Harmonica: The speech developing tool that turned into a musical wonder
If you are an aspiring musician, what is your preferred instrument? After all, you there is a plethora of options for you to try out – from string instruments such as a guitar or a violin to percussion instruments like drums, not to forget wind instruments such as trumpets and the pocket-sized harmonica.
Considering you are a fan of the last option, aka, harmonica, and are pursuing it seriously, have you ever wondered who you should credit for its invention? Well, today we will let you know the entire story.
Precursor of the modern-day harmonica
Perhaps the most popular theory is that harmonica was preceded by a similar musical instrument called sheng that was a free-reed device, dating back all the way to 1100 BC China. Sheng can be described as a bundle of bamboo tubes fixed to a curving pipe and having a free reed (a strip of flexible metal) that flaps up and down whenever a player blows through the holes, in turn making music.
Inception of talking machine
In the early 18th century, a French Jesuit named Jean Joseph Marie Amiot who lived in Qing ruled China for a long time, returned to Europe and brought sheng with him. Around 1780s, a Dutch physicist named Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein came upon sheng and was inspired by its free reed design to invent a device that would help approximate human speech and better understand the mechanics of human voices. This is how the immediate forerunner of harmonica was born that was the size of an upright standard piano and was called the “talking machine.”
World welcomes the first official harmonica
With the turn of the century, free reed instruments, used as talking machines earlier, became widespread in Europe. But it wasn’t until 1821 that a German musical instrument maker and inventor named Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann who was experimenting with free reed devices came up with the first ever harmonica. He called it ‘terpodian’ or ‘mini harmonium’ and had significantly reduced the size of earlier designs to make it portable and pocket-sized. This harmonica had a special tuning called Richter tuning and contained chambers they generated multiple notes.
Harmonica becomes popular in the USA
Around the 1820s, many Germans migrated to the USA and with them carried the pocket-size harmonica to the West. Realising that USA received harmonica with open arms, German clock salesman Matthias Hohner opened a harmonica manufacturing company with his own name and by 1857 was selling the instrument to German immigrants. In fact, it was Hohner who had come up with the name mouth organ or mouth harp to give it an American feel.
While harmonica became quite popular across USA, it wasn’t until the World Wars that it ushered into its golden age. It was in circulation among different circles starting with vaudevillians (performers at multi-act musical theatres) who toured across the country with it to Hollywood musicians, who in turn encouraged the American cowboys to take up playing harmonica as a suitable pastime. The rest is of course history as over the years, the instrument has influenced distinct genres of music, from folk to rock and has been played by the likes of Bob Dylan to Stevie Wonder to present-day Taylor Swift.