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Originally Posted by Lalaith
Agreed. I was fortunate enough to attend a Royal Opera performance of Lucia where they had a proper glass harmonica for the mad scene. An instrument so rare, with a sound so sublime, that it belongs, in itself, in the Shire.
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Interesting idea. However, given the armonica's association with insanity, perhaps that instrument was played excessively in Gondor until it affected Denethor--the staltwart, healthy hobbits being more impervious to such disorders?
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Originally Posted by Wikipedia
One example of fear from playing the glass armonica was noted by a German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung where it is stated that "the armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation. If you are suffering from any nervous disorder, you should not play it; if you are not yet ill you should not play it; if you are feeling melancholy you should not play it."
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