Looking Back at My Graduate Thesis, Part 2: A Short History of Water Music

(This is part 2 of a series.. The first post is here: https://lucyjacksonmusic.com/blog/2020/7/8/looking-back-at-my-graduate-thesis-part-1)

In my last blog post, I promised I’d explore the history of water music before moving on to a discussion of my own work. It’s a strange, obscure corner of music history, bringing together characters as wildly different as Benjamin Franklin, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and John Cage. Of course, since this is a blog rather than a graduate thesis, I’ve tried to condense my research to a brief overview. At the very least, I’ll touch upon the major instruments and composers I came across. Hopefully, if anyone wants to explore water music more deeply, this blog will provide more than enough starting points for further learning.

The earliest example of water music I could find is an instrument called tusut in Arabic and sazi kasat in Persian, dating at latest to the 14th century. It was a set of porcelain bowls, each filled with water. The bowls would produce different pitches when struck, depending on the amount of water they contained.[1]  Although sources on the tusut or sazi kasat are limited, there’s room to speculate that it may have influenced a later and more familiar development, the crystal glasses. 

Richard Pockrich first used a set of crystal glasses as a musical instrument in the 18th century, and to this day it remains the most well-known of the water instruments.[2] Large glasses filled with lots of water make low pitches, while small glasses with only a little water make high pitches. They can be struck or rubbed along the rims. When struck, they make a clinking sound with a slightly wobbly pitch. When rubbed, they make a haunting, ghostly sound, a little like a bowed vibraphone. They appear prominently in a number of concert works. George Crumb used them in Dream Sequence: Images II and “God-Music,” the tenth movement of Black Angels.[3] [4] Joseph Schwantner included them at the beginning of …And the Mountains Rising Nowhere.[5] Very recently, Viet Cuong has written Water, Wine, Brandy, Brine.[6] Despite being fairly short, this piece opens up all kinds of musical possibilities, with the performers toasting one another, tilting their glasses to bend pitches, and striking the glasses with chopsticks.

Not long after Richard Pockrich began putting on shows with his crystal glasses, Benjamin Franklin decided to see if he could come up with a more sophisticated version of the instrument. In 1761, he created the armonica (also called the glass harmonica).[7] Instead of arranging glasses on a table, Franklin suspended glass bowls on a rotating bar. By wetting his fingers and stroking the bowls, he could produce pitches. The sound was essentially the same as that of the crystal glasses, but arranging the bowls close together in order of ascending pitches, like the keys of a piano, made performance a little easier. In the end, the simple crystal glasses far outlived the popularity of Franklin’s instrument. After all, arranging glasses on a table is much easier than building such an elaborate musical contraption. Before the armonica faded into obscurity, however, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart did write one piece for it: “Adagio and Rondo in C Minor,” K. 617.[8] The combination of Mozart’s classicism with the armonica’s unconventional sound is beautiful, otherworldly, and just a little unsettling.

After the crystal glasses and the armonica, little progress took place in the world of water music until the 20th century, when an outburst of daring experimentation pushed composers to seek strange new soundscapes to explore. John Cage, in writing his Trio for percussion, realized he needed to find a way to give cues to synchronized swimmers, since they were underwater and couldn’t hear the music. He submerged a gong in the water and struck it, allowing  the sound to travel to the swimmers.[9] This innovation revealed one of the most promising acoustic properties of water: pitch-bending. When an object is struck and lowered into water, the pitch bends downward. John Cage explored the idea further by incorporating multiple submerged gongs in First Construction (In Metal), layering tremolos as the gongs are raised or lowered to create an eerie texture.[10] Later, other composers would use percussion instruments like cymbals or crotales; Viet Cuong’s Diamond Tide, for example, prominently features submerged crotales in its first and final movements.[11] The pitch-bending effect of water would also form the basis for the waterphone, a water-filled metal bowl with rods, invented by Richard Waters. The player bows or strikes the rods, then tilts the instrument so the water will bend the pitch.[12]

In addition to his work with submerged instruments, Cage wrote a number of pieces featuring miscellaneous water-based sounds. In these, he focused not on developing sophisticated new techniques, but simply on exploring interesting textures. Water Music requires the performer to blow a duck call into a glass of water.[13] The deeper the call is held in the glass, the more muted the sound becomes. In Water Walk, a work specifically created for live audiences and famously performed on the game show I’ve Got a Secret, he experimented not only with liquid water, but also with ice and steam.[14] Cage requires the performer to fill a glass with ice, lower a gong and a cymbal into a bathtub, water a vase of roses, release steam from a pot, and whistle into a water glass, among other odd techniques.

