Before the Musical Glasses
Porcelain Instruments
Porcelain, which can superficially resemble glass, is essentially a kiln-fired clay. Unlike glass, which is formed when it is molten hot (over 650C/1200F), porcelain/clay is formed at room temperature and then baked. The methods of working porcelain, as well as its chemical and physical properties, are quite different from glass.
Porcelain musical instruments have their own long history, and predate musical instruments made of glass.
I haven’t been able to find any example of a porcelain instrument played with the ’wet finger around the rim’. (And although modern wine goblets made of glass which musically work are extremely common, the author has yet to find a single porcelain wine goblet that works musically. The author does have a small porcelain wine-glass that pitifully ’tries’ to sing—and being the ’trained professional’ he finds it easy to make a glass sing if it’s able. )
The following list only includes porcelain cups (and excludes, for example, wind instruments made of porcelain like the ocarina). All are played with mallets or sticks. Some are tuned with water. None are played with the wet-finger-around-the-rim.
The Japanese “Hi”
The ’Hi’ is essentially a porcelain teacup. “Its use was suggested by the sound of drinking cups when accidentally struck.” No mention of more than one ’hi’, and no mention of water tuning.
Piggot (1909), 175
The Chinese “Fou”
The ’Fou’ is essentially a clay urn, struck with a wooden or bamboo stick.2 No mention of more than one ’fou’, and no mention of water tuning.
Liang (1970), 25 (text), 68–69 (illustration)
The Chinese “Shui Chan”
A 13th century Chinese encyclopedia compiled by Ma Tuan  states
quoted in Moule (1908), 147–148
that this instrument consisted of nine clay cups.
13th century Ma Tuan does not mention water tuning, but 20th century Moule says they were “probably containing different quantities of water”, yet offers no evidence to support this assertion—they could just as easily simply be different sized cups
The Indian “Jˆalathar´angini”
The Indian Jˆalathar´angini appeared perhaps around 700 CE. It consisted of a set of porcelain cups tuned with water, and was played with sticks covered with felt or tipped with cork.
Day (1891), 105
The Arabian “Tusut”
Played with sticks. The Persian Ibn Ghaybi describes a set of ’musical bowls’ made of earthenware, whose notes were determined by the amount of water in each bowl. An author of the 9th/15th century describes a set of kizan (cups) and khawabi (jars) and their water content.
Farmer (1960) 9:11
A Persian Porcelain Instrument
An interesting example of playing porcelain cups is found in The Voyages and Travels of the Ambassadors from the Duke of Holstein to the great Duke of Muscovy and the King of Persioa 1633–39, written originally by Adam Olearius, rendered into English by John Davies:
We were invited to sit down, and to eat of the fruit and conserves which were brought in, during which we had the divertisement of musick and dancing. And as a further honour to us, the Patriarch was sent for, who came in immediately, having about him a cassock of water’d chamlet of a violet colour, and attended by two priests clad in black, with caps on their heads. He was no ill company: but the second of the two bretheren, whose name was Elias—by, made the best sport of any of the company. For, to heighten the divertisement of the ambassadors, he would needs play on the tamera, which is an instrument used by the Persians instead of the lute: and then, he called for seven porcelane cups, full of water, and striking them with two little sticks, he accorded them with the lute.
London Chronicle March 1764? See Pohl (1867), I:59
Early Glass Instruments
Gafurius
Franchinus Gafurius (1451–1522) was a personal friend of Leonardo da Vinci and a famous musician in Italy in his day. His Theorica Musicae (Milan, 1492) contains a woodcut showing various ’Pythagorian experiments’. One of these ’experiments’ involves water filled cups; it is uncertain whether these cups are made of glass. The discovery that musically pleasing combinations of notes have simple numerical relationship is ascribed to Pythagoras (569–475 B.C.E.), and certainly at least belongs to the School he founded. For example, the relationship of ’Do’ to the ’Do’ above it (as in “Do Re Me Fa So La Ti Do”) is 1 to 2 (and is called an ’octave’), meaning this can be achieved by doubling the frequency, or making the string half as long (all other variables remaining unchanged), and so on. This much has been verified by modern physics, and it may be argued that this observation marks the beginnings of Western Science as we know it: quantifying experience with numerical relationships.
