Irish harp (i)

(Irish cláirseach; Scots Gael. clàrsach).

The specific name for the regionally distinctive kind of harp made in Ireland and Gaelic Scotland between the 12th and 18th centuries. 14 instruments and fragments survive from the 14th century onwards. Characteristic structural features were: i) a resonator (‘box’) hollowed from a single block of wood (generally willow) to a thickness of about 1·3 cm on the curved belly, but with thicker sides; this was closed at the back by a wooden ‘door’; ii) a curved forepillar, most of which was T-shaped in section; iii) a deeply curved neck; iv) 30–36 brass strings, attached at the left side of the neck to metal tuning pins and at the lower end to wooden toggles inside the box; v) horseshoe-shaped metal loops (‘shoes of the strings’) fixed round the friction area of each string hole in the belly.

14th- and 15th-century instruments were small and low-headed, the neck protruding slightly over the forepillar, and were diatonically or perhaps modally tuned. 16th- and 17th-century instruments were larger and high-headed. The harp was set at the player's left shoulder, the left hand playing in the upper register and the right hand in the lower. Strings were plucked with long fingernails, trimmed to a point. In his Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna (Florence, 1581) Galilei described an Irish harp which he had examined as having 29 strings, i.e. one less than the usual number on later Irish instruments. He also related the characteristic playing technique, which had been described to him by its Irish gentleman owner.

Outside Ireland, some Irish harps were used in the performance of non-Irish music. These instruments may have been tuned chromatically and were not necessarily plucked with the fingernails in the manner of the Irish professional players. Praetorius provides the only written evidence of a partly chromatic tuning (Syntagma musicum, iii, 1620), but his discussion does not make reference to any idiosyncratic playing technique. His tuning pattern was perhaps received at second-hand or imperfectly understood, since it contains several repeated or misplaced segments. When allowance is made for these, a pattern comparable with partly chromatic tuning on other contemporary harp types becomes clear. With 43 strings, the overall compass was given as C–e''', the lowest octave having a flattened B, the second both b and b, the third and fourth octaves completely chromatic and the highest four strings tuned c''', c''', d''' and e'''. The neck and forepillar of the Cloyne (formerly Dalway) harp, made in 1620 by local craftsmen for a member of the Fitzgerald family, are massive and elaborately carved with animals (derived from non-Irish sources), grotesque hybrids and lofty sentiments about music (see illustration). This is the only Irish instrument which displays evidence of a tuning pattern resembling that given by Praetorius. There are 45 pinholes in one rank in the neck, plus an additional seven set alongside the 15th to the 21st holes in the main rank. In the absence of the original box, the function and tuning of these is uncertain.

Late 17th- and early 18th-century Irish harps continued to be diatonically tuned; there was virtually no chromatic requirement in characteristic Irish harp repertory. By the late 18th century, the use of brass-strung harps played with long, pointed fingernails had ceased, except by the centenarian Denis Hempson. Exact replicas of some surviving instruments have confirmed that big-boxed, brass-strung Irish harps did indeed have the qualities attributed to them by Giraldus Cambrensis in the 12th century, namely a powerful low register and a sweet upper register, and by Praetorius, who wrote of their lovely resonance.

A few 18th-century notations, made at performances by some of the last professional players, contain traces of idiosyncratic musical structures and performing practices in which those characteristics were exploited. For example, the earliest source of the music of Carolan’s praise piece Fanny Dillon is in A Collection of the Most Celebrated Irish Tunes (Dublin, 1724), arranged metrically for amateurs of the violin, flute or oboe. But nearly four decades later, Edward Bunting and James Cody notated from live performance a form in which alternating vocal and instrumental modules can be clearly identified. Bunting also made two notations of Carolan’s John Jones, one from a fine but unidentified executant and one from a solo harp performance by Denis Hempson in 1793. This impassioned lover’s complaint is pentatonic, and where the instrumental interlude in Fanny Dillon, addressed to a woman, is in the harp’s middle and upper registers, that in John Jones is in the middle and lower registers. Complete performance of these long, highly personal pieces would have taken at least 15 minutes and the harp interludes would no doubt have varied in intensity to match the sentiments of the verses (see Rimmer, 1997). (See also Harp, §V, 1(ii); Cláirseach; and Clàrsach.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R.B. Armstrong: The Irish and Highland Harps (Edinburgh, 1904/R)

J. Rimmer: The Irish Harp (Cork, 1969, 3/1984)

S. Larchet Cuthbert: The Irish Harp Book (Dublin, 1975)

M. Billinge and B. Shaljean: ‘The Dalway or Fitzgerald Harp’,EMc, xv (1987), 175–87

P. Holman: ‘The Harp in Stuart England’, EMc, xv (1987), 188–203

J. Rimmer: ‘Harp Repertoire in Eighteenth-Century Ireland: Perceptions, Misconceptions and Reworkings’, Aspects of the Historical Harp: Utrecht 1992

R. Evans: ‘A Copy of the Downhill Harp’, GSJ, l (1997), 119–26

J. Rimmer: ‘Harp Function in Irish Eulogy and Complaint’, GSJ, l (1997), 109–18

JOAN RIMMER