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by Thomas Bloch
copyright
Thomas Bloch / Naxos, 2001
from the booklet of the Thomas Bloch's
CD "Music for Glass Harmonica" (ref.: Naxos 8.555295)
English translation : Michelle Vadon
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Thomas Bloch's glassharmonica
made by
Gerhard Finkenbeiner
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Glasses
filled with varying amounts of water so as to alter the pitch of the
sounds obtained by striking them with sticks were already used in early
times by the Persians, the Chinese (shui chan), the Japanese and the
Arabs (the tusut was mentioned in 1406), but the technique took a
decisive turn in 1743 when an Irishman, Richard Puckeridge, had the
bright idea of standing the glasses on a table and rubbing the rims
with wet fingers.
Benjamin Franklin first saw that instrument which
was also played by the composer Gluck, at a concert given by the
English virtuoso Delaval. It was called the angelic organ, then musical
glasses, seraphim or glassharp. Franklin, fascinated by the "soft and pure sound
of the musical glasses", modified them so as to increase their
possibilities. In a letter to the Turin scientist Giovanni Battista
Beccaria in 1762, he explained how he had improved them. He called the
new instrument the Armonica because of its harmonious sounds. He had
glasses of different diameters blown, each corresponding to a note,
instead of filling glasses with water. When the bowls are chromatically
fitted into one another, but not in contact, with a horizontal rod
going through their centreds, the rotation of which is controlled by a
pedal, complex chords can be played and the possibilities of virtuoso
performance are increased.
A
number of instruments derived from the glass harmonica have been built
since that time: the melodion, the eumelia, the clavicylindre, the
transpornierharmonica, the sticcardo pastorale, the spirafina, the
Instrument de Parnasse, the glasharfe, the piano harmonica of Tobias
Schmidt, who also built the first guillotine, the uranion, the
hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica and others.
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The glass harmonica was very
popular from the start. Some four hundred works were composed for it,
some unfortunately now lost ( two works by Mozart including his very last chamber music work, Beethoven, Donizetti,
C.P.E. Bach, Hasse, Reicha...). There was probably about four thousand
instruments built over the course of some seventy years.
The
instrument, adored or hated, roused passionate responses. Paganini
declared it to have "such a celestial voice", Thomas Jefferson claimed
it was "the greatest gift offered to the musical world of this
century", Goethe, Mozart, Jean-Paul, Hasse and Théophile Gautier
all praised it. A dictionary of instruments mentions that the sounds
"are of nearly celestial softness but (…) can cause spasms". In
a Traité des effets de la musique sur le corps humain (Treatise
on the Effects of Music on the Human Body) by J.M. Roger in 1803 it is
said that "its melancholy timbre plunges us into dejection … to
a point that the strongest man could not hear it for an hour without
fainting".
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Manuscript from Mozart showing the main themas
from the Adagio and Rondo K.617
for glass harmonica, flute, oboe, viola and cello (1791)
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The Armonica
according to the 2nd italian
publication of
Benjamin Franklin's letter
to priest Beccaria
(1762)
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It
is true that some performers on the instrument ended their lives in
mental hospitals, among them one of the best, Marianne Davies. In his
Anleitung zum Selbstunterricht auf der Harmonika (Method of
Self-Instruction for the Harmonica), published in 1788, Johann
Christian Müller answered objections: "It is true that the
Armonica has strange effects on people (…). If you are irritated
or disturbed by bad news, by friends or even by disappointment from a
lady, abstain from playing, it would only increase your disturbance".
The Armonica was accused of causing evils such as nervous problems,
domestic squabbles, premature deliveries, fatal disorders, and animal
convulsions. The instrument was even banned from one German town by the
police for ruining the health of people and disturbing public order (a
child died during a concert). Franz Anton Mesmer, a Vienna doctor known
for his experiments (mesmerism) and for using hypnosis to treat his
patients, would use the glass harmonica in his treatment. He was forced
to leave Vienna after a blind pianist, Marie Paradies, recovered her
sight but to the detriment of her mental health. Rumours of this kind
contributed to the death of the Armonica, which in 1829 had been
considered "the fashionable accessory of parlours and drawing-rooms".
Although
Karl Leopold Röllig in the late eighteenth century, had tried to
add a keyboard to the glass harmonica in order to avoid the possible
danger caused by rubbing the fingers against the glasses, few later
composers were interested in the instrument. The increasing intensity
of the sound of orchestras deterred musicians from using a fragile
instrument with such a delicate sound. Yet, there were two outstanding
exceptions. In 1835 Donizetti used it in his opera Lucia di Lammermoor in
the mad scene, in which the glass harmonica was soon replaced by two
flutes (the part recorded here is the original version, crossed out on
the manuscript) and Richard Strauss wrote for it in the last act of his
opera Die Frau ohne Schatten,
first staged in Vienna in 1919. |
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Thanks to a German performer, Bruno
Hoffmann, who did not play a glass harmonica but a glasharfe (glasses
standing on a table), and thanks also to a German-born master
glass-blower, Gerhard Finkenbeiner, who had settled near Boston in the
United States, a new generation of performers and of composers has
rediscovered the glass harmonica since 1982 (Björk, Tom Waits, Damon Albarn / Gorillaz, Amadeus and Flight over a kuku's nest by Milos Forman, La Marche de l'Empereur - The March of Penguins in its original version...).
To
build a glass harmonica, Gerhard Finkenbeiner (1930 – 1999) and
today Tom Hession, his associate, use quartz, the purest glass, in the
shape of a long cylinder, heated to 3100°F and blown, then cut into
spheres and then half-spheres, so as to produce two bowls. The process
is completed for tuning by dipping the bowls in hydrofluoric acid to
adjust their thickness.
In the eighteenth century, 24% lead glass was
used. The bowls were ground and tuned with an emery grind-wheel. As the
depth of a bowl decreases, the pitch becomes higher. Sometimes, the
seven colours of the rainbow were used to symbolize the seven diatonic
degrees, with black figuring for the inflected notes. Finkenbeiner and
his associate use transparent glass, with gold for the rims of the
bowls corresponding to the black keys of a keyboard, as Röllig did
in the eighteenth century.
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Gerhard Finkenbeiner
(1930-1999)
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Angelica Kaufmann playing the glassharmonica
(Thomas Bloch collection)
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Glass
harmonicas belong to the family of autophone rubbed instruments. The
glasses start vibrating according to a relaxation principle: when a
finger rubs a bowl, it alternately catches and releases. This creates a
series of impulses which set the bowl into vibration. The phenomenom is
complex, so the master glass-blower needs the greatest skill to give
the instrument its own character. A number of parameters can play a
part, modifying the tone, the mode and the harmonic composition of the
bowls. Thus, two bowls giving the same note will have different timbres
according to the materials used, their shape, their thickness, their
dimensions, and any hidden defects.
It
is said that sounds and noises are closely related to each period of
time. It would be interesting to know what brought about the revival of
the glass harmonica at the end of the twentieth century and the passion
it has aroused, simply the result, perhaps,of new demands from
musicologists and performers seeking authenticity.
All in all, though, we may echo the words of Lucia di Lammermoor, Un’ armonia celeste, di’, non ascolti ? (Can you not hear a celestial harmony ?). |
A nine scanned pages newspaper article written in French for Crescendo magazine by Thomas Bloch in 1991
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