Books/2013.09-GlassArmonica/tex/Menzies.tex
2026-06-30 08:19:02 -07:00

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\subsection{??? Captain Menzies and his Glass Harp}
\break
One of Franklin's armonica ideas was applied back to the musical glasses: tuning the glasses to have the correct pitch without water tuning. This is now called the 'glass harp'-musical glasses without the water tuning. Not only does this save the player a lot of trouble, but water in the glasses dampens the sound (the more water, the more muffled), so glass harps also sound better.
Smith describes an improvement to the Glasses devised by Captain Menzies of the Perthshire Militia, ``a gentleman who, from his infancy, seems to have prosecuted the study of Musical Instruments with the most enthusiastic devotion''. In Menzie's improvement the wineglasses were still upright-like the musical glasses tuned with water, but they were ground to pitch-like the glasses on Franklin's armonica, so they didn't need water tuning. \footnote{Smith, v.} Later we shall meet Bruno Hoffman, a twentieth century glass performer who also tuned his musical glasses by grinding and called his instrument the 'glass harp'.