In 1761 Edward Delaval , inspired by Pockrich and a member of the Royal Society , also performed musical glasses . Benjamin Franklin said it was through Delaval that he got to know this type of music. This experience inspired him to an invention, the glass harmonica. Franklin hoped to get support from the Milanese physicist Giovanni Battista Beccaria in spreading his new invention. Since Italy was the musically leading nation in Europe at the time, the invention - under the new Italian name Armonica invented by Franklin  - should spread more easily. In early 1762 his instrument had already become known in London as the Glassy Chord . Franklin's choice of Beccaria as an advocate was not the most favorable because Beccaria was more of a scientist than a musician.

In his fragmentary autobiography of his early years in Europe, Franklin does not go into the exact course of his musical invention. The playing technique was already introduced by the musical glasses, and the attachment of individual, approximately hemispherical glass bowls with a neck or hole in the center of their curvature by means of cork plugs on a horizontal shaft was already known from carillons in 1741 and later also from clock chimes. Franklin is generally awarded the idea of ​​moving the glass bowls located on a common shaft with a foot drive in rotation. Due to the small distances between the individual bowls, which are mounted one inside the other and whose diameter decreases towards the high notes, there are possibilities for playing techniques comparable to keyboard instruments. From the technical details regarding the grinding and tuning of the glass bowls, which we can take from Franklin's letter, it is evident that he was intensively involved in the manufacture of the first instruments, which initially ranged from g to g ″. He built his first instruments in London together with Charles James, who had already made musical glasses. Back in America, Franklin continued to work on his invention, although it is unclear whether he brought tuned glass bowls from London or commissioned them from a glassmaker in America.

18th century

Beginnings of the spread

The first concert on the new harmonica (as the Franklin Armonica has been called since its spread in German-speaking countries) was given by Marianne Davies , a relative of Franklin, in the Great Room in Spring Gardens in early 1762 . Encouraged by the success, she then went on tour and performed in Bristol , London and Dublin . In America, Stephen Forrage was the first to play the harmonica in a public concert in December 1764 in the Assembly Rooms in Lodge Alley / Philadelphia . In 1768, Marianne Davies and her sister, the singer Cecilia Davies , went on another concert tour through Europe and particularly through Italy. Franklin had given Marianne Davies an instrument for this purpose. Cecilia soon became famous as "l'Inglesina" in Italy and Europe, while Marianne Davies even counted the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa , who later became Queen Marie Antoinette , among her students . Both sisters are said to have established themselves at the Viennese court with Gluck's help. There they lived with Johann Adolph Hasse , who in 1769 composed the Cantata pour soprano, harmonica e orchester for Marianne and Cecilia . The model for this was an ode Pietro Metastasios , which he wrote on the occasion of the marriage of Archduchess Maria Amalia to the Spanish Infante Ferdinand von Bourbon , Duke of Parma.

Numerous replicas

Other harmonics were soon made in large numbers by numerous manufacturers, especially in the then German-speaking areas. In these regions the raw materials necessary for glass production were plentiful and the techniques of glass processing were well developed.

Joseph Aloys Schmittbaur , Kapellmeister of the Badische Hofkapelle , was the first to expand the range of his harmonica from c to f ″ (later c to c ″ ′) in Karlsruhe and, in addition to his daughters Therese and Lisette, also taught Marianne Kirchgeßner , who was largely blind . As a patron, the Imperial Baron Joseph Anton Siegmund von Beroldingen took over all teaching costs for Kirchgeßner. The Canon of Speyer and Hildesheim sponsored young talents and also wanted to work with Wilhelm Heinse .

Quotation from the book Outbreaks of musical poet's anger, sensitiveness in music , Gilde 2004, by Andreas Hoffmann- Kröper : The search for the esoteric tone produced instruments that would probably never have prevailed without the phenomenon of sensitivity. For example the glass harmonica, “this deeply moving melancholic instrument” (199), as Christian Schubart calls it, which represents a technical improvement in playing on wine glasses. With the glass harmonica, in particular, one repeatedly comes across the argument that it is an attempt that represents a single phenomenon. It may look like this in view of the few surviving instruments, but a look at the music-making practice of this time teaches us another one. Although it was a thorn in the side of iatromusic fans that the player was exposed to a constant health risk due to the constant direct nerve stimulation of the fingers resting on the rotating glass bowls, a glance at Prague shows the local preference for this instrument, which it was expressed in the fact that every improvement to the glass harmonica in Prague was immediately reported in the periodical print. One of the reasons is certainly the fact that Anton Renner improved the drive mechanism of the glass harmonica in Prague in order to make it independent of the beat and to be able to influence the speed of the rotating glass bells, which promoted the dynamic possibilities of the instrument, “consequently an increasing one , falling, or always equally strong sound could be produced ”(200), as the Kaiserl. Royal Prager Oberpostamts-Zeitung reported on May 19, 1781. The same source reports on September 7, 1784 that Kapellmeister Schmittbauer in Karlsruhe had expanded the range to more than three octaves. The interesting news from Prague reported on March 8, 1787 that in October of the previous year Professor Burja presented a glass harmonica in Berlin that was played with two violin bows held in both hands. And on April 5, 1797, the same newspaper reported that the Viennese mathematics professor Konrad Bartl had improved the glass harmonica, which consisted in adding a keyboard, which, as the newspaper report emphasizes, created the bass tones, which "were considered to be an indescribable and never-before-heard beauty “(201) were won. The keyboard also contributes to the perfect equality of all tones. The aim of these inventions was also to increase the playing speed of the instrument, which in and of itself is only suitable for playing the adagio.