Gafurius
Gefarius text accompanying the woodcut reads as follows:
After truly obtaining these sounds Pythagoras himself investigated by a number of methods whether a system encompassing all harmonies consisted in these ratios, and he attached to equal strings weights derived from the same numbers and ratios. Then by adapting the length of various pipes so as to conform to particular dimensions and experimenting with them variously he upheld his absolute trustworthiness in these matters. Often too he measured vessels of equal weight, filled them with water according to some ratio and struck them with a rod. Also, by striking bronze bells of differing weights with a bronze or iron rod he concluded that musical intervals of this kind are formed and answer each other harmoniously through the ratios themselves. Indeed the effect whereby the length and thickness of strings of bronze and gut bring notes of music together in harmony as a result of the lead taken by actual ratios is more assured when derived from this source. And by using these methods he discovered a rule which takes its name from its character, not because the rule itself by which we measure sounds and their magnitudes is in the wood or bronze, but because an investigation of this kind is so firmly based that it cannot cause any investigator to come to an erroneous conclusion.. . .
The diagram below demonstrates the forms of these specific proportions and the intervals that are derived from them. In the upper left panel of this woodcut we see the event which legend says gave Pythagoras his insight. According to the legend, Pythagoras looks on as various blacksmiths pound the anvil, observing that different notes are produced depending on the weights of the hammers. Unfortunately this wouldn’t actually work—a hammer that is twice as heavy or twice the size of another won’t produce a note an octave different—the physics is more complex in this situation. (“IUBAL” which occurs in this panel is Latin for “Jubal”, who was considered the inventor of music.)
In the upper right panel we see bells and musical cups. With regards to the bells, there is no one characteristic to which numbers can be assigned which will give the Pythagorean musical intervals: a bell that weighs twice as much as another will not necessarily be an octave apart. A bell that has twice the volume as another will not necessarily be an octave apart. A bell whose rim is twice the diameter, or circumference, as another will not necessarily be an octave apart. (All other factors being equal).
The same is true of the cups in the same upper right panel. (I invite the reader to take essentially identical drinking glasses from their kitchen cupboard and see if any amount of water in them can result in a pitch difference of an octave. It can’t be done.) The image would suggest that the cups are transparent, but how else could the artist show the differing levels of water? The text does not say they are of glass, simply that they are ’vessels’ (Latin: ciatos).
The lower left hand image suggests that the Pythagorean Ratios apply to the tension of strings on a zither-like instrument. Vincenzo Galileo (the famous Galileo’s father) demonstrated that this is false—to achieve the Pythagorean musical ratio of 1 to 2 (the octave) it is actually necessary for the string tension to be 1 to 4. The lower right hand image is the only unequivocally correct one: all other factors being equal: two pipes—one twice as long as the other— will have musical notes an octave apart.
The Ambras Collection
The first mention of a specifically glass musical instrument occurs in a 1596 inventory of the Ambras Collection at the Kunsthistorisches Museum (’Art History Museum’), Vienna which describes ’Ain instrument von glaszwerch’. This probably refers to the “Glasglockenklavier” (’glass glocken-keyboard’) dedicated to Ferdinand of Tyrol, made in the 2nd half of the 16th century and currently on display at the museum. It was a keyboard instrument, three and a third octaves in compass[F/G/A chromatically to g2/a2]. At this point it’s not possible to say if the instrument worked with glass-bells or glass-bars.
Private correspondence with the Kunsthistorisches Museum
’Buy My Fine Singing Glasses’
This image appears in The Cries Of London, a book consisting of a set of images of street vendors. It was first published in 1687, and reprinted frequently thereafter until well into the 20th century (when the images were reprinted as cigarette cards). Over time various images were added, and it isn’t clear exactly when this particular image appeared in this collection, but obviously it couldn’t be earlier than 1687.
