page_title: Glass harmonica
section_title: Musical works
hierarchical_section_title: Glass harmonica / Musical works
caption_attribution_description: English: Beginning of the manuscript score of 'Aquarium', movement 7 of the Carnival of the Animals, showing part for glass harmonica
context_page_description: The glass harmonica, also known as the glass armonica, glass harmonium, bowl organ, hydrocrystalophone, or simply the armonica or harmonica, is a type of musical instrument that uses a series of glass bowls or goblets graduated in size to produce musical tones by means of friction.
context_section_description: Composers including J. G. Naumann, Padre Martini, Johann Adolph Hasse, Baldassare Galuppi, and Niccolò Jommelli, and more than 100 others composed works for the glass harmonica; some pieces survive in the repertoire through transcriptions for more conventional instruments. European monarchs indulged in playing it, and even Marie Antoinette took lessons as a child from Franz Anton Mesmer.
  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his 1791 K. 617 and K.356 (K.617a) for the glass harmonica. Ludwig van Beethoven used the instrument in an 1814 melodrama Leonore Prohaska. Gaetano Donizetti used the instrument in the accompaniment to Amelia's aria "Par che mi dica ancora" in Il castello di Kenilworth, premiered in 1829. He also originally specified the instrument in Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) as a haunting accompaniment to the heroine's "mad scene", though before the premiere he was required by the producers to rewrite the part for two flutes. Camille Saint-Saëns used this instrument in his 1886 The Carnival of the Animals (in movements 7 and 14). Richard Strauss used the instrument in his 1917 Die Frau ohne Schatten.
  For a while the instrument was "extraordinarily popular," its "'ethereal" qualities characteristic, along with instruments such as the nail violin and Aeolian harp, of Empfindsamkeit, but "the instrument fell into oblivion," around 1830. Since the armonica's performance revival during the 1980s, composers have again written for it (solo, chamber music, opera, electronic music, popular music) including Jan Erik Mikalsen, Regis Campo, Etienne Rolin, Philippe Sarde, Damon Albarn, Tom Waits, Michel Redolfi, Cyril Morin, Stefano Giannotti, Thomas Bloch, Jörg Widmann (Armonica 2006), and Guillaume Connesson.
  The music for the 1997 ballet Othello by American composer Elliot Goldenthal opens and closes with the glass harmonica. The ballet was performed at San Francisco Ballet, the American Ballet Theater, the Joffrey Ballet, and on tour in Europe including at the Opera Garnier with Dennis James performing with his historical replica instrument.
  George Benjamin's opera Written on Skin, which premiered at the 2012 Aix-en-Provence Festival, includes a prominent and elaborate part for the glass harmonica.
caption: Part of the original manuscript score of "Aquarium" from The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns. The top staff was written for the (glass) "Harmonica". About this soundPlay (help·info)
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