I forgot!

[kitchen_kink]

In all the hullabaloo of my last post, I forgot a major point:

The glass harmonica.

In Harvard Square, we found a woman playing this bemusing instrument, and I took a turn (so to speak) at the crank while she played a lovely "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." The thing sounds a little like an organ, a little like a musical saw, and of course, a little like when you run your finger around the rim of a wineglass.

She played it by having someone turn the crank, then wetting her fingers and touching them along the gold-leaf edges of each glass bleb in the structure, each of which would make a different note.

This picture looks the most like the one I saw. I seriously could not stop grinning at this thing.



Apparently, this guy can't, either.

My favorite thing about this instrument, though, is its bizarre history and how it languished into obscurity:

A dictionary of music from the period warned that the instrument's "celestial softness" could cause spasms. Cases of Armonica-induced melancholia began making the medical rounds. Several Armonica performers (including one of the most celebrated players, Marianne Davies) were hospitalized for nervous disorders. Soon, the Armonica was being blamed on premature births, causing convulsions in farm animals, domestic squabbles, madness and death. When a child died during an Armonica concert in Germany, the instrument was banned there.

The woman's notes near the glass harmonica that we saw also included "raising the dead" as one of the feared results of the playing of this strange instrument. Damn! Why'd they ban it? Zombie glass harmonica players, come on!

Comments

[madbard.livejournal.com]

I really really wanted to include glass harmonica in my score for Home Room, but the nearest player I could find was in San Diego, and the logistics of getting his instrument up to L.A. was too tricky. I was bummed.

Dunno if you know Spot Backman, but he's got one of those things in his home. Real fun to play with.

[concrete.livejournal.com]

I heard the exact same rumors about the Theremin as well. Do they sound similar?

[madbard.livejournal.com]

Not quite. Theremins make that "wooooOOOoooo" sound in vintage sci-fi films (or Simpsons episodes where aliens invade). Their distinctive quality is a bending pitch. Glass harmonicas are fixed-pitch, their sound best compared, as dietrich said, to the sound of a finger sliding around the rim of a wineglass.

(Sorry about all the commentary, K. I'm a bit glass (h)armonica enthusiast.)

[cycon.livejournal.com]

Not really, but they're both other-worldy enough to [CENSORED] with your head.

Speaking of theremins, though, wouldn't one of those be a perfect addition to the orchestration of "Science Fiction Double Feature"?

[cathijosephine.livejournal.com]

My dad thought double-reeded instruments cause insanity. It's strange to hear the same stuff from another source.

[jennasuze.livejournal.com]

Hiya - I moved from taiste. Can I get back in the loop? :)

[lhynard.livejournal.com]

I think Ben Frnaklin invented it.

[madbard.livejournal.com]

He did. And Mozart wrote for it! It's weird to think of them as contemporaries, but they were.

[wavyarms.livejournal.com]

Could those problems be based on lead or something in the glass, consistently coming into contact wth the skin?

Doesn't explain the child dying, of course, but there could be a kernel of truth. Just hypothesizing.

[dietrich.livejournal.com]

That was my thought, as well - apparently a lot of players went crazy or died from it. The other things might be coincidence.

Also, there was talk of Mesmer using it, and those undergoing his treatments were bathed in iron filings and so forth, which, you know, might not be so good for you.

[lightcastle.livejournal.com]

That`s just cool!