Clearly the street peddler is demonstrating his wares with one hand, and holding his inventory in the other. Whatever he is selling, it has to be cheap and simple to be a ’street product’. If it were musically useful and sophisticated at all, it would be sold in a proper music store—in the The Cries Of London, there is no image of “buy my fine violins”.  (When considering this image, keep in mind that artists frequently get details wrong of the musical instrument they are depicting.)
Although the end of the singing glass against his lips suggests a mouthpiece, all of the glasses in his inventory have straight ends. It has been suggested that these glasses are played like a trumpet. Then, why no ’mouthpiece’ in any of his inventory? And why wasn’t this image titled “Buy My Fine Glass Trumpet?”
It has also been suggested that you would place a reed in it and play it like an oboe. But again, no reeds are apparent in his inventory, and why wasn’t this image titled “Buy My Fine Glass Oboe”?
Perhaps the title means exactly what it says: a ’singing glass’ is a glass for singing: you sing into it.
The (Single) Musical Glass
The (Very Basic) Physics of the Singing Wine Glass
Before delving into the history of the singing wine glass per se, let’s understand the singing/musical wine glass a little better.
Essentially a singing wine glass (or armonica cup) is a glass bell. Like a conventional bell made of metal, it has a resonant frequency, and if energy is put into the bell somehow—by striking it, for example—it resonates at its resonant frequency.
When you rub the rim of a wine glass with a wet finger, you’re doing the same physics as a violin player sliding the bow over the string — the ’sticky’ bow pulls the string to one side of the violin until it slips, and the bow is able to catch it and pull it again. This process repeats itself over and over hundreds if not thousands of times a second. The exact same process occurs when you rub your wet finger around the rim of the wine glass: your finger ’sticks’ to the rim and torques the glass until it finally slips, until your finger is able to catch it and torque it again. This process repeats itself over and over (again, hundreds/thousands of times a second), which puts energy into the (glass) bell, whose physics only allow it to vibrate at musical frequencies. And, voilà! A musical sound!
The standard wine glass is ideal for this because the stem gives the player something to hold on to while their wet rubbing finger puts energy into the bowl: if the player holds the bowl (bell) itself, this prevents the sides from vibrating—and thus no musical sound.
Adding water lowers the pitch (which the reader can verify for themselves in their own kitchen) mostly because—in effect—it adds mass to the sides of the glass, effectively making the sides heavier and thus lowering the pitch of the glass.
The water also adds a compressive factor that additionally complicates matters. See Chan.
Putting water inside the wine glass lowers the pitch, and so does putting water outside of the glass! Take a wine glass and check its pitch (with the wet finger around the rim); then run some water in your kitchen sink, put the glass in the sink so the glass is submerged except that the top part of the bell is above water, and check its pitch again. (See the figure below). Partially submerging the glass lowers the pitch. In fact, having water both inside and outside of the glass lowers the pitch most of all. The reader can verify that adding water ’outside’ the glass also lowers the pitch by placing a wine glass in a sink partially filled with water.
To recap: two essential elements are required for a musical glass: the walls of the bowl must be thin enough to vibrate easily, and it must have a stem—so the player can hold the glass by the stem without dampening the vibration of the bowl. You need both—thin-walled bowl, and a stem—or the wine glass simply will not sing with the wet finger around the rim.
Neither the Romans nor their Byzantine successors particularly cared about blowing thin glasses. But that was a hallmark of the Venetian glass blowers of the 14th through 16th centuries—particularly due to their invention of cristallo. These glasses were available to the wealthy throughout Europe.
Shattering a Glass with the Voice
We have seen how a Venetian wine glass can be shattered by placing poison in it (and how there may actually be some truth to it). In addition, if a glass is subjected to a sufficiently loud sound at exactly its resonant frequency, it will shatter it.
