The Professor who Unknowingly Started the Free Reed Revolution

[adrian brown]

No, not Charlie Wheatstone, but Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723-1795). There's a very interesting article about the man and the early development of the free reed in the latest Galpin Society Journal. (Vol. LXXVIII, March 2025)  Here's the abstract:

 

Author: Olaf Aasland
Title: The Professor who Unknowingly Started the Free Reed Revolution.
Abstract: Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723-1795) was a German professor, physician and polymath who spent most of his academic life in Copenhagen. His competence spanned widely, and one of his achievements was a small organ that could play the five vowels a, e, i, o and u, for which, in 1780, he won the gold medal at a prize competition proposed by The Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. He erroneously thought that the human sound generator was a vibrating epiglottis and discovered a new type of pipe with freely vibrating reeds. Nicolai Kirsnik (1741-1802), an organ maker in St Petersburg and runner-up in the same competition, was the first to use free reeds in musical instruments, and when Georg Joseph (Abbé) Vogler (1749-1814) visited Kirsnik in St Petersburg in 1788 he was so impressed that he engaged Kirsnik's assistant, Georg Christoffer Rackwitz (1760-1844), to accompany him on his many Europe-wide concert tours to install free reed stops in existing organs, thus disseminating the new knowledge. Within the next three decades free reed instruments of all sizes and shapes popped up everywhere. Now there is probably no inhabited place in the world where you cannot find a mouth harmonica or an accordion.

 

If anyone is interested in a scan of the whole article, send me a PM and I'll try to oblige.

 

Adrian

 

 

 

 

[David Barnert]

On 3/29/2025 at 12:26 PM, adrian brown said:

If anyone is interested in a scan of the whole article, send me a PM and I'll try to oblige.

 

Yes, I’d like to see it. Thanks. You can email me at [got it, thanks]

 

The abstract leaves me wondering:

1. Does the author of the article assume the general readership knows what a free reed is without more clarification than “freely vibrating reeds”?
2. Had any of the people named ever seen a Sheng?

Edited March 31 by David Barnert
Removed email address

[Takayuki YAGI]

Interesting. On page 33 of the book "The History of the Melodica" I found Gottlieb Kratzenstein's name and a reference to his free-reed "talking machine".

[aeolina]

In my 1995 dissertation I wrote:

Although there is a need for further research, to “allow for the compilation of accurate data and supporting evidence to properly trace the free-reed from Asia ...to Europe”, [106] it is not my intention to dwell on the matter here. [107]  Similarly, a survey of the influential work of pioneering scientists must be left to others.  The publication of the findings of Kratzenstein of Copenhagen, Kirschnik of St. Petersburg and Robison of Edinburgh, and of other theoretical and descriptive material during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, helped spread an understanding of the free-reed and stimulated its application in experimental instruments. [108]    Pp. 22-23

 

Footnotes: 

[106] Macerollo, Accordion Resource Manual (London, 1985). , p.6. 
[107]  Key primary references include: Praetorius, Michael “De Organographia” in Syntagmatis Musici (tomus secundis) (1618); Marin Mersenne Harmonicon Libri Chapman) in Harmonie Universelle. The Books on Instruments 5 (Paris, 1636) (trans. by Roger E.  (London, 1957), p.383; Amiot, Jean Joseph Marie (Abbe Pierre Joseph Rousier ed.) Memoire sur la Musique des Chinoise (Paris, 1779) and Memoire concernant l’histoire, les sciences, les arts, les moeurs, les usages des Chinoise de la Borde, Jean Baptiste Essai sur la Musique Ancienne et Moderne (Paris, 1780); Vol. 1 (Paris, 1780) pp.365, 129, 141 and 142.  Secondary sources include Sachs, Kurt The History of Musical Instruments (London, 1940), p.184; “Harmonium” EB 11 Vol. VI, p.78; “Harmonium” NGDMM Vol. 8; Muller, Mette “Around a Mouth-organ: The Khaen in the Danish Kunst Kammer” in F. Hellwig (ed.) Studia Organologia , (trans. Jean Olsen) (Tutzig, 1987), pp.389-404. 
[108] “Free-Reed Vibrator” EB 11 Vol. XI, p.87. 

