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?