Scholes mentions a book by one D.G. Morhof ‘on an Amsterdam tavernkeeper who could vocally shatter twenty-five glasses in thirty minutes’. And the Talmud (the compilation of Jewish civil and religious law completed A.D.500) says:
Scholes (1970) 7
When a cock shall stretch forth its neck into the hollow of a glass vessel and sing therein in such a way as to break it, the full loss shall be paid.
When a horse neighs or an ass brays and so breaks a glass vessel, the half of the loss shall be paid.
Soncino edition (London, 1936), Kiddushin, p.118
It’s hard to imagine such incidents actually occuring. But it suggests that they were aware of the possibility of shattering a glass with sound.
A rather curious sequence of articles appeared in the London Times and other London papers in 1947. On February 3, 1947, ‘The Times’ printed a letter raising as a legal issue possible damage to a person resulting from the fragmentation of a glass, when, on January 18, a ‘lady of pleasing voice was singing a beautiful aria in “Madame Butterfly””. The ‘Evening Sandard’ in its issue of that same day went on to say that the note in question was the top B flat of ‘Un bel di’, sung by Miss Josie Fearon.
In the next few days ‘The Times’ printed a selection from many letters received on this subject, giving instances of the shattering of a glass by causes ranging from the voices of Clara Butt, Lablache, Garcia and Caruso, to the shrill chatter of children and the tones of a schoolmistree teaching Greek! As a kind of follow-up, the ‘Sunday Express’ printed the following letter on April 27, from a lady in Upminister
Shortly after my brother drank from a glass, Lassie, our Devon sheepdog, gave a piercing bark in the yard below. The glass exploded, fragments shootng all over the room. Maybe the Talmud was right about barking dogs and glasses after all!
King 1956
A Hyatt King repeats an even more bizarre story by the then editor of the ‘Strand Magazine’ who recalled that in 1898 it had published a story ‘The Luck of Pitsy Hall’. . .
. . . in which the villainess plotted to shatter a valuable goblet at a coming-of-age ball given for the Pitsy heir. She secured an orchestra to play a waltz of her own composition into which she had cunningly introduced a malignant sequence. For a repeated unison on the dominant broke the goblet by a purely acoustic agency which its guardin footmen could hardly have forestalled!3
King 1956
Francis Bacon
The first mention of rubbing a wine glass rim with a moist finger is apparently by Francis Bacon (1561—1626) in his Sylva Sylvarum (1627):
9. Take a glass, and put water into it, and wet your finger; and draw it round about the lip of the glass, pressing it somewhat hard; and after you have drawn it some few times about, it will make a the water frisk and sprinkle up in fine dew. This instance doth excellently demonstrate the force of compression in a solid body: for whensoever a solid body, as wood, stone, metal, &c. is pressed, there is an inward tumult in the parts thereof seeking to deliver themselves from the compression: and this is the cause of all violent motion.. . .
Bacon (1841), II:8ff.
Curiously, Bacon doesn’t mention the sound of it (although a few paragraphs later he talks about sound in general). I’ve tried getting the water to ’frisk’ in glasses that don’t sing, and it looks like singing and ’frisking’ are mutually dependent. Which is expected from the understanding of physics that we now have—the glass is going to have to be resonating (singing) for the walls of the glass to be able to put enough energy into the water to make it ’frisk’. (Try it! It won’t ’frisk’ until it ’sings’.)
It is very curious that he doesn’t mention the sound itself—did he have a hearing problem?
Galileo
If there is some question about Bacon’s discussion of the wet-fingeraround-the-wine-glass-rim phenomenon because he doesn’t mention the sound, Galileo’s discussion of the same phenomenon leaves no doubt.
Galileo’s father Vincenzo Galileo (c.1525–1591) was a preeminent musician and music theorist of his day. Since antiquity, the theory of music had consisted of a mathematical discussion of harmony (based on Pythagoras’ observations), in other words what are the mathematical ratios of the lengths of strings producing consonances, and how does one divide the octave? It had always been thought that not only was the ratio of lengths of two strings sounding an octave 2:1, but that so also was the ratio of the tensions of strings of equal lengths tuned an octave apart. Vincenzo showed that this is not the case: the ratio of tensions is 4:1. He found that ratio by hanging weights from strings. Here was an experiment (conducted in 1588, when his son Galileo was living at home and giving private lessons in mathematics) that produced numbers and bore directly on the age-old theoretical discussions. The example was certainly not lost on his son. The better part of Galileo’s career was spent observing the heavens through his telescope, founding modern astronomy and proving the Copernican heliocentric model of the solar system in the process.
