(Fr. harpe; Ger. Harfe; It., Sp. arpa).
Generic name for chordophones in which, as defined in the classification system by Hornbostel and Sachs, the plane of the strings is perpendicular to the soundboard. See also Organ stop.
SUE CAROLE DeVALE (I; III; V, 7(iii–v), 8), BO LAWERGREN (II), SUE CAROLE DeVALE, BO LAWERGREN (IV), JOAN RIMMER/ROBERT EVANS, WILLIAM TAYLOR (V, 1, 2), JOAN RIMMER (V, 3), CRISTINA BORDAS (V, 4), CHERYL ANN FULTON (V, 5), JOHN SCHECHTER (V, 6), SUE CAROLE DeVALE, NANCY THYM-HOCHREIN (V, 7(i), 10(ii)), HANNELORE DEVAERE (V, 7(ii)), NANCY THYM-HOCHREIN (V, 9), MARY McMASTER (V, 10(i))
Normally triangular in outline, all harps have three basic structural components: resonator, neck and strings. Hornbostel and Sachs divided them into two categories: ‘frame harps’ and ‘open harps’. Frame harps have a forepillar or column which connects the lower end of the resonator to the neck, adding structural support and helping to bear the strain of string tension. Harps without forepillars are ‘open harps’. Only European harps and their descendants are consistently frame harps: most others are open. Hornbostel and Sachs further subdivided open harps into two sub-categories: ‘arched’ and ‘angular’ harps. According to Hornbostel and Sachs, the neck of an arched harp curves away from the resonator while the neck of an angular harp makes a sharp angle with it. The termBow harp is often applied to arched harps; some organologists have applied the term to a type of Musical bow with attached resonator. The Ground harp (or ground bow) has characteristics of both harps and musical bows.
Resonators of harps may be spoon-shaped, trowel-shaped, boat-shaped, box-shaped (square, trapezoidal or rectangular, often with rounded edges), hemispherical or, rarely, waisted. Resonators are topped with a wood or skin soundtable and a string holder to which one end of a string is usually attached. In some West African Bridge harps (harp-lutes) the strings pass over a bridge and are then attached in some manner to the lower end of the harp. The other end of a string is attached to the neck either directly with special knots or indirectly to fixed plugs, movable tuning-pegs, or to tuning-rings or nooses which are themselves attached to the neck. Mechanisms which themselves buzz or which modify the string’s overtones and vibratory patterns, or both, may be attached near one end of the string, either on the neck or the soundtable, and activated by the plucked string. Mechanisms of these types were used on European harps from the Middle Ages to the early Baroque (i.e. brays; see §V, 1, below) and are used on many African harps. The number of strings on a harp can range from only one to over 90. Mechanisms for chromatic alteration of the strings range from manually operated hooks or levers to complex pedal-activated systems.
The earliest known use of the word ‘harpa’ was by Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, in about 600; he wrote, for example: ‘Romanusque lyra, plaudat tibi barbarus harpa’. The old Norse word ‘harpa’ is believed to have been a generic term for string instruments. Around the year 1000, Aelfric glossed hearpe as ‘lyre’. By this broad definition, even the Sutton Hoo instrument, reconstructed for the second time in 1969 in the form of a long lyre, might have been called a harp. Similarly, the word ‘hearpan’ in Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon literature is taken to mean playing a string instrument. Early medieval Latin terminology is also ambiguous. ‘Cithara’ was used for both lyres and harps, while in the 10th and 11th centuries the terms ‘lira’ and ‘lyra’ were used for a certain type of bowed instrument. A rare example of a specific use of ‘cithara’ is in an illustration, said to be from a 12th-century manuscript, which was reproduced in the 18th century by Martin Gerbert in his De cantu et musica sacra. It shows a 12-string harp, captioned ‘Cythara anglica’. Confusions as to terminology still existed as late as 1511, when Virdung wrote: ‘What one man names a harp, another calls a lyre’. Further confusion persists in the application of such terms as ‘table harp’ to a type of zither, ‘mouth harp’ to the harmonica, ‘jew’s harp’ to a plucked idiophone (the guimbarde) and ‘glass harp’ to a form of musical glasses. The instruments described by Hornbostel and Sachs as ‘harp-lutes’ have now been redefined as bridge harps; see §III below. Hybrid instruments with harp-like features include the Harp-piano (or keyed harp) and an English guitar-like instrument of the early 19th century (see Harp-lute (ii)).
The harp is played in six basic performing positions (fig.1), of which five were used in ancient civilizations and are still in use today; the sixth (position F) appears only in Africa. Analysis of performing positions along with structure is vital to understanding the dispersal and evolution of the harp across time and the globe. Harp tunings are pentatonic, tetratonic, heptatonic (including diatonic) and chromatic. Strings are usually plucked with the fingers, but they may also be struck with a stick or strummed with a plectrum while strings which are not wanted to sound are damped; occasionally the bass wire strings may be stroked with the palm of the hand. Resonators may be used as percussion instruments and struck with the fingers, hands or with hooked rattles. Harpists may use any number of digits from the thumb of one hand with the thumb and forefinger of the other to the thumb and first three fingers of both hands; rarely only a single index finger is used. The fifth finger is seldom used because of its lack of strength and its shortness, which generally causes a clawlike and nearly unusable performing position when all five digits are placed on the strings.
The harp’s use ranges from religious ritual to pure entertainment. Harpists are depicted in royal chambers, salons, banquet scenes and processions as soloists or in ensembles. Harpists have accompanied themselves singing ballads, reciting oral history and epic poetry or accompanying rituals of various types. In the ancient world, solo harpists and harpists in large ensembles were usually men while harpists who played in small chamber ensembles were often women. In the Western world until the late 19th century, professional harpists were usually men, while women played the harp as a domestic instrument probably from the 17th century. Today, men and women play harps throughout the world; but throughout Africa, in India, Georgia and Siberia women are rarely professional harpists and, in a few cases, are not even allowed to touch the instrument.
In ancient times harps were, with some isolated exceptions, all of the ‘open’ type, arched or angular. Many kinds and sizes were developed, with various performing positions and playing techniques (see figs.2, 3, 4 and 7 below). The way that the harp is held determines the angle of the strings to the body of the performer. The evidence shows that the majority of ancient harps were held with the strings either vertically (figs.2 and 3) or horizontally (fig.4). (A few were held with the strings at an oblique angle, but classifying harps according to whether they are horizontal or vertical, and arched or angular, is still useful when considering general trends in the development of ancient harps.) The strings were either plucked by the fingers (figs.2f, g, k–t; fig.3a–c, e; fig.7b and fig.8 below) or struck with a long plectrum held in the right hand (figs.3f and fig.4c–e). Both methods are seen on ancient representations by the 2nd millennium bce, but vertical harps were often plucked with the fingers and horizontal ones with a plectrum. In representations with plectra, the left hand is often obscured by the strings, but it may have been used to dampen the strings that should not sound when the plectrum was strummed across all strings. On most of the earliest harps tuning was effected by rotating collars (‘tuning nooses’) encircling the neck, although some had tuning pegs (see fig.8 below).
Arched harps were first introduced during the 3rd millennium bce in the Middle East (fig.2a, c–h) and Egypt (fig.2i–k) and angular harps appeared in about 1900 bce in Mesopotamia, from where they quickly spread. The latter were used throughout the Hellenistic period, entered the Buddhist and Islamic worlds, but died out after the end of the 17th century ce.
There were two major types of vertical angular harp, ‘heavy’ and ‘light’. Up until 600 ce a sturdy design predominated, with a thick neck passing through the robust resonator. This gave way to a much more delicate design where a thin neck was attached to an extension or ‘tail’ below the resonator and rested against a short pin extruding from the resonator (fig.7d). In effect, the neck formed a lever and the pin a fulcrum. The contraption was stable because the torque of the strings around the fulcrum was counteracted by the torque of the tail. Light vertical angular harps appeared on Iranian and East Asian monuments within a few decades of 600 ce, but because of the closeness of dates it is difficult to be certain which region first adopted them or whether they were invented in some intermediate region. The latter possibility is suggested by the rounded ends of their resonators (fig.7a, c and d), a feature already present on a horizontal angular harp dating from 400 bce found near Pazïrïk in the Altai mountains. Mouth organs typical of China were depicted alongside light vertical angular harps in the rock reliefs at Taq-i Bostan, Iran (7th century ce, see Iran, §I, fig.8); as the former were certainly imported from the East, this kind of harp may also have had its origin there.
Frame harps appeared briefly in Greece (c450–350 bce, fig.3h) and Italy, when some angular harps had a forepillar inserted between the top of the resonator and the far end of the neck. They were subsequently forgotten, and did not return until the modern harp emerged in Europe in about 800 ce. Just as the classical Greek frame harp was an isolated case, so was the Cycladic harp (fig.2b) two millennia earlier. The latter has sometimes been identified as a frame harp, but is more likely to have been an arched harp: the ‘forepillar’ being nothing more than a long and curved extension to the neck.
Iconographical evidence is helpful in showing the ways in which ancient harps were constructed, but to determine the number of strings employed on the various types one must turn to the fragments of instruments that have survived, since pictures and carvings are often sketchy or schematic. The dry sands of Egypt have preserved a large number of harp fragments dating from the middle of the 3rd millennium to the end of the 1st millennium bce, and several have been excavated elsewhere, e.g. several horizontal arched harps at Ur (c2500 bce, now housed in the British Museum; see §II, 3(i), below) and the angular harp at Pazïrïk (400 bce; now in the Hermitage, St Petersburg). Fragments of two light vertical angular harps that were brought to Japan from China in the 8th century bce have been held ever since in the Imperial Treasury of the Shōsōin, Nara.
Although these survivals demonstrate a considerable variety in the number of strings used, the overall trend is that the early arched harps had few strings (usually less than ten, in one case only three) but angular harps, from their first appearance onwards, always had many (between 15 and 29, but averaging at 21). The re-invented frame harp of medieval Europe could support many more strings, partly because the structure was stronger and partly because, with the ‘harmonic’ curve of the neck, the string lengths increased exponentially, resulting in an even distribution of tension across a wide compass.
Because the number of strings used on ancient harps discloses the number of pitches available to the harpist (considering that unison strings are unlikely), the increase in compass made possible by the switch from arched to angular harps presumably reflects contemporary changes in the musical material.
The image of a vertical arched harp was used in a Sumerian pictogram of 3000 bce (fig.2d–e; see also Mesopotamia, fig.1). The same shape is found on stone plaques (2600 bce; fig.2f–g) and seals (3000 bce; fig.2c). A horizontal arched harp is shown on a vase from Bismaya (fig.4c) dating from the later half of the 3rd millennium bce. No complete harp has been found, but a reconstruction has been made of a composite of two fragments of an arched harp with 13 strings from the Royal Cemetery at Ur (c2500 bce; the original neck is in the British Museum, and the resonator is in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia; see Mesopotamia, fig.4). Although all the wooden parts had decayed, their shapes were discernable by the silver and gold foil that partly covered the instruments and from the bitumen that had been used as a filler. Stauder (A1957) arrived at a similar reconstruction based on iconography.
Angular harps were introduced in about 1900 bce to the complete exclusion of arched ones, and the conversion brought about a sudden increase in the number of strings available to harpists (see §II, 2, above). It is not surprising that this change occurred in Mesopotamia since, as shown by the Ur harp, Sumerian harp makers were already making arched harps with as many as 13 strings by about 2600 bce. By contrast, contemporaneous harps in Egypt typically held only four or five strings. The switch may be linked to the development in Mesopotamia of codified tuning systems in the middle of the 2nd millennium bce (see Mesopotamia, §8). The known tuning texts, which include tuning instructions, concern a nine-string sammû, but the theory could in principle apply to any number of strings. (There are two interpretations of the Old Babylonian term sammû: Gurney and Lawergren (A1987) argue that it was a harp; see fig.4d–e. According to Kilmer it meant ‘lyre’; see Mesopotamia, §5.)
Side-views of Old Babylonian vertical angular harps (fig.3a) show an incised cross near the top of the resonator, and similar figures can be found on neo-Assyrian harps (800–650 bce; fig.3b). It was known as the ‘ear of the sammû’, i.e. its soundhole. Angular harps were prevalent throughout the neo-Assyrian period. The pinnacle of their popularity was reached in the palace of King Ashurbanipal (reigned 668–627 bce), where wall reliefs show large numbers of harps: for example, one depicts a victory celebration accompanied by five angular harps.
Harps were depicted in Iran from at least 3100 bce to 1600 ce, a longer period than elsewhere. Arched harps were shown on seals, being played vertically at Chogha Mish (fig.2a; see also Iran, fig.2a; 3300–3100 bce) and Susa (2750–2600 bce), but horizontally at Shar-i Sokhta (fig.4b; 3000–2300 bce) and in south-eastern Iran (see Iran, fig.2c). In the 2nd millennium bce the focus shifted to the Elamite region in western Iran. As in Mesopotamia, Elamite harps were angular, but the latter were smaller. During the 1st millennium bce Elamite harps acquired full size, as shown on a metal bowl dating from about 650 bce, found at Arjan, Elam (see Iran, fig.7). Judging from the presence of large harp ensembles (larger than those of Mesopotamia), Elam had a major harp culture. Nine harps are shown at Madaktu and groups of six, three and two harps at Kul-e Fara (9th–7th century bce; see Iran, §I, 4(i) and Iran, fig.6).
In Iran light vertical angular harps appeared first at Taq-i Bostan (600 ce; fig.7b). They co-existed with heavy vertical harps, but grew to dominance from 1400 to 1600 (see fig.3i). Islamic book illustrations during this period form the largest corpus of harp iconography before the standardization of modern instruments. Angular harps continued to be used in the Islamic world up to the end of the 17th century. In his census of instrument makers living in Istanbul (c1650) Ewliya Çelebi reported ten chang (angular harp) makers (Farmer, 1936). The question remains as to why they then disappeared after such an illustrious history spanning 3500 years. Perhaps the delicate design of light angular harps was unable to keep stable tuning, or that compared to lutes and zithers, which steadily increased in popularity, harps may have come to be seen as unwieldy anachronisms, incapable of adapting to new musical demands.
In Europe Islamic travellers brought angular harps as far West as Spain.
Harps were the most prominent type of Egyptian instrument and they existed through most of the pharaonic period. Some were covered with ‘silver, gold, lapis lazuli, malachite, and every splendid costly stone, for the praise of the beauty of his majesty’ and others with ‘ebony, gold and silver’. The generic Egyptian name for harp was benet.
During the Old and Middle Kingdoms (2600–1500 bce) there was only one type – the shovel-shaped harp – but it existed in several sizes (figs.2i–k and fig.8). Since the harp arose later in Egypt than in the Middle East, Sachs (SachsH) assumed that the harp came to Egypt from the Middle East. However, the Egyptian shape differed from the contemporary Sumerian one (fig.2h): Egyptian harps had a thick neck and relatively small resonator while Mesopotamian ones had the reverse proportions.
During the New Kingdom (1500–1200 bce) new types with Mesopotamian proportions were introduced with ladle shapes (fig.2l and n). Another shape has also been identified: the seven-shaped harp (fig.2p, r and o, the latter with an added ladle-like base and a finial head). Strongly curved harps are called ‘round ladle-shaped harps’ (fig.2q). Shoulder harps (fig.4f) also flourished during this period. During the Ptolemaic period (332–30 bce) crescent-shaped harps were introduced (fig.2s). Angular harps were subject to much experimentation with the angle of the neck to the resonator and with playing position (fig.3e–g). Similar experiments were being carried out contemporarily in Greece. Ladle-shaped harps are the most prevalent types still being played in Africa today (see §III below).
The relative popularity in Egypt of the various types of harp is summarized in fig.9. The most notable trend is the slow but steady increase in proportion of angular harps, which grew from a modest start in the New Kingdom to dominance in Hellenistic period. At the time of Athenaeus (160–230 ce) a trigōnon (angular harp) player from Alexandria had become so popular that Roman citizens were whistling his tunes in the streets (Deipnosophistae, iv.183e).
Angular harps conquered Egypt nearly two millennia after they had replaced arched harps in Mesopotamia, i.e. the latter region craved instruments with many strings, whereas Egypt did not. Egyptian musicians may have resisted angular harps because they feared the consequences of easy access to many pitches. That was the attitude of Plato when he condemned harps in Republic (iii.399c):
“Then”, said I, “we shall not need in our songs and airs instruments of many strings or whose compass includes all the modes.” “Not in my opinion”, said he. “Then we shall not maintain makers of harps [trigōnon, pēktis] and all other many-stringed and polymodal instruments.”
In fact, Greece too had been very slow in accepting the angular harp. It preferred lyras and kitharas with approximately seven strings. Egypt's long preference for harps of narrow pitch range amounted to inveterate musical conservatism, a condition praised by Plato (Laws, 656d):
clinias: How, then, does the law stand in Egypt?
an athenian stranger: … It appears that long ago they
determined on the rule … that the youth of a State should practice in their
rehearsals postures and tunes that are good: these they prescribed in detail
and posted up in the temples, and outside this official list it was, and still
is, forbidden … to introduce any innovation or invention … in any branch of
music.
There were, however, attempts to increase the numbers of strings on Egyptian arched harps, especially during the reign of the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten (1353–1335 bce), when foreign harps seem to have gained temporary acceptance.
