Glasschord or Glass Harmonica made by Beyer, France, 1786.
Bought from Alan Vian, Paris
Made in France for the
aristocracy and as a decoration (Transvaler, 28.1.66).
Very rare, played like a piano, but the tune comes from slivers of glass instead of wires. Bought in France in a very old music antique shop (Star, 12.11.59) Hans Adler has only seen two others, one in a private collection in France and one in the musical instrument museum in Vienna. Their fragility accounts for their rarity. Mozart composed music in 1791 for such an instrument, a variant of which was played in his time by a blind musician, Marianne Kirchgessner.
Very rare, played like a piano, but the tune comes from slivers of glass instead of wires. Bought in France in a very old music antique shop (Star, 12.11.59) Hans Adler has only seen two others, one in a private collection in France and one in the musical instrument museum in Vienna. Their fragility accounts for their rarity. Mozart composed music in 1791 for such an instrument, a variant of which was played in his time by a blind musician, Marianne Kirchgessner.
The sheet music - an Adagio in C and an
Adagio and Rondo for a glasschord, flute, oboe, viola and cello - are in the
Adler music library.
Two-and-a half by one-foot instrument, mahogany case, three octaves
of notes which act on hammers with heads of green leather as large as
olives. These strike a glass xylophone and produce sounds more limpid and sweet than those of a celesta.
Glasschords originally consisted of glasses
filled with water to varying levels to produce the notes of the scale. Sound was produced either by hammers or the
wetted fingers. Benjamin Franklin, when
he came to England in 1757, became interested and mechanised it by using
self-tuned glass bowls. He called it
"Harmonica". The instrument was later replaced by the celesta.
Permission for export had to be granted by the Musée du Louvre, which checked
if there was one left in France.
It belonged to the Comte de Briqueville, whose collection was dispersed in the 1930s (RDM, 17.12.59) It was unwieldy to carry around glasses of water in a piano. Thus Beyer changed these to strips of glass. (Sunday Times, TV Times, June 1, 1975)
It belonged to the Comte de Briqueville, whose collection was dispersed in the 1930s (RDM, 17.12.59) It was unwieldy to carry around glasses of water in a piano. Thus Beyer changed these to strips of glass. (Sunday Times, TV Times, June 1, 1975)
Is there anyone out there making reproductions?
ReplyDeleteI am ! This is still the first one I reproduce, but I finished the plans of Georges Bachmann's model and working on the prototype with an glass craftsman.
DeleteHello Anaïs. I'm interested by your Glasschord replica. I live in France (Nantes). Where do you live ? Thank you. Antoine.
DeleteHello Anaïs ! J'habite le sud de la France, je suis compositeur et je fais de la lutherie expérimentale. J'ai envie de faire un instrument de verre depuis longtemps et j'ai commencé quelques expérimentations. Ce serait chouette d'entrer en contact, je suis curieux de voir où tu en es de ton glasschord!
DeleteMon site : https://archil-lab.com/instruments
DeleteWondering how much would be the price today?
ReplyDeletehttp://instruments.loungetronica.com
Hello Layla Schubert, my name is Anaïs and I am a piano maker student. I have to give a project at the end of my studies and I choose to (try to) reproduce a piano-harmonica. If you are still interested, let me know! It would be a pleasure to work on it with the idea that someone would play it.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely *not* a glass harmonica. That instrument consists of glass bowls made to rotate in a trough of water through a treadle, which the player sounds with their fingers: see an example being played here https://images.app.goo.gl/cXGSCdHTvPwDpJP88 The glass harmonica is the instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin, and it was for this that Mozart wrote his charming pieces. Several antique examples survive.
ReplyDeleteYour instrument on the other hand is a glass-chord or glassichord, which as you say has a conventional keyboard, with the notes produced by tiny hammers striking glass rods. According to the /Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments/, this was actually invented by Beyer, a physician of Paris, and was approved in 1785 by the Académie des Sciences, so you have a very early example – perhaps the very first! If what Grove says is true, it is a little curious that the nameboard inscription is in the English language; and that Adam Beyer is a well known eighteenth-century *London* maker of square pianos from about 1768 on: but there it is, who am I to quarrel with Grove. Glass-chords were afterwards produced in some numbers by the London firm of Chappell and I have seen more than one.
The Glass harmonica was an important instrument for a while, taken seriously by composers; the glass-chord was essentially a toy, its restricted compass severely limiting the music it could play.
Hope this is helpful.
Correction: the bowls of the harmonica do not rotate in a trough of water, but they are played with wet fingers! Sorry for my error.
ReplyDeleteThere is apparently another glassichord in the Naples Conservatory, Italy