135 lines
14 KiB
TeX
135 lines
14 KiB
TeX
\section{The Armonica in Germany}
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\newcommand{\Year}[1]{\textbf{#1:}}
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%The Holy Roman Empire (the ``Heiliges R\"{o}misches Reich''), known from the 16th century also as The Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, was a political conglomeration of lands which, at its height, contained most of the territory of today's Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Czech Republic and Slovenia, as well as eastern France, northern and part of central Italy, western Poland and western Croatia. Its languages thus comprised not only German and its many dialects and derivatives, but also many Slavic languages and the languages that became modern French, Dutch and Italian. The Emperor's Catholicism did not preclude large numbers of other religious groups-Jews and Eastern Orthodox-from living within its borders at various times. The Empire was also the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation.
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%Emerging from the eastern part of the Frankish Empire after its division in the Treaty of Verdun of 843, it lasted almost a millennium until its dissolution by Napoleon in 1806. By the 18th century, when the Empire was already in decline, Voltaire famously ridiculed its nomenclature by saying that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.
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%For most of its existence, the Holy Roman Empire was more akin to a confederation of sovereign states than a state in and of itself. In the concept of the Reich (or 'Empire')[ The Holy Roman Empire was the ``First Reich''; the German Empire, from 1871\EnDash{}1918, founded by Bismark and brought to an end by Germany's loss of WWI was the ``Second Reich''. The Third Reich is of course infamous.] was included not only the government of the territory, but strong Catholic connotations (thus the holy prefix). Until 1508, German Kings were not considered Emperors of the Reich until the Pope had formally crowned them as such.
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%All this helps explain why there was abundant nobility in the Holy Roman Empire to be patrons to Mozarts and Kirchgaessners, musicians' (sometimes tacit) Catholicism, and the relative political ease with which musicians traveled in that region.
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Though the armonica was invented in England, it's really in Germany that it found its home\EmDash{}embraced and loved like nowhere else.
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The instrument soon aroused widespread interest.
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\Year{1766} The armonica is described in the \Title{Hanoversche Magazin}
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\footnote{St\"{u}ck 59. Cited in \BrForkelQUIW{}, 30}
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and the \Title{Leipziger W\"{o}chentliche Nachricten die Musik betreffend}
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\footnote{S. 71. Cited in \BrForkelQUIW{}, 30}
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\Year{1768} Marianne Davies performed in Vienna [??? Or 1769].
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\Year{1769} Frick tours throughout Germany. He gives a concert in Frankfurt on September 16, which includes this description of his instrument: ``This instrument consists of pure glass bells, from which one hears a fine and singing tone unlike anything else in music.''\footnote{Quoted in \BrIsraelQIUY{}, 50}
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\Year{1773} Frick tours Germany again, (Hamburg in February), and leaves for Russia
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\Year{1776 or 1777} Frick returns to Germany from Russia
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\Year{1778} Frick leaves for London
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\Year{1780} Roellig takes up the armonica and goes on tour
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\Year{1781} Roellig performs in Hamburg
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\Year{1782} The \Title{Almanach f\"{u}r Deutschland auf das Jahr 1782} (``Almanac for Germany for the year 1782'') announces Franklin's new invention\footnote{\BrForkelQUIW{}, 30}:
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\begin{quote}
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Of all musical inventions, the one of Mr. Franklin has created perhaps the greatest excitement. Concerning the way of producing tones, it is an entirely new kind of instrument. But considering the remaining aspects, it has similarites to the glockenspiel, the electrical machine, and the so-called Nuremburg Geigenwerk
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\footnote{a keyboard instrument in which the strings are rubbed by a moving band. Invented in 1575 by Hans Haiden of N\"{u}rnberg; Vincenzo Galilei saw one in Munich and later described it. See \BrMarcuseQOYR{}, ``Geigenwerk'', p.202}
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\end{quote}
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\TODO{??? India rubber fingers, useless without keyboard, etc.}
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It goes on to mention among ``clever instrumental artists in Germany'' who performed on the Armonica one Fricke, Court Organist of the Markgraf von Baden-Baden, and a certain R\"{o}llig and Kirchgaessner.\footnote{Sonneck, Suum, 66}
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\Year{1787} Roellig's \Title{\"{U}ber Die Harmonika: Ein Fragment}
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\Year{1788} Roellig performs in Hamburg
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\Year{1791} Kirchgaessner performs in Vienna; Mozart composes his quintet (K617) for her; Roellig moves to Vienna
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\Year{1792} Kirchgaessner performs in Prague, Dresden, Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg and Magdeburg
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\Year{1796} In November Kirchgaessner performs in Hamburg in November and December
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\Year{1800} F.F. Hurka (1762\EnDash{}1805) a minor musician of Bohemian origin, a tenor singer in various towns and concert director in Berlin, includes a song about the armonica in a collection published around 1800. The song is entitled 'An die Harmonika', a setting of words by 'Richter' (probably Jean-Paul Richter). The first and second of the six stanzas are as follows:
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\begin{quote}
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Youngest and fairest of the fair daughters of sweet harmony, to whom that mother gave omnipotence in magical sounds, thou, sent to comfort mortals whom the goddess saw lamenting, wert turned aside from Elysium and didst become\EmDash{}`Harmonika'.
