Aura

(from Lat. aura: ‘breath’).

An instrument consisting of several heteroglot Jew’s harps, invented by J.H. Scheibler and described in his short treatise of 1816. It was largely a response to the contemporary – and short-lived – vogue of the jew’s harp on the European concert stage. Scheibler himself was one of its more accomplished practitioners, and published some of his own compositions and arrangments for the instrument in his treatise.

Scheibler’s aura consisted of two identical star-shaped frames made from sheet metal or horn, and joined in the centre by a handle with a screw. Mounted into the frames were two sets of five jew’s harps, each held in place by the screw of the handle so that their steel reeds pointed inward. The handle of each frame was grasped between the thumb and index finger and the reed was struck with a downward motion of the fourth finger. The harps in the right-hand frame were tuned f–g–a–b–d', and those in the left-hand frame c–d–e–e–f. To make tuning easier, Scheibler affixed balls of sealing wax to the tips of the reeds. A performer could alternate among the jew’s harps quite rapidly, simply by rotating the frames. Scheibler marked the jew’s harps in the left-hand frame with red dots, and those in the right-hand frame with vertical bars or note names; he also incorporated these markings into his scores so that performers would know exactly which jew’s harp to use for any particular passage.

To extend the range of the instrument, jew’s harps tuned to higher or lower fundamentals could be added. W.L. Schmidt (1840) described one consisting of 12 jew’s harps, six to a frame, and another consisting of 20 jew’s harps, ten to a frame, which both Schmidt and Scheibler believed to be a practical limit; additional jew’s harps would make the aura too cumbersome and difficult to learn. In spite of their efforts to promote the instrument, it was all but forgotten by the middle of the 19th century.

Schmidt used the terms ‘aura’ and ‘mouth-harmonica’ synonymously, believing the timbre of the instrument was comparable to that of a harmonica. His usage is a little confusing and lingers in some of the literature; the aura invented by Scheibler is not a harmonica, and Scheibler did not follow Schmidt’s usage.

See also Jew’s harp.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

J.H. Scheibler: ‘Die Aura’, AMZ, xviii (1816), 505–12

W.L. Schmidt: The Aura or Mouth-Harmonica Presented as a Musical Instrument (Quedlinburg and Leipzig, 1840)

L. Fox, ed.: The Jew’s Harp: A Comprehensive Anthology (Lewisburg, PA, 1988) [incl. Eng. trans. of Scheibler’s treatise]

KEVIN MOONEY