A celebrated virtuoso on the glass harmonica was the Prague pianist and composer Vincenz Maschek , who also introduced this instrument to Prague concert life. Perhaps he had all the qualities Schubart demands of a glass harmonica player:

“The soulful player is made for this instrument. When heart's blood drips from the tips of his fingers; when every note of his performance is a pulse; if he can transfer rubbing, grinding, tickling, then approach this instrument and play. "(202)

The tone of the glass harmonica, which is evidently suitable not only for expressing emotions but also for enthralling the audience, was described as early as September 7, 1782 in the Prague Interesting News :

“For anyone who has the slightest musical feeling, the tone is so penetratingly gentle on the weakest piano, and as it gradually grows up to fortissimo, it carries away the feeling so that no one will be able to remember a similar and so pleasant tone ever heard of. [...] since the sound of the bell in a harmonica expresses innumerable modifications of crescendo and decrescendo, and instantly causes new movements in the mind of the attentive listener. "

And Schubart adds: "The eternally howling, plaintive grave tone - make the instrument a black ink, a large painting, where in each group the sadness bends over a friend who has fallen asleep."

Mozart

In January 1791 Marianne Kirchgeßner started her first concert tour through Europe with her future companion and sponsor, the influential music publisher Heinrich Philipp Bossler , and his wife. Her accordion concert in Vienna on June 10, 1791 prompted Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to compose a quintet for harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello (KV 617) and a solo adagio (KV 617a = KV 356) for her. The world premiere of KV 617 followed on August 19, which was to become the basis of their ten-year, extraordinarily successful virtuoso journey.

She played at aristocratic courts and gave private concerts. She got to know almost all of the famous composers living in her time, many of whom wrote works for her and her instrument. Due to her extraordinary musical memory, it was possible for her to record the compositions simply by performing at the piano, but she did not have a hand printer or music setting machine for blind (musical) writing, like the blind pianist Maria Theresia Paradis . That is why some compositions for the harmonica have not survived (not least due to various looting of their residence in Gohlis near Leipzig by both Prussian and French soldiers). Only during her stay in London (1794–1796) did Marianne Kirchgeßner obtain treatment from the ophthalmologist Dr. Fiedler briefly had poor eyesight.

Glass harmonica virtuosos

Other harmonica players and composers traveled through Europe following their example, giving concerts. Among them were: Friederike Bause , Christian Gottlieb Breitkopf, Jan Ladislav Dusík , Johann Baptist Kucharz, the married couple Johanna and Vincenc Mašek , Vincenc Mašek's brother Pavel Mašek , Johann Christian Müller, Johann Gottlieb Naumann , Johann Friedrich Naumann, Johann Friedrich Reichardt , Nicolas- Joseph Hüllmandel , Carl Leopold Röllig and Johann Abraham Peter Schulz .

Marianne Kirchgeßner remained the most famous harmonica player, but according to the reviews, Pavel Mašek was at least as virtuoso, while Carl Schneider from Gotha is described as by far the most ingenious harmonica virtuoso.

Effects for the opera, entry into poetry

In addition to the numerous solo and chamber music works, more and more orchestral pieces with glass harmonica for operas were created. The glass harmonica often served as an organ replacement in the smaller theaters and was used as a soloist in key dramaturgic scenes in important productions in order to underline the special mood of the respective scene with its timbre, such as in the mad scene of Gaëtano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor . Many contemporary writers, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , Johann Gottfried Herder , ETA Hoffmann , Jean Paul , Friedrich Schiller , Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart , Christoph Martin Wieland or the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel expressed themselves in their works about the remarkable sound character of the harmonica .

In his drama The Evening of the Ancestors of the Harmonica, Adam Mickiewicz allows the visions of the protagonist Konrad to play an important metaphorical role in a key scene. The harmonica was also very well known in Russia and Alexander Sergejewitsch Pushkin heard the "magical sounds [...] something supernatural". Franz Liszt compared Frédéric Chopin's piano playing with, among other things, playing the glass harmonica. Horst Wolfram Geißler wrote a novel with the title: The Glass Harmonica .

