Glass (H)armonica

[Paul Mackin]

As an addendum to this thread to elaborate on Ben 
Franklin's involvement with musical glasses as featured in
M&D I quote the Encylopaedia Britannica article on percussion
instruments:

. . . the tuned metal cups or bowls of the East were transformed
in Europe into tuned glasses and are first seen in the MUSICA
THEORETICA (1492) of the Italian musical theorist, Franchino Gafori.
One hears of them intermittently thereafter until they come to the
fore in the mid-18th Centruy as concert instruments. The rims of
glasses of graduated sizes containing enough water to tune them
were rubbed by the player's moistened fingers. By the 1760s they
had attracted the attention of the American scientist and
philosopher Benjamin Franklin, who proceded to convert them
into a more efficient and, above all, a polyphonic (many-voiced)
instrument, which he called armonica--now known as the glass
harmonica.

If this was covered earlier, apologies.

                                P.


>>This morning's Washington Post reports the following on the Saturday
>>evening National Symphony Orchestra Mozart Summer Festival
>>performance:
>>
>>Saturday's concert touched on chamber works, beginning with an
>>oddity, the Adagio and Rondo in C Minor for glass harmonia,
>>flute, oboe,  viola and cello, K. 617. The glass harmonica--water
>>filled cognac glasses played by rubbing a moistened finger around
>>the rim--produces weird, otherworldly sounds, an 18th Century
>>equivalent of the electronic instruments (Theremin or Ondes
>>Martenot) used by composers in our century . . .