Carl (Karl) Leopold Röllig
1754 - 1804
ActiveVienna, Austria
BornHamburg, Germany
BiographyCarl (Karl) Leopold Röllig was born in Hamburg in approximately 1754, however he spent the majority of his life in Vienna, where he worked and lived until his passing on 4 March 1804. In his early life, Röllig served as the music director of Ackermann’s theatre company in Hamburg between 1764 – 1769 and 1771 – 1772, and had his opera Clarisse staged in Hamburg in 1771 and in Hanover in 1773. He began performing on the glass harmonica in around 1780, and toured with the instrument throughout much of the decade, performing in locales such as Dresden and Berlin, and finally settled in Vienna in 1791, where he worked as an official of the Court Library in Vienna from 1797 onward. There are very few records kept of Röllig’s work as an instrument builder, however he is credited with the invention of the Orphica in 1795. Among his other instrument innovations were a bowed string instrument that also incorporated a keyboard, and, in 1801, in collaboration with instrument builder Mathias Müller, a variation of the Orphica called the Xänorphica. Although he is well known as the inventor of the Orphica, Röllig’s most famous association is perhaps with the glass harmonica, an instrument of which he was a virtuosic player, composer, and, in 1784, designer of a version that employed a keyboard. Röllig also worked to develop several technical improvements upon the mechanical glass harmonica, an instrument also known as the glass armonica (deriving from the word ‘harmony’) that was most significantly refined and advanced by the American inventor Benjamin Franklin in 1761. Classified as a crystallophone, the glass harmonica consists of a series of tuned glasses or bowls that are aligned laterally on a rod. When in use, the rod is spun and the player places a moistened finger upon one or more of the glasses; the friction resulting in this action activates resonant vibrations in the glass that are self-amplified, producing something of an eerie tone. Röllig composed for both the Orphica and the glass harmonica, and was also a prolific writer on the practice and theory of instrument building. Among his writings are the 1787 essay Über Die Harmonika: Ein Fragment (Concerning the Armonica: A Fragment). Röllig was known as having a memorable and unique personality, and was never married throughout his life.
