Röllig, Carl Leopold

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Röllig, Carl Leopold

Röllig, Carl Leopold , German glass-harmonica player, inventor, and composer; b. Hamburg, c. 1735; d. Vienna, March 4, 1804. He was music director of Ack-ermann’s theater company in Hamburg (1764–69; 1771–72). After taking up the glass harmonica about 1780, he toured widely. He invented the Orphika (c. 1795) and the Xänorphika (1801), pianos with bows instead of hammers. In 1791 he settled in Vienna (1791). He wrote a comic opera, Clarisse (Hamburg, Oct. 10, 1771), and various pieces for glass harmonica, including 4 concertos. He publ. über die Harmonika (Berlin, 1787), Versuch einer musikalischen Intervallentabelle (Leipzig, 1789), Orphica, ein musikalisches Instrument erfunden von C.L. Röllig (Vienna, 1795), and Versuch einer Anleitung zur musikalischen Modulation durch mechanische Vortheile (Vienna, 1799); his Miscellanea, figurierter Kontrapunkt remains in MS.

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire

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