WASHINGTON, November 14, 2011 – One of the most interesting benefits of attending countless operas, plays, ballets, and concerts is that sometimes, when you’re least expecting it, you’ll come up with a brand new experience. Take the Washington National Opera’s performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, now being performed in the Kennedy Center’s Opera House.
Most opera fans have seen at least one performance of this popular opera, based on Sir Walter Scott’s tragic, melodramatic Scottish novel, The Bride of Lammermoor. Others have upwards of half a dozen or even more.
Working version of a glass harmonica.
WNO’s current production, however, features a rarely heard novelty instrument that Donizetti actually wrote into his original score. Referred to in WNO’s program notes as a “glass armonica,” but at least as well known as a “glass harmonica,” it was actually invented by Benjamin Franklin, providing Lucia with an unexpected connection to colonial America.
In search of novelty
From the time people actually started setting down music to paper, and probably before, musicians and composers have searched for ways to stretch the musical envelope in their own time. One way to do it, of course, is to invent a new instrument and promote it by frequently playing it in public.
Long ago, inveterate truth-searchers like Galileo noticed that that goblets, wine glasses, or other glass containers filled to varying levels with plain water could actually be used to play specific notes of traditional scales. For example, with the right kind of glass, filled up to a specific level with water, you could play a reliably accurate middle C by running a moistened finger around its rim. Galileo first wrote of this phenomenon in “Two New Sciences.”
Young Roman busker playing her glass harp for fun and donations.
Taking this discovery to the next level, employing seven additional glasses, each filled to varying levels with water, scientists, musicians, and even garden-variety tinkerers could easily replicate the scale and octave of C, for example.
The individual often credited with being the first to systematically exploit this phenomenon was Richard Pokrich, an Irishman. He began performing in public in 1741, playing a set of tuned glasses as a kind of collective instrument that allowed him to play simple songs in a novel way that no one had ever heard before.
Pokrich understood that octaves and accidentals could be replicated with additional glasses filled to differing levels with water. (Alternatively, one could manually create individual glasses shaped and tuned to the varying pitches needed to mount an interesting performance.)
The enterprising Pokrich soon became well known in London as an expert performer on these water-filled glasses. Initially referred to as “musical glasses,” “singing glasses,” the new instrument eventually became better known as the “glass harp.”
The glass harp was quite popular in its time. No less a musician than path breaking opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck waxed enthusiastic over the new invention. He actually performed as a glass harp soloist himself, playing his own 26-goblet glass harp at public concerts. Mozart actually composed music for this instrument or its successors.
(Below: Robert Tiso's astonishingly virtuostic glass harp rendition of Johannes Brahms' Hungarian Dance No. 5, with synthesized orchestral accompaniment.)
Enter Ben Franklin and American efficiency
Franklin, too, became charmed by the glass harp, no doubt on one of his frequent pilgrimages to Europe. This famous American statesman and inventor was apparently a decent amateur musician himself, and he became intrigued with the possibilities—and the pitfalls—of the glass harp. The worst of these, no doubt, was the ever-present possibility that, en route to a performance, your glasses could get shattered in an unfortunate accident.
Whatever the case, in the early 1760s, Franklin invented a more reliable mechanical replacement for the glass harp. It was eventually dubbed the “glass armonica” or “glass harmonica.” Instead of glasses, Franklin’s contraption mounted a series of shallow, concentrically positioned cast lead glass bowls onto a horizontally spinning shaft.
Print depicting a version of Benjamin Franklin's glass (h)armonica.
Graduated from small to large and apparently color coded, each of Franklin’s bowls replicated a single tone. Better yet, the bowls’ arrangement on the shaft resembled each note’s relative position on existing keyboard instruments. This meant that any reasonably good harpsichordist could easily grasp the instrument’s principles, a big help when trying to get the hang of something that seemed entirely new.
Making things even easier, Franklin’s horizontal shaft spun his glass bowls continuously. The power was provided by a handy foot treadle, making a complete performance on the glass armonica not dissimilar from the experience of playing a small church organ. An added plus: since the glass harmonica was arrayed like a keyboard instrument, you could play up to ten notes at one time, something very nearly impossible on the glass harp, given the distance between various water glass-represented notes.
Improving on the familiar moistened finger technique used to perform on the glass harp, Franklin’s spinning bowls continually picked up moisture from a water filled reservoir beneath them as they spun. It was similar in a way to water boxes that do-it-yourselfers use today when moistening rolls or panels of self-pasting wallpaper.
(Below: Thomas Bloch in a fine, glass harmonica performance of Leopold Röllig's 'Commodetto.'
Freed from unnecessary motion and distractions, the glass armonica performer could thus play more complicated music than had previously been the case with the glass harp. The musician’s fingers could scamper quickly up and down Franklin’s virtual keyboard without having to worry most of the time about keeping those fingers wet.
Franklin’s invention became popular with composers and the public. Unfortunately, however, as the early 19th century began to unfold, the glass harmonica also began to generate some public controversy as well.
