Mahamateshwari's Harmonium

This is the original harmonium bought in Lahore by Mahamateshwari which she used to play in Mussoorie. There was a music teacher who taught her many verses of Ghalib etc which were all very sad. Like

Dil hee to hai na sango khist dard se bhar na

aaye kyon

Royenge ham hazaar baar koyi hamen

sataaye kyon

It is but a heart and not a piece of stone that it be not filled with pain,

Weep I will a thousand times, let no one come to disturb me

Amongst the other songs that she sang were:

“Shankar Bhole Bhaale, bhakton ke

rakhvaale, tumko laakhon parnaam”

O Shankar, Thou sweet and innocent

Shankar, the Preserver of devotees,

Thousands of prostrations to Thee!

“Hamaari aankhon men bas rahe hain,

Idhar hain Raghuvar, udhar Kanhayiyaa

Utthaa ke prithvi kaa bhaar donon idhar hain

Raghuvar udhar Kanhayiyaa

Thou art before my eyes, as Raghuvar on

one side, and Kanhayiyaa on the other!

Carrying the burden of the earth, yes,

Raghuvar on one side, and Kanhayiyaa on

the other

Then there would be the melancholic ghazals of Ghalib, which a music teacher had taught her:

Then there was her song which she used to sing, while standing after the Arti, on all HH birthdays without the harmonium:

 "Prabhu mere sharan teri main aayaa"

O Lord, thou art mine, I seek refuge in Thee,

From the make and brand of the Harmonium, it looks like a style of Harmonium called "Lahore Flute" which was intonated and made at Anrakali Bazzar itself. The same area of Lahore were Mahamateshwariji used to stay. "Lahore Flute" was made by  Late Sardar Harcharan Singh Sachdeva, a master in the field of Indian Musical Instruments. After partition they shifted to Delhi and started the Lahore Music House. It still sells its Harmonium brand "Lahore Flute".  Its address is -  3705 Netaji Subhash Marg, Darya Ganj, Next to Moti Mahal Restaurant, New Delhi – 110002 Tel: +91-11-232-71-305 

Mahamateshwari’s Harmonam has the best quality Belgian Reeds. All good quality reeds used to be imported from Belgium or Germany. Belgian and German Jubilate/Harmola Harmonium Reeds (as seen in the adjacent photo) are brass reeds used in Indian harmoniums that were manufactured in Belgium and Germany between 1911 and the early 1960s. In the 1930s and 1940s the factories started exporting the reeds to India where Indian style hand-pumped harmoniums had become very popular creating the demand and a market for the Belgian and German Jubilate/Harmola reeds.

In the early 1960s the factory making the Jublilate/Harmola organ reeds, having changed hands several times and now situated in post World War II East Germany (GDR), was taken over by the communist government and the reed making machinery was destroyed. This marked the end of German Jubilate reed production. In the late 1970s India had also issued a ban on the importing of any Belgian or German made Harmonium reeds to boost sales and promote the production of harmonium reeds now being made in India. As a result the demand and the value of the reeds increased as did the scarcity of availability. Today Belgian and German Jubilate/Harmola reeds are highly prized and sought after by players of Indian harmoniums in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as around the globe.

 

 A harmonium is a free-standing keyboard instrument. Sound is produced by air being blown through sets of free reeds, resulting in a sound similar to that of an accordion. The air is usually supplied by bellows operated by the foot, hand, or knees.

Harmoniums consist of banks of brass reeds (metal tongues that vibrate when air flows over them), a pumping apparatus, stops for drones (some models feature a stop that causes a form of vibrato), and a keyboard. Harmoniums are made with one, two, three or, occasionally, six sets of reeds. Classical instrumentalists usually use one-reed harmoniums, while a musician who plays for a qawaali usually uses a three-reed harmonium which overall makes the sound fuller.

Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723–1795), professor of physiology at Copenhagen, was credited with the first free-reed instrument made in the Western world, after winning the annual prize in 1780 from the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg.[1] The harmonium's design incorporates free reeds and derives from the earlier regal. Alexandre Debain improved Grenié's instrument and gave it the name harmonium when he patented his version in 1840.

At the peak of the instruments' Western popularity around 1900, a wide variety of styles of harmoniums were being produced. These ranged from simple models with plain cases and only four or five stops (if any at all), up to large instruments with ornate cases, up to a dozen stops and other mechanisms such as couplers.

The invention of the electronic organ in the mid-1930s spelled the end of the harmonium's success in the West. The last mass-producer of harmoniums in the West was the Estey company, which ceased manufacture in the mid-1950s. As the existing stock of instruments aged and spare parts became hard to find, more and more were either scrapped or sold. The majority of Western harmoniums today are in the hands of enthusiasts, though the instrument remains popular in South Asia.

During the mid-19th century, missionaries brought French-made hand-pumped harmoniums to India. The instrument quickly became popular there: it was portable, reliable and easy to learn. In Kolkata, Dwarkanath Ghose of the Dwarkin company modified the imported harmony flute and developed the hand-held harmonium, which has subsequently become an integral part of the Indian music scenario. Though derived from the designs developed in France, the harmonium was developed further in India in unique ways, such as the addition of drone stops and a scale-changing mechanism. It has remained popular to the present day, and the harmonium remains an important instrument in many genres of Indian music. For example, it is a staple of vocal North Indian classical music concerts. It is commonly found in Indian homes.