Glass harmonica the result would be musical cacophony. This modification also made it much harder to make the glass "speak", and muffled the sound. In 1975, an original armonica was acquired by the Bakken Museum in Minneapolis and put on display, albeit without its original glass bowls (they were destroyed during shipment). It was purchased through a musical instrument dealer in France, from the descendants of Mme. Brillon de Jouy, a neighbor of Benjamin Franklin's from 1777 to 1785, when he lived in the Paris suburb of Passy. Some 18th- and 19th-century specimens of the armonica have survived into the 21st century.
Glass harmonica wires resembling cat whiskers are placed under the instrument, supposedly to increase the sound power of high-pitched frequencies. Dennis James recorded an album of all glass music, "Cristal: Glass Music Through the Ages" co-produced by Linda Ronstadt and Grammy Award-winning producer John Boylan. James plays the glass harmonica, the Cristal di Baschet, and the Seraphim on the CD in original historical compositions and new arrangements for glass by Mozart, Scarlatti, Schnaubelt, and Fauré and collaborates on the recording with the Emerson String Quartet, operatic soprano Ruth Ann Swenson, and Ronstadt. James played glass instruments on Marco Beltrami's film scores for