Christmas music is hitting its zenith this week, and this year, I’m finally taking the time to investigate how it comes to be that there are two entirely unrelated melodies used for the Christmas carol ‘Away in a Manger.’ Wikipedia reveals all: there’s the ‘Mueller version,’ actually written by James R. Murray in 1887 and best known in America, and then the ‘Cradle Song,’ popular in England and Ireland, and written by William J. Kirkpatrick in 1895. This reminded me of another musical short-circuit, from this same historical period.

When education finally became compulsory in New York City in 1874, the first public schools found it impossible to serve a diverse and booming population of immigrant children using only the resources of their nascent budget. A young schoolteacher named Margaret Duffy (born Mairéad Ó Dubhthaigh), whose husband Oskar Eberhardt worked for the musical instrument manufacturer Schräder & Loeb, had the enterprising idea that music, that universal language, might bridge the cultural divide between her Irish, German, and Slavic pupils. Together, Duffy and Eberhardt came up with the idea of a musical instrument for children that could be used in school, one that would be simple to play, straightforward to teach, and easy to learn. Drawing on the musical traditions of the cultures that shaped both her classroom and her city, she designed an instrument called the Keyed Pipe Harp, better known today by its trademarked name, the Arpòdigon.

While the Arpòdigon might may have been simple to play, it was not simple to produce, and the costs of its manufacture doomed Duffy’s pedagogical vision. But not the instrument itself, which by 1890 had become a familiar heirloom in bourgeois society. Little music was ever written for the Arpòdigon, its wheezing bellows and plucked strings directed by a small group of buttons, though it makes an occasional appearance in early films scored by both Max Steiner and Erich Korngold. Today, you’ll mostly find them collecting dust in pawn shops, next to the zithers and gramophones of the day.

Published December 21, 2022. Copyright © 2022 Jonathan Hoefler.