Lesser-Known Composer of the Month: Brief Sketches: Marianne Davies

The glass armonica, an instrument developed by Benjamin Franklin as a refinement on the older musical glasses, enjoyed a relatively brief but powerful vogue in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.  Marianne Davies became known as one of its most celebrated players, performing on an instrument supplied by Franklin himself, after first making a name for herself as a child prodigy on the harpsichord.  She toured extensively with her younger sister Cecilia, who was similarly precocious as a singer.

The daughter of two Irish musicians, Marianne Davies made her first documented public appearance in London in 1751 at age 7.  Franklin made his first glass armonica in 1761, and by 1762 Davies had devoted herself entirely to that instrument.  During this time the Davies sisters gained the approval of several notable figures in England, most significantly Johann Christian Bach and the Venetian expatriate and man of letters Joseph Baretti, both of whom supplied the sisters with numerous letters of introduction and recommendation to acquaintances in Europe.

Highlights of subsequent European tours included lodging with Johann Adolph Hasse in Vienna, who gave singing lessons to Cecilia and collaborated with Metastasio on a cantata, "L'Armonica," designed to showcase the sisters' talents.  There were also several meetings with the Mozart family, which left them favorably impressed; Leopold Mozart considered acquiring an armonica himself.  (The instrument also made a lasting impression on Wolfgang, but his glass armonica works were written for another virtuoso, Marianne Kirchgaessner.)

Cecilia continued to enjoy a successful career for some years, but Marianne was increasingly plagued by health problems beginning in the late 1770s.  This, coupled with the growth of the notion that the armonica could cause or exacerbate nervous disorders, effectively brought her career to an end.

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