L'estro armonico National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. The 1797 Encyclopædia Britannica records that the fifth concerto was also played on an Irish variant of Benjamin Franklin's celebrated invention, the glass harmonica. Under the entry for "Harmonica" or "Armonica", a 35-glass harmonica is described, about which its inventor, the Dublin physician Edward Cullen, writes: There were numerous arrangements for keyboard instruments in the eighteenth century, as described in the next section. One surviving eighteenth century transcription of Op.3, No.3 has been interpreted as an arrangement for glockenspiel. Themes from movements in the concertos were borrowed by other composers for vocal works: the
Paris in the 18th century Robespierre and a member of the radical Jacobin club, became the unofficial minister of propaganda of the Revolution. He created a series of paintings associating the French Revolution with the virtues of the ancient Rome, and designing costumes and pageants for the Revolutionary government. After the fall of Robespierre, he was imprisoned, freed, and at the beginning of the 19th century was painting portraits of Napoleon Bonaparte. Of the great French writers of the 18th century, the two most famous, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, spent most of their careers far from Paris, either in exile or under strict censorship. Early