The Instrument That Ben Built
Ben Franklin was a fine musician. He played the harp,
guitar, and violin. He wrote songs. Music always filled
his home. And he constantly attended concerts.
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Few
people know that Benjamin Franklin
invented an amazing musical instrument. |
Franklin got the idea for an instrument during a trip to London in 1757. While there, he heard a musician give an entire concert by running his fingers around the rims of glasses filled with varying amounts of water. The beautiful sounds intrigued Franklin. His scientific mind began thinking of better ways to make music on glass.
Franklin set to work. He asked a crystal blower to make thirty-seven glass domes of different sizes and to put holes in their centers. Then he arranged the domes from smallest to largest on an iron rod that ran through the holes. He placed the line of bowls in a long pan of water. Then he attached the iron rod to a foot pedal that spun the bowls when pumped.
Franklin tinkered with his instrument for five years. Finally he was ready to play. With so much glass at his fingertips, Franklin performed quick, lively tunes as well as chords and harmonies. He claimed that his invention, which he called the glass armonica, sounded “incomparably sweet . . . and that once tuned, never again wants tuning.”
Franklin played his armonica for the many guests who visited his London home. He wrote, “My guests are certainly the best people in the world, for they are patient enough to listen to me play a tune on my armonica, and even hear me through to the end.”
Franklin’s many friends were enchanted by the clear, sweet sounds. As one Franklin visitor described it, “the armonica is a celestial, angelic, heavenly instrument.”
Eventually, Franklin gave a second armonica to a well-known musician named Marianne Davies. She took it on a concert tour of Europe.
Davies was a success! Everywhere she traveled—France, Austria, Italy, Germany—she was greeted by packed concert halls and standing ovations. Audiences admired the “sweetness and delicacy” of the armonica’s tones.
The armonica captivated American audiences, too. A musician named Stephen Forrage gave the first American armonica concert in Philadelphia in 1764. Soon, the instrument was charming people from New York City to Charleston. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson agreed that Franklin’s invention created some of the most beautiful sounds of the century.
For the next twenty years the armonica’s popularity grew. It became the fashionable instrument at drawing-room musicals and garden-party recitals. More musicians learned to play the instrument. But no musician played it as sweetly as a young German woman named Marianna Kirchgessner.
Blind since childhood, Kirchgessner had become legendary for the wondrous sounds she produced on the armonica. She performed so beautifully in Vienna that listeners burst into tears during her concert.
One of those listeners was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a well-known composer of symphonies and operas. Mozart was at the peak of his musical genius when he heard Kirchgessner play. He was so deeply moved that he pledged to write a piece of armonica music just for her.
Within weeks Mozart had completed his Adagio and Rondo, a quintet for glass armonica, flute, oboe, viola, and cello. He also wrote a shorter piece for the armonica only, called Adagio. They were exquisite pieces of music, and Marianna looked forward to more. But there would be no more. Just months later, at the age of thirty-five, Mozart died.
As for Benjamin Franklin, he continued to play the armonica until his death in 1790. Sadly, he never heard the music Mozart had composed for his instrument.
And the armonica?
People noticed that armonica players were beginning to get sick. Franklin never experienced any symptoms, but other musicians complained of headaches, stomachaches, hand tremors, and slurred speech. Today we know that eighteenth-century glass contained lead, a poison. It probably entered the musicians’ bloodstreams through the pores of their fingertips.
But doctors in Franklin’s time did not know about the dangers of lead. They believed that the vibrations of the glasses tormented the sensitive nerves of the musicians. They advised people to keep their hands off the armonica.
People did, turning instead to new instruments like the celestina. It sounded like the armonica but had keyboards connected to mechanical arms that struck glass bells. With the development of the celestina and eventually the modern-day piano, Franklin’s armonica faded from fashion.
Still, the armonica has not been forgotten. A replica of the instrument is on display at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, where recordings of Mozart’s music performed on a lead-free instrument can be heard.
Franklin’s original armonica, with its handsome mahogany veneer and brass hardware, can still be seen at the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