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When first every ear hearkened to the new sound, all the sons of earth abandoned themselves to enchantment: their intoxicated spirit seemed to hear the harmony of the spheres and the song of the angels in praise of the Uncreated.
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\footnote{Quoted from, and translated by \BrKingNotes{} 68}
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\end{quote}
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\Year{1801} Kirchgaessner performs in Hanover and Frankfurt
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\Year{1804} Kirchgaessner performs in Leipzig. Roellig dies in Vienna
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\Year{1805} Kirchgaessner performs in Berlin and Breslau
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\Year{1806} Kirchgaessner performs in Vienna.
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\Year{1808} Kirchgaessner performs in Prague; Kirchgaessner \& Goethe meet.
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\Year{1809} Kirchgaessner performs in Stuttgart, dies in Schaffhauser.
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\Year{1812} Hanslick records a concert given at Belin which includes a trio for three armonicas!\footnote{\BrHanslickGeschichte{} 1:135}
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\Year{1813} E.T. Hoffman publishes a review of Beethoven's Piano Trios, Op. 70[AMZ, 15:3, March 1813, 141\EnDash{}54, \TODO{??? check original} quoted in Hoffman, ed. Charlton, p. 300ff.??] in which he says of a certain passage in the Beethoven piece:
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\begin{quote}
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If these sextuplets are played with a dexterous light touch with the soft pedal down and the dampers raised, a susurration is produced that recalls the aeolian harp and the glass harmonica and has a quite wonderful effect when combined with the bowed notes of the other instruments.
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\end{quote}
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To the soft pedal and the sustaining pedal the reviewer added the so-called harmonica pedal. The Germans added a pedal to their pianos called the ``String Harmonica'' or the ``Harmonica Keyboard Glide''\EmDash{}the keyboard would slide over a tiny amount that resulted in only two of the three strings being struck by the piano (the third would sympathetically vibrate), making the sound quieter and more ethereal. It's still present on modern grand pianos, except that the hammer now strikes only \textit{one} of the three strings when the pedal is depressed\EmDash{}it's now called the \textit{una corda} pedal.\footnote{See Harding, 44ff.}
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\Year{1815} Beethoven composes his \Title{Melodrama} for the \glassarmonica{}
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\Year{1819} A letter by Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler appears in Der Freim\"{u}thige[xvi, April 29 and 30, quoted in Hoffmann/Charlton 414ff]. First he discusses why the armonica is going out of fashion, and of the cause of all the 'fainting-spells' the armonica caused:
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\begin{quote}
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Haude and Spener, in No. 31 of their journal[i.e. \Title{Berlinische Nachrichten von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen}, March 13 1819] make it clear that Frau K[rickeberg]'s armonica playing was rather lacking in effect, and ask how it is that the armonica in general is no longer so effective as formerly; perhaps our nerves have become hardened or softened, or perhaps the fault lies in our ear-drums, now that they have been spoiled by all the drum-beating, trumpeting, tromboning, and keyed-bugling. On the other hand the Freim\"{u}thige f\"{u}r Deutschland, in No. 62 of that journal,[March 27, 1819] calls the armonica the most beautiful and sonorous of all instruments, and praises the inspired fingers of this gifted artist which summoned forth the instrument's ethereal echoes.
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I for my part, not having heard these ethereal echoes, must agree with Messrs. Haude and Spener that the astonishingly magical effect produced by the armonica years ago is now completely a thing of the past. But I am sure that our nerves have remained exactly the same, and that our eardrums, however battered they may be by drums and trumpets, are certainly still able to detect ethereal echoes too.