Marble statuettes from the Cycladic islands show some arched harps in the Aegean by the middle of the 3rd millennium bce (fig.2b), but angular harps did not arrive until about 400 bce when they are shown on Red-figured Attic and Apulian (south Italian) vases. Some were actually frame harps, being made with a forepillar, often given a fancy shape, such as the bird shown in fig.3h. Frame harps disappeared with the demise of the classical Greek civilization. (See also Trigōnon.)
Harps with a cigar-shaped resonator are called spindle harps. Their odd shape may be an attempt to acquire the beneficial acoustical properties now associated with exponential string-length distribution (i.e. the curve given by the increase in the length of strings which, with the same tension and thickness, give a musical scale; it is given on modern frame harps by the ‘harmonic curve’ of the neck). As drawn on the example from an Attic Red-figure vase in fig.10, the exponential curve lies quite close to the spindle shape of the resonator.
According the ancient texts, the sambyke (‘siege-engine’; see Sambuca) was a musical instrument that looked like a warship used to attack harbour forts. Most likely, it was a horizontal angular harp. During the Hellenistic period angular harps remained popular, but their design had reverted to the earlier Near Eastern model that lacked a forepillar.
To understand the relatively late introduction of harps in the Aegean, Plato's Republic again serves us well. But his opinion was formulated at the beginning of the 4th century bce and does not explain why Aegean inhabitants did not adopt the harp in the 2nd millennium when neighbouring regions (Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Egypt) all enjoyed harps with wide compasses. Instead they took to the relatively narrow compass of the lyre (see Lyre, §2). The reason for the choice is an enigma, but it resulted in a segregation between lyre and harp cultures in the eastern Mediterranean.
Nowhere is there a larger variety of harps than in Africa. The harp has a place in the traditions of nearly 150 African peoples. The variations in the construction and decoration of African harps serve as excellent examples of the ingeniousness of African instrument makers in creatively utilizing locally available materials. African harp makers – often harpists themselves – incorporate formal and design elements that make each instrument a unique expression of a particular culture and performing practice. Harps and harp playing often have rich symbolic meanings; harpists are frequently historians and genealogists as well as the central figures in religious rituals.
For further details of West and central African harps, see Bridge Harp and Kora.
2. Organology and construction.
In construction, the harps of Africa belong to a continuous tradition that is at least 5000 years old. Several types of African harps, especially those of Mauritania, Gabon, Central and East Africa, are so strikingly similar to ancient harps, that one suspects harps began to be played in Africa south of the Sahara in ancient times. The ancient construction methods were quite probably preserved through oral tradition because of the extraordinary importance of the cultural functions and meanings assigned to African harps. While one would assume from the construction of African harps that they are most closely related to those of ancient Egypt, it is surprising to discover that some of the basic performing positions used on African harps resemble those of ancient Mesopotamia and were not found in Egyptian iconography. Whether harps originated in the Middle East and spread to Africa or vice versa is still a matter for debate. While there is specific iconographic evidence to prove the existence of black harpists in ancient Egypt, there is nothing for the remainder of Africa in ancient times; however, the presence of at one basic type of African harp in Praetorius's Theatrum instrumentorum (1620; the ngombi type: see fig.11d) suggests that it has remained virtually unchanged at least since the early 17th century.
African harps share some basic structural components with the Pluriarc and the Lyre. On the harp-like pluriarc, each string has its own neck rather than sharing a common one. The similarity of the wooden bowl-resonator and soundtable lacing of the Ganda harp, ennanga (fig.11b), to those of the Soga lyre indicates a relationship between them.
Harps, lyres and pluriarcs each predominate in their own geographical area to the exclusion of the others. Harps are distributed in a belt across Africa from Mauritania to Uganda and occur mostly north of the equator. Lyres occur east and north-east of harp territory, while pluriarcs appear south of the equator. In the few locations where more than one of these categories of instrument co-exist, the older instrument seems to die out as the newcomer to the area takes over (in parts of Uganda, for example, the lyre is slowly replacing the harp). Closer relationships between these categories could probably be established on the basis of a comparative study of bridges and string-holders, musical and social customs, geographic distribution and, most importantly, performing techniques. However, only those instruments considered as harps in the classification system of Hornbostel and Sachs (where the defining characteristic is that the plane of the strings is perpendicular to the soundtable) are discussed here.
All members of the African harp family share basic structural components (see fig.11a and 12b below): (1) a neck, usually made from the branch of a tree, and fitted with tuning pegs or tuning nooses to which one end of the strings are tied; (2) a resonator, the hollow body of the harp which amplifies the sound of the strings; (3) a soundtable, usually of skin stretched over the open top of the resonator, which vibrates when the strings are plucked, thereby enhancing the duration of the sound of the strings as well as helping to transmit their vibrations into the resonator to be amplified; and (4) either a string-holder, to which the other end of the strings are tied, or a bridge, which the strings pass over before being tied in some way to the far end of the harp. All African harps are thus classed as ‘open’ harps because they lack the additional structural support of a forepillar of most Western or ‘frame’ harps.
DeVale (New York, B1989) has classified instruments in the African harp family as belonging to two basic groups based on whether the string-holder or bridge is placed lengthways on the soundtable in line with the neck, or whether it stands perpendicular to the soundtable (or leaning somewhat toward the neck).
African harps with longitudinal string-holders are the direct relatives of ancient harps and are related by their basic construction to all the harps of the world outside of Africa. In these harps, the string-holder lies on (fig.11a) or under (fig.11b and d) the soundtable, or is inserted pin-like into it (fig.11c), and lies parallel to the centreline of the soundtable in line with the neck. In addition to the placement of their string-holders, the tuning mechanisms for all harps of this group are tuning pegs inserted into the neck of the harp. Harps with longitudinal string-holders are found throughout Central and East Africa but not in West Africa, with the exception of the Mauritanian ardin.
Harps with longitudinal string-holders have been classified into three types by Klaus Wachsmann (B1964) based on the manner in which the neck is attached to the resonator. In the first type (fig.11a and b), found in Mauritania and Uganda (the extreme ends of African harp territory), the neck simply rests in the resonator like a ‘spoon in the cup’, and if the strings were removed, the whole structure would collapse. Harps of this type are arched, except for the ardin (fig.11a) which is angular. The second type (fig.11c) is the most common, being found throughout Central and parts of West Africa and related to one type of Asian harp. Its neck is tanged and fitted into a hole at one end of the resonator or sometimes forced in like a cork into a bottle. Harps of this type are all arched. The third type (fig.11d) is known as a ‘shelf’ harp. When this type of harp is carved, a projection (‘shelf’) is left remaining at the back half of the top of the resonator and sometimes carved into an anthropomorphic form (see §III, 4, below). The neck is either laced to the shelf with fibre or thong (fig.11d) or tanged and fitted into it (in either case this type is classified as an angular harp). Shelf harps are found primarily in Gabon and the Central African Republic and are related in basic structure and performance position to Western European harps and their descendants.
Although harps with vertical string-holders or bridges (fig.12) are classified in the system of Hornbostel and Sachs as ‘harp-lutes’ (see Chordophone), they have little in common with lutes except that some have straight necks and some have bridges. Unlike lutes their string-holders and bridges are vertical not horizontal, and the plane of their strings is perpendicular to the soundtable (like all harps), not parallel. Additionally, the performing position, in which the neck is pointed away from the performer (fig.1, Type A), and the techniques used are unquestionably those of a harp, and are nearly identical to those of most harps of Uganda and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is this basic position, not found in ancient Egypt, that relates all of these harps to the horizontally-held harps of ancient Assyria.
Harps with vertical string-holders or bridges are the unique creation of West African harpists and harp makers. Bridges are usually placed perpendicular and string-holders sometimes at an angle to the soundtable. The necks are not fitted with tuning pegs; instead, either each string is tied to its own ring made of braided hide which is ‘strung’ onto the neck, or ‘nooses’ in the form of rope or leather extensions are tied to each string on one end and then wrapped around the neck in some fashion.
Following Wachsmann's lead in classifying harps with longitudinal string-holders by the manner in which the neck is connected to the resonator, DeVale has identified two types of harp with a vertical string-holder or bridge: tanged and spiked. In the first type (fig.12a), the neck is tanged and fitted into a hole in the end of the resonator or, like its counterparts with longitudinal string-holders, forced in like a cork into a bottle. The tension of the strings on the string-holder is counterbalanced by cordage which anchors the tip of the sound holder directly to a stubby protrusion on the far end of the resonator. Its resonator is carved from wood, and the morphology of the harp as a whole resembles a ship, often complete with masthead, a sculptural form peculiar to this type of harp. Because ‘shiplike’ harps are found primarily in museums in Western countries and there is little evidence that they were played in Africa, speculation has it that they are either obsolete or may have been made only for tourists.
The neck of a ‘spike harp’ passes entirely through the resonator like a spike, protruding a bit at the lower end (fig.12b–d). There are two categories of spike harp, those with string-holders and those with true bridges. In the first category the vertical string-holder is anchored with cordage to the short protruding end of the neck (fig.12b and c). Instruments in the second category (fig.12d), named ‘bridge harps’ by Knight (B1972), have a bridge in place of a string-holder, which the strings pass over before being tied, usually to a metal ring or a small metal arch (like a croquet hoop) nailed into the protruding end of the spiked neck.
The resonator of a spike harp is usually made from a calabash (a prevalent material in West Africa), and ranges from hemispherical to nearly spherical in shape. Occasionally it is made of wood, as in the now rare seperewa of the Asante of Ghana whose resonator is a rectangular box. Most spike harps have two handles threaded through the skin soundtable, which the harpist holds with the last three fingers of each hand while plucking the strings with the thumbs and forefingers, the neck pointing away from the performer. The handles allow the resonator to be braced securely against the harpist's body or the ground, and thus the harpist has great control over the pressure exerted to pluck the strings, whether strolling or sitting while playing. In the Jola furakaf and the Wasulu donso ngoni traditions, however, the harp is held with the neck pointed guitar-like to the side: the harpist wraps one arm around the harp to hold the handle, plucking with the thumb and index finger, while the other hand holds the neck about two-thirds of the way up its length and only the thumb plucks.
Spike harps can have one or two parallel ranks (rows) of strings. In those with one rank of strings (fig.12a and b), the string-holder is usually a rod drilled with a single row of holes. In those with two ranks of strings (fig.12c), the string-holder is usually rectangular with holes drilled along each of the long sides resulting in a rank of strings tied to each side, the rank on the right played by the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, and the rank on the left played by those of the left hand. Bridge harps always have two ranks of strings fitted into notches on each side of the rectangular bridge (fig.12d).
The bridge-harp category, prevalent in Senegal, Gambia, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, includes the largest members of the African harp family. The 21-string Mandinka kora is the best known. Smaller bridge harps, usually with four to eight strings, have been played in the Ivory Coast, Mali and Ghana. Bridge harps are believed to be the newest members of the African harp family, developing from spike harps with string-holders probably sometime during the 17th or 18th centuries.
African harp makers demonstrate imaginative use of local materials in making their instruments. The resonators of African harps come in a wide variety of forms including boat-shaped, waisted, triangular, trapezoidal, ovoid, hemispherical and, most rarely, rectangular. They are usually carved from a solid piece of wood, but, in West Africa, often a hollow gourd (calabash) is used, resulting in a hemispherical resonator, while the Acholi, Lango and Labwor peoples of Uganda generally use a tortoise carapace. The soundtables are usually mammalian skin or, more rarely, of lizard or snakeskin. Soundholes in the soundtables amplify the sound, and for most harps with longitudinal string-holders also provide access for the replacement of strings. The skin of the soundtable is fastened to the harp in various ways, usually requiring twisted hide or vine thongs. Sometimes the skin is tied to itself, its ends being stretched over the back or sides of the resonator, or laced through holes in a ledge which encircles and projects from the body of the resonator. Or, as on the ennanga, a separate smaller piece of skin placed over the bottom of the resonator is decoratively laced to the soundtable skin. Often in West Africa the soundtable is nailed to the sides of the resonator and then the nails are covered with upholstery tacks; nailing is rare in Central and East Africa. Strings were formerly made of animal tendons, twisted hide, metal, vine or raffia, but nylon fishing line, which comes in a variety of gauges perfect for strings, is rapidly replacing traditional materials. Nearly all African harps have bowed or curved necks; but the Mauritanian ardin and the Mandinka kora, both from West Africa, have straight necks. String-holders and bridges, necks and tunings pegs are traditionally made of wood. Any part of a harp (except, of course, the strings) may be decorated; many carved or even sculpted. The elaborate ivory-necked harps of the Mangbetu (Democratic Republic of the Congo) found in many museums were probably carved for collectors.
The aesthetic of ‘buzzing’ sounds is integral to the timbre of many African harps, as to many other African instruments. The objects added to create these effects – an intensification of sonority or an increase of the noise to pitch ratio – are usually activated, directly or indirectly, by plucking the strings, but their material and position on the harp vary widely. On the ennanga rings of banana fibres wrapped with the skin of a monitor lizard are placed below each tuning-peg at a point where the strings can vibrate against the rings (fig.11b). Circular metal plaques attached to the ardin soundtable skin are bordered with tiny loose metal jingles (fig.11a). West African kora players may attach a similarly constructed metal plaque, but rectangular in shape, to the tips of the bridge. One soundhole of the ougdyé of the Kirdi is covered with membranes from spider's-egg cocoons.
On harps with longitudinal string-holders, i.e. those in Central and East Africa, there are usually five to ten strings (although nine-string harps are exceedingly rare), notable exceptions being the ardin (ten to 16 strings) and the single-string zamataba of Gabon. These two are also the only African harps played exclusively by females: the former by professional musicians of the griot caste, the latter by Fang adolescents. Harps with five or more strings are generally tuned to a pentatonic scale, but not necessarily diatonically (see the tuning key in ex.1). The Gwere of eastern Uganda, however, tune their six-string tongoli to a tetratonic scale with nearly equal intervals (sounding like a chain of 3rds to Western ears) and the ardin player frequently changes her tuning to fit the particular mode of the classical poetry she sings. Harps with vertical string-holders, i.e. those of West Africa, range from one (rare) to 21 strings, with several having three or four to eight strings. Those with large numbers of strings (seven to 21) are usually tuned heptatonically; those with fewer strings, pentatonically. Like the ardin players, kora players are also professional musicians of the griot caste and have multiple scales to which they tune their harps, both traditions reflecting their synthesis of African and Islamic musical traditions.
In the history of the harp throughout the world, harpists have used only six basic performing positions (see fig.1); only in Africa are all still used, where they depend on local tradition. The position directly affects what can be played on the harp, and harps of the same structural type are often played in different positions. For example: among harps with longitudinal string-holders, harps of the first structural type (‘spoon in a cup’) are used in positions A (the ennanga) and B (the ardin); harps of type 2 (‘cork in a bottle’) are used in positions A (the kinanga of the Konjo in western Uganda and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo), C (the dilli of the Masa), D (the harp of the Mara of Chad), E (the kundi of the Zande of northern Democratic Republic of the Congo) and F (the kinde of the Barma and others south-east of Lake Chad); harps of type 3 (‘shelf harps’), like harps of European origin, are apparently played only in position C (e.g. the ngombi of the Fang and other neighbouring peoples). Among harps with vertical string-holders and bridges, most are played in position A (e.g. the Mandinka kora and simbi) although two (the Jola furakaf and the Wasulu donso ngoni) are played in position E.
In Africa, the harp is performed most often as a solo instrument in dialogue with the harpist's own voice, and a repertory of songs or sung poetry is performed either for an audience or for the harpist's own pleasure. African harp songs generally have the same basic form. While the harp is usually played throughout a song, predominantly instrumental and vocal sections alternate. It is sometimes impossible to make a rigid distinction between vocal and instrumental sounds: although the preludes and postludes are almost entirely harp solos, during the interludes the harpist may hum or utter syllables which duplicate the pitches of the harp pattern and imitate the sound of the plucking, or use glottal stops in imitation of a percussion instrument. In the large-harp traditions of West Africa, the interludes are frequently elaborate improvisations.
African harpists generally play repeated patterns which vary in length from one song to another but remain constant within a song. Patterns range from simple ostinatos to those which closely imitate the vocal melody. Particularly in West Africa, the patterns may be ornamented during repetitions. Sometimes a people use more than one style, even within the same song. Strings are seldom plucked simultaneously, but when they are the intervals produced are mostly octaves (ex.1) or 4ths, a notable exception being the 5ths of the Teso of Uganda. The vocal melody of a harp song is usually hidden within, although its range is not necessarily limited by, the harp pattern (see ex.1), and during the course of a song both the harp pattern and the vocal line may be varied, or, more rarely, changed for another.
Harp patterns are divided between both hands, but the division is most often melodically and rhythmically unequal; however, ennanga patterns have equal parts which dovetail: the ennanga player uses the thumb and first finger of each hand, the patterns consisting of the isochronal notes of a single melody presented successively by the alternation of hands (see ex.1). This form of dovetail interlocking has also been noted as peculiar to Kiganda xylophone playing.
The subject matter of harp song texts is extremely varied. Topical songs, apparently the commonest, are often oblique in meaning and laden with personal allusions. Harp songs frequently record historical events and the deeds of legendary heroes, and are performed in ritual or social contexts. Genealogy, praise, and eulogy are sometimes included, as is the performer's name and people. Songs about war and love, those used to incite warriors to battle or to protect and encourage hunters, are also common. Often the harpist improvises repetitions of important musical and textual phrases or entire verses; the frequency and method of repetition depends on the performer's emotional involvement at the moment, sense of timing and responsiveness to the audience.