Opponent of an "esoteric" instrument

A countermovement came mainly from opponents of the Viennese doctor and scholar Franz Anton Mesmer , who used the harmonica in his therapies as well as for his own edification. After a social evening at Mesmer's, Leopold Mozart wrote to his wife Anna Maria in Salzburg on August 12, 1773 : “Do you know the H: v Messmer very well the harmonica of Miss Devis [Note: Marianne Davies (1743 / 44-1818) ] plays? he is the only one who learned it in Vienna, and has a much nicer glasses machine than Miss Devis had. der Wolfg: has already played on it, if we only had one "

Mesmer was reported to have improvised on the glass harmonica to his pleasant tenor voice. Also, Haydn and Gluck among his friends, with Gluck, often inspired by Mesmer's harmonica, relieved him of the promise "Never differently so that is merely fantasizing, without notes and artificial pieces this Tonglocken to touch". Amazingly, there is no evidence that Gluck Mesmer reported on his own experiences with musical glasses almost 40 years ago. Mesmer actually became famous with his theory of animal magnetism , with which he laid the foundations for psychotherapy and many natural healing practices. Since he occasionally used the glass harmonica in his magnetic treatments for "follow-up treatment and relaxation" for the patients, it came under fire from those who saw Mesmer as a charlatan. They claimed that the harmonica's vibrations "enervated" and "disrupted" the nervous system and that the lead content of the glasses caused disease. Both were objected to just as violently, but discussions of this kind about the effects of the glass tones , as they were called, were detrimental to the establishment of the harmonica as a solo or orchestral instrument. Despite considerable treatment successes, Mesmer and his students, for example Dr. Karl Christian Wolfarts (in the Berlin war hospitals) and the French General La Fayette in the American War of Independence , also rejected Franklin, who was specially convinced of Mesmer's finished harmonica playing in Paris, his teachings, whereas George Washington expressed his appreciation to the outlaw in a letter.

19th century

Well-known glass harmonica players

Among the accordion players of the 19th century, the most important after the death of Marianne Kirchgeßner were Carl Schneider, the actress Sophie Friederike Krickeberg , who introduced ETA Hoffmann to the instrument, the Swiss composer and music teacher Franz Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee and the court librarian and chamber musician Carl Ferdinand Pohl . Gottfried Keller enthusiastically mentions a private concert by Schnyder von Wartensees in his memoirs, and Niccolò Paganini was also played by him and expressed himself similarly moved.

The Pohl family from Kreibitz in northern Bohemia produced harmonics for five generations from 1785 to 1945. Among them, Carl Ferdinand Pohl (1781–1869) became the best known, as Princess Luise von Anhalt-Dessau played the harmonica herself in Darmstadt and employed the “chamber musician Pohl as a harmonic player” in the court orchestra from 1818 to 1830.

Decline

From around 1830, the glass harmonica fell more and more into oblivion, as other instruments existed with similar dynamic expressiveness; for example the Physharmonika Anton Haeckl ; Its name was borrowed from the glass harmonica for advertising reasons and its later perfection: the harmonium (patent application by the Parisian organ builder Alexandre-François Debain ). These new "accordion" instruments made the extra glass harmonica (Engl. Glass harmonica, französ. Harmonica, Italy. Armonica) necessary. Together with the emerging fortepiano , these instruments were not so expensive, less fragile and musically more versatile for a broader class. The ever more powerful orchestral sound and the tendency to expressive solo virtuosity eventually supplanted the quieter chamber music and the glass harmonica as a typical instrument of this genre. A big problem for the harmonica was the constantly and inconsistently changing orchestral tunings, because it is very time-consuming, costly and risky to adjust the bowls afterwards by grinding in order to adapt them to local moods. This is also where Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy failed in his search for a harmonica, along with a player, for one of his symphonic works.

20th century

Rediscovery

In 1913, the just eighteen year old Carl Orff asked for a glass harmonica for the orchestra of his first opera Gisei , which was not performed during his lifetime . It was practically only Richard Strauss who went to great lengths and costs for his opera Die Frau ohne Schatten in 1919 to be able to use the glass harmonica in the finale of the work in the third act. Franz Schalk , the conductor of the premiere, was entrusted with the procurement of the harmonica and was faced with great adversity.

Elliot Goldenthal

The American composer Elliot Goldenthal (born 1954) now uses the instrument regularly in his film and stage music. The most notable use of a glass harmonica in Goldenthal's oeuvre can be heard in his ballet Othello (1998): the instrument plays an introductory sarabande melody. The glass harmonica by Dennis James is played on the CD published by the Varèse Sarabande label. But Goldenthal also uses the glass harmonica in the Oscar- winning music for Julie Taylor's film Frida and in the Broadway theater production The Green Bird , based on a text by Carlo Gozzi .

Carl Ferdinand Pohl the Younger

Carl Ferdinand Pohl the Younger (1860–1945), the great-grandson of the accordion maker CF Pohl of the same name (see above), who until then was the last harmonica player to interpret Mozart's works for glass harmonica at the Salzburg Festival in 1924, finally made three special instruments, one each for the Saxon State Opera (Dresden), the Bavarian State Opera (Munich) and the Vienna State Opera , but a total of 30 instruments. It could not be proven whether the instruments were ever used in the woman without a shadow , as the first performance instrument arrived with a bent axis and the instruments from Dresden and Munich were sent to Pohl in Kreibitz for repairs in 1941, from where they were probably due to the war didn't come back.