Galileo’s lenses must have been expertly ground from glass that was both thick and clear, and surely made in Murano. Galileo continued to improve on the telescope until he finally attained magnifications of up to thirty times; this was actually the maximum that could be achieved with his basically simple telescope. It was with lenses like these that he made his revolutionary discoveries in astronomy.
Polak, 87-88
We also know that Galileo himself was an accomplished amateur lute player and composer, trained by his celebrated musical father no doubt. Galileo even used his musical training to subdivide time in his physics experiments!
Drake (1975)
Galileo’s wrote his last book, Two New Sciences (1638), while under house arrest by the Vatican. At the time he was suffering from very poor health, including the loss of sight in one of his eyes. (Medical attention was finally begrudgingly permitted after Galileo was completely blind, which occurred shortly after completing his book). He was also grieving the loss of his beloved daughter Maria Celeste (who died at age 33), and under strict orders not to write anything about astronomy. So instead he wrote about the strength and resistance of materials, and the physics of moving objects—his ’two new sciences’—arguably founding modern physics in the process. It encompassed 30 years of highly original experimentation, discussing aspects of the fracture of solid bodies, cohesion, leverage, the speed of light, sound, pendulums, falling bodies, projectiles, uniform motion, accelerated motion, the strength of wires, rods and beams under different loadings and placements-and the musical wineglass.
Galileo
Galileo was also forbidden to publish anything, “not even the Lord’s Prayer”, but Galileo managed to publish his book anyway by heroic intrigues which kept both him and his publisher out of trouble with the Inquisition.
Sharratt, 184
Sharratt, 185
Galileo knew this was his last book, and he wrote it under terribly difficult circumstances, yet he digresses for several pages to consider the wet finger around the wine glass phenomenon:
If one bows the base string on a viola rather smartly and brings near it a goblet of fine, thin glass having the same tone [tuono] as that of the string, this goblet will vibrate and audibly resound [the first mention of ’sympathetic resonance’?]. That the undulations of the medium are widely dispersed about the sounding body is evinced by the fact that a glass of water may be made to emit a tone merely by the friction of the finger-tip upon the rim of the glass; for in this water is produced a series of regular waves.. . .
Galileo, 99-101
Athanasius Kircher
Father Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680) was a Jesuit priest, German linguist, ancient historian, mathematician, vulcanologist, physicist, theologian, inventor and music theorist (to name only a few), active mainly in Rome. He has been called ’the last man to know everything’. His encyclopedic works invited his readers to explore the connections among virtually every imaginable form of knowledge. “His books offered choice passages of forgotten texts to his readers in large folio volumes, dense with the fonts of many languages and laden with the promise of more knowledge yet to come. The fact that he was unable—or perhaps unwilling—to release all of his books and editions of the wisdom of the ages into print made him all the more interesting and enigmatic.”
Findlen, 3–4
Kircher is a complex man to assess. He correctly determined that the Coptic language was descended from the language of ancient Egypt; yet his “translations” of the hieroglyphs were pure figments of his imagination. He had the prestige and connections to build a global network of Jesuits and non-Catholic men of letters to compile the first table of magnetic declination (the amount that true north differs from magnetic north, which varies by region of the world—something very useful for navigation).Yet, presenting himself as an expert in decrypting codes, he was completely unable to decipher a simple case of ’mirror writing’ presented to him by his friends. In his lifetime he was equally venerated and vilified. According to his autobiography, Kircher was:
Findlen, 21
Kircher, 1684
Almost drowned in a pond as a child.