The harp is sometimes used in ensembles with other harps. Harp duos are frequent among the Nzakara ba-ya-bia (poet-musicians) of the Central African Republic who play the harp patterns together but alternate in singing the text. Trios are played on the dilla of the Masa. In Kotoko exorcism rituals three harps (galdyama, direndana and kolo) form a family with overlapping ranges. In both these trios one harpist is considered the leader and does all the singing. Among the Barma a women's song and dance encouraging warriors to battle is accompanied by men playing a quartet of kinde harps and a calabash rattle. Acholi harpists form a quintet and play the same pattern simultaneously while the leading harpist sings; the others softly sing the refrain with him. The harp is also played in mixed ensembles. The ardin player is usually accompanied by one or more of the following: another ardin, a tbol (drum), a tidinit (four-string lute) or another singer. During a performance she sings in dialogue with another singer, or stops plucking the strings and beats the rhythm on the resonator, or another member of her group taps on the resonator while she continues to play. In Busoga (Uganda) a harpist playing a kinzasa is sometimes accompanied by three other performers, one playing a single-headed drum (of engabe type), another, a small pair of kettledrums, and the third alternately striking the edge of the harp's resonator with a drumstick in his left hand, and the soundtable of the harp with a rattle on a hooked beater held in his right hand; at the same time they all sing together. When two Jola harpists perform together, only one of them normally plays the harp while the other, with two sticks, beats a simple rhythmic pattern on the calabash of the harp being played. In a Padhola dance a solo harpist is sometimes accompanied by a percussion trough, single-headed drum, cone flute, side-blown trumpet, the pellet bells on the dancers' ankles and a chorus.
Symbolism is an important aspect of African harps and can lie in the intangible, such as the names given to strings, or in the tangible, in the form of geometric, anthropomorphic or zoomorphic designs. For example, the ngombi is the most important instrument used in Bwiti rituals of the Fang, and represents Nyingwan Mebege, the sister of their god and a benevolent life-giver to whom the Bwete appeal in their songs. The strings of the ngombi are considered to be her sinews and tendons; the tuning pegs, her spine; the resonator, her womb; her features are represented in the carved anthropomorphic figure (‘shelf’) on the top of the resonator; the sound of the harp is her voice.
Both the arched and angular harps of the ancient world (see §2 above) were carried eastwards: the arched to South and South-east Asia, where it has been played continuously to this day, and the angular to East Asia where it was revived in the 20th century.
The earliest depictions of arched harps in India are ideograms in the Indus script from before 1800 bce. After the demise of the Indus civilization, harps were not shown again in Indian iconography until the 2nd century bce with a narrow, boat-shaped resonator and a strongly bent neck (fig.4j above, and fig.13). Their dispersal coincided with the spread of Buddhism. According to the Nātyaśāstra (300 ce), this harp – the Vīnā – had seven or nine strings, but soon after 600 ce the term vīnā came to refer to a stick zither. Arched harps spread eastwards through India to Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia. Harps betraying distant Indian influences appear in Javanese stone carvings at the Buddhist monument of Borobudur in Central Java dating from the 9th century and at the Cambodian site of Angkor Wat (12th century), but it is debatable whether they were ever popular in Java, perhaps played only among the upper classes. Chinese documents reported that a large Burmese ensemble including an arched harp with 14 strings visited China in 801–02.
While the arched harp appears to have died out in most of South and South-east Asia after the end of the 17th century, three living harp traditions remain: the Saùng-gauk, the classical harp of Myanmar which goes back at least to the 7th century, the bīn-bājā that survives among the Pardhan of Madhya Pradesh, and the vaj or waji of Nuristan (Afghanistan; fig.14). The saùng-gauk, played by both sexes, is plucked with the right hand. No plectrum is used; instead the left hand rests on the neck of the harp so that the left thumbnail, the tip v-notched for accuracy and clarity, can be used to stop a string to raise its pitch. The bīn bājā and the vaj are played only by men, but with the same technique as that depicted in the 2nd millennium bce in Mesopotamia (see fig.4e) and in ancient India at least until the Gupta period (4th and 5th centuries ce; see Vīnā, §1): they are strummed with a plectrum in the right hand while the left damps the strings.
Although strikingly different in appearance, both the bīn bājā and the vaj probably derive, ultimately, from the Mesopotamian and Iranian traditions of the 4th–3rd millennia bce. Whether they can be linked morphologically with the Indian vīnā tradition is uncertain, but they are etymologically related in that bājā and vaj are both derivatives of the Sanskrit word meaning ‘instrument’. In addition to sharing performing positions and techniques, both have a neck/string-holder that is one continuous piece of wood. The strings are attached to the neck end with tether cords creating tuning collars, and are fed through holes in the string-holder end and then knotted there. Like ancient Egyptian harps (fig.4g), the vaj has ‘guide pegs’ (not tuning pegs) in its neck over which the strings are draped to prevent them from sliding down the neck; the bīn bājā is pegless. In neither case do the strings penetrate their skin soundtables. The strings of the bīn bājā are made of cow or deer veins; those of the vaj of calf or cow tendons. Both have waisted resonators, that of the vaj wide with a rectangular cross-section, while the resonator of the bīn bājā is long, smooth and slim. The method of fastening their continuous neck/string-holders to their resonators, however, is very different. That of the vaj, a pronounced C-shape resting on its side, is pinned through the soundtable so that only a small amount of it is in contact with it. The neck/string-holder of the bīn bājā is pinned into the skin soundtable at both ends of the notched string-holder section which is thus entirely in contact with the soundtable. The bīn bājā has five long strings (although there are eight sawtooth notches on its stringholder) with a low tuning, and the vaj has four (there are some reports of five) strings and a higher tuning, approximately within a tetrachord. The vaj is played as a melodic instrument and is apparently not accompanied by singing, while the bīn bājā produces a kind of rhythmic ostinato or drone to accompany the narrative singing of excerpts from the Mahabharata or from Gond epic poetry.
The vertically held angular harp spread eastwards through Central Asia, probably along the Silk Road. Cave paintings along this route show harps being played in Buddhist ensembles: the arched harp seen in Pendzhikent, Tajikistan (700–20 ce; fig.4i), suggests Indian influence, but most sites display the light angular type (e.g. fig.7a) of Persia. According to written histories, the angular harp entered China during the Han Dynasty (206 bce to 220 ce) and was later taken from there, apparently along with Buddhism, to Korea and Japan. The dominant type remained the light angular type which in China (called konghou) reached the zenith of its popularity during the Sui and Tang dynasties (581–907). The only two surviving Chinese harps (collected in the 9th century, but possibly manufactured some centuries earlier) are now in the Shōsōin Repository at Nara, Japan. By about 1100 when purges had decimated Buddhism in China, the harp ceased to be illustrated, although Tang dynasty paintings were continuously copied (including the harps), a fact that is apt to cause confusion among scholars.
Vertically held angular harps probably continued to be played for several more centuries in the Middle East, possibly reaching India during the Muslim period (13th century or later); they were depicted in Persian and Mughal miniature paintings until the 17th century. Occasionally these later harps were depicted with what appears to be a thin forepillar. Most frequently the strings were attached to the neck via tuning nooses as they were in most previous Asian iconography; a few depictions showed tuning pegs but only in the later centuries.
In Japan the angular harp was once used in gagaku, the court orchestral tradition. In the 1970s, the Japanese Gagaku Society commissioned a replica of the larger of the two Shōsōin harps, thus reviving the tradition. However, the replica omitted the small pin between the neck and the resonator (fig.7d), the original of which was not found until later, but a more exact replica was made in the early 1980s. It then became apparent that the light angular harp had a crucial weakness: when one string was tuned, others were strongly affected. Most likely, this shortcoming affected most harps of the light angular type.
Harps spread to regions far north of the ancient Middle Eastern heartland. In Georgia (see Georgia, §II, fig.3) there is an angular harp, the changi (derived from chang, the Persian term for harp). An arched harp, the tor-sapt-iukh is an arched harp of the Khantys, one of the Finno-Ugric people of western Siberia. Both harps survived well into the 20th century and may still be played in some regions. Although these two harps have been classified as angular and arched respectively, the distinction is not as clear-cut as on ancient harps. Georgian and Khanty harps sometimes have a thin forepillar inserted between the distal ends of the resonator and the neck and, in view of the formalistic nature of classification schemes, one might call them ‘frame harps’. But the very light dimension of the sticks, and their absence on some specimens, suggest that they may be disregarded for the purposes of classification, and the harps can still be regarded as arched and angular. The Khanty harp is laminated so that the neck end rises smoothly from the resonator like the neck of a swan. On the Georgian harp the neck is also laminated to the body, but it forms a 90° angle with the body.
1. The Middle Ages and the early Renaissance.
2. Ireland and Scotland: diatonic harps from the 14th century to the 18th.
4. Spain, mid-16th century to the early 18th.
5. Multi-rank harps in Europe outside Spain.
7. Mechanized harps and later ‘harpes chromatiques’.
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
The distinguishing characteristic of the medieval harp is its resonator carved out of a single piece of wood. Harps made in this way were played in Europe from the 8th to the 18th centuries. Some resonators may have been carved from the front and covered with leather, tightly stitched up behind, so that the skin served as the soundboard. Strings were probably made from materials close to hand, including those derived from animals (gut, sinew, leather, horsehair), metal (brass, bronze), precious metal (electrum, silver) and exotic materials (silk). Medieval harps generally had a range no wider, and often much narrower, than the human voice.
Though the oldest extant European harps date from the 14th century ce, the earliest European depictions of harps are those on Greek and Italo-Greek vases of the 5th and 4th centuries bce. These, however, show Asiatic-type harps, mostly derived from Mesopotamian and Persian harps of the previous millennium (see §II above). At present, no iconographical evidence is known that suggests the existence of harps in western Europe in the millennium between the Italo-Greek depictions and those of the 8th century ce. The origins and early development of European harps remain a matter for speculation and debate. Terminology provides little assistance. The Anglo-Saxon hearpe, from which the word harp is derived, originally denoted a Teutonic lyre. In some early Western depictions, harps are labelled ‘cithara’, ‘lyra’ or even ‘barbitos’: Greek terms for various kinds of lyre.
The primary source of information about medieval European harps is in Christian iconography. Open harps continued to be depicted occasionally up to the 12th century; after that time, frame harps are virtually the only kind shown. Most appear in illustrations of the psalms, in the hands of David himself or one of his attendants.
The Dagulf Psalter, a product of the Court School of Aachen, was presented to Pope Hadrian I by Charlemagne some time before 795. Its carved ivory cover carries two David scenes, one with harp. In the lower scene, soldiers look on as an enthroned David plays the harp accompanied by two musicians: one with clapper cymbals, the other with a plucked three-string lute (fig.15). This harp is reminiscent of a Greek type, but it has only a vestigial resonator and is held in medieval and not west Asiatic position (see fig.1, positions C and D respectively). There is no trace of such a harp in European use, but similar depictions continue to occur later; for example, in a Greek psalter written and illustrated by Theodorus of Caesarea in 1066. As many as 12 frame harps are found on Picto-Scottish cross slabs and free-standing crosses, dating from the 8th to the 10th centuries, all shown within the context of David iconography. If the dating of the stone at Nigg (Scottish Highlands) to the second half of the 8th century is accurate, its depiction of a triangular frame harp would be the earliest known (post-Classical) appearance of the instrument in northern Europe, although it soon spread south to the Continent and west to Ireland. Pictish stones from Lethendy, near Perth, and Ardchattan, near Oban, both 10th century, present harp players alongside other instrumentalists, including triple-pipers and a horn player, evoking Davidic choirs, such as that seen in the Dagulf Psalter.
Harps in the Byzantine-influenced Utrecht Psalter (816–35) continue to have straight necks as found on all angular harps, with five to eight strings and forepillars either imperfectly delineated or absent. In some cases there is a suggestion of a trefoil or clawed foot at the base of the resonator. Harps are more clearly drawn in the 11th-century Harley Psalter and the Canterbury Psalter (before 1170), both of which derive from the Utrecht Psalter. These harps demonstrate features common to most European harps for several following centuries: the neck is slightly curved inwards towards a trapezoidal box resonator; the neck is joined to the narrower end of the resonator by a narrow shank; and the forepillar is curved outwards, away from the longest string.
Variations on this basic shape (fig.16a), perhaps regional, can be seen. The harp played by the seated figure on the 11th-century Irish Shrine of St Mogue (in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin) already has the characteristic Irish T-formation strengthening the forepillar (see §V, 2 below). The late 12th-century Hunterian and Westminster Psalters depict harps with about 13 strings, zoomorphic, slightly overhanging neck finials, carved or turned forepillars, and resonators whose quatrefoil and oblong markings are probably nonperspective representations of soundholes.
In psalm illuminations dating from the 12th to the 14th centuries, David is often tuning his harp, symbolically imposing order on the world. In the Hunterian initial, David is plucking a 5th with his right hand (assuming the forefinger and not the middle finger is used and the harp is tuned diatonically) while turning the peg of the upper string with a tuning key in his left (fig.17). This hand position is also often shown in depictions where he is not tuning; it appears to be a thumb and two-finger technique that continued to be the primary playing method used in Spain until the mid-18th century.
Another small harp-type instrument was quadrangular. Its string holder was at the top and it had a slim forepillar. Such an instrument is depicted on the cover of a book probably made between 1131 and 1144 for Melissenda, Countess of Anjou, played by one of David's musicians, while another plays a small triangular harp (see Dulcimer, fig.10). Other examples are in a Greek psalter and canticles of Eusebius Pamphili, 11th-century Bishop of Caesarea, and on the North and South Crosses at Castledermot in Ireland, probably from the same century.
In the 12th century harps were often shown in the hands of some of the 24 Elders. Large examples with zoomorphic finial and plain forepillar are found on the Pórtico de la Gloria of the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela and the Portail Royal of Chartres Cathedral. A book of Old Testament illustrations of about 1250, with text in an Italian hand and pictures probably by various French artists, shows small, highly decorated 12- or 13-string harps of this type with trefoil foot. Plainer forms were still depicted in the 14th century; one example of 1376 (the Irish Shrine of St Patrick's Tooth, National Museum of Ireland, Dublin) has 22 strings, and was made after French models for Thomas de Bramighem, Baron of Athenry. Another with 22 strings, played by one of six attendant angels, was portrayed by the Catalan painter Pere Serra (1375–1404) in his Virgen de Tortosa (Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona).
A significant change can be seen in some instruments depicted in the 13th century. While the gentle curve of the neck is retained, the neck extends upwards somewhat at the front, thus giving slightly more length to the lowest strings, and the forepillar is now only gently curved (fig.16b). The stained glass in Chartres Cathedral contains a figure of David with this kind of harp, as does the Beatus initial in the English Peterborough Psalter (c1300).
By the 14th century, another harp form had developed: its forepillar was still strongly curved, but its neck swept up at the front into a pointed finial balanced by another pointed finial at the neck-to-shank joining point (fig.16c). A harp of this type, with nine strings, is depicted being tuned by David in the Tree of Jesse on an orphrey of opus anglicanum made between 1310 and 1340 (fig.18). Stringing can be deduced from the remains of a late 14th- or early 15th-century ivory harp (now in the Louvre); it has 24 original pegholes and one which seems to be a later addition, bringing the total to the number given by Machaut in his poem Dit de la harpe (Oeuvres de Guillaume de Machaut, ed. Hoepffner, 1908–21). If modally tuned throughout, it would have a range of a little more than three octaves. With a more probable partly chromatic tuning in at least one octave, it would have slightly less than three octaves overall. The forepillar is 47 cm high on the external curve and is mortised into the neck. Presumably this was the kind of harp used in French 14th-century polyphonic music. The performing instructions of Jacob de Senleches's La harpe de melodie (a copy in US-CHAhs 54.1 is uniquely notated in the shape of a harp) indicate that its somewhat slow-moving tenor was to be played on the harp and the injunction ‘harpe toudis sans espasse blechier’ seems to imply that its long notes should be sustained by reiteration.
While most medieval and Renaissance harps were probably gut-strung, it is likely that a proportion were metal-strung. Irish harps, in which many medieval features were retained, had brass strings which were alternately plucked with long fingernails and damped or stopped with the fingerpads. The fingernail technique is mentioned in the 13th-century Geste of Kyng Horn, where the direction ‘Teche him to harpe with nayles scharpe’ occurs. Extant tuning-pegs from the 12th, 14th and 15th centuries are either perforated or slotted; most are made of bone, which has a higher chance of survival than wood or metal, though the latter materials were also used.
During the early 15th century considerable experimentation in harp design took place, resulting in several forms, with some common and some individual features. These changes were contemporary with the downwards extension of bass registers in general and with the development of keyboard instruments. In the late 14th and 15th centuries the harp and organ were frequently depicted with clerics (as well as in the earlier context with angels), and both instruments must have fulfilled functions which were parallel in some ways.
The methods of achieving a downwards extension of harp compass involved changes in the angles between the rigid parts of the instrument. In one type of harp the neck and curved forepillar were swept upwards to form a high point (i.e. ‘high-headed’), accommodating bass strings considerably longer than was possible on earlier harps (fig.16d). The other type showed more fundamental changes. Longer string length was achieved by lowering the bass end of the resonator in relation to the neck. The angle of the forepillar-to-resonator joint thus became more acute at the lower end, while that of the neck-to-resonator joint became wider. The forepillar, at first gently curved, was later straight or nearly so, and of T-formation in section. The neck was no longer set directly into the treble end of the resonator but was set on a slim shank. To some extent this improved the line-up of the shortest strings, which had been somewhat splayed and out of plane on earlier harps. Points or scrolls decorated the forepillar finial and the neck-to-shank point (fig.16e).