As reported by members of the Pohl family who were still alive in 1995, the NSDAP chairman of the Reich Chamber of Culture Joseph Goebbels sent pupils to Carl Ferdinand Pohl, but with this one died in the refugee camp in Zittau, a tradition that went right back to Mozart's music, namely the whereabouts of his pupils is still uncertain today.

In 1956 the company Corning Glass , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the organ builder Herman Schlicker together with the organist Edward Power Biggs tried to commemorate Franklin's 250th birthday and Mozart's 200th birthday to build a new (keyboard) glass harmonica as the museum instruments were unplayable. Despite immense financial expenditures, the project failed because the notes responded too poorly and only small solo pieces could be performed on the resulting instrument. It was not until 1983, for example, that glass harmonics that could be used for sophisticated harmonica works were again produced, and since the company Glass-Music-International was founded at the same time in Loveland , Colorado , there have been around ten harmonica players and around 130 glass musicians around the world.

Well-known glass harmonica players

Other well-known glass harmonica players of the 20th century are Thomas Bloch , Sascha Reckert , Dennis James, Philipp Alexander Marguerre, William Zeitler, Bruno Kliegl, Martin Hilmer, Christa and Gerald Schönfeldinger and Jean-Claude Chapuis.

Manufacture and acoustics of the glass harmonica

Manufacture of the glass bowls

Traditionally, the crystal glass bowls are hand-blown in wooden molds. The previously higher proportion of lead is now largely replaced by other additives. Comparisons with preserved instruments in various museums have shown that the sound of the glass used today still corresponds to that of the old harmonics. The sound is more influenced by the wall thickness and shape of the glass. With thicker walls, higher frequencies are obtained with the same diameter than with thin walls. Thick-walled bowls have more reverberation, sound power and brilliance than thin-walled bowls, but at the same time they are more difficult to respond and can no longer be assembled in a narrowly graduated manner . As differences of more than two octaves can be obtained from a certain wooden shape due to the different wall thicknesses of the blown bowls, it is often necessary to carefully choose from 30 to 100 bowls per tone before tuning. Sanding the upper open edge makes the tone higher, and sanding the lower bottom or the base of the neck deeper.

Between the glass and the iron spindle, a pin made of cork was fitted into the neck base in such a way that the respective bowl sits firmly on the axis and rotates centrally. To identify the different tones, Franklin had the shells corresponding to the white piano keys colored in seven prismatic colors and the intermediate tones white. Later, Röllig and Schmittbaur marked the shells corresponding to the black piano keys with a burned-in gold rim. The range was sometimes expanded to five octaves, but the most favorable range in terms of sound and playing technique is between f and f ″ ′, for fast passages more c′ – f ″ ′.

Mood

In order to achieve the desired tuning of the shells in the assembled state, the planned scale length must be taken into account. In Die Frau ohne Schatten , for example, eight-part chords are to be played, which require an octave to be reached with one hand in the middle register. The distance from the shell edge to the shell edge is then only 1.5-1.6 cm. Due to the extremely small space between the shells, they mutually dampen each other, which reduces the reverberation time of the mounted shells to a musically meaningful level. At the same time, the frequency of each tone decreases compared to the frequency before assembly. In the bass, for example, the frequency of the bowls drops by up to a quarter tone after all the tones have been installed. When tuning you have to take this effect into account and usually disassemble the harmonica again for fine tuning after complete assembly and grind the still deviating shells. This was seldom taken into account when repairs were made to today's museum instruments, so that most of the old harmonics are now in an unclean mood.

The often elaborately carved housings are purely a support for the axis and decoration, as any resonance spaces can only produce a barely perceptible amplification. It is also impossible to let the glass bowls rotate through a kind of water basin, since the frequencies change irregularly when they are slightly immersed in water and the bowls hardly respond. The inner lining of the housing with different metals is more likely to be traced back to the intention to protect the valuable wood from drops falling from fingers and glasses while playing.

Historical instruments in museums

Preserved instruments can be found in the large musical instrument collections of Berlin, Eisenach, Goslar, Gotha, Halle, Zittau, Leipzig, Moritzburg, Hof, Bamberg, Nuremberg, Munich, Stuttgart, Frankfurt am Main, Poznań, Nieborów, Salzburg, Vienna, Rome, Zurich , Basel, Brussels, The Hague, London, Copenhagen, Stockholm, New York, Boston, Princeton and Pittsburg.

Further developments of the glass harmonica in the 20th century

Piano accordion

By attaching a keyboard with which, for example, moist leather cushions were pressed against the rotating glass bowls, it was hoped that it would be easier to use. Gustav Schilling mentioned this in his encyclopedia in 1835 . In his musically critical library, Johann Nikolaus Forkel attributes the invention of the harmonica to Abbot Mazzuchi in 1779, "... in which the glass bells are played with a violin bow ...". Wilhelm Hessel , a German mechanic in Saint Petersburg , invented a piano accordion that he named in 1785, in which three layers of bells were placed side by side. In 1798, the Pressburg music professor and composer Heinrich Klein , who was also a student of Johann Philipp Kirnberger , decided in favor of the same construction . In 1786, Röllig provided a single-axis harmonica - based on the Franklinian design - with a keyboard so that it could be played without it.

