Glass Harmonica invented by Ben Franklin

For years the glass harmonica, invented by Ben Franklin, was thought to inspire madness in listeners and players.

But madness and passion are close cousins. Whatever feelings the instrument stirred in those long ago audiences, Vera Meyer can likely identify with today. Meyer, a former U-M student whose father was a U-M professor, still remembers the sunny afternoon 25 years ago in Harvard Square, when a street musician held her transfixed with his glass music for more than an hour. The ghostly, eerily beautiful notes wafted over the crowd and wormed directly into Meyer’s heart.

“I had a eureka flash,” Meyer, 59, recalls. Shortly after, she procured a Franklin-styled harmonica from master glassblower and instrument maker Gerhard Finkenbeiner, and she hasn’t stopped playing since.

Meyer has played among classically trained masters before audiences worldwide. She’s stopped touring now, preferring small shows close to her home outside Boston. Meyer considers playing a privilege whether it’s a European concert hall or a local church.

“Sometimes you have a life-altering experience where something just speaks to you,” she says of that day in Harvard Square. “I liked everything about it. Maybe also the fact that it was so rare, and I’m by nature attracted to very unique things.” 

Glass music is a simple concept (music made by wet fingers on glass rims) but Franklin’s creation was and is incredibly difficult to make, and Meyer’s glass harmonica is unlike any instrument most have seen—or heard.

“The pieces written for the glass harmonica range from the obscure to the very obscure,” Meyer says dryly.

During a concert in Harvard Square, Meyer places the instrument in front of her on a table and sits down. If asked, she dresses in period clothing, but this time she’s casual. Her harmonica resembles a graduated stack of dessert dishes nestled together and mounted horizontally on a steel rod. Some of the rims are painted gold, analogous to the black keys on a piano. Franklin painted his rims different colors to represent the flats and sharps.

A crowd gathers, curious. Foreign visitors are in for a treat: Meyer can play every nation’s national anthem, and more than one Nepalese and Pakistani tourist has hugged, cried, and even saluted her.

This day Meyer picks a child—“they just stare in awe, I love it”—from the crowd to hand crank the spindle. She plays and periodically chats about the instrument’s history. The child turns the wheel and Meyer’s fingers trot up and down the harmonica’s length, tracing the rims of the quartz cups.

The resulting tinkling, delicate notes have an eerily beautiful quality that brings to mind tattered curtains, flitting Victorian ghosts, and yes: madness. Meyer just chuckles, tickled by the instrument’s macabre reputation. She assures the audiences with an impish smile: “I feel fine.”

Laura Bailey writes for the University of Michigan.