There was little change in the size of the resonator in either type of harp. It remained slim and fairly shallow, though there was some variation in shape, later examples being generally oval or hexagonal in section and made from two hollowed-out parts put together length-ways. There was one completely new feature common to both types. Each string was fixed into the resonator with a right-angled wooden pin, which later became known as a bray (Fr. harpion; Ger. Schnarrhaken; It. arpione; Welsh gwrach). When a string was plucked, it vibrated against the bray, producing an aesthetically desired buzzing quality. This was comparable with the sound obtainable on other contemporary instruments, such as the krummhorn and the hurdy-gurdy; an annotation in a copy of Mersenne's Harmonie universelle (1636–7) likened the effect to ‘le doux tremblement d'une orgue’. There are a few instances of brays on much later types of harp, including two-rank chromatic harp s (see §V, 5 and fig.25 below) and high-headed single-strung harps with ribbed-back resonators (see §V, 3 below). The new Renaissance harps were gut-strung; some continued to be played with the older nail technique in the stopped style and others may have been played with the fingertips. This Renaissance harp must have been well suited to the music of the time as it remained in use, across the British Isles and into central Europe, until well after the next significant redesigning of harps at the end of the 16th century.
Besides a great number of depictions of Renaissance harps, several instruments have survived. The earliest, now in Eisenach, was made in the Tyrol, possibly in the 15th century. It has 26 strings, stands 104 cm high and has delicate inlaid geometrical decoration of a kind found on other 15th-century instruments. Two undecorated 16th-century examples, now in the collections of Leipzig University and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg (fig.19b), are 92 cm and 102 cm high, with 25 and 26 strings respectively.
A method of sharpening individual notes by stopping or pinching the string near the neck or close to the soundboard was used to some extent, but sustained change of mode required retuning of some strings. Simple tunings of a kind already in use were given in several 16th-century printed treatises: Martin Agricola (Musica instrumentalis deudsch, 1529) mentioned a harp with one row of 26 strings (F to c''') in which the B strings could be tuned either flat or natural; Venegas de Henestrosa (Libro de cifra nueva, 1557) indicated that the fourth string (B) and the seventh (E) could be tuned either natural or flat. Mersenne also illustrated the simple single-strung harp with brays (which had been superseded in France by his time), giving the range of the 24-string harp as G to g'' with natural B in the lowest octave and both flat and natural Bs in the other two. He said the performers of his day tuned by ‘putting flats in all sorts of keys’, though the tuning of certain strings (known as modales) was constant. These tuning methods continued to be used on later single-rank harps.
In Wales the classic Renaissance harp had brays, horsehair strings, bone tuning pins and mare's skin stretched over the soundbox. Descriptions of such instruments appear in many Welsh poems of the 15th and 16th centuries, soliciting the gift of a harp. A small silver model of a Renaissance harp, made by a Chester silversmith, was one of the awards at the Eisteddfod at Caerwys in Flintshire in 1567. Renaissance harps were still used in Wales long after they had been abandoned elsewhere. James Talbot, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge (1689–1704), made extensive notes on many instruments in use towards the end of the 17th century (Talbot MS; GB-Och Music 1187). ‘The proper Welch harp’ and ‘Welch or Bray Harp’ referred to by some of his informants were in fact large Renaissance harps, with either 31 (A' to c''') or 34 (G' to e''') strings. Welsh harp players employed five standard and guaranteed tunings, as enumerated in 16th-century treatises and repertory lists: is gywair, cras gywair, lleddf gywair y gwyddil, go gywair and bragod gywair; tro tant was not a standard tuning, but was commonly used. Such tunings are required by the music of the Robert ap Huw manuscript (GB-Lbl Add.14905). This manuscript, written in a unique tablature, contains examples of harp music composed by 14th- and 15th-century bardic harpers in Wales and gives precise playing instructions, indicating specific fingerings for both striking and stopping the strings.
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
The Irish and Gaelic name for the harp, Cláirseach (Scottish: Clàrsach), is documented from the 15th century onwards; the terms ‘ceirnin’ and ‘cruit’ are also found. Harps depicted in medieval shrines (see §5(i) above) show structural features of the type of instrument used in Ireland until the late 18th century (see Irish harp (i)).
The oldest extant Irish harp, now at Trinity College, Dublin, had legendary associations with Brian Boroimhe (or Boru, 926–1014), but dates in fact from no earlier than the 14th century (fig.20). This harp is low-headed: the upper end of its forepillar meets the neck at a point only slightly higher than the joint between the treble end of the neck and the resonator. Two other harps, known as the Queen Mary and Lamont harps (now in the Royal Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh), are also of this type and have been dated to the 15th century. Later, perhaps by the beginning of the 16th century, a larger but still low-headed form emerged.
These three instruments share features which characterize the Irish harp as it was used in Ireland, Scotland and Europe until its disappearance: brass wire as stringing material; large, flat soundboxes hewn from a single piece of wood with metal ‘shoes’ to protect the string-holes and a thin panel rebated into the back; strong, deeply curved necks further reinforced by metal cheek-bands which sandwich the timber and are pierced by bronze or brass tuning pins of large diameter; and curved pillars with T-formation. The neck, pillar and resonator are held together by the tension of the strings alone, without glued joints.
By the 18th century, however, the typical instrument, as played by itinerant Irish harpers, was much larger. Whereas the panels which closed the backs of the medieval instruments had no holes, causing stringing to be done through open sound-holes in the bellies of the harps, from the 17th century onwards most instruments had sound-holes filled with tracery, so stringing was done through large holes in the back panel. Unlike previous harps with solid backs, these had a drier, simpler tone. The big, one-piece resonator was retained but the forepillar, now only slightly curved, was very tall (the low-headed Lamont harp has a forepillar height of 59·7 cm; that of the high-headed, 18th century Sirr harp – in the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin – measures 111·8 cm) and the neck swept upwards to meet it. The bass strings were therefore much longer in relation to the treble strings than on a low-headed harp. Irish harps were strung to the left side of the neck, but tuning was done from the right; the left hand played the treble, the right hand the bass. Irish harpers struck the brass strings of their harps with specially trimmed long fingernails. It seems unlikely that this technique was used by gentleman amateurs in England who took up the Irish harp in the later 17th century.
The sonority of the individual notes varies greatly, depending on whether the wires are struck by the fleshy fingertips or the fingernails; the use of the latter implies a quite different playing technique and type of attack. It also means that the melodic ornamentation typical of Irish performance on an Irish harp properly ‘strung with brass strings and beaten with crooked nails’ cannot be reproduced by a player using the fingertips. Even in Ireland the old technique gradually died out in the 17th and 18th centuries, and of the ten harpers present at the famous harpers meeting in Belfast in 1792 only one, Denis Hempson, then 97 years old, used the traditional fingernail technique. It was very soon to die out altogether – during a period, ironically, of revived interest in Irish music and the Irish harp (see §10(i), below).
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
Diatonically or partly chromatically tuned harps with one rank of strings continued in use long after the invention of double- and triple-strung fully chromatic harps (see §V, 4–5 below) and, later, of pedal harps. In most cases, they were adaptations of earlier types, often structurally influenced in some respects by newer forms. Two chief kinds are traceable. One seems to derive from that regarded by Praetorius in Germany as the ‘ordinary’ (‘gemeine einfache’) harp (fig.21). The resonator was generally fairly shallow, four-sided and rectangular in section, though some instruments had a convexly curved soundboard; strings were pegged into a string holder, a wooden strip that ran lengthwise down the middle of the soundboard. Soundholes were sometimes circular, more often clusters of small perforations. Some instruments were plainly made; others had very elaborately carved necks with anthropomorphic or zoomorphic finials (heads of David, Cupids, warriors, lion heads etc). Forepillars were slightly curved in earlier harps, later generally straight. Though low-headed harps of this kind were made even in the 18th century, high-headed forms had already appeared in the 17th century and these were still played by some professional virtuosos at the end of the 18th century. Presumably their repertory (like that in some regions of Latin America) was not more chromatic than could be accommodated by the old system of partly chromatic tuning or different tuning in different octaves. In hooked form, some harps of this type lasted even longer in certain regions (see §V, 8, below).
The other main type had a resonator with a ribbed back, a flat soundboard, and a straight forepillar in either low- or high-headed form. Most of the later single-strung Welsh harps are of this type. Although a low-headed form became the predominant type in Latin America (see §V, 6, below) few European examples have been preserved and its early history is difficult to ascertain. It seems to have been derived from Mediterranean (not northern) sources and may have been a byproduct of early triple harps.
A very small harp (forepillar height of 84 cm), bearing the mark ‘Stradivarius, Cremona 1681’ (in the Naples Conservatory), has a flat pine soundboard (now slightly lifted with string tension) with violin-like double purfling, set on a resonator shaped as if in five ribs, though it is actually made in one piece. The 27 strings are pegged directly into the soundboard, except for the lowest three, which are toggled through large holes; there are four tiny heart-shaped soundholes. In another small Italian instrument (owned by one family since 1860 but possibly of earlier manufacture), the resonator is five-ribbed, 31 strings are pegged into a central strip on the soundboard and there are four soundhole clusters.
A small harp now in the Royal College of Music, London, must have been made for a Welsh player, who traditionally balanced the harp on his left shoulder, since it is strung to the (player’s) right of the neck. Its resonator is five-ribbed; the strings are pegged into the soundboard and above each string-hole is the metal strip found on most 18th-century triple harps. The Richard Hayward harp (so-called after its last private owner, who gave it to the National Museum of Ireland, Dublin, in 1947) is similarly strung. It is 150 cm high, with a nine-ribbed resonator 109 cm long and 31 strings. Except that it is single-strung, it is structurally like 18th-century Welsh-made triple harps. The inscription in Irish (‘May you never want a string while there are guts in an Englishman’) and the unlikely date 1657, which are incised on the forepillar, must have been added during its use in Ireland where it is said to have been played in the streets and parks of Belfast about 1780 by the itinerant harper Paddy Murphy.
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
Various techniques used to obtain chromatic notes on diatonic (single-rank) harps are described or depicted in Spanish sources, mainly of the mid-16th century to the early 18th. Alonso Mudarra (Tres libros de musica en cifras para vihuela, 1546), Juan Bermudo (Declaración de instrumentos musicales, 1555; describing the technique of the harpist Ludovico) and Diego Fernández de Huete (Compendio numeroso de zifras … para arpa de una orden y arpa de dos órdenes, y de órgano, 1702–4) all described sharpening the required string by stopping it close to the neck of the instrument with the thumb, and Mudarra and Huete also described re-tuning certain strings to obtain the required accidentals. Although it is never mentioned in the writings, another technique which may have been used was that of stopping the string with the tuning key, held in the fourth and fifth fingers of the right hand – which are not used for plucking the strings – in a manner similar to the current practice in some Latin American regions. This technique is depicted in a painting from the second half of the 17th century (Herod's Banquet and Salome's Dance by Domingo Nieto, S Juan Bautista de Taragabuena, Toro, Zamora), the only known reference in Spain to this practice.
In his Declaración, Bermudo described diatonically tuned, single-rank harps (of 24 to 27 strings), but he considered them imperfect compared with the fully chromatic keyboard instruments; he stated that the harp was little played on account of its difficulty and suggested adding eight or ten coloured strings to make it possible to play cadences correctly, or even five coloured strings to each octave for a complete chromatic range. A manuscript note added to the copy of Bermudo's book in the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, indicates that at the time when Bermudo was writing his treatise, Francisco Martínez, harpist to the infantas, used harps with chromatic strings added and had written tablature for harp (Stevenson, 1960). Martínez had commissioned harps for the royal household from the luthier Juan de Carrión (d c1606), who was probably one of those who developed the harp with two ranks of strings; it is possible that this book of tablature (now lost) was written for a chromatic harp. All this indicates that the chromatic harp, probably with crossed strings, was in use in Spain by the middle of the 16th century. The florid and fairly chromatic pieces in Hernando de Cabezón's Obras de música para tecla, arpa y vihuela (1578) could have been played only on a harp with considerable chromatic possibilities.
Ever since it first appeared in musical sources in the middle of the 16th century, the harp has been linked with keyboard instruments in terms of musical function and repertory, and in the chromaticism required of these instruments. The first known piece of music specifically written for harp is Tiento IX, Cifras para harpa y órgano by Alonso Mudarra (in Tres libros de música en cifras, 1546), written in tablature (Sp. cifra) for a diatonic harp of 28 or 29 strings. Mudarra stated that this was an example from an entire book of tablature for harp and organ which he had written but not published. Mudarra's Fantasía no.10 (for vihuela) was written in imitation of the playing of Ludovico, who contrived chromatic notes with good effect on a single-rank harp – perhaps by means of string stopping but more probably by pre-tuning selected strings. Another tablature, invented for harp, vihuela and keyboard by Venegas de Henestrosa (1557), was used by several composers from the late 16th to the early 18th centuries, including Antonio de Cabezón (1578), Ruiz de Ribayaz (1677) and Diego Fernández de Huete (1702) (see also Tablature, §2(iv), fig.3 ). In this tablature the letters y, l and p are used for the fingers – index (índice), middle (largo) and thumb (pulgar), respectively – and q, o, and s for the left-hand chords (quinta, octava, sexta). Some harp music has survived in normal notation.
In Spain, single- and double-rank harps coexisted from the mid-16th century (slightly later elsewhere) until the 18th. In 1702–4 Huete still devoted part of his treatise to the single-rank harp, although he pointed out that double-rank ones were more commonly used. Iconographic sources, texts, and the only surviving example of a single-rank harp (made c1700 by Joseph Fernández de Valladolid, and now in the Museo de la Encarnación, Ávila, this harp has the resonator of a diatonic harp but a neck of a chromatic harp), all indicate that, except for in the number of strings, diatonic and chromatic harps were similar in their morphology, proportions and style of construction. One early 16th-century painting (Juan Correa de Vivar, King David, c1535; fig.22) shows a single-rank harp that displays all the main characteristics of the Renaissance and Baroque Spanish harp: several ribs in the soundbox, the head slightly raised, the forepillar narrow though still lightly curved, two soundholes with parchment, and 20 strings (though only 14 pegs; see also fig.23).
Spanish documentation from the 17th century to the early 18th indicates that diatonic and chromatic harps were all built according to the same set pattern, differing only in the number of strings. This pattern was possibly already established in the second half of the 16th century. The guild of luthiers, regulated since the second half of the 15th century in the Kingdom of Aragon and since the beginning of the 16th century in Castilla, was ruled by a strict set of guidelines. In Madrid there are ordinances going back to at least 1578 (which indicates a pre-exisiting tradition) requiring the use of specific woods and patterns in the construction of string instruments, among them the harp. This explains the continuity of a particular harp-making style over more than a century.
In the 1680s, there were at least six players of a Spanish kind of harp in London. The low-headed, 33-string instrument measured and described in the James Talbot Manuscript (c1690–1700, GB-Och MS 1187) was was a little over 147 cm tall, with a seven-ribbed resonator 137 cm long, widening from 12·7 cm at the top to 45·8 cm at the bottom. Like several of the cross-strung Spanish chromatic harps that have survived, its soundboard was of pine and the rest of the instrument of walnut. (Talbot mentioned the existence of a double-strung Spanish harp with five chromatic strings per octave, but he gave no measurements and appears not to have encountered one personally.)
Single- and double-strung Spanish harps from the late 17th century and early 18th, though approximately as tall as that described by Talbot, had much larger resonators, closer to those prescribed by Nassarre in 1724 (for double-strung harps). In Latin America, very large resonators are found on some instruments which are otherwise still of 17th- or early 18th-century type (see §5, 1(iv), below).
Nine complete two-rank harps and one fragment survive, all from the late 17th and early 18th centuries; several of them are signed by luthiers of the royal household. In all of them the diatonic and chromatic ranks cross approximately one third of the way up the length of the strings (i.e. they are ‘cross-strung’), and in four instances numbers representing the notes as they were given in tablature are written on the neck or on the soundboard. In each example, the soundbox is made up of seven ribs, usually of walnut; the head is slightly raised and the forepillar is narrow and straight, and carved with decorative rings. The base of the forepillar is usually open, with two strips of wood crossed over it that serve as feet. There are seven polygonal soundholes in the soundboard; in two examples, both from 1704, they are rhomboidal. Inside the box there is very little reinforcement; there are wooden bars only under the soundboard; the ribs are joined together by glued strips of cloth. Two of these harps have 27 diatonic and 15 chromatic strings, and the rest have 29 diatonic and 18 chromatic. Their characteristics approximate those stated by theorists, especially Nassarre.
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
Harp, §V, 5: Europe and the Americas: Multi-rank harps in Europe outside Spain
Several types of harps were developed with more than one rank of strings to make chromatic notes available as they are on the keyboard. One type, used in Spain and Portugal, had two ranks crossing approximately one third of the way up the length of the strings, yielding the term ‘cross-strung’ (see §V, 4, above). In other parts of Europe, harps with two or three parallel ranks in various configurations were used, known in general by the term arpa doppia (‘double harp’: in this sense the term refers to a harp with ‘additional strings’, not specifically in two ranks, nor does ‘double’ that the instrument is ‘doubled’ in size – as in ‘double bass’ – as some scholars have speculated).