He traveled to most of the glassworks in Hungary, Bohemia and Germany for his experiments, so that he is often named as the real inventor. Before Röllig, the court organist David Traugott Nicolai had made a keyboard harmonica in Görlitz in 1784 and about 15 years later the mathematics professor Franz Konrad Bartl from Olomouc described this in a detailed treatise. Technical aids of this kind and additives in the water create an uncomfortably nasal tone color; This was also criticized by Johann Christian Müller in 1788 in his instructions for self-teaching.

Euphon and Clavicylinder

In the years 1789 to 1800 the physicist Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni invented the euphon and the clavicylinder based on his acoustic research, among other things on longitudinal and transverse vibrating strings and bars . The construction principle of both instruments is similar to that of vibraphone records, in the middle of which a solid glass rod was glued into a corresponding hole. If you rub a stick up and down with wet fingers, you get an organ-like, full sound. With the Euphon, a glass rod is connected to a coordinated metal plate for each tone. The glass rods protrude from the housing and lie next to each other in front of the player like a keyboard, which are then rubbed back and forth. The Clavicylinder has a harpsichord keyboard, each key lever is extended to the rear and on this rear end there is a narrow, tuned sound plate attached to its nodes. A small piece of felt is stuck to one end of each sound plate, and when the key is pressed it is pressed against a glass roller above all plates, set in rotation and previously moistened, causing it to vibrate. The euphon in particular is characterized by its extremely easy response in all pitches. The possible pitch range of both instruments extends into the subcontractive octave and is limited to about f ″ ′ in the treble.

Chladni demonstrated both instruments on his lecture tours with great success, but ETA Hoffmann and other contemporary witnesses judged that the euphon is of a lower volume than the glass harmonica. The clavicylinder sounded stronger, but was simply invented too late to assert itself against the fortepiano. He thus shared the fate of the vast number of emerging friction instruments, the development of which Chladni had triggered with his work.

Further

Christian Friedrich Quandt's “New Harmonica” , an instrument made of glass tuning forks that were made to sound longitudinally through friction on one of the bent legs, was soon forgotten again.

A combination of musical glasses and glass harmonica, which cannot yet be precisely dated, is described by Frederick Willis in “A Book of London Yesterdays”: Glasses were mounted on small rotating plates that only had to be touched with moistened fingertips.

The Terpodion or Uranium by Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann is one of the friction instruments, but differed primarily in terms of the rotating cylinder, as this consisted of lacquer-coated wood. It had a keyboard.

The harmonichord by Friedrich Kaufmann from Dresden was a combination of a stringed instrument and a glass harmonica with a keyboard.

Glass harp

Main article: Glass harp

From 1929 on, Bruno Hoffmann from Stuttgart put together a glass game to reproduce the harmonic literature, the structure of which corresponded to the glass game and was handled in exactly the same way. According to Sascha Reckert, with numerous performances and numerous concert tours all over the world organized by the Goethe-Institut , he achieved “a certain general awareness” of the term glass harp, which led to the fact that even today the glass harmonica is often incorrectly referred to as a glass harp, even among experts.

Crystal

Main article: Cristal Baschet

In Paris around 1955, the brothers Bernard and François Baschet further developed their metal sculptures from sheet metal and iron rods, to which they partially attached glass rods, into a musical instrument, the crystal, which essentially corresponds to the sound production of Chladni's euphon, but with large sheet metal resonators greater volume and volume Has reverberation times.

New instruments of classic design

Contemporary glass harmonica from the Finkenbeiner workshop

The American glassblower Gerhard Finkenbeiner has been building harmonics again in Boston, Massachusetts since 1981 . He uses quartz glass, the sound of which easily extends into the four-stroke octave and responds quickly in the high pitches, but is problematic and very expensive to produce in the bass down to f in the required size. Finkenbeiner receives his bowls by heating quartz tubes on a glassblower lathe and manually shaping them into the desired shape, which requires great manual dexterity in order to obtain a completely matching bowl set for an instrument. The glass harmonica from Sascha Reckert's workshop are made from hand-blown glass bowls. Here, a different shape is required for each shell, which also makes production very complex.

Verrophone

In 1985 the glass musician Sascha Reckert invented the (tube) Verrophone. Glass tubes standing vertically in a wooden body are played at their upper open edges in exactly the same way as musical glasses, but not the diameter but only the length increases towards the bass. This means that even six to eight-part chords are tangible, depending on the position. All of the literature for harmonica can be played on the (tube) verrophone. Because of its extraordinary sound intensity, it is already used in the symphonic field, as an orchestral and solo instrument, and in contemporary opera.

Glass harmonica

In 1986, Reckert finally resumed the tradition of the Pohl family and, together with the Eisch glassworks in Frauenau , Bavarian Forest , is once again producing harmonics from hand-blown crystal glass to faithfully reproduce Mozart's works and opera literature. In 1992, Reckert realized the first performance of the complete glass harmonica part in The Woman Without a Shadow with the instrument originally intended by Strauss at the Salzburg Easter Festival with the Berlin Philharmonic and at the Salzburg Festival with the Vienna Philharmonic, both under Sir Georg Solti .

