Corey Mead - Angelic Music: The Story of Benjamin Franklins Glass Armonica

ALSO BY COREY MEAD

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THE STORY OF BENJAMIN FRANKLINS GLASS ARMONICA

Simon & Schuster

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New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2016 by Corey Mead

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition October 2016

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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui

Jacket design by Jess Spataro

Jacket art Courtesy of Theodore Presser Company Copyright 1927

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016000734

ISBN 978-1-4767-8303-1

ISBN 978-1-4767-8307-9 (ebook)

To Mom, Dad, and Ken

T he book you are about to read may seem unusual. It is, in the main, the story of a musical instrument, a unique, ethereal-sounding creation that was devised by Americas most inventive Founding Father. And yet this instruments curious history provides us with a window into any number of worlds beyond music: It tells us about eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture, psychology, and mysticism, about how styles come and go, and about the various prejudices and beliefs that have always attached themselves to music, and to every other form of art.

As much as anything, I hope this book is fun that it entertains you, and that it takes you on an unexpected journey through one of the unknown legacies of Benjamin Franklin, arguably the most widely skilled individual this country has ever produced. I hope the book tells lots of things youve never heard before. Most of all, I hope it stirs in you some of the same wonder and enchantment that, for me, a great piece of music has always generated.

I n the 1740s, as a middle-aged man, Benjamin Franklin was journeying through the Allegheny Mountains when he chanced upon a scene that remained with him for decades afterward. An impoverished Scots familyhusband, wife, and teenage daughterwere gathered on their front porch in the fading evening light. As Franklin sat with the family, the wife began singing a haunting, wistful tune, Sae Merry as We Twa Hae Been (Such Merry as We Two Have Been):

A lass that was ladend with care

Sat heavily under yon thorn

I listend a while for to hear

When thus she began for to mourn

When eer my dear shepherd was there

The birds did melodiously sing

And cold nipping winter did wear

A face that resembled the Spring

Sae merry as we twa hae been

My heart it is like for to break

When I think on the days we hae seen

The wifes soft, harmonious voice, along with the melancholy lyrics, brought Franklin to tears. Thirty years later, living in Passy as the American ambassador to France, and relating the story to his French friend Andr Morellet, Franklin remained moved by the memory.

Though he is known as a scientist and statesman, Benjamin Franklin had a lifelong appreciation for the power of music and song. And while he is renowned for such ingenious inventions as bifocals, the Franklin stove, the lightning rod, and the odometer, his own favorite invention, the one that he said gave him the greatest personal satisfaction, was a musical instrument. It was called the glass armonica, and while the instrument is largely unknown to the general public today, it was so popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that Mozart, Beethoven, and Handel wrote works for it, Marie Antoinette and numerous European monarchs played it, Goethe and Thomas Jefferson praised it, and Dr. Franz Mesmer used it as an integral part of his Mesmerism sessions. Most remarkably of all, the glass armonica was the first musical instrument ever invented by an American, making it not only an important element of Franklins legacy, but a crucial part of early American culture. During the initial decades of its popularity, over 5,000 armonicas were produced in factories throughout Europe, and more than 500 pieces were composed for it.

The glass armonica became Franklins lifelong companion; he played it in his home in Philadelphia, and during his many years of residency in Europe. The instrument meant so much to him that he planned on dedicating an entire chapter of his never completed autobiography to its invention. Even at the end of his life, Franklin declared the glass armonica to be his most cherished creation.

The armonica appeared at a time when the worlds population was exploding, and with that explosion came a rapid upsurge in the number of instrument makers, as well as the inventiveness and resourcefulness these makers needed to compete in a crowded field. The number of musicians, the quantity of performed music, the money spent on music, and the distribution of printed music were swiftly expanding, as well. For a period of time in the late eighteenth century, the glass armonica seemed, in scholar Heather Hadlocks words, to conjure up all the magic of which music was capable. Like the magic rattle envisioned by philosopher Ernst Bloch, the armonica gave the impression of being an instrument both sacred and occult, one that could either summon beneficent spirits or banish evil ones through the power of its materiality. Like Orpheuss lyre, Hadlock writes, the armonica was no mere object for making music, but a focus for fantasies about ideal music itself. Drugstores stocked their shelves with special armonica water that contained secret ingredients (likely just alcohol) to help musicians play better. A large glass armonica factory in Germany employed dozens of workers to churn out hundreds of instruments.