Iconographical evidence shows that experiments with more than one rank of strings began at least as early as the 14th century. A triptych of 1390 (Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid) from the monastery at Piedra shows a small medieval harp with two parallel ranks.
Literary references to harps with more than one rank of strings date from the early 16th century. In his Tetrachordum musices (Nuremberg, 1511) Johannes Cochlaeus reported that the English play a harp with three ranks. A second annotation scribbled in the Library of Congress's copy of Bermudo's Declaración (see §V, 4, above) complains that Bermudo was unaware ‘que en flandres abia harpas de tres ordenes’ (‘that in Flanders there are harps with three ranks of strings’; see Stevenson, 1960).
The term arpa doppia has caused confusion since the 17th century. In Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1635–6), Mersenne used the term double Harpe when referring to a large harp with three ranks of strings, comparing it to the smaller Harpe ordinaire à trois rangs. In the 1770s Charles Burney referred to a three-rank harp as ‘our double Welsh harp’ (Burney GN). On another occasion, when viewing the painting Allegory of Music (c1625–34; now in the Palazzo Barberini, Rome) by Giovanni Lanfranco, which features a large three-rank harp, Burney noted that ‘St Cecilia is playing a large double harp’ (BurneyFI). A similar harp appears in the painting of King David by Domenico Zampieri (‘Domenichino’, 1581–1641), an artist of the school of Bologna (fig.24). Domenichino portrayed triple harps in several other paintings (Martyrdom of St Agnes, c1619–22, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna; Virgin and Child with SS John the Evangelist and Petronius, c1626–9, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan; Dance of David, Silvestro al Quirinale, Rome). A large arpa doppia (it is not quite clear if it has two or three ranks) is included in the Portrait of the Artist's Family (c1646; Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan) by Carlo Francesco Nuvolone.
Three treatises survive that contain detailed information on the structure and tuning of harps with more than one rank of strings: Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna (Florence, 1581) by Vincenzo Galilei, Mersenne's Harmonie universelle, and the Tratado de la música (Ms, 1634, E-Mn 8931) by Bartolomé Jovernardi (Bartolomeo Giovenardi, a Roman harpist working at the Spanish court). Galilei's is the only known detailed description of a harp with two parallel ranks. His schematic diagram shows 58 strings comprising a compass of four octaves and one tone (C–d'''). The two ranks were divided around c' into an upper half used by the right hand, where the second or chromatic rank lay to the (player's) left of the main diatonic rank, and a lower half, used by the left hand, where the chromatic rank lay to the right of the main rank; i.e. the chromatic rank changed sides half way up so that with each hand the player had to reach through the outer diatonic rank to pluck the chromatic strings. The problem with this type of stringing was outlined both by Galilei and Jovernardi: when playing with the right hand below the cross-over point (c') or with the left hand above, in each case the fingers must reach through the chromatic rank to play the diatonic notes, unless strings on the chromatic rank could be tuned in unison with the diatonic rank. This complication is eliminated on three-rank (triple) harps with two parallel outer ranks tuned in unison and the inner rank of chromatic notes set between them.
Jovernardi and Mersenne gave detailed descriptions of three-rank harps. In 1634, while in residence at the court in Madrid, Jovernardi observed that Spanish harps did not have three ranks of strings as did the harps in Italy. Features found on extant instruments corroborate the details Mersenne gave concerning the structure of the three-rank harp. Strings were secured to the soundboard using pegs or pins, a system that persisted in Welsh triple harps well into the 19th century. The back of the resonator was ribbed (rather like that of the lute), rather than being a three-sided box or carved out of one piece of wood. The metal tuning-pins were squared at one end to accommodate the tuning key, and pierced with a hole at the other for strings to be threaded through. Brass wires were attached to the soundboard above each peg to stop the wood, with the grain running vertically, from splitting. Mersenne said that harps could be made to whatever size one wished, but he suggested a height of 4 or 5 feet (1·2–1·5 metres). Large Italian triple harps were over 6 feet (1·8 metres) tall.
Some
basic characteristics of two- and three-rank harps of the late 16th and early
17th centuries emerge from these sources. Compasses varied from over three
octaves to four octaves and a 5th. The latter (G'–d''') is the
largest range required in works where arpa doppia is specified,
including the Toccata by Trabaci and the solo in Monteverdi's L'Orfeo
(see §V, 5(ii), below). Two- and three-rank harps could be tuned with either B
or B
in the diatonic ranks. The
chromatic ranks contained all the accidentals needed corresponding to the
diatonic ranks and could include D and A, in unison with the diatonic ranks, or D
and A. Mersenne said that the exact size
of the semitones on the harp was not easily determined, but that they could be
variable, and tuned equal or unequal. No particular temperament was specified.
Two- and three-rank harps were usually strung with gut. Jovernardi referred to
‘reinforced strings’, but what these were made of has not been determined
(possibilities include gut strings with a higher twist or some kind of
overwinding with metal). Silk or metal strings may also have been used. These
harps were played resting on the right shoulder, and strings were plucked with
the pads of the fingers, sometimes close to the nails. Damping the strings was
sometimes necessary to avoid dissonances created when notes rang over. Great
dynamic range was possible with the proper touch.
The lavishly decorated harp known as the ‘L'arpa de Laura’ is the most beautiful surviving example of a two-rank harp (Galleria Estense, Modena; fig.25). It was ordered for the singer and harpist Laura Peverara (c1550–1601) by the Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso II d'Este, and built in Rome in 1581. Two 17th-century two-rank harps are in the Musée des Instruments de Musique, Brussels. The first, which displays some structural similarities to the harps depicted by Domenichino and Nuvolone, is called the ‘Kaiser’ harp due to a possibly anachronistic label reading ‘Martinus Kaiser 1675’. This harp has a five-staved, cypress resonator, a walnut neck and forepillar, four soundholes in the soundboard, and metal staples to prevent the strings from ripping the soundboard. The two parallel ranks have extremely narrow spacing and the strings are fastened to the soundboard with bray pins. The second of the Brussels harps – of German origin – is an elegant instrument, its forepillar terminating in an anthropomorphic finial (fig.26). It has 33 strings in the left rank and 26 in the right; the five lowest and four highest have no chromatic strings beside them. This harp is also equipped with bray pins. Another important two-rank harp (late 16th century) is in the Museo Civico, Bologna. This harp has a carved resonator, eight soundhole rosettes in the soundboard, brass staples and three ranks of strings: a continuous middle rank from treble to bass and two incomplete chromatic ranks on either side.
The very large, highly decorated, three-rank ‘Barberini harp’ (c1625) formerly in the Palazzo Barberini and now in the Museo degli strumenti musicale, Rome is almost certainly the harp in the painting by Lanfranco mentioned above. This harp has an extravagantly carved forepillar, a resonator made of nine staves, and a long-grain softwood soundboard with four soundholes. The number of tuning pins in the neck does not correspond with the number of pins in the soundboard, so the original configuration of this harp cannot be precisely determined. A large, three-rank harp in the Museo Civico, Bologna is probably composed from two instruments. The nine-staved, maple resonator (? early 17th century) with its two-piece, long-grain spruce soundboard with four soundholes and brass staples has a light construction. The neck and forepillar are carved and heavy, and probably come from a later, larger harp.
Pierre Trichet, in his manuscript Traité des instruments de musique written in Bordeaux between about 1630 and 1640, observed that while single-, double- and triple-rank harps were being used at this time, the single-rank harp was by far the most common. By the beginning of the 18th century there are no records left of players of multi-rank harps working in Naples or Rome. Filippo Bonanni (Gabinetto Armonico, Rome, 1722), however, indicated that the three-rank harp, though scarcely found in Italy, was being used in Germany. J.P. Eisel (Musicus autodidactus, Leipzig 1738) gave a diagram of a two-rank harp (which he called a ‘Davids-Harfe’) and described how it was played, with the left hand from G' to c' and the right hand form c' upwards. This diagram is similar to the two-rank harps made by the German builder Johann Volckmann Rabe of Nordhausen. One of 1740, preserved in the Musikhistorisk Museum, Copenhagen, is fully chromatic, with 52 strings in two parallel rows fastened to the soundboard with bray pins. Three other harps by Rabe are in collections in Los Angeles, Nuremberg and Brussels.
Harp, §V, 5: Europe and the Americas: Multi-rank harps in Europe outside Spain
Beginning in Naples in the 16th century, and later in Rome, Italy was home to the most important centres for builders and players of the arpa doppia. Galilei stated that the double harp was introduced into Italy sometime prior to 1580. The Neapolitan harp tradition was centred around Gian Leonardo Mollico (c1530–1602), known as Giovanni Leonardo dell'Arpa, and his students, including Flaminio Caracciola (fl 1579–90), Scipione Bolino (fl 1600) and Francesco de Auxiliis (c1630). By 1552, Dell'Arpa was recognized as the leading harp virtuoso in Naples and one poetic reference even claims that he invented the arpa doppia. Nearly fifty years later, Scipione Cerreto (Della prattica musica vocale et strumentale, Naples, 1601) identified Dall'Arpa, Ascanio Mayone (c1565–1627) and Domenico Gallo (fl 1600) as excellent players of the ‘arpa a due ordini’. Mayone's son Giulio dell'Arpa was also an active and well known harpist.
Two publications printed in Naples include pieces designated for the harp. Ascanio Mayone included a Recercare sopra il canto fermo di Constantio Festa per sonare all'arpa (based on the La Spagna melody) in his Secondo libro di diversi capricci (1609). Giovanni Maria Trabaci's Il secondo libro de ricercare (1615) contains his Toccata seconda, & ligature per l'arpa, four Partite artificiose sopra il tenor di Zefiro and Ancidetemi pur, per l'arpa. Trabaci, Mayone and Luigi Rossi (?1597/8–1653; also a composer-harpist) were associated with Giovanni de Macque (c1548–1614), maestro of the Chapel of the Spanish Viceroy in Naples from 1599.
Rossi, in a manuscript collection (GB-Lbl Add.30491), preserved the majority of Macque's solo instrumental works along with other contemporary pieces including the four Partite sopra Zefiro by one Rinaldo. These are remarkably similar, in places virtually identical, to the Trabaci's partite on the Zefiro tenor. Although the precise identification of Rinaldo is somewhat uncertain, the most likely candidate is Rinaldo Trematerra [Rinaldo dall'Arpa] (d 1603), a singer and harpist who was based in Naples who visited the court of Ferrara, home to Laura Peverara, during the 1590s in the retinue of Carlo Gesualdo.
By the beginning of the 17th century the harp was also flourishing in Rome. Jovernardi claimed that the perfect triple harp (arpa perfecta a tre ordini), was invented in Rome in 1612. Vincenzo Giustiniani, however, wrote in his Discorso sopra la musica (1628) that the arpa doppia was invented around 1600 in Naples by Sire Luc Anthoine Eustache and then introduced to Rome by Giovanni Battista Jacomelli (del Violino) (c1550–1608). One of the most lauded of the Roman harpists was Orazio Michi (b 1594/5; d 1641), whose talent was praised by many Italian and French writers (including Mersenne and André Maugars), as well as by other harpists such as Caterina Baroni (daughter of the singer and harpist Adriana Basile Barone) and Costanza de Ponte, who married Luigi Rossi in 1627. Costanza's brother Paolo de Ponte was also a professional harpist active in Vienna. Rossi's younger brother Giovan Carlo (c1617–1692) was a noted player of the arpa a tre registri based in Rome, whose career also included a period in France. While there Rossi performed in the first performance of Cavalli's opera Ercole Amante in Paris (1662). Two other harpists held in high esteem in Rome were Marco Marazzoli (b c1602–5; d Rome, 26 Jan 1662) and Lucrezia Urbani (fl 1609), who was a member of an ensemble that included Girolamo Frescobaldi and the lutenist Alessandro Piccinini.
One of the most famous solos for harp in opera literature is the Ritornello for arpa doppia in L'Orfeo (1607) by Claudio Monteverdi. The arpa doppia was also used as a continuo instrument in operas by Marco and Domenicho Marazzoli and Stefano Landi and in other works by Sigismondo d'India, Girolamo Montesardo, Francesco Lambardi, Filippo Albini and Lelio Colista. Agostino Agazzari (Del sonare sopra 'l basso con tutti li stromenti, Sienna, 1607) classified the harp for use in continuo realization as an instrument both of foundation and of ornamentation.
The harp began to decline in southern Italy during the second half of the 17th century. Gregorio Strozzi included two solo pieces, a Sonata di basso solo per cimbalo et arpa, o leuto and two variations for harp in his Romanesca con partite, in his Neapolitan publications of 1683 and 1687.
Harp, §V, 5: Europe and the Americas: Multi-rank harps in Europe outside Spain
The triple harp appeared in the British Isles early in the 17th century. On 11 October 1629, the French harpist Jean le Flelle [Flesle] took the oath at the court of Charles I as ‘musician for the harp’, having arrived in London in 1625 in the retinue of Charles's bride, Henrietta Maria. Le Flelle, whose playing was praised by Mersenne, played the Italian triple harp with gut strings. William Lawes composed the 11 ‘harpe consorts’ for bass viol, violin, harp and theorbo, probably for Le Flelle's own consort.
It was the triple harp, however, that seems to have been so quickly adopted by the Welsh harpers living in London during the 17th century – so much so, that by the beginning of the 18th century the triple harp was already generally known as the Welsh harp. The first known Welsh triple harpist is Charles Evans who was appointed harper to the court in 1660, and was later referred to as ‘His Majesty's harper for the Italian harp’. Two outstanding Welsh makers were David Evans, who in 1736 made the splendid triple harp now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (fig.27), and his pupil John Richards of Llanrwst, who worked mostly in Wales at the estate of Sackville Gwynne at Glanbrân.
The typical Welsh triple harp is very high-headed with a steep harmonic curve. The range is generally about five octaves containing an average of 95 strings. The strings are held in place in the soundboard by round-headed wooden pegs and pass through slotted tuning-pins arranged in three stepped rows on the right side of the neck. The neck is not jointed directly to the resonator, but is set on a flat-topped shank which forms the upper part of a fluted block fixed in the upper end of the resonator. Often the neck is reinforced with an iron insert. The joint between the neck and the long, slim forepillar is held together by the tension of the strings. The resonator is coopered and strengthened on the inside with a number of wooden braces. Some Welsh triple harps have soundholes in the soundboard, others simply have an open resonator bottom. Welsh triples are designed to be played on the left shoulder, the left hand playing the treble register, the right hand the bass register and both hands accessing the inner row (fig.28). Welsh triple harps built in the 18th century were very lightly constructed, having thin, long-grained soundboards bent to form a convex belly. During the 19th century makers began to imitate pedal harp construction, using cross-grained soundboards. Late in the century Bassett Jones of Cardiff, chief harp maker to Queen Victoria and the most famous of the 19th-century makers, introduced a brass bar, or gallery, along the neck, improving the distribution of tension and justifying the plane of the strings. Compared to that of Italian triple harps, the tone is less defined but richer in the bass, and sweeter and less bright in the treble, both characteristics well suited to the 18th- and 19th-century repertory, particularly that of Welsh airs.
A good description of the Welsh triple harp is given by the harpist and composer john Parry (ii) (1776–1851) in the preface to the second volume of his collection of Welsh airs, The Welsh Harper (London 1839):
The compass of the Triple Harp, in general, is about five octaves, or thirty-seven strings in the principal row, which is on the side played by the right hand, called the bass row. The middle row, which produces the flats and sharps, consists of thirty-four strings; and the treble, or left hand row, numbers twenty-seven strings. The outside rows are tuned in unison, and always in the diatonic scale, that is, in the regular and natural scale of tones and semitones, as a peal of eight bells is tuned. When it is necessary to change the key, for instance, from C to G, all the Fs in the outside rows are made sharp by raising them half a tone. Again, to change from C to F, every B in the outside rows is made flat, by lowering it a semitone. When an accidental sharp or flat is required, the performer inserts a finger between two of the outer strings, and finds it in the middle row. Many experiments have been made, with a view of obviating the necessity of tuning the instrument every time a change in the key occurred. Brass rings were fixed near the comb, but those rattled and jarred; in short, every attempt failed until the invention of the Pedals. … Yet my old country Triple Harp, though it has its imperfections, possesses one advantage, and that is the unisons. Who has ever heard some of the old Welsh airs with variations, and not been quite delighted with the effect of the unisons?
The effect of ‘unisons’ mentioned in the last two sentences refers
to a characteristic effect of Welsh technique, obtained by playing a pair of
unison strings on both the outside rows using the right and left hands in rapid
succession. Examples of this technique can be found in many of the publications
of Welsh airs. One of the most famous of the 18th-century Welsh triple harp
players was john Parry (i) (‘of Rhuabon’; c1710–82). From 1734 until his death he was
harper to the family of Sir Watkin Williams Wynns of Wynnstay, Ruabon. Parry
and his amenuensis Evan Williams (Parry being blind from birth) published the
first collection of Welsh melodies for the triple harp, Antient British
Music (London, 1742). His 1761 Collection of Welsh, English & Scotch
Airs with New Variations also contained four ‘New Lessons’ of his own
composition. Parry's playing was much admired by Handel, and gave three
performances of Handel's Harp Concerto in B (published as op.4 no.6, 1738) in 1741–2. According
to Sir John Hawkins, however, Handel had composed this work (which had
originally been intended for the first performance of Alexander's Feast,
1736) for another Welsh harp virtuoso, William Powell (d 1750). Powell
was almost certainly the harpist for Handel's first composition with an
obbligato harp part, the air ‘Praise the Lord with Cheerful Noise’ in Esther,
composed about 1718 when both Handel and Powell were in the employ of the Duke
of Chandos. Handel also included harp parts in Giulio Cesare (1724), Saul
(1739; including a solo ‘symphony’) and Alexander Balus (1748). edward
Jones, Bardd
y Brenin (‘the King's Bard’), was appointed harper to the Prince of Wales
in 1788. He published Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards
(1784; enlarged editions in 1794 and 1808), The Bardic Museum (1802) and
Hên Ganiadau Cymru (1820), each consisting of Welsh airs. These
constitute the largest source of Welsh airs, and some of the plates were
reprinted in the publications of John Parry (ii). Jones also published many of
his own sonatas, marches and dances for solo harp or keyboard, written in the
idiom of the day.