Literature for glass harmonica

Treatises and textbooks

  • A. Ford: Instructions for Playing on the Musical glasses . In: Public Advertiser . London 1761.
  • [Article] Musique des Verres . In: Denis Diderot (ed.): Encyclopédie . Paris 1765.
  • Karl Leopold Röllig: About the harmonica. A fragment . Berlin 1787.
  • Johann Christian Müller: Instructions for self-teaching on the harmonica . Leipzig 1788.
  • Franz Konrad Bartl: Treatise on the keyboard harmonica . Haller, Brno 1798.
  • G. von Graubfeld: Aesthetic thoughts about Bartl's keyboard harmonica . Vienna 1798.
  • JE Franklin: Introduction to the Knowledge of the Seraphim or Musical glasses . sn, London 1813.
  • David Ironmonger: Instructions for the Double and Single Harmonicon Glasses . London 1840.
  • Francis Hopkinson Smith: Instructions for the Grand-Harmonicon . Baltimore 1829.
  • James Smith: A Tutor for the Musical glasses . Edinburgh 1829.
  • Jared Sparks (Ed.): The Works of Benjamin Franklin . Volume 1-10, Kelley, New York 1910.
  • Carl Ferdinand Pohl: On the history of the glass harmonica . Vienna 1862.

Compositions for glass harmonica

Solo works

  • Philipp Joseph Frick: Balletto
  • Vaclav Vincenc Mašek: 11 pieces and 7 variations (around 1790–1800)
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Adagio C , KV 617a = 356
  • Johann Christian Müller : Instructions for self-teaching on the harmonica , Leipzig 1788
  • Johann Gottlieb Naumann: Six Sonates pour l'harmonica qui peuvent servir aussi pour le piano forte (12 sonatas in total), Stockholm 1950
  • Johann Friedrich Reichardt: Grazioso (around 1786)
  • Karl Lepold Röllig: Small pieces of music for the harmonica or the pianoforte with a few songs for the latter , Leipzig 1789
  • Joseph Schlett: 2 sonatas , Munich 1804
  • Joseph Alois Schmittbaur: Cinque Préludes et un rondo pour l'armonica ou pianoforte , Vienna 1803
  • Johann Abraham Peter Schulz: Largo for the harmonica , in: AmZ 1799/1800
  • Wenzel Johann Tomášek: Fantasy for the harmonica at the grave of Demoiselle Kirchgessner , who deserved so much for this instrument , in: AmZ , supplement of March 8, 1809
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Abendschatten - moment musicale
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Poem for the glass harmonica
  • Christa Schönfeldinger: Nuremberg sketches

Chamber music

  • Gotthelf Benjamin Flaschner: Evening song and To a forget-me-not for glass harmonica , Stuttgart
  • Richard Graf: "Seconds to Eternity" for glass harmonica and verrophone, (Wiener Glasharmonika Duo)
  • Paul Lambert Mašek: Benedictus for glass harmonica , Stuttgart (Str. Divertissement for glass harmonica, Hf., Hr.)
  • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Adagio and Rondo for glass harmonica , fl., Oboe, va., Vc. (KV 617), Vienna May 23, 1791; Fragment of an Adagio (Fantasia) C (KV Anh. 92) for the same instrumentation, Vienna 1791 (probably the first sketch of the Adagio KV 617)
  • Johann Gottlieb Naumann: Duo for glass harmonica and lute (based on an aria from Naumann's opera Cora for Gustav III), Db (1779); Quartet C (Andante-Grazioso) for glass harmonica, Fl., Va., Vc. (1789)
  • Johann Friedrich Reichardt: Rondeau b for glass harmonica , string quintet
  • Thomas Daniel Schlee: Pure Present , (instrumentation: glass harmonica, verrophone)
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Abendschatten , (Instrumentation: Glass Harmonica, Verrophon - Wiener Glasharmonika Duo),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Aglaopheme - The Brilliant Voices (Instrumentation: Glass Harmonica, Verrophone, Voice),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: lead oxide , (instrumentation: glass harmonica, historical glass game),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Devas Dance , (instrumentation: glass harmonica, verrophone),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: "Drumming on the edge of glass", (line-up: Glasharmonika, Verrophon),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Wesenlos - A sound transfiguration , (instrumentation: glass harmonica, verrophone),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Amphytrion , (Instrumentation: Glasharmonika, Verrophon),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Bärentaler Kontratänze , (instrumentation: glass harmonica, verrophone),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Ballade Notee , (instrumentation: glass harmonica, verrophon),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Before the earth knew tones , (Instrumentation: Glasharmonika, Verrophon),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Gateway to the Soul , (instrumentation: glass harmonica, verrophone),
  • Gerald Schönfeldinger: Tears of the Leopard , (Instrumentation: Glasharmonika, Verrophon),
  • Franz Xaver Schnyder von Wartensee: Duet for the harmonica and the pianoforte (Der Wütherich overcome by music - Allegro furioso - Andante) for harmonica and class or string quintet and class, Frankfurt / M. around 1825

