CORRALES, N.M. — A glass instrument that produces the hypnotic music of wet crystal is sounding a clarion call for debate over the lead poisoning of Beethoven.
The glass armonica, invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761, was demonstrated to Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart when Franklin visited France during the American Revolution. Both composers then wrote music for the instrument, which created an international sensation--and superstition.
The instrument consists of blown crystal bowls, in graduated sizes, arrayed along a spindle that rotates while the player places moistened fingers on them. In the early history of the instrument, lead glass stemware was sometimes used instead of crystal, and leaded paint was applied to some of the bowls to differentiate those notes.
Recent California-sponsored studies of Beethoven's hair show the composer had a concentration of lead 100 times higher than is normal today, according to the Health Research Institute in Naperville, Ill. Researchers commissioned by San Jose State University say it's virtually certain Beethoven had lead poisoning, or plumbism, which could explain some of his illnesses, his strange behavior, maybe his deafness and quite possibly his death.
Armonicist Mayling Garcia of Corrales believes Beethoven's association with a lead-glass armonica may have been instrumental in his death. Beethoven was exposed to the armonica before his symptoms started as a young man, she said.
Rumors of lead poisoning were associated with the glass armonica, also sometimes called a glass harmonica, for years before the Beethoven study was released last October, says William Zeitler of Seattle. He is among about a dozen armonicists in the United States.
"It's been kind of running around in the armonica community as long as I've been involved," said Zeitler, a pianist who took up the armonica six years ago.
Modern armonicas are made in the United States by G. Finkenbeiner Inc. of Waltham, Mass., where the glass bowls are blown and the electrically rotated spindles are built. Lead glass and leaded paint are no longer used in them.
Garcia, 35, said company founder Gerhard Finkenbeiner told her about historic armonica lead contamination--and more.
The armonica was greeted in colonial America with allegations of witchcraft. People who played it were said to have later gone insane.
Franz Anton Mesmer, a pioneer in hypnosis and a contemporary of Franklin, used it to entrance some of his subjects.