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
Peruvian harps may be divided into two types: a longer instrument, generally found in 20 of the 23 states (covering much of the central and southern coast and the central and southern Sierra), and the domingacha, a small harp found principally in the state of Cuzco. Gourd harps, a type observed in 19th century Colombia (there are examples in the Pedro Traversari Collection of Musical Instruments, Quito, Ecuador), are still played in Piura, north-west Peru. Peruvian harpists perform waynos (Huayno), song-dances in rhythmic duple metre, often with the violin and sometimes other instruments, and lyrical, elegiac yaravís, which are frequently performed solo. Each region of Peru may be identified by particular left-hand, or bass patterns, notably for the wayno. The Peruvian performance practice of carrying and playing the harp upside down in a sling resting on the harpists shoulder while in procession, is traditional and distinctive for Latin America (see Peru, fig.3). In Quechua-speaking areas of Bolivia, harpists attend farras (or fiestas), where they perform cuecas, bailecitos and kaluyos with the kena (flute) and occasionally other instruments.
In the Ecuadorian highlands the two major harp traditions are that of primarily mestizo culture, in Tungurahua province, and that of Quechua culture, in Imbabura province. In central highland Tungurahua, harpists of average ability perform national folk musical genres such as pasillo and albazo, but there are also players with a broader, sometimes international repertory. Distinctive in the repertory of northern highland Imbabura Quechua harpists, is the vacación, a cyclical, ametrical non-dance music closely allied to ceremonies for a child’s wake. The dance music of the same child’s wake ritual comprises the sanjuán, a vigorous music with isorhythmic phrase structure, and the slightly faster pareja, a music associated with newly-weds, dancing and the dawn. (For further discussion see Ecuador, esp. §II, 1(ii) and fig.1.)
The harp in the central highland Tungurahua province is made of a
combination of several types of wood, usually cedar, walnut and cinnamon.
Played seated or standing, it has three soundholes, which are circular or
oblong, sometimes flanged and occasionally wood-inlaid; these are present on
all Ecuadorian and Venezuelan harps. The neck is elaborately carved, often in a
floral pattern; its curvature is substantial, resulting in a near-S shape
(similar to the neck of the Naderman single-action harp of 1780). The
forepillar is tall, straight, squared and unturned, with a carved finial, often
in the form of a human or animal head. Master harpists tune the large 34-string
harp, with four octaves and a 6th, to play sanjuanito, in the ‘natural’
minor and its relative major; the range in C minor/E major would be G'–e'''. For the slow, expressive yaraví,
in C minor/E major,
the following variant tuning is used: the lowest octave, natural minor; the
second, harmonic minor; the third, natural minor; the fourth, Dorian. For the pasillo,
the alterations from the strict natural minor are, in the second and third
octaves, that the subtonic is raised to the leading-note and the submediant is
raised a semitone, and in the fourth the subdominant is also raised a semitone
(these alterations accommodate frequent recourse to the dominant).
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
(i) Hook harps and single-action pedal harps.
(ii) The Pleyel harp and other later experimental harps.
(iii) The double-action pedal harp.
Harp, §V, 7: Europe and the Americas: Mechanised harps
Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie shows a typical harp of the period (fig.31). The resonator was composed of a ribbed back, lidded by a thin flexible soundboard of lateral grain. The curve of the neck varied slightly according to the number (generally 36 to 43) and pitch of the strings. A box to house the seven pedals was added at the base of the harp, and the pedal rods connected to the linkage ran up through the hollow forepillar, now of necessity absolutely straight. In response perhaps to the taste of aristocratic patrons, the simply carved forepillars were made highly ornate, sculptured and gilded. Soundboards were painted in the Vernis Martin style, and the harp itself became an important decorative element, indeed a requisite of the most elegant Parisian salons.
Improvements were made in its mechanism. The crochets – a French version of the hook mechanism – were right-angled rather than U-shaped. When the pedal was depressed the crochet moved horizontally inwards towards the neck where it squeezed the string against a fixed nut, thus shortening it by approximately an 18th of its length. The disadvantage of this system – used by all the leading harp makers including Louvet, Salomon, Holtzmann, Renault and Chatelain, Naderman, and the Cousineau family – was that strings so sharpened were pushed out of vertical alignment. Their sonority was then rather dull in comparison with the open strings, and they also tended to buzz against the neck of the harp. To remedy these failings Georges Cousineau and his son Jacques-Georges contrived an improved system (à béquilles), in which each string is provided with two small crutch-ended levers placed to either side of it, one above the other. The downwards movement of the pedal causes one lever to turn clockwise and the other anticlockwise, tightening the string in a firmer, more controlled manner than the crochets (for illustration see Cousineau).
In 1794 Sébastien Erard, who by this time had established his firm in London, took out the first British patent ever granted for a harp. This instrument, the fruit of much experiment, represented a radical change in the construction of the single-action harp. The ribbed resonator was abandoned in favour of a body made in two separate parts: a soundboard of Swiss pine and a rounded back reinforced by internal ribs. For strength and stability, the neck was of laminated construction. The mechanism, mounted on two brass plates, was fixed to the neck instead of being housed inside it, and was therefore independent of the frame. Erard also made mechanical improvements to the pedals, but the really revolutionary feature of his harp was its brilliantly simple ‘fork’ system, which replaced the unsatisfactory crochets and béquilles. The ‘fork’ consists of two brass prongs mounted on a small round brass disc. The disc is screwed centrally on to an axis which passes through the brass plates. The string, resting against a bridge-pin which aligns it with the centre of the disc at a distance of approximately 5 mm, passes between the forks. When the pedal is depressed, the axis turns to bring the prongs into firm contact with the string, thus sharpening it by a semitone (figs.32 and 34 below). The string is held firmly in position by the fork, so that the problem of jarring strings, common to the crochets and béquilles systems, is eliminated. The movement of the fork also keeps the affected string perfectly parallel with the others.
Harp, §V, 7: Europe and the Americas: Mechanised harps
Harp, §V, 7: Europe and the Americas: Mechanised harps
In spite of mechanical and constructional improvements, musicians
and harp makers alike were dissatisfied with the tonal and modulatory
limitations implicit in the fact that the single-action harp could play in only
eight major and five minor keys and that accidentals were extremely limited. In
1782 the Cousineau family built a harp which could play in all keys by means of
a complicated apparatus with two sets of pedals placed one above the other,
making 14 pedals in all. (The open strings were tuned in C.) Around the turn of the century
Erard set out to produce a better solution, and, after continuous experiment,
in 1810 he patented his double-action harp. Operating on the same fork
principle as his earlier single-action harp, Erard’s double-action instrument
uses C as its open key
and has 43 strings (E' to e'''') and seven pedals, each of which
can be depressed twice, housed in a box at the base of the harp. Each string
passes between two fork-bearing discs, placed one above the other. When the
pedal is depressed into its first notch, the upper disc turns so that the forks
grip the string and sharpen it by a semitone, while the lower disc turns about
45° but does not touch the string. When the pedal is depressed a second time,
and fixed into the bottom notch, the lower fork turns a further 35°, gripping
the string and shortening it by another semitone (see fig.32). Each string, except the highest and the
lowest one or two which have no forked discs, can therefore be sharpened two
semitones, from flat to natural to sharp, and the harp can be played in any key
by the simple expedient of fixing the pedals in the requisite notches.
Moreover, on double-action harps, accidentals are only limited by the fact that
when a pedal is activated, all strings of the same name change together. Thus,
for example, one cannot play C and C at the same time in different octaves unless
enharmonics can be used for one or both of the two Cs, i.e. B for the C or D for the C. This ingenious mechanism has been used,
with very few modifications, by most harp makers up to the present day. Between
1811 and 1835 Erard made about 4000 double-action harps, decorated in a
‘Grecian’ style, and many of them are still in use. They are strung with gut
from e'''' (known on the harp as ‘First Octave E’) to F (known as
‘Fifth Octave F’), and from E to E' with wire-covered silk (now
often replaced in restrung Erards with wire-covered nylon).
When European harps were first imported into the USA in large numbers in the second half of the 19th century, it became obvious that a more robustly constructed instrument was needed to withstand the rigours of the varying climatic conditions. Two rival Chicago-based firms – Lyon & Healy, who made their first harps in 1889, and the Rudolph Wurlitzer company (see Wurlitzer, §2), who made harps from 1909 to 1936 – worked to this end. Mechanical precision was improved and the mechanism was entirely enclosed between the brass plates of the neck. The pedal rods within the forepillar were enclosed in individual brass tubes, which made their movement easier and less noisy. While all of the non-mechanical structural parts of the harp were still made entirely of wood, soundboards were strengthened by covering the usual single cross grain with a veneer of vertical grain. On bigger harps the soundboard was extended to exceed the width of the body of the instrument at its lower, bass end, where the heavier strings needed greater amplification. The largest modern concert pedal harps have 46 or 47 strings (D' or C'' to f'''' or g''''), are about 183 cm tall and weigh about 35 kg (fig.34). The stringing is usually the same as that set by Erard, i.e. gut with wire-wound strings in the bass. Some harps are strung with nylon rather than gut, while many harpists who generally prefer gut use nylon for the highest one to two and a half octaves because they are less susceptible to the temperature and humidity changes that cause frequent breakage of the strings. The total applied string tension exceeds 730 kg. There are now many makers of this type of pedal harp around the world.
(d) The rods that connect the pedals to the mechanism in the neck of the harp have been replaced with more durable stainless steel flexible cables similar to aircraft control cables. A separate testing device with an electronic sensor – nicknamed ‘le dohickey’ – has also been designed which allows facile regulation of the length of the cables to help keep the harp equal-tempered. The device is inserted into the harp and if the cables are out of adjustment it begins beeping and does not stop until the cable is correctly adjusted by turning the cable adjustment screw. Such regulation can take less than ten minutes, and can be carried out by the harpist rather than needing the services of a technician. (e) While maintaining the basic Erard concept of double action, the mechanism inside the neck of the harp has been completely redesigned. While a forked disc on most pedal harps is a stand-alone disc screwed on the outside of the harp to an axle which turns inside a hole between the two plates on the neck (see fig.33), the Camac disc has been modified to have an extended base with a conical bore, thus making the disc an intrinsic part of the spindle system which turns inside the harp (fig.36). Thus, while the forked discs on a standard pedal harp can become easily de-regulated by the screws which hold them in place becoming loosened by the tension of the strings, the Camac conical disc-spindle system functions as a stable inert unit which resists de-regulation. In addition, the Camac natural and sharp discs rotate in opposite directions – the natural disks anticlockwise like most pedal harps, and the sharp disks clockwise – resulting in even contact pressure from both disk pins and less string deflection when engaging the sharps, which minimizes buzzing and helps maintain the tuning of the strings.
Harp, §V, 7: Europe and the Americas: Mechanised harps
(b) Modern technique and repertory.
Harp, §V, 7(iv): Europe and the Americas: Mechanised harps
Dussek wrote his op.2 harp sonatas (including the well-known one
in C minor) in Paris between 1786 and 1789; the op.11 duo for harp and piano,
which he dedicated to Mme Krumpholtz, was probably composed after he went to
London in 1789, as was the E concerto (op.15). Between 1792 (when he married the
harpist and singer Sophia Corri) and his departure for Hamburg in 1799, he
wrote more duos, solo sonatas and three concertos. The first of these
concertos, the two-movement op.30 in C, demands firm, incisive playing and
impeccable articulation of the fingers. Without doubt, Dussek’s best works for
the harp are his late Trois duos concertants for harp and piano (op.69
nos.1–3), written for performance by himself and F.J. Naderman in Paris in
1810. The problem presented by the inability of the single-action harp to
modulate into the remote keys favoured by Dussek is here solved by combining
the two instruments in such a way that the remoter modulations are accomplished
in the piano’s solo passages. Although the harp parts are technically extremely
demanding, Dussek did not demand of the instrument itself excessive
chromaticism or key changes beyond its capabilities.
Spohr’s output contains several pieces for solo harp that do not
tax to any great extent the modulatory possibilities of the instrument. In the
duo sonatas for violin and harp, however, like Krumpholtz he made much use of
harmonies rendered possible on the harp by the use of enharmonic equivalents.
Dorette Spohr’s instrument was a single-action harp made by the elder Naderman,
and the unsatisfactory béquilles system of these harps (see §V, 7(i)
above) caused the sharpened strings to be dull in sound, to be pulled out of
alignment, and, most annoying to the harpist, to jar. However, when the harp’s
pedals were in their open position, none of these problems occurred. It was
normal practice when playing in A to tune all the D strings down to D. Spohr conceived the idea of tuning
all the strings a semitone flat so that pieces in D or G might be played with
the pedals in their open position. The manuscript copy of his Concertante for
violin, harp and orchestra (GB-Lcm) is provided with two harp parts, one
in A and one in G.
Dorette Spohr eventually gave up the harp around 1820 when, though dissatisfied
by the limitations of her own instrument, she found she could not adapt herself
to playing one of Erard’s splendid new double-action harps tuned, in the open
position, in C.
Some other works for the single-action harp deserve mention: in Germany the concertos of Eichner (1769) and Albrechtsberger (1773); in France the four concertos and various sonatas, variations and duos of Petrini (1744–1819); and the harp and fortepiano duos of Boieldieu as well as his elegant Concerto in C of 1801. All these works are technically demanding but use only the conventional stock-in-trade of harp writing – trills, arpeggio figuration and scale passages – without any search for musical profundity or attempts to overcome the harmonic limitations of the single-action instrument.
The harp entered the modern orchestra by way of the opera house, where it was at first little used except as an instrument evocative of mythology and romantic legend. Early uses in 18th-century opera include Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). Haydn used it in his L'anima del filosofo (1791), and in 1804 Le Sueur called for 12 harps (six to each of two parts) in his Ossian ou Les bardes.
Harp, §V, 7(iv): Europe and the Americas: Mechanised harps
Elias Parish Alvars (1808–49), a fine composer and outstanding harp virtuoso, was the first to recognize the numerous effects and harmonic possibilities made available by the double-action harp and had an immeasurable influence on later harp writing. One of his teachers was Théodore Labarre, whose excellent Méthode complète (1844) indicates the techniques expected of good performers on the double-action harp. Apart from the usual scales, arpeggios and trills, Labarre particularly stressed harmonics, glissés and the use of enharmonic ‘synonyms’.
Harmonics are written with the sign ‘o’ above or below the notes, and in the left hand can be single, doubled or tripled to allow chords in harmonics. Left-hand harmonics are obtained by using the side of the palm as an artificial bridge, placing it at a point halfway down the length of the string and playing only the top half to produce a note one octave higher in pitch. In the right hand only one harmonic at a time can be obtained, as the artificial bridge is formed by the first joint of the index finger, the harmonic being obtained by playing the top half of the string with the thumb. The best range for harmonics is A to g''.
Another important technique is the sliding movement which Labarre
called glissé, produced in a downward direction by sliding the thumb
from one string to the next, and in an upward direction either with the second
(index) finger alone, or with the second and third fingers together in parallel
3rds. Yet another important technique was that of producing enharmonic
‘synonyms’ – the unisons made possible by the positioning of the pedals. On the
double-action harp, every note except D, G and A has its synonym, that is, a note of the same pitch
obtainable on an adjacent string. For instance, D has C as its synonym, F has E, A has G. When played at speed, the quickly reiterated notes
of the same pitch thus produced give an impression of great virtuosity (see
Bisbigliando). It was by combining the glissé and ‘synonym’ techniques
that Parish Alvars was able to produce the chordal glissando, a device that
became essential for any composer writing for the harp. If, for example, the
pedals are positioned so that the strings sound B–C–D–E–F–G–A, a diminished-7th chord is formed. Many other such
combinations are of course possible, and once the pedals are fixed to produce
only the notes of the chord and their synonyms, a chordal glissando (without
any dissonances) can be obtained by sweeping the fingers across all the
strings. Parish Alvars, the first to use this remarkable effect, called it sdrucciolando
(‘slipping’). Berlioz, who heard Parish Alvars in Dresden in 1842, and, in his
treatise on orchestration (1843) described him as ‘the most extraordinary
player’ ever heard on the harp, understood its technique though he did not use
it in his own works. Parish Alvars was also the first to combine sdrucciolandi
with harmonics. (The best-known example of their combined effect is in the
cadenza of Ravel’s Introduction et allegro.)
Much of the solo harp repertory of the 19th century, however, was scarcely more than salon music to be performed by talented amateurs. None of the later virtuosos approached Parish Alvars either as harpist or as composer, and with a few exceptions the solos and concertos they wrote for themselves, and the music they wrote for their pupils, have little intrinsic merit, relying for their effect on some of the easier techniques used by Parish Alvars.
