CHAPTER XLVIII.—MUSICAL GLASSES AND THE WOOD HARMONICON.
I.—THE GLASS HARMONICON.
The harmonicon is not a very difficult instrument to make. It consists of a box and a series of plates—of metal, stone, or glass—to give the sounds.
FIG 1
FIG 2
Take a piece of deal free from knots and shakes, and plane it smooth and true. Let it be of the shape of [Fig. 1], three-sixteenths of an inch thick, six and a half inches wide at the top, four and an eighth inches wide at the bottom, and twenty-three and a half inches along the side which is at right angles to the ends. The slope will be just a trifle longer.
This piece of wood is for the bottom of the box. Now for the sides. Make them out of quarter-inch stuff, twenty-three and a half inches long and one inch and five-eighths wide. For the ends take two pieces of three-eighths stuff an inch and five-eighths wide; and let one be six and a half inches and the other four inches long. For the tops, as shown in [Fig. 2], take two slips a quarter of an inch thick and two inches wide at one end, and an inch and a half wide at the other.
Let the wood be as perfect in quality and equal in thickness as possible, and glue up the box—without the tops—as evenly as you can. The box can be nailed or screwed if you think it will be easier for you, but the result will not be so satisfactory. The box is like a fiddle, and the more of a perfect shell it is the truer and fuller will be the sound.
FIG 3
FIG 4
In the centre of the box glue in the bridge, which will be about five and a quarter inches long and half an inch wide, and should stand clear of the bottom and clear of the tops. Then in the broad end, at two and a quarter inches from its sides, cut the slots, as shown in [Fig. 3]; and at the other end, as shown in [Fig. 4], cut the slots one inch and a quarter from each side. Below each slot is shown a small circle. This represents the head of the screw or tack round which the twine is strung on which the musical plates are to rest.
For the string use very fine twine, crochet cotton, or silk, and stretch it very tightly, and fasten it off at the end it started from; that is to say, fix it at the broad end under the tack, then pass it under the tack at the narrow end, then under the other tack at the narrow end, and then bring it up to the broad end and there finish it off. It should be very tight, and just rest on the bridge in the middle.
The next thing is the glass, which should be cut in inch strips, and fixed on to the strings with a drop of sealing-wax. Let us have eighteen notes ranging from B to E in the key of C. The true dimensions and position will have to be found by experiment, but for glass a sixteenth of an inch in thickness the following will be found the suitable lengths. B should measure five and three-eighths; C, five and a quarter; D, five; E, four and seven-eighths; F, four and five-eighths; G, four and a half; A, four and three-eighths; B, four and a quarter; C, four and an eighth; D, three and three-quarters; E, three and five-eighths; F, three and a half; G, three and three-eighths; A, three and a quarter; B, three and an eighth; C, three and an eighth; D, three and an eighth; E, two and three-quarters. These are the lengths for glasses an inch in width.
FIG 5
The glasses should be laid on the strings, which gradually approach each other, and they should be shifted about until the correct note for each is obtained. In [Fig. 1] we have shown how they rest on the strings, and in [Fig. 2] we have boxed them in and shown by the space at the end how they may have to be closed up to keep the proper intervals. As soon as the notes are right, fix the glasses on to the string with a tiny drop of sealing-wax. And also fasten the string on to the bridge with wax so as to make everything secure. Then glue on the tops to hide the ragged ends, and the harmonicon is complete. For the hammers glue a piece of cork or wood on to a length of whalebone or split cane, or any springy stick about eight inches long. A convenient shape is that shown in [Fig. 5], where the black head represents the cork cut to a wedge.
Although many tunes can be very pleasingly played on this simple instrument, do not let it be supposed that it at all resembles the harmonica for which music was written by the great composers. That was a different affair altogether. Perhaps a few notes concerning it may not be uninteresting.
One of the first allusions to an instrument of the sort is by Harsdörfer in 1677, though among savage nations, Burmese and what not, rock, bone, and wood harmonicas have existed for ages. On St. George’s Day in 1746, Gluck played a concerto on twenty-six drinking-glasses, ‘tuned with spring water.’ The instrument was of his own invention, and he played it accompanied by the whole band. It was said to be capable of producing all the effects of the violin and harpsichord.
When Benjamin Franklin was in London in 1762, he saw Puckeridge and Delaval amusing themselves by playing tunes on ordinary drinking-tumblers. The tumblers were tuned by the water poured into them up to different levels—the higher the water the lower the note—and were sounded by wiping a wet finger round their brims. Franklin was so much struck with this that he straightway took the matter in hand and invented the harmonica, for which the music used to be written, and of which a specimen now rests in the South Kensington Museum.
The harmonica—Franklin called it the ‘armonica’—consisted of a series of glass bells fixed in regular order on an iron spindle made to revolve like a lathe with a treadle. The sound was produced by pressing the wet fingers on the bells as they rotated, and it could be increased or decreased in volume and tone by varying that pressure.
