Glass Harmonica - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

In music

Pink Floyd's 1975 track, Shine On You Crazy Diamond, opens using a glass harmonica. David Gilmour's 2006 album, On An Island, features a glass harmonica played by Alasdair Malloy on several tracks. The subsequent tour featured a glass harmonica being played at two shows to open "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".

Björk's song "All Neon Like", from her 1997 album, Homogenic prominently features a glass harmonica played by Alasdair Malloy throughout the song. Alasdair Malloy also featured on Björk's"Unplugged" set for MTV

Dennis James played glass harmonica as backing to the song After The Gold Rush on the 1999 album Trio II by Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.

On Linda Ronstadt's own solo album Winter Light, a glass armonica is part of the instrumental accompaniment of "Heartbeats Accelerating."

American nu-metal band KoRn featured a glass armonica on some songs from their 2006 album See You on the Other Side including "Tearjerker" and "Seen it All". They also used one for the songs "Creep" and "Falling Away From Me" from their 2007 MTV Unplugged concert.

The intro of the Aerosmith song, "Janie's Got A Gun," has an eerie glass harmonica feature.

In television

An armonica is featured in the sixth episode of the anime Black Butler II, where a maid plays the instrument at a costume ball and its sound hypnotizes all human listeners into becoming a mindless, attacking mob. This is a direct reference to the belief that its sound could disturb the minds of those who heard it. Sebastian even explains this to the other characters after the instrument is destroyed.

In film

The instrument has been used in several film soundtracks. James Horner used a glass harmonica and pan flute for Spock's theme in the 1982 film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.. The glass harmonica is also used for Spock's theme on the soundtrack of the 1991 film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, composed by Cliff Eidelman. Alasdair Malloy is featured on glass harmonica for dozens of soundtracks including many of the Harry Potter films, The Young Victoria, Prometheus,and Mansfield Park.

In literature

In his 1997 novel Mason & Dixon, Thomas Pynchon fictionally describes Franklin's armonica: "If Chimes could whisper, if Melodies could pass away, and their souls wander the Earth... if Ghosts danced at Ghost Ridottoes, 'twould require such Musick, Sentiment ever held back, ever at the edge of breaking forth, in Fragments, as Glass breaks."

The 2000 novel The Glass Harmonica, by Louise Marley, is speculative historical fiction focusing on the glass harmonica. It describes Benjamin Franklin's invention of the armonica, the public debut of the armonica as played by Marianne Davies, and exposure of a young Mozart to the instrument. A future story arc describes the modern revival of the instrument and the superstitions regarding its potential effects on the nerves.

In Mitch Cullin’s 2005 novel, A Slight Trick of the Mind, Sherlock Holmes investigates the case of a grief-stricken woman’s fascination with the music of the glass armonica.