The harp continued to be played in opera orchestras – particularly noteworthy are the harmonics in Boieldieu’s La dame blanche (1825), the use of two harps in Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable (1831) and the idiomatic harp solo in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) – but it was Berlioz who pioneered its use in the symphony orchestra (Symphonie fantastique, 1830; Harold en Italie, 1834). Not until the 1840s, however, did the double-action harp become so widespread that it was available to all Western composers. Liszt’s tone poems (particularly Orpheus) show the harp to great advantage. Both Schumann (Drei Gesänge for tenor and harp op.95) and Brahms (Four Songs op.17) wrote harp parts that are idiomatic and difficult, while those in Wagner’s operas are extremely difficult and unidiomatic. Verdi’s later ones, on the other hand, are well written and grateful to play. Bruch’s Schottische Fantasie op.46 (1880) has an important and well-written harp part. Occasionally in 19th-century operas multiple harps are required. Wagner apparently was the first in this: Das Rheingold (completed 1854) has six harps on-stage and a seventh off-stage. For the remaining three parts of the Ring, Wagner wrote only two harp parts but called for six harps, three on each part. Berlioz scored for six separate harp parts in Les Troyens (composed 1856–8).
The closing years of the century produced Richard Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung and Don Juan (both 1888–9), Sibelius’s Swan of Tuonela (1893) and Symphony no.1 in E minor (1898–9), Franck’s Symphony in D minor (1886–8) and Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1892–4), all with parts for harp. The Debussy Prélude is scored for two harps, using chords, arpeggios, broken chords, glissandos and harmonics to excellent effect. Also notable are harp cadenzas by Rimsky-Korsakov (Spanish Capriccio, 1887) and Tchaikovsky (Swan Lake, 1875–6; Sleeping Beauty, 1888–9; and The Nutcracker, 1891–2).
Until the second half of the 19th century, professional harpists were usually men; women played it primarily as a ‘parlour instrument’ or were harp teachers. One of the first women harpists of renown was Henriette Renié (1875–1956), who was awarded the premier prix at the Paris Conservatoire in 1877 and later became professor of harp there.
Almost all the available harp effects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some of them bearing fanciful names (e.g. ‘Aeolian flux’ for ‘glissando’), were detailed by Carlos Salzedo in his Modern Study of the Harp (1921). He described, for instance, a ‘pedal glissando’ (best used on the bass notes of the harp) that is achieved by moving the pedal to flat or sharp and back again within the duration of a note, the ‘glissando’ effect being produced by the sound of the movement of the fork against the still-vibrating string. The pedal glissando is used to great effect in André Caplet’s Divertissement à l'espagnole (1924). Salzedo also mentioned the device of weaving a narrow strip of paper between the strings, an effect used by Puccini in Turandot. Most of the new effects introduced by Salzedo himself are of a percussive nature: ‘esoteric sounds’ (in which the pedals are moved without any notes being played), chordal glissandos played with the backs of the nails, plucking the strings with the nails near the soundboard and harmonics at the 12th (produced by playing the top third of the string; Salzedo wrote harmonics at the pitch at which they sound, a departure from the normal practice, both before and since, of writing them at the octave at which they are played). Many of these effects have become a common part of the harpist’s technique.
Early 20th-century works featuring the harp as a solo instrument include Gabriel Pierné’s Concertstück (1903), Debussy’s Danse sacrée et danse profane (1904) and Ravel’s Introduction et allegro (1905). In the opera house, the harp parts of Puccini are idiomatically written, extensive, and consistently effective. Like all harp parts by Richard Strauss, the score for his opera Salome (1905) is technically difficult, particularly Salome’s dance with its nearly continuous chromaticism requiring rapid multiple pedal changes; it has become a required test piece for harpists auditioning for orchestra positions. In the concert orchestra, where the inclusion of two harps had become standard, Debussy and Ravel composed parts that are models of harp writing, while those by Stravinsky, though more unconventional, are nevertheless effective. The dominant school of playing was the French, a fact reflected in the repertory, which includes solo works by Fauré, Roussel and Caplet, a concerto by Saint-Saëns (Morceau de concert op.154, 1918) and chamber music such as Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp (1915) and Caplet’s Conte fantastique for harp and string quartet (1924). The impetus derived from such works, allied to the ever-increasing number of good harpists, led to a proliferation of chamber works including harp, particularly in France and later in Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and North America. Among those that have remained standards in the harp repertory are the compositions of Marcel Tournier (1879–1951) including Féerie: prélude et danse (1920) for harp and string quartet, and Jazz-band (1926) for solo harp, Hindemith’s solo Sonate (1940), and Britten’s Ceremony of Carols (1942) for chorus with solo harp accompaniment.
Of great importance to harp repertory from the late 19th century to the present are the compositions, transcriptions and arrangements by great harpists and teachers such as Charles Oberthür (1819–95), a German-born harpist, and the Welshman John Thomas (1826–1913), both of whom flourished during the third quarter of the 19th century in London. Others included Henriette Renié, Marcel Tournier, Ada Sassoli (1881–1946), Carlos Salzédo (1885–1961), Micheline Kahn (1890–1987), Marcel Grandjany (1891–1975), Pierre Jamet (1893–1991) and Lily Laskine (1893–1988), all students of Alphonse Hasselmans (1845–1912), professor of harp at the Paris Conservatoire from 1884 to 1912. (For further details of harpists and their compositions from the 18th century to the early 20th, see Rensch 1989).
From the late 1950s onwards composers such as Berio, Boulez, Holliger, Rands and Miroglio extended the technical vocabulary even further in their works, at the same time developing new notation and giving instructions for the performance of the required effects. New effects have included the loud ‘buzzing’ sound resulting from threading the lower strings with aluminium foil, an eerie whistling sound created by sliding a steel tuning fork up the whole length of several contiguous wire bass strings simultaneously, muted single-string ‘glissandos’ produced by plucking and re-plucking a string continuously near the soundboard with the index finger of the left hand while lightly sliding the index finger of the right hand up or down the length of the string, and a bevy of percussive sounds caused by striking groups of strings with everything from chopsticks to rubber mallets. Unfortunately, many composers have used the same effects but with different notation, much to the chagrin of harpists. In 1984, Ingelfield and Neill came to the rescue of fellow harpists with their Writing for the Pedal Harp, which created a standardized notation of harp effects.
Since the 1950s a considerable number of harp concertos and works for solo harp have been written, most either inspired, commissioned or composed by harp virtuosos. A call by Sue Carole DeVale for scores from composers, posted on the internet in 1995, had yielded nearly 80 such works by early 2000 by composers from around the world. Most are harp solos or small chamber works for harp with other instruments or voice, most are by women composers, and every style of composition is represented.
Since at least the mid-20th century, many pedal harpists have played diverse forms of music – classical, jazz, popular and traditional – and many compositions and arrangements reflect this fact. Composers are increasingly writing for the harp played in combination with non-Western instruments, and for combinations of Western and non-Western tunings, resulting in new explorations of tonality and sound effects for the harpist. Examples include Robert Lombardo’s Independence Day (1983), a dance-theatre suite for Javanese Gamelan and harp, with the latter tuned to match the gamelan’s seven-note pelog scale; and Elaine Barkin’s Gamelange (1993) for harp and a mixed band of selected instruments from the Javanese and the Balinese gamelan, in which harp is tuned diatonically to interplay with the three notes common to Western tuning and those of the Javanese slendro (five-note tuning system) and the Balinese pelog. The three ‘common’ notes are not in exact unison and thus, when played together, create audible, vibrating beats.
Harp, §V, 7: Europe and the Americas: Mechanised harps
In 1962, Lyon and Healy Harps in Chicago introduced their ‘Troubadour harp’, of ‘neo-Gothic’ shape, on which every string could be raised a semitone (and lowered back again) by means of a brass lever that could be flipped up with the performer's left thumb either before or (with planning) during a piece; this was the first ‘lever harp’. The lever was essentially L-shaped, the longer arm being the handle, and the shorter arm having a rounded slot in its edge which would catch the string and stop it when the lever was raised. While allowing the desired sharpening effect with great ease, these original levers were unsatisfying in other respects. Firstly, the sharpness of the notch wore down the strings, causing them to break more frequently than strings without levers. Secondly, the timbre of the stopped string was deadened slightly and its volume consequently decreased. Nevertheless, the Troubadour harp was a great success because it was seen immediately as a less expensive alternative to a pedal harp for beginners.
However, it very quickly became clear that lever harps were not just for beginners, but a new form of affordable and easily transportable harp, and a genuine alternative to an expensive and heavy pedal harp. Their popularity has grown exponentially. Soon other manufacturers, both small one-man shops and larger factories, arose around the world, either devoted solely to the production of lever harps or adding lever harps to their production line. Since then, a large variety of harp styles and levers have been developed. Most are still ‘neo-Gothic’ or ‘neo-Celtic’ in shape, but now lever harps with the classic rounded column design that makes them look like miniature pedal harps are being manufactured. Newer levers have improved both the sound quality and the longevity of the strings on which they are employed. Some of these can be purchased to be used on any harp, while others remain for the exclusive use of the harp brand for which they have been invented. Even the J-hooks have returned (see §V, 7(i), above), but with the cup of the J filled in, taking the form of sharpening ‘blades’. Lever harps range in size from small lap harps with 21 strings to standing harps of 1·5 metres with 40 strings. Harps can be purchased with levers only on particular notes (usually Cs and Fs) or with a ‘full set’ on all the strings.
At first some of the less chromatic pieces of the classic pedal-harp repertory were adapted ‘on-the-spot’ for lever harp, but special lever-harp (or ‘pedal-free harp’) arrangements soon began to be made of traditional music of Ireland and other countries, and of pieces from the classical, popular, musical comedy and film repertories. Many new compositions have been written specifically for the lever harp. The lever harp has been used for folk, classical, jazz, popular and country music with equal success.
The major manufacturers of lever harps are Lyon & Healy, Dusty Strings and Triplett Harps (USA), Salvi (Italy), Aoyama (Japan) and Camac (France). There are now several manufacturers of excellent harp kits for assembling in the home: an even more affordable alternative to owning and playing a harp.
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
As is true of all innovations in musical instruments, electric and electro-acoustic harps have been developed to respond to changing musical aesthetics and the needs of harpists. Beginning no later than the 1940s, jazz and pop music began to be explored as sources of solo repertory for the harp. One of the early pioneers was Robert Maxwell in the United States, a classically-trained graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, whose original compositions and arrangements were first published over a ten-year period beginning in about 1946. While microphones on stands connected to public address systems could be used to amplify the sound of a harp, during Maxwell's time, the only way for a harpist to produce sound effects common today, such as instant reiteration, was to re-record over one's previous recordings in a studio, an extremely difficult task. In his recordings of ‘Limehouse Blues’ and ‘Chinatown, My Chinatown’, Maxwell did exactly that, but an astonishing 15 times for each piece.
Concomitantly, the number and types of venues available to harpists to perform (such as restaurants, nightclubs and hotels) increased. It was inevitable that harpists, like other instrumentalists, would seek more sophisticated ways to amplify their instruments so they could be heard over conversation and other ambient noise, and to explore timbral variation. Whether performing classical, jazz or pop music in such venues, harpists began to use various types of contact microphones or pickups, first connecting them to public address systems or simple separate amplifiers, and later to electronic amplifiers with built-in sound modifying capabilities. The latter allowed experimental sound effects especially used for jazz and pop. Both practices are still widely in use and pickups are attached to tuning pins, bridge pins or soundboards of small diatonic harps, lever or pedal harps whether strung with gut, nylon, wire or some combination thereof.
The first electric harp – one, like an electric guitar, that could only be heard if connected to an amplification system – was produced by Salvi Harps (who no longer makes them) in the 1980s. During the same period, in response to the demands by harpists to have amplified sound equal in quality and clarity to their acoustic harps, Lyon & Healy (Chicago) began researching and developing two such harps which they call ‘Electric and Electroacoustic’. Both types of harps are fitted with transducers on each of the strings that transform the acoustic sound of the string into an electrical signal. Both types use the same pedal mechanism and strings as all Lyon & Healy harps, and are made in two of the same sizes: the ‘concert grand’ with 47 strings and the ‘semi-grand’ with 46 strings. The difference between them lies in their soundboards and their uses.
The soundboard of the Electric harp, introduced in 1991 and designed to be used only as an electric instrument, is made of solid hardwood poplar which is immovable and less resonant, thereby suppressing feedback at loud volumes. Poplar is also used for its ruggedness for the gigging harpist, constantly moving the harp from venue to venue, and for its resistance to the radical climatic changes of some performance environments. The Lyon & Healy Electroacoustic harp (1977), has the same Sitka spruce extended tapered soundboard as acoustic concert-grand pedal harps; thus it can be played as an amplified instrument or as an acoustic one with the same sound and feel as other acoustic harps. Unlike other electric harps, both of these models have high-performance ‘Stereo Active’ electronics that mix and preamplify the separate string signals to produce a stereo-like output. Because each string has a specific location on the stereo spectrum, ‘moving stereo sound’ can be produced when the harp is amplified or recorded in stereo; this also allows adjustment of the balance between the top and bottom strings when only monaural output is available. An electro-acoustic lever-harp is in development.
Camac Harps introduced its electrified harps in 1991. The line, consisting only of electro-acoustic harps, is known as the ‘Blue’, and all five harp styles in it, both lever and pedal harps, are lacquered in royal blue. Like Lyon & Healy electric and electro-acoustic harps, each string has its own electric transducer and the harps can be plugged into all manner of amplifiers and sound modifiers. Unlike Lyon & Healy harps, they do not have a preamplifer built in. The ‘electroharps’ are a pair of lever harps of neo-Celtic shape, the larger with 36 strings; the smaller with 30 strings is dubbed ‘Baby Blue’. The other three are all pedal harps with the ‘New Generation’ double action and construction (see §V, 2(ii), above). The smallest pedal harp, with 44 strings, is called ‘Little Big Blue’; the other two are both concert-grand size with 47 strings, and are differentiated by their soundboard shape, one being called ‘Straight-soundboard Blue’, the other, ‘Extended-soundboard Blue’.
Amplification or modification of sound is not the only way harp makers use electrification. For example, Glen Hill of Mountain Glen harps has incorporated a unique laser light system into his custom-built, electro-acoustic, 34-string lever harp. Using microchips, his trigger circuitry allows a signal from piezoelectric pickups to act as a switch that activates red diode lasers, like those in laser pointers, set under faceted crystals in the pillar and the neck. Activated in real time by plucking any of nine strings (C, D or G in three successive octaves), the laser-lit crystals sparkle in response to the tones being played by the harpist with the same intensity and decay rates shared by light and sound. Mountain Glen will also custom-fit a harp with a wireless FM radio transmitter, so the harp can be amplified but with no cables to get in the performer's way, or with a pitch-to-MIDI converter so that any MIDI sound or digital signal can be controlled by one or more of the harp's strings. Using a custom computer program, any sampled visual image can also be controlled by this same circuitry. Images can be fed into a liquid crystal display projector via a computer, and then be controlled by the harpist. Because they have their own separate circuitry, both the laser-lit crystals and the MIDI system can be plugged in separately and activated whether the harp is played either as an acoustic instrument or an electric one.
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
Local and primarily indigenous harp traditions on the European continent began at least by the 17th century and were found performed by musicians from Norway, several countries within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany and Italy. At the present time, unbroken traditions, both stemming from 18th-century itinerant Austrian harpists, are known still to flourish in the Tyrol and in Hungary.
The earliest mention of a local Norwegian harp tradition appears in ‘King David's Psalter’ written in 1623 by Bishop Arrebo of Trondheim in defence of his strict conduct. He lists krogharper along with hackebretter (hammered dulcimers) and langspil (langeleik, a type of dulcimer) as instruments leading to bad character among young people. Only one description of performance practice has been found. In a novel by N.R. Østgaard written in 1852, but describing events at the end of the 18th century, a woman plays pols and halling (dance tunes) as well as psalm melodies on the krogharpe for a wedding party. In a footnote, Østgaard explains that the krogharpe is similar to the common harp, has metal strings, is played with the soundbox horizontal and sounds louder than a langeleik.
There are nine extant Norwegian krogharper (‘crook harps’) or bondeharper (‘peasant harps’) and one fragment, all dating from 1681 to 1776. They are located in the Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo; the Glomdalsmuseet, Elverum; the Ringve Museum, Trondheim; the Historisk Museum, Bergen; the Musikmuseum, Stockholm; and in private collections. Two of these (in Bergen and Stockholm), presumably from the south-west coast of Norway, resemble large medieval harps. They have wooden pegs for 14 and 18 strings respectively. The resonators are carved from a solid block of wood and backed with a single wooden slab.
The other instruments are very unique in construction. They are characterized by a hollow forepillar constructed like the resonator, i.e. carved from one piece of wood and backed with slab. The soundboard is carved so that the strings rise from a peak which runs down the centre of its length. The neck is a simple yoke between the soundbox and the forepillar and is often hollow as well. The harps are decorated with wood-burnt patterns and cross-shaped soundholes. Two of them have carved zoomorphic heads at the front of the pillarbox. These harps are all from Østerdalen, the eastern-most valley of Norway.
