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Description: | If you stroke the edge of a drinking glass with the fingertips you will hear a faint musical note. Concerts on sets of wine glasses, played in this way and filled with water to tune them to different notes, were given in Britain from the 1740s. The armonica is a mechanised version of these ‘musical glasses’. It was invented in 1761 by Benjamin Franklin, who was inspired to do so after hearing a concert for the musical glasses while on a visit to Britain earlier that year (the trough of water beneath the bowls to wet them was a later invention). The armonica remained popular, especially in Germany and Austria, until long after the turn of the 19th century, although it was sometimes harmful to the performer’s mental health. It was also heard during healing sessions of the ‘mesmerising’ physician, Franz Anton Mesmer. Hadyn, Mozart, Beethoven and many of their respective contemporaries composed music for the instrument.
Armonica (‘glass harmonica’). This glass musical instrument, or crystallophone, consists of thirty-three glass bowls of graduated sizes, mounted on an axle. They form a row of bells, not struck, but played by friction. The bottom of the mahogany-veneered case is lined to hold water, wetting the bowls turning on the axle, which is operated by the treadle mechanism on the left. The wet, rotating glasses play a chromatic scale of two octaves and eight notes (f-sharp to d''') when stroked with the fingers. The glasses with gold-edged rims sound the accidentals, while the plain bowls sound the natural notes. The treadle and crank drive are stamped 'Hof Schlosser Böhme in Karlsruhe'.
caption: General view of object no. 14.12.55/1.
caption: Frontal view of object no. 14.12.551. | Publisher: | http://www.horniman.ac.uk/ | Rights holder: | Horniman Museum and Gardens | Subjects: | 133.2 Sets of friction vessels rubber armonicas wood paper glass paint iron crystallophones copper alloy | Source: | Horniman Museum | Identifier: | oai:oai.horniman.ac.uk:object-198537 | Go to resource |
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