Orchestral works

  • Jörg Widmann : Armonika (commissioned work Int.Mozart Week UA 2007)
  • Hector Berlioz : Glass harmonica part in the autograph of the movement Fantaisie sur la Tempête de Shakespeare from: Lélio ou Le Retour à la vie (1831/32)
  • Johann Adolph Hasse : Cantata L'Armonica for glass harmonica , s, oboe, right, strings, Vienna 1769
  • Anton Reicha : Grand solo pour harmonica et l'orchestre , Vienna 1806; Farewell to Johanna d'Arc , after Friedrich Schiller for glass harmonica, speaker, orchestra, March 12, 1806, F-Pc, 12045
  • Carl Leopold Röllig : 6 concerts for glass harmonica , hr., Woodwinds, strings or for glass harmonica, strings, around 1790
  • Camille Saint-Saëns : Le Carnaval des animaux (1886), glass harmonica in No. 7 (Aquarium) and No. 14 (Finale)
  • Carl Maria von Weber : Adagio e Rondo F for glass harmonica, orchestra (in the original score and letters expressly intended for glass harmonica; last version for harmonichord / harmonium, 1811, J 115).

Opera or stage music

Works for musical glasses ( verrophon , glass harp)

  • J. Duda: Quartet for Verrophon, Fl., Va., Vc .; Duo for Verrophon and Hf. Or 2 Verrophone (1995); Concert piece for 2 verrophones and orchestra (1995)
  • Harald Genzmer: Variations on an old folk song for glass harp, Fl., Va., Vc. (1946); Adagio and Allegro Moderato (Solo; 1983)
  • Hans Werner Henze: Glass part in Voices (1973) for 2 voices and instrumental group
  • Nikolaus Heyduck : Slow Motion - Repeats of Breaking Glass for four players and feed (1992)
  • Hans Ulrich Humpert: Novalis: Fairy Tales for a Soprano Voice, Verrophone and String Trio (2001)
  • Olga Neuwirth: live-electronically moving glass sounds in the room in the music theater Bählamms Fest (1997-99)
  • Luigi Nono: Glass Sounds in Prometeo , 1984
  • Carl Orff: Glass tones in Der Mond , Munich 1939; Astutuli , Munich 1953; Oedipus the Tyrann , Stuttgart 1959; Ludus de nato Infante mirificus , Stuttgart 1960; Prometheus , Stuttgart 1966
  • Fred Schnaubelt: various glass solos, elegy and caprice in the Mozart quintet line-up of KV 617 (1994); Concertino for glass instruments and orchestra (1960)
  • Gerhard Stäbler: Bittersweet - Bagatelle for guitar, glass game (1994)
  • Simon Stockhausen: Music for a Glass House (1994)
  • Andreas HH Suberg: Lineaments for 6 players, glass instruments, live electronics and tape (1990); Ice cream for 6 players, glass instruments, live electronics, synthesizers (samplers), electroacoustic sounds and tape (1991); “1791” - Paraphrases on an Adagio for glass harmonica by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart for sampling keyboard, live electronics and tape (1994); What melted your longing out of the shards for countertenor, glass instruments and live electronics and electroacoustic sounds (1997)
  • Bernd Alois Zimmermann: Glass part in the cello concerto, 1965/66
  • Walter Zimmermann: Earth-water-air tones for glass play, pos., Cl .; Self-forgotten, for s, Glasspiel, Fl., Git .; Glass part in Hyperion. A letter opera (1989/90).

Works for Verrophon

  • Sabine Dobbertin: Choral - Miniatures for Verrophone solo, op.13 (2012)
  • Sabine Dobbertin: Introduction for Verrophone solo, op.37,1 (2013)
  • Wolfram Graf: Klanglichter for Verrophon solo, Op. 193: I sound of calm - II play of colors - III light song (2012)

Choral music

  • Sabine Dobbertin: Come to me all who are troublesome and burdened - Small Motet for four-part choir and Verrophon, op.15,1 (2012)
  • Sabine Dobbertin: It'll be evening again - Small Motet for mixed Women's choir and Verrophon, op.35,1 (2013)

Mentioned, previously lost works

(Selection; for further works see: Bruno Hoffmann, in: MGG )

  • Luigi Cherubini: Sonata Solo
  • Christoph Willibald Gluck: Composition for Musical glasses
  • Joseph Augustin Gürrlich: Concertino
  • Adalbert Gyrowetz : Symphony for glass harmonica and orchestra
  • Jan Kucharž: Pieces for glass harmonica and mandolin
  • Vaclav Vincenc Mašek: solos and chamber music with glass harmonica, orchestral pieces
  • AJ Mertlick: Big concert for the harmonica in G, and variations for the harmonica in E flat with quartet accompaniment
  • Johann Gottlieb Naumann: Quartets
  • Ignaz Josef Pleyel: Symphony for glass harmonica and orchestra
  • Anton Reicha: Fantasies for Marianne Kirchgeßner (solo) and with orchestra
  • Anton Rubinstein: Part in The Demon , St. Petersburg 1875
  • Jacques Salomon: Sonata Solo
  • Carl Schneider: Andante with solo variations
  • BA Weber: Monologue from the Maiden of Orléans (1801) for glass harmonica, speaker, 2 hr., Vc., B.
  • Paul Wranitzky: Solos