[wschruba]

9 hours ago, adrian brown said:

No, not Charlie Wheatstone, but Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723-1795). There's a very interesting article about the man and the early development of the free reed in the latest Galpin Society Journal. (Vol. LXXVIII, March 2025)  Here's the abstract:

 

Author: Olaf Aasland
Title: The Professor who Unknowingly Started the Free Reed Revolution.
Abstract: Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723-1795) was a German professor, physician and polymath who spent most of his academic life in Copenhagen. His competence spanned widely, and one of his achievements was a small organ that could play the five vowels a, e, i, o and u, for which, in 1780, he won the gold medal at a prize competition proposed by The Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. He erroneously thought that the human sound generator was a vibrating epiglottis and discovered a new type of pipe with freely vibrating reeds. Nicolai Kirsnik (1741-1802), an organ maker in St Petersburg and runner-up in the same competition, was the first to use free reeds in musical instruments, and when Georg Joseph (Abbé) Vogler (1749-1814) visited Kirsnik in St Petersburg in 1788 he was so impressed that he engaged Kirsnik's assistant, Georg Christoffer Rackwitz (1760-1844), to accompany him on his many Europe-wide concert tours to install free reed stops in existing organs, thus disseminating the new knowledge. Within the next three decades free reed instruments of all sizes and shapes popped up everywhere. Now there is probably no inhabited place in the world where you cannot find a mouth harmonica or an accordion.

 

If anyone is interested in a scan of the whole article, send me a PM and I'll try to oblige.

 

Adrian

 

 

 

 

 

Would be interested in reading it, if you don't mind.  As another poster referenced, Praetorius (Of Terpsichore fame) was an accomplished organist.  His later contemporary, Pachelbel (of Canon fame  ) actually listed the stop selections in his organ pieces, that included Racket, Rauschpfeife, and Posaune.  Meaty, interesting sounding reeds, but functionally very different from their respective instruments' actual function.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reed_pipe shows how they work--functionally the same as a clarinet reed.  It often requires quite a bit of imagination on the part of the organist to 'hear' the instrument being imitated.

 

"Reed" stops on a pipe organ are generally of a different type than what I believe the abstract is referring to, the 19th century (coarsly, that is) trend of the "reed organ", which indeed uses quite large reeds of similar construction to a concertina reed.  The stop showed up around the same time as Kratzenstein, and used in many modern pipe organs, is the Vox Humana.  The pump-organ was wildly popular as a parlor instrument, only being dethroned later in the 19th century by the cheaper upright piano.  Some of those reed organs were even complex enough to have an actual pedal board!  They're interesting instruments (and can be quite a hoot to play), though the stops typically require just as much imagination to hear their inspiration.  Good thing they frequently used terms/names that more evoked the idea of a sound, rather than an actual instrument.

 

My (loose) understanding of reed classes are single (beats against the thing it's clamped to), double (beats against its opposite twin), and free (beats against nothing, just vibrates).  I know nothing about the journal it's published in, but I would assume that it's either specifically for people who would know the difference, or the abstract omits the definitions of the terms.

[adrian brown]

11 hours ago, wschruba said:

 

Would be interested in reading it, if you don't mind. 

 

  I know nothing about the journal it's published in, but I would assume that it's either specifically for people who would know the difference, or the abstract omits the definitions of the terms.

The general readership of the Galpin Society would certainly know what a free reed was - it’s an organisation devoted to the study of organology - a British version of your AMIS (American Musical Instrument Society).

 

I have scanned the article for David, but I am loath to simply put the link here as the society only puts its pdf’s on Jstor after 5 years. Send me a PM if you want a copy.

 

Adrian 

[aeolina]

Chapters 2 and 3 covered this area:

 

http://www.concertina.com/eydmann/life-and-times/index.htm

 

I was fascinated by the role of the physicist John Robison of Scotland who worked in St Petersburg before becoming a professor at the University of Edinburgh. His writings mention an early interest in the potential of the free-reed that had to be set aside for more pressing scientific challenges.

 

[aeolina]

Grok tell us:

 

The free-reed concept remained largely confined to Asia until the 18th century, when European musicians and inventors began encountering and adapting it. One key figure in this transition was Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein, a German physician and scientist, who in 1780 experimented with free-reeds after being inspired by Asian instruments like the sheng. Around the same time, the free-reed began to appear in Europe through trade and exploration, sparking interest among instrument makers.

[David Barnert]

I’m finally getting around to reading it and am struck by this sentence on page 57 (the 2nd page of the pdf):

 

Quote

Here, the great scientist Euler writes about complicated topics in a way that even a 15-year-old girl can understand, no wonder it became popular!

 

Curious, for contemporary scholarly writing, with its attitude toward female education and its final exclamation.