The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #113656 Message #2418497
Posted By: Newport Boy
20-Aug-08 - 07:39 AM
Thread Name: What's a Stylocarf?
Subject: RE: What's a Stylocarf?
Rolf Harris is Australian, Prof Haselmayer was Austrian. The extra 2 letters are important!!
And the instrument is reported as being the antecedent of the xylophone, which would be percussion, not strings.
Not that I can find any other reference to his version of the xylophone, and the story seems doubtful. Gusikov had been playing his instrument extensively around Europe by 1830, 9 years before Haselmayer was born.
Bearing in mind that Haselmayer was a magician, the story was probably good enough to fool the Australians!