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Zaterdag 5 augustus 2017
The glass harmonica: the world's most dangerous instrument?
Composer William Zeitler plays a glass armonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761. For more on this fascinating story read the full article here on the Toronto Star: http://on.thestar.com/2jmXp0E. Or read an excerpt of Joe Fiorito's article below:
Rare instrument makes an eerie Toronto debut: Fiorita
The mad scene, in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” will feature a rare glass armonica performance by William Zeitler.
The second thing you learn, when you learn to drink wine, is how much fun it is to run a wet finger along the rim of the glass in order to make an eerie musical sound.
The third thing you learn is that, if you run your wet finger around the rim of a glass half-full, it will produce a different sound than that of a glass that is full.
The first thing you learn? If you have to ask, you have never had a glass. Now, let the curtain rise on Lucia di Lammermoor.
I will, as usual, explain:
The Canadian Opera Company is mounting a production of Donizetti’s masterwork; during the performance, eerie music plays as Lucia goes mad.
That music was written for a rare and peculiar instrument; the dull call it a bowl organ; snobs call it a hydrocrystalophone; you and I will call it what its inventor, Ben Franklin, called it.
The glass armonica.
Franklin, who could not refrain from inventing things, was in England in 1761 when he saw a fellow playing glasses filled with water; intrigued, he had some glass bowls made, large and small; these he mounted on a spindle, and he used a treadle to make them spin. Then he wet his fingers, and Bob was his uncle.
Enter William Zeitler. He is from California, and has been brought here for the Lucia. We met the other day, at the Four Seasons Centre. He led me backstage to a rehearsal hall. We talked as we walked.
He said, “The music for the mad scene was composed for the armonica; it has an other-worldly sound, but that first player was a pain in the neck, according to the story, so it’s usually played on the flute.” And, of course, there are more flutes than armonicas in the world.
The rehearsal hall looks like a high school gym without the basketball nets. The armonica sat off to the side on its own table; squint, and it looks like bubbles; you want to hold your breath.
Zeitler, a trusting soul, left me alone for a moment, saying, “I’m going to find some dihydromonoxide.”
Water, to you.
He needed to wash his hands. His fingers must be oil-free when he plays. “You want your hands squeaky-clean. I use lava soap; four out of five armonica players agree.” That’s a joke. There are only five or six armonica players in the world.
He returned with a bowl of water and set it down. Water, fingertips; rosin, bow; same thing.
Zeitler’s first instrument was the piano, but as soon as he heard the armonica, he was hooked. He had one made 15 years ago in Waltham, Mass., by the late and legendary Gerhard Finkenbeiner.
Zeitler’s instrument has 44 bowls, some of which are rimmed with gold to indicate the equivalent of what would be, on the piano, black keys.
The set of bowls is worth $36,000. He travels with them in a special nesting case; the rest of the instrument — spindle, brackets etc. — accompanies him as excess baggage.
He then turned on an electrical device which set the spindle spinning, wet his fingers and began to play the mad scene from the opera. The music is haunting; if I say it is mesmerizing, I’m not kidding.
Mesmer; look him up.
Zeitler has recorded 10 CDs, eight of which are his own music; the other two contain music written for the instrument by Mozart and others.
When he finished with the mad scene, I, cheekily, asked him to play “Stairway To Heaven.” He, cheekily, obliged.
Jimmy Page, but better.
“Lucia di Lammermoor?” That’s Italian for “I love Lucy.” No, it isn’t. But you should go and see the opera, if only to hear Mr. Zeitler rock his bowls.
http://www.roh.org.uk/news/the-glass-harmonica-the-worlds-most-dangerous-instrument
The glass harmonica: the world's most dangerous instrument?
Credited with unexplained deaths and mental breakdowns, how can 37 glass bowls cause so much chaos?
25 April 2016 at 3.02pm | 7 Comments
It started out as something of a dinner party crowd-pleaser. After hearing musicians in England playing an arrangement of water-filled wine glasses, Benjamin Franklin (of American ‘Founding Fathers’ fame) experimented with creating his own version.
The result was the ‘armonica’: 37 glass bowls of different sizes, threaded together on an iron spindle and colour-coded with paint to identify the notes. In contrast to the wine glass version, the bowls were positioned horizontally, allowing the player to sound up to ten notes at the same time. With its delicate sound and unusual appearance, the instrument soon became popular – even French queen Marie Antoinette took lessons – and thousands were built and sold.
So far, so ordinary, until reports from delighted party guests gradually gave way to something altogether more perplexing. Hearing the singing glasses, listeners credited the instrument with mind-altering affects. Princess Izabella Czartoryska of Poland, who met Franklin and his armonica in 1772, wrote an account: 'I was ill, in a state of melancholia, and writing my testament and farewell letters... [Franklin] opened an armonica, sat down and played long. The music made a strong impression on me and tears began flowing from my eyes. Then Franklin sat by my side and looking with compassion said, "Madam, you are cured." Indeed in that moment I was cured of my melancholia.'
Soon, regular players reported unusual side-effects from playing. Tinnitus, disorientation and even 'madness' struck the players with alarming regularity. The instrument was credited with causing evil and endangering the public, and the health warnings were clear: ‘If you are suffering from any kind of nervous disorder, you should not play it; if you are not yet ill you should not play it; if you are feeling melancholy you should not play it,' German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz wrote.
Reports of mental instability and hysteria soon saw this eerie instrument relegated from the realms solo performance. Opera, however, with its frequent flights of fancy and multiple 'mad scenes', is where this instrumental anomaly found its home.
Its most famous outing is during Donizetti's bel canto tragedy, Lucia di Lammermoor - unsurprisingly, during the 'mad scene', cementing the glass harmonica's place as the soundtrack to unusual or other-worldly activities. It's these unique qualities which Beethoven had used to his advantage in a similarly disconcerting scene written 20 years before, in an unpublished extract from Princess Leonore, incidental music composed for a play, Op.202/WoO 96. The play itself is unremarkable, but, unusually for Beethoven, there is a short 'melodrama' for glass harmonica and narrator, at at the point in the play when the heroine Leonore is speaking to her true love from beyond the grave.
If only the players had listened to the steadying voice of science a little earlier. A quick analysis of the tones produced by this maddening instrument reveals they are produced between 1,000 and 4,000 hertz. Sounds of this frequency are difficult for the ear to place, and the result is that listeners are unable to work out where the music is coming from: 'beyond the grave', unsurprisingly, no longer stands up as a credible answer.
But it wasn't just the sound that caused players and listeners alike to lose their wits. The lead crystal used in the manufacturing of the instrument reportedly had an effect on all those who spent hours in its company, causing them to hallucinate or even faint. One such player, Marianne Kirchgessner, died at the age of 39, with the instrument being blamed for her untimely death. Science, again, debunks this theory: lead poisoning was common in the 18th and early 19th centuries for both armonica players and non-players alike.
Nowadays, with science on its side, the glass harmonica has a small but devoted fan base. It's not hard to find plentiful examples of the instrument on YouTube or Spotify, where the likes of Björk, David Gilmour and Tom Waits are among those to have offered it a guest spot on their albums. But even despite a celebrity following, it's fair to say the instrument hasn't yet shaken its dangerous reputation. After years in the shadows the glass harmonica enjoyed its time in the operatic limelight in George Benjamin's 2013 work, Written on Skin, but the associations were clear. As the singer descended into madness, the eerie song of the glass harmonica could be heard from somewhere imperceptible. Science tells us it was the orchestra pit, but you never can be sure...
Geschreven door bosheks om 13:20
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