After John Cage, other composers have continued to explore watery textures. The Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal has focused much of his career on finding music in nature, leading him to frequently include water in his work.[15] He turns to the natural world around him for inspiration, exemplifying a unique and valuable approach to composition. His work is deeply connected to rural Brazil. He borrows from numerous genres, and often uses everyday objects such as teakettles as musical instruments.[16]

Tan Dun, like Pascoal, has turned to water as a source of musical ideas. His Water Concerto, composed in 1998, reflects his sense of personal connection to water, which he associates with his childhood memories of Hunan, China.[17] The soloists play waterphones (both bowed and struck), pour water from glasses, drip it from their hands, splash it around in large bowls, and use the glasses to make air bubbles. The main orchestra often remains in the background, allowing the soloists to indulge in the rich but unpredictable sonorities at their disposal.

The most recent development in water music, as far as I’m aware, is Steve Mann’s hydraulophone. This 21st century instrument relies on the flow of pressurized water through a pipe, which the player can manipulate by pressing holes along the pipe in a manner similar to many wind instruments.[18] It sounds somewhat like an organ. As exciting as this instrument is, it hasn’t gained a foothold in music, probably because of its novelty. Still, it does show up every now and then in various science-oriented exhibits, in locations such as the Ontario Science Center.[19] 

I would not have been able to write Folk Music of Atlantis had it not been for the work of all these composers. I often incorporated older instruments and techniques, like crystal glasses and submerged instruments. Once in a while, I stumbled upon an idea I thought was new, only to find that it had already been done, like Tan Dun’s use of a glass to make air bubbles. When I did begin inventing my own instruments, I relied on the knowledge I’d gained from studying past works, using the acoustic principles they demonstrate to guide me to new ideas.

Sources

[1] A. Hyatt King, “The Musical Glasses and Glass Harmonica,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 72, no. 6 (April 1946): 97-98.

[2] George N. Heller, “To Sweeten Their Senses: Music, Education, and Benjamin Franklin,” Music Educators Journal 73, no. 5 (January 1987): 24.

[3] George Crumb, Dream Sequence: Images II (New York: C. F. Peters Corporation, 1976).

[4] George Crumb, Black Angels (New York: C. F. Peters Corporation, 1970).

[5] Joseph Schwantner, . . . And the Mountains Rising Nowhere (Mainz: Schott Helicon Music Corporation, 1977).

[6] Viet Cuong, “Water, Wine, Brandy, Brine.” Chamber Music. Accessed August 10, 2020, http://vietcuongmusic.com/water-wine-brandy-brine. 

[7] K. Marie Stolba, “Benjamin Franklin and Music,” American Music Teacher 26, no. 2 (1976): 8.

[8] Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Adagio and Rondo in C Minor, K. 617 (New York: Alfred Music, 1985). 

[9] William Fetterman, John Cage’s Theatre Pieces: Notations and Performances (New York: Routledge, 1996).

[10] John Cage, First Construction (In Metal). New York: Edition Peters, 1939.

[11] Viet Cuong, Diamond Tide, Wind Ensemble, accesse August 10, 2020, http://vietcuongmusic.com/diamond-tide.

[12] Bart Hopkin, “Trends in New Acoustic Musical Instrument Design,” Leonardo Music Journal 1, no. 1 (1991): 14.

[13] Cage, Water Music (New York: Henmar Press, 1960).

[14] I’ve Got a Secret, hosted by Garry Moore, featuring Zsa Zsa Gabor and John Cage, aired February 24, 1960, on CBS; Cage, Water Walk (New York: Henmar Press, 1961).

[15] Luiz Costa Lima Neto, “The Experimental Music of Hermeto Paschoal e Grupo (1981-83): a Musical System in the Making,” British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9, no. 1 (2000): 119-142.

[16] Hermeto Pascoal, “Hermeto Pascoal’s Music Reaches Far into the Stratosphere,” interview by Betto Arcos, Morning Edition, NPR, November 30, 2017, audio, 7:14, https://www.npr.org/2017/11/30/567220827/hermeto-pascoals-music-reaches-far-into-the-stratosphere.

[17] Tan Dun, Water Concerto, Water Concerto for Water Percussion and Orchestra, accessed August 10, 2020, http://tandun.com/composition/water-concerto-for-water-percussion-and-orchestra/

[18] Ryan Janzen, “Hydraulophones: Acoustic Musical Instruments and Expressive User Interfaces” (master’s thesis, University of Toronto, 2008), 5-8. 

[19] Janzen, “Hydraulophones,” iii.