A Mesmerizing experience
While many audiences enjoyed the novel sounds of the glass harp and the glass harmonica, sinister rumors began to float around about the instrument’s otherworldly secret powers. The controversial German doctor Franz Mesmer (1734-1815)—who actually knew Franklin—was known to own and perform on a glass harmonica, and was purported to use it in his experiments in “animal magnetism” or “Mesmerization” when treating difficult patients.
More problematic than Mesmer’s alleged use of the glass harmonica was the unfounded rumor that the distinctive harmonic overtones generated by the instrument could drive musicians and listeners into madness.
Ironically, that’s almost certainly what attracted Donizetti to the glass harmonica when he was scoring Lucia di Lammermoor. As regular operagoers know, Lucia is driven quite literally mad by her evil brother’s political machinations and by her cruel treatment by her singularly inept lover, Edgardo. In the opera’s final act, Lucia flips out most impressively, terminating her sham, forced marriage with a knife and stalking the castle, completely unhinged. To this day it is regarded, hands down, as opera’s most memorable “mad scene.”
Lucia has been pushed over the edge in this scene and husband Arturo's (Corey Even Rotz') short, unhappy life has come to an end.
So what better way to illustrate the extent of Lucia’s madness than to score some of its accompaniment for the spooky, unearthly, gossamer tones of Ben Franklin’s glass harmonica? As already noted, the instrument had developed a reputation, albeit via rumor and Franz Mesmer, as an device that could fling a human being off the uncertain edge of reason. So why not exploit it to underscore the tragic depth of Lucia’s descent into madness?
The earliest performances of Lucia—the ones that employed the glass harmonica—must have proved a startlingly eerie experience for those in attendance. But, as is often the case with composers for musical theater, Donizetti continued to tinker with his scoring, eventually replacing the glass harp in Lucia’s mad scene with the more conventional tones of the solo flute, the scoring with which most modern audiences are most familiar.
Back to the future with Ben
Fast forward to our own time. Donizetti’s glass harmonica iteration of Lucia has begun to sneak back on stage in the 21st century. The Met used the glass harmonica scoring in their 2007 production of the work. And now the Washington National Opera has brought the instrument back yet again in its current performances of Lucia at the KenCen.
In its latest production, WNO actually positions what appears to be an antique or reproduction antique glass harmonica stage left. It begins to spin during Lucia’s mad scene, apparently driven by a small electrical motor rather than by a traditional treadle. However, this stage prop isn’t the instrument the audience is hearing. Rather, an updated version of the glass harmonica is being played in the orchestra pit by virtuoso William Zeitler. In a necessary compromise, given larger modern performances spaces, the instrument is slightly amplified so it can be heard in a larger modern auditorium.
William Zeitler performing on a modern, souped up, light-show version of the glass harmonica.
Interestingly enough, this leads us back to perhaps the most plausible reason—Mesmer and madness aside—as to why the glass harmonica may have fallen out of favor in 19th century orchestral and operatic repertoires. As the Romantic orchestra grew larger and more powerful and as singers developed louder and more robust voices, the exquisite but faint sound produced by the glass harmonica were simply overwhelmed by the over all sonic mix. After all, there’s no point in scoring for an instrument that can’t be heard.
Likewise, the scarcity of acoustic guitars and lutes in major Romantic and 20th century repertoire—largely for the same reason. It took rockers and power amps to get these instruments back into the musical fray.
(Below: On a more seasonal note, here's William Zeitler, glass harmonica soloist for WNO's Lucia, performing a virtuoso version of the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies from Tchaikovsky's ballet masterpiece, The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky scored the major part here for the music-box-like keyboard instrument known as the celeste, so it works quite well for the glass harmonica here.)
Today, with the simple flip of a switch, minimal amplification has the ability to return the glass harmonica to center stage. Whether this odd, otherworldly instrument catches on again or not, only time will tell.
Meanwhile, aided by a dollop of contemporary acoustic science, an updated version of one of Ben Franklin’s least known inventions is adding a ghostly, ethereal frisson to a signature mad scene in WNO’s current production of Lucia di Lammermoor.
And that pretty much sums up the improbable story of how a Scottish tragedy reimagined by an Italian Romantic composer got its novel special effects from an intrepid American patriot and inventor. Who says classical music is boring?
(Below: Let's wrap up our musical highlights with a performance of Mozart's Adagio and Rondo for Glass Harmonica and Quartet, K.627. Although the "video" here is only a portrait of Amadeus, the audio is quite good in this performance with feature soloists Gustav Sheck [flute]; Helmut Wionschermann [oboe]; Emil Seller [viola]; August Wenzinger [cello]; and Bruno Hoffmann on the glass harmonica.)
Read more of Terry's news and reviews at Curtain Up! in the Entertain Us neighborhood of theWashington Times Communities. For Terry's investing insights, visit his WT Communities column,The Prudent Man in Politics.
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