CLEVELAND — The nearly-200-year-old crystal flute played by Lizzo during a concert in Washington DC Tuesday was once owned by President James Madison and lent to her by the Library of Congress, but it also has a Northeast Ohio connection.
The crystal flute was made for Madison in 1813 by French craftsman and clockmaker Claude Laurent. It was one of 18 glass flutes donated to the Library of Congress by Case Western Reserve University professor and acoustic expert Dr. Dayton Miller in 1941.
Lizzo said she was the first person to ever play the flute, trilling it as she twerked before a crowd of thousands Tuesday night.
“I just twerked and played James Madison’s crystal flute from the 1800s,” Lizzo proclaimed. “We just made history tonight.”
She held the flute over her head before handing it back to the Library of Congress curator who lent it to her, to return back to the collection donated by Miller.
Lizzo tweeted a video of her testing out the ornate instrument at the Library of Congress prior to the concert Tuesday night:
Miller’s full collection donated to the Library of Congress consisted of nearly 1,700 flutes and other wind instruments, along with books, music, patents, photographs, glass plate negatives, and more, according to an article on the Library of Congress’s website.
His collection of 18 glass flutes is the largest of its kind in the world, the article states, followed by a collection in Paris.
Miller himself was a physicist, acoustician, and astronomer who taught for and conducted research at CWRU for more than 40 years, according to the Library of Congress. In addition to his expertise in acoustics — he worked on the architectural acoustics of Severance Hall — he was also one of the first to use x-rays in a surgical setting, helping to detect an improperly set broken arm in a colleague one year after the discovery of x-rays, according to Case Western Reserve University’s Encyclopedia of Cleveland History.
You can learn even more about the rare Madison Flute from the Library of Congress here.
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