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\ldots
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Now if the Freim\"{u}thige f\"{u}r Deutschland calls the armonica the most beautiful and sonorous of all instruments, then as a hardened musician I would reply that from the musical point of view the armonica is one of the most feeble and imperfect instruments there are! Of the welter of trivial ariettas and variations and polonaises and other insipid trifles that are normally played on it I will say nothing except to remark that, to a finer ear at least, any melody on the armonica sounds stiff and wawkward. The fault lies in the instrument's mechanism, which makes it impossible even for the most practised player to connect the notes together in an artistic sense. This mechanism also precludes any rapid execution. On the other hand, the armonica affords the advantage of the organ, that the note continues as long as one's finger touches the glass. This property means that the characteristic quality of the instrument can be fully exploited only in slow music written in stric style.
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\end{quote}
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Interestingly, swooning at the sound of the \glassarmonica{} seems to have been a method for women to attract men:
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\begin{quote}
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Now if it is true that the armonica has such limited capabilities in music, then it is clear that the admiration and wonderment created by its novelty was aroused merely by its tone\ldots In addition, the armonica's popularity rose during the period of delicate nerves, and when it was claimed that the armonica exerted a magical influence on the nerves, the instrument could not fail to captivate every sensitive soul. For any young lady of breeding it would have been most ill advised, as soon as the glasses were even touched, not to fall into a tolerably convincing swoon; she would have risked becoming an immediate object of indifference to any young man of refinement, however long he had courted her with amorous glances. Even ladies of more mature age fancied themselves transported back ten or fifteen years by all the pangs of blessed rapture, and received an heart and a novelette in the bargain! Of the use made of the instruments by Mesmer I prefer not to think!
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Now, it seems, the age of delicate nerves and swoons is just about over.
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\end{quote}
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He concludes with a story worthy of Roellig:
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\begin{quote}
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The best armonica player of recent times I have heard was a fine man of gentle and pleasing character who, returning home from the French war, resided for a few days in the same house as me. I am referring to none other than my inestimable friend, the Bashkirian Colonel Tetulow Pripop who, unjustly, has become little known in the musical world. This man was totally obsessed by the armonica which he found in my house; he played the whole day long, and was able to elicit from the instrument the strangest sounds on could ever hear; the melodies and chords he produced also rejoiced in the most amazing originality. The distinctive, inimitable sound which other good armonica players achieve only now and then, and which insensitive people claim to resemble the scraping of a knife across a window-pane, was so completely within the colonel's power that he was able to produce it uninterruptedly.
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The manservant to my dear Tetulow Pripop, a jolly young fellow with a most endearingly tigerish physiognomy, was so beside himself at his master's virtuosity that with loud howls he threw himself down and kissed his feet. Yet it was not surprising that this person was so deeply moved, since he too ws musically gifted and was able, when playing his long, narrow, Bashkirian pipe, to awaken trul idyllic sensations in the breast. One was momentarily transported to the most beautiful toad-pond a sensitive soul had ever sat beside.
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I will eternally remember the occasion when Tetulow Pripop played the armonica for the last time. Overcome by profound emotion, he had removed his large, pointed fox-fur capas well as three small caps he was wearing beneath it; he sat there in his red cape, conjuring forth the most exquisitely ethereal harmonies, at which his tiger was also moved to wail and moan dreadfully.
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Finally, as though in heart-breaking grief at the departure of their beloved friend, the majority of the glasses burst into pieces.
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Thereupon the Bashkirian Colonel Tetulow Pripop pulled on a pair of white kid-gloves and hurried away to his regiment.
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I have never seen the good man since.\footnote{Hoffmann/Charlton 418\EnDash{}19}.
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\end{quote}
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Schiller introduced it into his \Title{Geisterseher (S\"{a}mmtliche Werke)}\footnote{edited by E. von der Hellen, 1904, Bd. 2, p.275} and in one of his letters wrote: ``Die Wirkung dieses Instruments kann in gewissen Situationen m\"{a}chtig werden. Ich verspreche mir hohe Inspirationen von ihr (Bd. 2, p.423).'' \TODO{??? need years to put this in the chronology}
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Other writers: Jean Paul (as in his \Title{Hesperus}, \Title{Titan}, and \Title{Quuintus Fixlein}, Schubert and Wieland (cf. \Title{Neue Deutsche Merkur, 1804}) were also enthusiastic.\TODO{???}
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% From King (1946) p.114
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\TODO{???}
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%An indication of the 'heydey' of the \glassarmonica{} in Germany can be seen in the dates of publication of articles and reviews concerning the armonica in the \Title{Allgemeine Musicalische Zeitung}:
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