A short history of the glass harmonica
The glass harmonica makes music from glass bowls that spin on a rod. You touch the wet rims with your fingertips, and each bowl sings a pure, floating note. It's one of the few instruments with a known inventor, Benjamin Franklin, who called his version the armonica.
Singing wine glasses
People had played glasses for centuries by rubbing a wet finger around the rim. In May 1761 Franklin, who was living in London, heard Edward Delaval perform on tuned water glasses at Cambridge. He loved the sound and set out to make an instrument that was easier to play and to keep in tune.
1762: Franklin's armonica
Franklin worked with the London glassblower Charles James to build something better. His design nested 37 bowls of graduated size on a single horizontal iron spindle, turned by a foot pedal. The player only had to touch the rims, and could play up to ten notes at once. Franklin painted the rims to help players find their place, with a color for each note and white for the sharps and flats. He named it from the Italian word for harmony, and described it in a letter to the Italian scientist Giambattista Beccaria in July 1762.
The late 1700s craze
The armonica became fashionable across Europe. Performers such as Marianne Davies and Marianne Kirchgessner toured with it, and Franz Mesmer played one in his treatments. Mozart wrote two pieces for it in 1791, including the Adagio and Rondo, K. 617, with flute, oboe, viola, and cello. Beethoven used it in 1814, and Donizetti originally wrote the mad scene in Lucia di Lammermoor for it in 1835, though flute later replaced it.
Why it faded
In Vienna and Germany, rumors spread that the instrument unsettled players and listeners, even driving them mad. One critic warned that it overstimulated the nerves. Many players, including Franklin himself, lived long lives, and the instrument was also quiet next to a growing orchestra. By about 1820 it had mostly disappeared from public performance.
The revival
In the 1930s the German performer Bruno Hoffmann revived interest by playing historical pieces on glass. In 1984 Gerhard B. Finkenbeiner, after about thirty years of experiments, rebuilt Franklin's design using bowls of fused quartz. His company in Waltham, Massachusetts, still makes them. Modern composers including Damon Albarn, Tom Waits, and Jörg Widmann have written for the instrument.
Try one in your browser
Llarmonica is a free, independent instrument inspired by the glass harmonica. It has 37 glasses with Franklin's color scheme, and you play it by touching the glasses and sliding between them.