Franklin presented his invention to the Davies family, with whom he was connected, and one of them, Marianne, performed on it with great success in London, Paris, Florence, and Vienna. The constant thrilling of the fingers affected her nerves, however, and she had to abandon it, just in the same way as had Naumann, the composer, who ‘found it necessary to restrict himself in practising.’
Some of the music played by Miss Davies was specially written for the instrument by Hasse; and when, in 1791, the blind Kirchgässner went to Vienna, Mozart wrote an adagio and rondo in C for harmonica, flute, oboe, violin, and violoncello. Who in these days would imagine that the ‘musical glasses’ once stood so high in the world?
Three years afterwards Kirchgässner came to London, and there played on a new harmonica built by Fröschel. At Darmstadt the harmonica held its place in the Court orchestra, and C. F. Pohl ‘professed’ it. Beethoven even condescended to write for ‘the glasses,’ and Naumann’s half-dozen sonatas for them still exist.
The instrument, however, has been laid on the shelf—or rather consigned to its case as a curiosity—and the musical glasses of to-day are the harmonicon we have described, and the tumblers about which we may now say a word.
II.—MUSICAL TUMBLERS.
Musical glasses have been arranged in many ways. Sometimes they have been all of one size, and the different tones have been produced by varying quantities of water placed in them. This, however, was a troublesome and clumsy way of getting effects.
Another method was to place forty-one parallel glass cylinders of equal length and thickness on a perpendicular sounding-board. These tubes were wetted and stroked, the music varying by the greater or less pressure of the performer’s fingers. This, it is obvious, must have been a difficult instrument to play.
The musical glasses originally arranged by Dr. Arnott are undoubtedly the best, and with a little patience can be easily and cheaply made by anyone. The patience is required to hunt up glasses having the required notes on them.
We give a [drawing] of this above. The open circles represent the mouths of the glasses standing in a wooden case. The relation of the glasses to the written musical notes is shown by the lines and spaces which connect them. The learner will see at once that one row produces the notes written upon the lines, the other row those in the spaces. There are two octaves, and the player stands by the side of the case, with the notes ascending towards the right hand, as in the pianoforte. The sounds are produced by passing the moistened fingers round the edges of the glasses. A little gum dissolved in the water makes the fingers ‘bite’ better, and produces a greater volume of sound.
III.—A WOOD HARMONICON.
In the section on ‘[The Musical Glasses]’ we gave at length the details of construction of a glass harmonicon. An instrument of the same character made of wood is now, it seems, taking a place in the French orchestras, and we herewith give an [illustration] of the latest form of the so-called ‘Xylophone’ as used in Paris, with the names of the notes marked in the French manner, wherein the ancient ‘Ut’ does duty for the modern ‘Do.’
The curious in such matters must have noticed the wide distribution of the bamboo harmonicon. Some such instrument for the production of sharp, short sounds can be traced back to the old Greeks and Hebrews, and is found to-day amongst the Russians and Cossacks and Tartars of the Steppe, and the mountaineers of the Urals and Carpathians. Even in Sicily, in 1742, a wooden harmonicon was described under the name of the Xylonganum, and the wooden slips analogous to the nigger-bones laid on strings are mentioned as forming a German ‘music-maker’ more than three centuries ago. In 1830 Gussikow, a Russian, made a tour of Europe with a xylophone composed of wood and straws, the straws taking the place of the strings and tapes; and straws, it may be as well to observe, are excellent substitutes for the strings in a glass harmonicon. There is no difference in the treatment of these suspenders, and the arrangement given in our plan herewith does equally well for both.
Of the instrument very little explanation is required. A number of pieces of wood, metal, bones, or stones are selected which will give the required tone when struck by a small hammer, and these are arranged on strings which are tightened over a shallow wooden box, being fastened with a small lump of sealing-wax to keep them in position. The harder the wood chosen for the palettes the better will be the sound; and if one good piece can be met with to give the set, the various sizes will give the tones almost without any variation. The straighter the grain the truer the sound; and though hard wood, such as oak and mahogany, is as a rule the best, yet pieces of ordinary deal will sometimes be found more musical. Some years ago we remember hearing a harmonicon made entirely out of a bundle of firewood scattered along a couple of waxed threads, and admirably was it played by the maker. There being no sustaining power in the materials, only very rapid tunes could be performed satisfactorily, but the sailor’s hornpipe on this bundle-wood harmonicon was quite a success. The notes being clear, sharp, and unmistakable, the very quick country dance and marching tunes could be delivered with great effect owing to there being no blurring of sounds. In combination with a piano or violin the xylophone is not to be despised, and in the orchestras wherein it has now been introduced it will probably prove more effective than is generally supposed. Being cheap, and easily made, it is worth having a try at.