Almost hung by Protestants, but because of his piety they gave him money, returned his possessions and let him go.
On another occasion, to escape the Protestants, he struggled through deep snow, ill-clad and penniless, begging for food for three days.
Almost died from a leg infection but was cured after praying to the Virgin Mary.
At a horse race he was accidentally pushed into their path, but crouched motionless and emerged unscathed.
While crossing a river in winter, the ice he was on broke away and he floated downstream. He then swam to shore through the icy water and walked 3 miles through the snow to safety.
Godwin, 10
He failed his first application to the Jesuit College in Mainz, and was admitted as a novice to the College at Paderborn in 1618. Due to misplaced humility he disguised the fact that his intelligence was far above that of his fellows, but eventually he came to his senses.
Godwin, 10
In 1624 he taught mathematics, Hebrew and Syrian at Heiligenstadtat the tender age of 23. During this time he published his first book, Ars Magnesia (1631) -his researches on magnetism. That same year once again the invasion of Protestant troops forced him to flee-this time leaving behind all of his manuscripts.
Godwin, 11
Obviously Protestant Germany was a bad place for a bright Jesuit priest to be in those days, so Kircher’s superiors allowed him to go to France. He ended up in Avignon around 1631, where once again he nearly got himself killed—this time when he was caught in a waterwheel which he had investigated a little too closely. Meanwhile, his teaching and studies continued happily until 1633, when he was summoned to Vienna to succeed the astronomer Johannes Kepler (d. 1631) as Mathematician to the Habsburg Court.
Godwin, 11
Since Germany was still dangerous for Jesuits, Kircher took a route through northern Italy. He embarked with some other brothers of his order, and on the first stage of their journey from Avignon to Marseilles they all became ill. So the captain landed them on an island to recuperate-and promptly sailed away with all their possessions. They managed to hail some fishermen who took them to Marseilles, whence they sailed for Genoa in a more respectable ship. After two violent storms—in one of them the captain avoided shipwreck by guiding his ship into a narrow cavern-they at last reached Genoa. After two weeks Kircher continued his journey, and yet another storm drove the ship far past its intended destination—to Civitavecchia, the main port of Rome. Obviously Kircher could not miss the chance of seeing the Eternal City, so he set out on foot for the forty-mile pilgrimage. On reaching Rome in 1635 he found that he was expected! Friends and patrons had succeeded in having his orders changed, and he was to stay at the Roman College, the hub of the whole Jesuit Order, with a special commission to study Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Kircher arrived in Rome shortly after Galileo had been placed under house arrest—Kircher steered clear of open participation in the Copernican controversy.
Godwin, 11
Findlen, 21
In 1636 Friedrich, Landgraf of Hesse-Darmstadt, the ruler of Kircher’s home state, converted to Catholicism, largely through Kircher’s efforts. He was received into the Church with great solemnity in Rome, and soon made Cardinal. Wishing to travel in Italy, he selected Kircher as his traveling companion. The party traveled south to Sicily and touched at Malta-everywhere Kircher took the opportunity to explore natural science: mirages, zoology, volcanism, and much more. When they reached Naples, Vesuvius threatened to erupt (the same volcano that we saw claimed Pliny the Elder a millennium and a half earlier), and Kircher climbed to the top of the volcano and had himself lowered into the crater to observe it more closely.
Godwin, 13
That was his last adventure. He was made professor of Mathematics at the Roman College, a post that he held for eight years, after which he was completely relieved of his teaching duties so he could devote himself to study. Now he began to publish his major works, apparently concentrating on a different subject every three or four years. His reputation brought him scholars, letters and specimens from all over the world, and he amassed a vast collection of artifacts, curiosities of natural history, and scientific apparatus. Before his death, in fact, a large hall was provided to house the ’Museo Kircheriano’, which was one of the world’s first museums.
Godwin, 13
By 1678, suffering the ailments of old age, he mainly occupied himself with spiritual exercises. He died in 1680.
