BIRTH OF HARMONIUM

The first step toward Harmonium was taken by Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein. People will be shocked to know that Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein was not a person of music rather he was a professor of physiology at the University of Copenhagen.

During span, the European market imported plenty of “sheng” a Chinese musical instrument with a reed it looked like a vertical pipe. Professor Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein was very much fascinated by that instrument. He wanted to explore the physic behind the sound that the instrument is producing.

In 1779 an institute of st. Petersburg announced a reward for making a musical instrument that will produce a vowel sound. Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein decided to bag the award and started the experiment and finally, he was successful in making it up.

After the success of Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein, many other people across Europe got influenced by him started to make similar reed instruments. Some of them were successful and their creation can be still seen in the museum of Europe.like Gabriel Joseph Grenié invented the orgue expressif.

Latter on Alexandre Debain of France worked on the Grenié’s instrument and further developed it into an instrument which was later named a harmonium. He also got it patented in 1840 as Harmonium.

The Harmonium made by Alexandre Debain was smaller in size and was foot-operated. Although it looked like a piano it was less sensitive, soon it became popular in Europe and the united states. During the 20th century, church prayers songs were accompanied by a harmonium.

The 19th and 20th century was the peak time when the popularity of harmonium flourished. As climate, temperature, heat, and humidity did not affect the harmonium it soon started to be imported to other parts of the world. Anyone who wish to buy a harmonium during that time would enjoy an upper-class status.

In the 1930s the invention of the electronic keyboard started to be popular in the united states and took over the market and the harmonium lost its importance. In 1875 Dwarkanath Ghosh came with an Indian version of the harmonium and gave second birth to the history of the harmonium. This version was smaller than the European version and it was pumped with the help of hands instead of foot.

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