Angelic Music The Story of Benjamin Franklin's Glass Armonica
epub | 12.4 MB | English | Author :Corey Mead | 1476783055 | 2016 | Simon & Schuster

Book Description :

"Fascinating, insightful, and, best of all, great fun...with spirited charm, Mead weaves history, music, science, and medicine into the story" (The Washington Post) of Ben Franklin's favorite invention: the glass armonica.
Benjamin Franklin is renowned for his landmark inventions, including bifocals, the Franklin stove, and the lightning rod. Yet his own favorite invention-the one he said gave him the "greatest personal satisfaction"-is unknown to the general public. The glass armonica, the first musical instrument invented by an American, was constructed of stacked glass bowls and played by rubbing one's fingers on the rims. It was so popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and Strauss composed for it; Marie Antoinette and numerous monarchs played it; Goethe and Thomas Jefferson praised it; Dr. Franz Mesmer used it for his Mesmerism sessions. Franklin played it for Washington and Jefferson.

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Category : | Handel, Mozart, Percussion Instruments