Musical glasses ‘create’ sweet, magical harmony

‘Franklin Armonica’

BBy Cezary Owerkowicz

enjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was not only a great statesman and politician, but one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. He was also a renowned author, printer, political theorist, civic activist, diplomat, freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist... Oh, not enough? He was also a lover of music and - builder of music instruments!

‘The advantages of this instrument are many, for example, its tone is incomparably sweet beyond those any other; that they may be swelled and softened at pleasure by stronger or weaker pressure of the finger, and continued to any length; and that the instrument, being well tuned, never again needs tuning.

In honor of your musical language, I have borrowed from it the name of this instrument, and call it the Armonica.’ Those words President Franklin wrote in 1762 in London to his friend, Giambatista Beccaria in Turin, Italy about the instrument constructed by Mr. President.

An original Franklin Armonica was displayed in 1975 at the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis but without original glasses destroyed during the shipment. It was purchased by a French musical instruments dealer from the descendants of a neighbor of Benjamin Franklin in the Paris suburb of Paddy where he lived from 1977 to 1785. (Glasses bowls are made in original pattern done and adjusted in Museum already.)

Another original Armonica made by Franklin is in the archives at the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, having been donated by Franklin’s descendants after ‘the children were delighted with the sound of creaking the bowls with the spoons during family gatherings. It is displayed only on the special occasion as Franklin’s birthday.

Owerkowicz

Originalities

‘All originalities are only undiscovered plagiarism’ says English sentence with typical English sense of humor. Softer it means that everything is only a continuation of early inspiration?

Benjamin Franklin invented a radically new arrangement of the glasses in 1761 after seeing water-filled wine glasses. He attended a performance of Edmund Deleval at Cambridge, England, in May 1761. Working with Londoner glassblower Charles Jones he built one with his own idea and it was world premiered in early 1762 with Marianne Davies as a performer.

Marianne was a young woman said to be related to Franklin who played also harpsichord and flute and became proficient enough to play at the Armonica to offer public performances.

She toured for many years with her sister Cecilia, renowned soprano but she is remembered mainly as the first ever virtuoso of Franklin Armonica. This is the name of instrument finally using in music literature. This way Mr. President took his place also in the history of music.

Crystallophones or glass harmonicas, called such because its sounding portion is made of glass which were known since quite a long time ago. The phenomenon of rubbing a wet finger around the rim of a wine goblet to produce the tone is documented back to the Renaissance period.

The source is Galileo’s Two New Sciences. Just before Franklin time, the Irish musician, Richard Pockrish is credited as the first performer playing composition on glass vessels by rubbing his fingers around the rims.

At the beginning in 1740 he is seen playing on a set of upright goblets filled with varying amounts of water. (Water was evidently not enough because fire in his room cut short his career killed him and destroyed his apparatus.

In Franklin treadle-operated version, 37 bowls were mounted horizontally on an iron spindle (like grilled ‘shashlik’). The whole spindle was turned by means of a foot pedal.

The sound was produced by touching the rims of the bowls with water-moistened fingers. The rims were painted in different colors according to the pitch of the note: A (dark blue), B (purple), C (red), D (orange), E (yellow), F (green), G (blue) and the accidentals were marked in white.

With the Franklin design, it is possible to play ten glasses simultaneously of desire, a technique that is very difficult if not impossible to execute using upright goblets. This way Franklin created his Armonica a ‘harmonic’ (chord playing) instrument.

He also took care of performing details and then advocated the use of a small amount of powdered chalk on the fingers, which under some acidic water conditions help to produce a clear tone!

Before there existed some similar attempts called to use glass as music made material: glass harmonica (or armonica), bowl organs, glass harp, hydrocrystalophone, harmonica de verre.

The longest was hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica, a name composed of Greek root to mean something like ‘harmonica to produce music for the soul by finger dipped in water (hydrofor water, daktul- for fingers, psychefor soul, not to mention about the typical Greek harmony). Most probably that was the longest ever name of any instrument in the history of music.

Attracted

The Franklin glass harmonica attracted many composers. Historians suppose as much as 100 composers wrote pieces for harmonica. Some of them were known mainly between contemporaries during their time and historians nowadays, such as J.G. Naumann, Padre Martini, Johann Adolf Hasse or Nicolo Jommelli and also the most famous legendary artistes used the Presidential item as W. A. Mozart (two opuses written in 1791 for glass harmonica), L. van Beethoven in 1814 in melodrama Leonore or Gaetano Dionizetti as an accompaniment to well-known Amelia’s aria in Opera Il. Castello di Keniworth, premiered in 1929 and the famous Lucia di Lammermoor in 1835. (NB: The last often is turned for two flutes because of lack of such instrument and the opera’s stores.)

The instrument became even popular on the courts of European monarchs who indulged in playing it. Even Maria Antoinette took lessons as a child from the enormously popular at that time the German Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer.

His theory was popularized from his name - mesmerism. Mesmerism was the hypnotic induction held to involve animal magnetism. He believed that it is an invisible natural force possessed by all living/animate beings as humans, animals, vegetables and so on.

Mesmerism passed by Harmonica was still used also by Camille SaintSeans in his Carnival of Animals and Richard Strauss in opera The Lady Without the Shadow in 1917.

The list of composers is too big to rewrite than I would point only two American events from the past decades: Elliot Goldenthal opens and closes with glass harmonica his ballet Othello performed by leading American Ballet Theater, San Francisco Ballet, the Jeffrey Ballet on their stages and Europeans tours. Also George Benjamin in opera Written on Skin which premiered in 2012 during Air de Provence Festival includes prominent and elaborate part for our instrument.

The leading contemporary virtuoso on Franklin Armonica is also an American musician, Dennis James. ‘I first became aware of glass instrument at about the age of 6 while visiting the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. I can still recall being mesmerized by the appearance of the original Benjamin Franklin armonica then on display in its own showcase in the entry rotunda of the city’s famous museum,’ he says.

Dennis James recorded an album of all glass music, Cristal: Glass Music through the Ages’ co-produced by Linda Ronstadt and Grammy Award-winning producer John Boylan.

James plays the glass harmonica on the CD in original historical compositions and new arrangements for glass by Mozart, Scarlatti, Schnabel and Faure and collaborates on the recording with the renowned Emerson String Quartet, the operatic soprano Ruth Ann Swenson and Linda Ronstadt. James plays also glass instruments on Marco Beltrami’s film scores for The Minus Man (1999) and The Faculty (1998).

James Horner used a glass harmonica and pan flute for Spock theme in the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Isn’t it a cosmic career of set of glass animated by magic touch?

PS. For many pianists, especially young, a really nightmare are sweaty fingers sliding on the keyboard. It’s not a joke. It is a real problem for many. Do you know the advantage it gives for the Glass Harmonica player who wets the fingers because of sweat -- there is no need to watermoisten them all the time...?

Editor’s Note: Cezary Owerkowicz is the chairman of the Kuwait Chamber of Philharmonia and talented pianist. He regularly organises concerts by well-known musicians for the benefit of music lovers and to widen the knowledge of music in Kuwait. His e-mail address is: cowerkowicz @yahoo.com and cowerkowicz@hotmail.com