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The Musical Glasses and Glass Harmonica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

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Extract

In this paper my chief concern is with the place of the musical glasses and glass harmonica in musical and social history, and only incidentally with their technical development. I want to trace some little-known phases in their origins and use, and to try to build up a picture of their continuity in one form or another. The only work in English on the subject is C. F. Pohl's Cursory Notices on the Origin and History of the Glass Harmonica, written for the London Exhibition of 1862. This admirable pamphlet of sixteen pages is now very rare, and so I make no apology for repeating some of its contents. But as it deals almost entirely with Germany, apart from Benjamin Franklin, and does not go back beyond 1677, I shall take the subject farther afield in both time and place.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1945

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References

1 In the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 39 (1908), p. 148.Google Scholar

2 I.e., Notices et extraits des mss. de la Bibliothèque du Roi.Google Scholar

3 Cf. Die Kaiserlich-königlich Ambrasen-Sammlung beschrieben von Alois Primisser (Vienna 1819), p. 219.Google Scholar

4 It is most misleading to refer to this work (as do all musical dictionaries) both as if it were an independent book, and by the German title Mathematische und philosophische Erquickungen, which is only the alternative title. Harsdorfer's compilation is the second part of the Deliciæ begun by Daniel Schwenter under whose name the principal entry for the book will be found in every reputable library.Google Scholar

5 This experiment is probably derived from Kircher's Phonurgia nova (1673) where on p. 173 a very similar one is described.Google Scholar

6 Some time after his death, “Mr. Urban,” writing in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1764 (p. 63), took occasion to link his memory with an extract from the above quoted passage from Olearius. In this connection cf. also footnote 31.Google Scholar

7 See Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, s.v. Harmonica.Google Scholar

8 Above this last announcement there appears an advertisement for scurvy, and immediately under it another telling of the loss of a white bitch with a large yellowish spot on each side!Google Scholar

9 She is stated by Gratton Flood, op. cit. p. 289, to have been a pupil of Pockrich.Google Scholar

10 It was announced in the Public Advertiser for November 2nd, 1761, together with her guitar method (both the date 1760 in Grove, 1st edition, and the 1762 quoted in many other works of reference, are wrong).Google Scholar

11 Edited by Toynbee and Whibley, 3 vol. 1935.Google Scholar

12 It was first given in his letter to Padre Beccaria of Turin (July 13th, 1762) which has been reprinted in the third edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 8, 1797, in vol. 6 of Jarred Sparks's Life of Franklin, and in O. G. Sonneck's essay Benjamin Franklin's Musical Side in his Suum Cuique, 1916.Google Scholar

13 An early illustration of an instrument made by Mr. Dobb of St. Paul's Churchyard, is on plate 22b of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 3rd edition: other illustrations are given in Grove, and also in Scholes's Companion, plate 88, which shows a painting of Franklin himself playing.Google Scholar

14 By Farmer and Gratton Flood, for instance, as quoted above.Google Scholar

15 In this spelling, the word is unknown to the O.E.D. but its supplement, s.v. glassichord, records two American uses of the word, both metaphorical, in the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

16 I am indebted for these particulars to Sonneck's Suum Cuique and to his Early Concert Life in America, 1731-1800 (Leipzig, 1909) where a more detailed account will be found.Google Scholar

17 Quoted in full in R. R. Drummond's Early German Music in Philadelphia, N.Y. 1910, p. 29. This “cymbaline de amour” was presumably something to do with Francis Hopkinson's improvement. Cf. p. 115 below.Google Scholar

18 I have been unable to trace the source of this statement, but it bears the stamp of truth. On the other hand, there does not seem to be any evidence for the ubiquitous assertion that she was the daughter of a relative of Franklin's. As long ago as 1888, Barclay Squire, writing in the D.N.B. (vol. 14 s.v. Davies) disputed this from a scrutiny of genealogical evidence. This lack of evidence is corroborated by a study of recent Franklin genealogies.Google Scholar

19 Pohl, Mozart in London, p. 61.Google Scholar

20 A copy of the text was found among Franklin's papers: the poem, not without merit, but very florid, is quoted in full on p. 65 of Sonneck's Suum Cuique. Vol. 72Google Scholar

21 In Beverley Nichols's play Mesmer (London, 1935) Mozart is represented as a harmonica virtuoso!Google Scholar

22 These particulars are taken from F. Schurer-Waldheim's admirably documented An ton Mesmer. Seιn Leben und Werken Vienna, 1930.Google Scholar

