From wine glass to music!

A glass harp being played by Russian artiste in India. The rims of wine glasses filled with water are rubbed by the player's fingers to create the notes.

A glass harp (also called musical glasses, singing glasses, angelic organ, verrilion or ghost fiddle) is a musical instrument made of upright wine glasses.

It is played by running moistened or chalked fingers around the rim of the glasses. Each glass is tuned to a different pitch, either by grinding each goblet to the specified pitch, in which case the tuning is permanent, or by filling the glass with water until the desired pitch is achieved.

The glass harp was created in 1741 by Irishman Richard Pockrich, who is known as the first virtuoso of the musical glasses.

The composer Christoph Willibald Gluck played the musical glasses. He performed in London and Copenhagen. His instrument consisted of 26 goblets.

The instrument was popular in the 18th century. Pockrich's contemporary, Ford, published Instructions for the Playing of the Musical Glasses while Bartl published a German version.

Source: Wikipedia


This footage is part of the professionally-shot broadcast stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM 1080i High Definition, HDV and XDCAM. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We are happy to be commissioned to film for you or else provide you with broadcast crewing and production solutions across South Asia. We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... Reach us at rupindang [at] gmail [dot] com and admin@wildfilmsindia.com.