Secondary literature

  • A. Buchner: The glass harmonica . In: The musical instrument . Issue 19, 1970, pp. 773-737, pp. 1182-1185.
  • A. Buchner: The glass harmonica . In: The musical instrument . Issue 20, 1971, pp. 38-40.
  • Ernst F. Chladni: Discoveries about the theory of sound . Central antiquariat of the GDR 1980 (repr. Of the Leipzig edition 1787, 1817 and 1821).
  • Johann Philipp Eisel: Musics autodidactos or the self-informing musicus . Central antiquariat of the GDR, Leipzig 1976 (reprint of the Erfurt 1738 edition).
  • Ann Ford: Instructions for playing on the musical glasses . London 1761.
  • Franchino Gaffori: The theory of music . Yale University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-300-05497-1 .
  • Athanasius Kircher: New Hall and Tone Art or mechanical secret connection between art and nature . Schäfer, Hannover 1983, ISBN 3-88746-072-3 (reprint of the Ellwangen 1684 edition).
  • Georg Harsdöffer: Deliciae physico-mathematicae or mathematical and philosophical refreshment lessons . Keip, Frankfurt / M 1990 (reprint of the Nuremberg 1636 edition).
  • A. Hyatt King: The musical glasses and glass harmonica . In: PRMA . Number 72, 1945/46, p. 97 ff.
  • Franz Liszt: Frédéric Chopin . Levi, Paris 1990, ISBN 2-86746-063-8 .
  • Wilhelm Luethge: The glass harmonica, the instrument of the Werther era . In: The Bear . 1925, p. 98 ff.
  • P. Lynton, KL Loewenstein: Musical glasses . In: News and renews . 1951, p. 2 ff.
  • B. Matthews: The David Sisters, JC Bach and the glass harmonica . In: ML . Issue 56, 1975, pp. 150-169.
  • David J. O'Donoghue: An Irish musical genius (Richard Pockrich). The inventor of the musical glasses, etc. Gill, Dublin 1899.
  • Antonio Pace: Benjamin Franklin and Italy . American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia 1958.
  • Marianne R. Pfau: Hasse's glass harmonica: "Musica Coelestis" or "The Devil's Work"? . In: Lichtwark booklet No. 65. Verlag HB-Werbung, Hamburg-Bergedorf, 2004. ISSN  1862-3549 .
  • John Carteret Pilkington: The real story . Hoey, London 1760.
  • Walter B. Pohl: Tinting glass. Narration . Self-published, Freudenberg 1960.
  • Alois Primisser : The Imperial and Royal Ambras Collection . ADEVA, Graz 1872 (reprint of the Vienna 1819 edition).
  • Sascha Reckert: Glass harmonica . In: The music in the past and present ( also on the web ).
  • Conny Sibylla Restle: Richard Strauss and the glass harmonica . In: musica instrumentalis . 1998, pp. 24-46.
  • Karl L. Röllig: About the harmonica. A fragment . Berlin 1787.
  • Hans Schneider: The music publisher Heinrich Philipp Bossler (1744-1812) with bibliographical overviews and an appendix "Marianne Kirchgeßner and Bossler" . Schneider, Tutzing 1985, ISBN 3-7952-0500-X .
  • Janka Schröder: A glass harmonica from around 1800 by Franz Ferdinand Pohl from the possession of the Heiligenkreuz Abbey (diploma thesis at the University of Applied Science and Art, Hildesheim 2004).
  • M. Schuler: Music in Messmerism . In: Freiburg University Gazette . Number 25, 1986, No. 93, pp. 23-67.
  • Peter Sterki: Ringing glasses. The importance of idiophonic friction instruments with axially rotating glasses, shown on the glass and keyboard harmonica. Dissertation, Bern 2000, ISBN 3-906764-60-5 .
  • Hermann Josef Ullrich : The blind glass harmonica virtuoso Marianne Kirchgeßner and Vienna . Schneider, Tutzing 1971, ISBN 3-7952-0113-6 .
  • Till G. Waidelich: The glass harmonica in the AmZ articles . Berlin, printing in preparation.
  • Johann Gottfried Walther: Musical Lexicon or musical library . Bärenreiter, Kassel 2001, ISBN 3-7618-1509-3 , (reprint of the Leipzig 1732 edition).
  • Master Pohl plays on singing glass . In: Dresdner current news . No. 3, 1941.
  • Something about the glass harmonica . In: Deutsche Instrumentenbau-Zeitung . 1903/04.

Web links

Commons : Glass harmonicas  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Glass harmonica  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau, Vol .: 62, Leipzig, 1941–42, No. 2, October 15, 1942, p. 11 u. 12 .
  2. ↑ Glass harmonica in the Germanic National Museum
  3. ^ Friedrich Rochlitz: Allgemeine Musikische Zeitung , Volume 12, pp. 1935-1038, December 1810.