Godwin, 14
One of Kircher’s 40 or so books was the Phonurgia Nova (1673), devoted to acoustics, and containing all the then-known mathematics and physics concerning sound. It also includes his invention of the megaphone, as well as two experiments involving the ’wet-finger-around-the-wine-glass’.
Kircher
In the first experiment, Kircher writes:
Kircher, 1673, 188-9
Take a glass drinking vessel of any size whatever, which you are to fill with pure clear water. If, after doing this, you wet your index finger and rub the outer lip of the vessel in a circular movement for some time, you will after some time perceive an extraordinary sort of sound resembling ringing metal; when the water is stirred by this it will be so forcefully rippled that it appears to be set in motion by some wind.
Thus far, Kircher is correct. He continues
If you fill this vessel only half-full, you will still perceive a sound, but pitched twice as high as the previous one, so that this sound will re-echo the earlier one at the perfect interval of an octave, and as a result you will observe that the rippling of the water is also more agitated. . .
Here Kircher is mistaken, as the reader can verify for themselves in their own kitchen with a wineglass. The range of a wineglass from empty to as-full-as-possible-yet-the-glass-can-still-sing is about a major third (’do’ to ’mi’ in ’do re mi’)—far short of the ’octave’ that Kircher claims.
His other experiment involved five wine glasses:
Let five drinking vessels of glass be taken, all of the same size and capacity, which you are to arrange so that they touch each other in the way which is portrayed here in the diagram below. Furthermore let one vessel be filled with aqua vitae (an aqueous solution of alcohol), a second with wine of the better sort, another with distilled water, another with a coarse liquid, such as sea water or olive-oil, and the central one with normal fresh water. Having done this you are to moisten a finger-tip and rub it continually on the lip of the vessel until you perceive the ringing noise which we showed you how to produce in the first experiment. For this very high pitched sound will to your amazement stir all the remaining liquids into motion, and the more violently the more one liquid surpasses another in fineness (subtlety). As a consequence the ethanol, true to its fiery or choleric nature, will leap up in the vessel more than the others; but the wine, true to its sanguine or airy nature, will undergo only a moderate agitation in its vessel. Furthermore the distilled water, which exhibits a phlegmatic constitution, will give rise to a movement that is slower and more sluggish than the others, but the coarse water contained in its vessel will, on account of its earthy make-up, be scarcely capable of any motion. One should conclude that music stirs emotions in our minds in the same manner. . .
No woodcut accompanies the first experiment (nor is one really needed), but the woodcut of the other clearly shows glasses with stems-a requirement for a musical glass. No mention here of different levels in the five glasses to achieve different pitches. Furthermore, the author has tried Kircher’s experiment:
For: | The author used:
’aqua vitae’ (an aqueous solution of alcohol) ’wine of the better sort’ ’distilled water’ ’a coarse liquid, such as sea water or olive-oil’ ’the central one with normal fresh water’ | vodka a nice merlot from 1998 distilled water olive oil tap water
The author simply couldn’t get the results Kircher described.
Based on what we now understand about the physics of acoustic resonance, Kircher’s experiment is much more likely to succeed if the glasses are tuned to each other (something that Kircher doesn’t specify). So the author tuned the glasses to each other and repeated the experiment, and still didn’t get the results that Kircher described.
The author concluded his attempt at recreating Kircher’s experiment by toasting him with the glass of merlot. (The glass of vodka was appropriately disposed of as well.) Thus Kircher’s two ’experiments’ with wineglasses are both problematic, particularly the second—did he actually perform them?
Kircher was also interested in (and sometimes credited with inventing) the Magic Lantern, which has a future part to play in our story of the armonica.
It doesn’t appear to have occurred to any of these men—Bacon, Galileo, or Kircher—to have a set of glasses tuned with water in order to play melodies. Why not? These were extremely bright men! Yet this is idea seems to spontaneously occur to little children at the Christmas Dinner table. Perhaps the answer is simply that, as we have seen, wineglasses of this period were extraordinarily expensive; a set of a couple dozen glasses on which to play music would have cost a king’s ransom, and was thus beyond imagining.