23 According to the Musikalisches Correspondenz, 1790, p. 170 and 1791, p. 69, she was a pupil of Aloys Schmittbauer. Pohl, in Grove, says that about 1794 in London, Fröschel made a new instrument for her. Cf. also Pohl's Haydn in London, p. 264 and 268.Google Scholar

24 Cf. Edgar Istel's Entstehungs-geschichte des deutschen Melodramas, Berlin, 1906, p. 80.Google Scholar

25 It is stated in Grove s.v. Pohl, C. F., that his grandfather (Emmanuel Pohl) was the first maker of glass harmonicas. It is difficult to reconcile this statement with Franklin's invention, unless it refers solely to continental makers. The Victoria and Albert Museum purchased one of these instruments for 15 guineas: cf. Carl Engel's Descriptive Catalogue of the Musical Instruments in the South Kensington Museum, 1872.Google Scholar

26 A detailed bibliography is appended to W. Lütge's article Die Glasharmonika. Das Instrument der Wertherzeit, in Die Bär, for 1925, likewise a reprint of the last of Röllig's Tonstücke.Google Scholar

27 E.g., Galpin, Textbook of European Musical Instruments, 1937 and Geiringer, Musical Instruments, 1943.Google Scholar

28 Cf. the Sticcardo-pastrole on p. 117.Google Scholar

29 Cf. the periodical L’Avantcoureur, 1765, p. 151.Google Scholar

30 Histoire des instruments à musique, Paris, 1921, p. 234.Google Scholar

31 Sainte-Marie adds a note that the instrument was developed from Pockrich's invention, who had derived his idea from the Persians!Google Scholar

32 History of Musical Instruments, London, 1943, p. 404.Google Scholar

33 Cf. Sonneck's Francis Hopkinson and James Lyon, 1905.Google Scholar

34 In the 1790's (the dates given in Kayser and Riemann differ) Bartl published a pamphlet Uber der Mechanismus zur Tastenharmonika, which elicited Grüber von Graubenfels’ Æstetische Gedanken über Bartl's Tastenharmonika, Vienna, 1798.Google Scholar

35 Here some general remarks on the music played on both the harmonica and the glasses may not be out of place. By whatever composer and for whichever instrument the music was composed or arranged, it rarely seems to have been quicker than andante in tempo, and both staves are usually in the treble clef. No amount of mechanical ingenuity or of deftness in touching the glasses could overcome the “linked sweetness long drawn out” emanating from the vibrating bowl. Attempts to introduce quicker playing only led to a blurring of the notes. The tone of the glasses blended well with the flute, and with the higher registers of the human voice.Google Scholar

36 I am indebted for this information to Mr. R. W. M. Wright, director of the Bath Victoria Art Gallery and Municipal Libraries.Google Scholar

37 Full details are given after the reprint of Franklin's letter in the Encyclopedia Britannica, third edition.Google Scholar

38 Edited by J. D. Beresford, London, 1924-31, Vol. 1, p. 235: the entry dated Sept. 9th, 1778.Google Scholar

39 Copies of both these methods are in the British Museum music library.Google Scholar

40 Who Mrs. Shard was, and where she played I have not discovered.Google Scholar

41 For these, as for the quotation from Hiley's Memoirs, I have to thank Dr. Scholes.Google Scholar

42 Mention of it will, I think, be found in the biographies of several great singers. The earliest reference in print is probably D. G. Morhof's Epistola ad Jon. Daniele majorem de Scypho vitreo per certem vocis humanæ sonum a Nicol. Pettero rupto, published in Holland in 1672 and next year at Kiel; there were later and enlarged editions at Kiel under a different title in 1683 and 1703. (See Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens, s.v. “Morhof.”)Google Scholar

In Gerber's Lexicon der Tonkünstler (1790) it is stated that Morhof twice visited England and that this book of his enjoyed much popularity in this country.Google Scholar

In the Oxford Companion to Music (s.v. “Acoustics,” 19) I give a curious quotation from the Talmud relative to the legal position that comes about (surely rarely!) when a glass vessel is broken by the crowing of a cock, the neighing of a horse, or the braying of an ass. This shows knowledge of the phenomenon at least as early as 500 a.d.—p.a.s.Google Scholar