All Norwegian harps show evidence of 12 to 20 iron or brass strings with wooden tuning blades and very wide spacing (2·5–3 cm). The name krogharpe is perhaps a reflection of the hook-shaped bray pins with which many of the harps are equipped. The Østerdalen harps were found at large farms and are usually decorated with the date (the earliest 1696, the latest 1776) and three initials of the owner ending in ‘D’ (e.g. ‘M H D’ for ‘Maren Halvorsdatter’), which suggests that the harps were played by the women of richer farms. The krogharpe died out completely at the beginning of the 19th century, but in the 20th century makers in Norway and England (such as Sverre Jensen, Paul Guppy and Kjell Stokke) began building them again. Performers such as Tone Hulbaekmo, Stein Villa and Åshild Watne have used the harp for Norwegian dance tunes from the langeleik repertory, song accompaniment and medieval music. The harp is regularly included in the Landskappleiken, the Norwegian national folk music competition.
The 19th century witnessed a rich tradition of wandering harpers in the Austro-Hungarian empire and Germany, with the earliest reports of its existence coming from Vienna at the time of Maria Theresa (1717–80). The wandering harpers were both men and women. They went from house to house, courtyard to courtyard and performed at markets, fairs, inns and gardens. The harps were termed Lamentiergattern (‘lamenting fences’) in reference to the tragic songs sung by the harpers. They had simple four-sided resonators and a straight forepillar sometimes topped with a forward-turned scroll. There is no mention of a hook mechanism, so the harps were presumably tuned diatonically and had 25–35 strings. In many orphanages children were taught to play the harp or other instruments so that they would have a means of making a living after leaving the orphanage. In the 19th century the harpers became so prolific that the Viennese authorities issued licences and instated prohibitions in an attempt to control their numbers and the quality of their music and the content of their songs, which were often obscene. Wandering harpers also played in the theatres between acts. The last of the Viennese harpers, Gustav Bergmann (b 1824), Paul Oprawil and Magdalena Hagenauer (b 1807), had died by the early 20th century.
In the second half of the 18th century, after the demise of the mining industry in the Erzgebirge mountains of German-speaking northern Bohemia, the population turned to other means of earning a livelihood. Records as early as 1745 show that wandering harp players travelled to Karlsbad to entertain the guests there. In 1787 Mozart heard the wandering harper Josef Häussler playing variations on melodies from Le Nozze de Figaro in Prague at his favourite inn. Mozart reportedly composed a theme upon which Häussler played several variations, which were published by Anton Schimon in 1848. Although men did play the harp, it was most common for women, called Harfenmädchen (harp girls), to travel alone or in pairs with their harps upon their backs. Later entire families took to the roads as Harfenkapellen (harp bands) became popular. The usual constellation consisted of the father on violin, the mother on guitar and the daughters on harp. The centre of this activity became the town of Pressnitz (now Přisečnice) whose entire population seems to have been engaged in some aspect of travelling music, whether performing, teaching young musicians or caring for the children of those on the road.
Sometime before 1840 the tradition spread from the Erzgebirge to the Czech-speaking areas of north-eastern Bohemia, centring around the town of Nechanice (near Nepomuk). From here impresarios travelled with large groups of harp players often made up of young children ‘bought’ from their parents. Smaller family groups consisted of violin, harp and sometimes transverse flute. Bohemian musicians also carried the tradition of the Harfenkapelle to the German towns of Hundeshagen in the southern Harz Mountains of Thüringen (by 1788; fig.37) and Salzgitter near Hanover (c1850). These areas of high unemployment also became centres of wandering musicians.
As with Vienna, certain larger German cities, such as Hamburg, Munich, Berlin and even Hildesheim (near Hanover), boasted their own Harfenjulen (wandering harp women). Most famous of these was perhaps Louise Nordmann, the last Berliner Harfenjule, who died in 1911.
At fairs, markets and inns, the wandering harpers from Bohemia, Hundeshagen and Salzgitter played dance melodies (Lanner and Strauss) and accompanied the popular songs of the time termed Schlager, Moritaten (similar to British broadside ballads) or Küchenlieder (lit. ‘kitchen songs’: those popular among servants). The harp played accompanying chords to the melody of the violin or played the melody in the right hand with chordal accompaniment in the left hand.
Bohemian and German musicians travelled throughout Europe and Asia, including Russia and Siberia, Scandinavia, the British Isles, northern Africa, the Near East, Manchuria and Mongolia. It was not uncommon for the musicians from Salzgitter to travel to the Americas.
The harps they played were built by carpenters in Pressnitz (which
also supplied Hundeshagen), Nechanice, possibly Schönbach in Egerland,
Markneukirchen in Saxony, areas near Salzgitter and certainly in other areas as
well. The names of several 19th-century carpenter-harp builders have come down
to us: Poppenberger, Reis und Bach in Pressnitz and František Kdoul in
Nechanice. They were light (4–6 kg) and portable hook harps, 135–145 cm high
with 36–39 strings, usually gut (although the harps from Nechanice had metal
strings in the treble) and they were tuned diatonically, usually in B or F. The resonators were
four-sided and arched upwards towards the neck. The harps from Pressnitz and
Salzgitter were equipped with hooks for each string (fig.38),
those from Nechanice usually had only one or two hooks per octave.
At the end of the 19th century, the Harfenkapellen became eclipsed by orchestras and brass bands from Pressnitz who toured all over the world. The tradition had died out by the beginning of World War I in most areas. In Hundeshagen, which lies just 5 kilometres to the east of the former East German border, women continued to travel and perform, sometimes stealing across to the West, until 1961 when the border became impassable.
In the Egerland, the area of north-western Bohemia closest to Bavaria, harps were included in the so-called Dudelsackkapellen (bagpipe bands) consisting of Bock (bagpipe), clarinet, short-neck fiddle, bass and harp. In these groups the harp was played exclusively by men. They played local folk music rather than popular music and often marched through the streets carrying their harps and playing at the same time. The harp was most commonly a hook harp as used by other Bohemian wandering harpers, but sometimes Tyrolean single-action pedal harps were used. The tradition continued until the end of World War II when German-speaking Bohemians were deported to Germany.
One region in which the present practice represents an unbroken but continually developing tradition is the Alpine region of Austria and Bavaria. Joseph Haydn (1731–1809), born in the village of Rohrau in lower Austria, wrote glowingly of the simple melodies his father played on the harp when Haydn was a small boy (quoted in E.F. Schmid: Joseph Haydn, Kassel, 1934, p.95). From the middle of the 19th century the Zillertal was the centre of harp activity. The musicians played mainly dance-music – ländler, waltzes and polkas – in groups consisting of harp, one or two violins and Bassettl (small double bass). Sometimes harps played with accordions or brass and wind ensembles. They also played solo and duet harp pieces, or accompanied solo instruments or song.
Records of harp builders in the Austrian Tyrol exist from the
middle of the 18th century onwards. Local tradition suggests that Bohemian
wandering harpers introduced the hook mechanism to the Tyrol. Most surviving
non-pedal harps are simple diatonic instruments with four-sided arched
resonators and straight forepillars. Very few have hooks. The first
single-action pedal harp builder in Tyrol was Sepp Sappl (1862–1925). His early
32-string harps retained the four-sided arched resonators of the hook harp with
the addition of three to five pedals. He used a simple hook mechanism, the
pedals attached to cables running through the resonator to the neck. Later he
developed the five-sided, staved, arched back with seven pedals and 36 strings
which has become the typical form of the ‘Tiroler Volksharfe’. This form was
perfected by Franz Bradl from Brixlegg (1882–1963). His harps were tuned in E and the pedals originally
arranged E B F C G D A from left to right. Later he changed to the present
arrangement, identical to that of the double-action pedal harp. Bradl's harps
became the model for all later Tyrolean harp builders such as Josef Sappl
(1909–86), Karl (b 1912) and Peter (b 1943) Petutschnigg of
Lienz, Benedikt (b 1928) and Peter (b 1958) Mürnseer of
Kitzbühel, Jakob (b 1919) and Alexander (b 1964) Kröll of
Kramsach, Fritz Hauser (b 1927) of Zell am Ziller, and Karl Fischer (b
1912) of Traunstein in Germany. The modern Tyrolean folk harp is still a
single-action harp with the cables running through the resonator but it now
uses forked mechanics like those of the double-action pedal harp. Nylon strings
have replaced the original gut. Until World War II it was exclusively a man's
instrument. But since then its popularity and use have spread throughout
Austria and Bavaria where it is played by both men and women. It is played as a
solo virtuoso instrument or in groups called ‘Saitenmusi’ (string music)
together with Hackbrett (hammered dulcimer), zither, guitar and violin.
Most music schools and conservatories in Austria and Bavaria offer Tyrolean
harp as well as classical harp; however, without the efforts of harp players
such as Berta Höller and Peter Reitmeier, who collected harp music during and
after World War II, the Tyrolean folk harp and its music would not enjoy the
standing it does today.
The itinerary of the 19th-century German-speaking wandering harpers also included the areas of Hungary settled by German speakers in the 18th century, particularly Transnubia. Some families of harpers and knife grinders, primarily from Austria, settled near Lake Balaton in Transnubia and continued the tradition of the wandering harper within Hungary. They played hook harps and performed waltzes and polkas as well as popular German songs, visiting mainly the German-speaking villages. Later Hungarian popular songs (gypsy songs) and folk songs were added to the repertory. In the 20th century some harpers built their own harps, adding a simple four- or five-pedal mechanism of their own construction. In the 1960s there were still 12 members of the Gertner and Horváth families carrying on the tradition of the wandering harper and some were still active in the year 2000.
Two areas of Italy – Viggiano near Naples and the Abruzzi near Rome – were also known for their wandering harpers in the period from 1780 to at least 1850. Paintings and etchings from this period usually show groups of musicians with one or two harps together with a mandolin, a violin bowed in front of the chest and a triangle; sometimes bagpipe and shawm, clarinet, guitar or bass are also pictured (fig.39). These are simple diatonic harps with straight four-sided resonators and a straight forepillar, sometimes topped with a volute. There is no evidence that a hook mechanism was used. Viggiano in Calabria is perhaps the more famous of the two areas. The Museo Storico Musicale in Naples owns a harp from Viggiano with 34 strings, a straight, four-sided resonator and straight forepillar. The musicians played and sang Italian folk melodies, tunes from operas and Neapolitan songs. Although the Abruzzi are most famous for their bagpipe and shawm players, ensembles with harps called carciofolari, were also known. The harp players in both locations were exclusively men. They wandered throughout Europe and to the Americas. In Italy the practice of teaching children in orphanages to play the harp was also widespread in the 19th century. In 1992 there was only one elderly Viggianese harpist, a Signore Rossi, but he still knew the traditional repertory.
Harp, §V: Europe and the Americas
In the early 19th century attempts were made to sustain and revitalize Irish harp playing traditions and repertory. The main source of information on the traditional style of harping in Ireland is the collection of Edward Bunting, originally published in three volumes as A General Collection of Ancient Irish Music in 1797, 1809 and 1840. A founder of the Belfast Harp Society (1808–13) and the Irish Harp Society (1819–39), Bunting acted as scribe at the meeting of harpers in Belfast in July 1792, notating the performances of dennis Hempson and nine others who remained from the class of traditional players, of whom Hempson was the only one who still used the old fingernail technique. This characteristic playing technique for the metal strung harp, using specially trimmed long fingernails, is very different to that of the gut or nylon strung harp and probably contributed to the Irish harp's almost total disappearance. Harp teachers were mostly from a classical background which implied gut-string playing technique.
The Belfast Harp Society inaugurated the teaching of a number of
children by Arthur O'Neill and Bridget O'Reilly, two of the players who had
taken part in the 1792 festival. Harps were provided by local makers. Having
collapsed in 1813, the society was re-established with similar aims in 1819 but
closed in 1839. A Dublin Harp Society, of social rather than pedagogical
character, lasted from 1809 to 1812. After 1819 John Egan, and later his nephew
and successor Francis Hewson, produced a new design of ‘Irish Harp’ for
amateurs. Although superficially resembling some 18th-century harps, Egan's
instruments were much more lightly constructed and were smaller, simplified
versions of the pedal harps of his day, with thin soundboards and separate,
rounded backs (fig.40). Later, he produced his ‘portable
harp’, the gut strings of which were fixed into the soundboard with pegs. A
hand-operated blade not unlike that of the hook harp (see §V, 7(i), above)
shortened individual strings by a semitone. In about 1819, Egan built a harp
with seven ‘ditals’ placed in the forepillar, each of which when pressed down
would affect a mechanism in the neck of the harp that shortened all strings of
the same note name by a semitone. Like the single-action harp on which it was
based, this harp was tuned in E; the technique of playing was also derived largely
from that of the pedal-harp. Egan also made at least one double-action dital
harp.
The upsurge of interest in Celtic culture at the end of the 19th century saw upper middle class scholars and academics encouraging interest in the harp by providing money for prizes at competitions (e.g. the eisteddfod in Wales and the mod in Scotland) and by commissioning instrument makers to try their hands at harp making. In the early 20th century J. & R. Glen, an Edinburgh bagpipe maker, made a few reproduction harps, and Briggs, an English violin maker based in Glasgow, made some harps which are still being played today. Small harps were also being made in Dublin by Egan, in Belfast by McFall and in London by Clive Morley. By the mid-20th century, the main makers were Walton in Belfast, Imbush in Limerick, Pat and John Quinn in the Republic of Ireland and Brown and Bruce in Edinburgh who took over the business of Sanderson and Taylor. Mary O'Hara played a Brown and Bruce harp. (For a discussion of the Welsh triple harp, whose tradition never entirely died out, see §V, 5(iii), above.)
However historically incorrect the terminology, the modern harp known as ‘Irish’ or ‘Celtic’ is small and diatonic, although most small harps have blades or levers which can raise the pitch of each string by a semitone (see §V, 7(iv), above). Generally these harps have a compass of about four octaves and an average of 30 strings. Older models, such as those by Morley or Briggs, have narrower spacing between the strings, but the ones being made today are more likely to have concert-harp spacing. Some of the modern harps (e.g. by Mark Norris and John Yule, both based in Scotland) are very tightly strung, but there is a growing trend among makers to use lighter-gauge strings. Nylon strings are very popular, especially in the USA, as they are less sensitive to extremes of temperature. They are also used by the Japanese company Ayoyama which has exported many harps to Ireland since the 1970s. Camac of France are experimenting with carbon fibre strings, but there are still some makers who prefer gut (e.g. Pilgrim Harps in England, Norris and Yule). Few metal strung harps are being made even though the tradition in Ireland before the mid-18th century certainly involved metal stringing (see Irish harp (i)).
However, some revivalist gut harpers have also experimented with the metal strung harp, either in researching the old techniques and music associated with the harp (e.g. the Americans Anne Heyman and William Taylor, and Alison Kinnaird of Scotland), or playing on it the music of today, be it traditional or newly composed (e.g. Paul Dooley in Ireland, Eileen Monger in England, Alan Stivell and Paul and Herve Queffelant from Brittany, Rudiger Opperman from Germany, and Mary McMaster from Scotland). Many of these players are also teachers and makers. Other makers of metal strung harps include Jay Witcher and Chris Caswell (USA), Robert Evans (Wales), Jack Morgan (England) and Ardival Harps (Scotland).
In Ireland in the 1960s, the harp became increasingly used in a chordal style to accompany singing, a style of which Mary O'Hara is perhaps the most famous exponent. During the same period Seán Ó'Riada introduced the harp to Irish céili music in his Ceoltóirí Cualann group, thereby encouraging its use also as a melody instrument. Considering the large population of emigrant Irish in the USA, it is not surprising to find the harp also beginning to gain popularity in America at that time. A similar development has taken place in Scotland, with the harp being increasingly played not only as a solo instrument but as an integral part of groups of musicians (see Clàrsach). In the 1970s Alan Stivell of Brittany was playing the harp in a rock-based band to large crowds all over Europe and America, and he undoubtedly inspired many younger people who perhaps had never seen a harp before. Since that time there has been a huge increase in the numbers of people playing the small harp, and it now has a status equal to any of the other instruments being used in traditional music, and it is also finding its way into other genres of music. There are players composing music for the small harp in the traditional mode, in jazz style, and in other wholly original ways. It has also become possible to study the small harp on degree courses in Ireland, Scotland and Galicia (Spain). There are societies for the small harp in England, France, Germany, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, the USA and Wales which promote concerts, fund teaching, host festivals and acquire harps to rent out to beginners. The small harp is being used in music therapy, especially in the USA and Ireland, and all over the world harpers find employment playing at weddings, formal dinners and in hotels.
Along with the general development of interest during the 20th century in historical performing practices using period instruments or replicas, a growing number of harpists and harp makers have been researching the playing techniques, repertory and building methods of earlier periods, and recreating them in performance on harps based on historical or iconographical models, with the help of contemporary descriptions. Harps were featured in many of the pioneering Early music groups of the 1950s and later. A growing need to further the exchange of information among historical harp players, builders and researchers has led to the establishment of a Historical Harp Conference and Workshop held annually in the USA, the first of which was organized by Judit Kadar and Cheryl Ann Fulton in 1984. The Verein zur Förderung historischer Harfen (International Historical Harp Society) was founded in 1985, based in Europe. Its archive houses literature, facsimile prints of harp music, iconography, photos and descriptions of harps in museums and private collections as well as information on harp builders and players. The Historical Harp Society, founded in 1990 and based in North America, has initiated the ‘Historical Harp Survey’ to register all harps built before 1939 currently in North America. Symposia and workshops are held annually in various locations in the USA and Europe under the aegis of the two main societies, and a number of smaller organizations have arisen, such as the Asociación arpista Ludovico in Spain. The International Harp Centre in Basle and its journal Harpa were established in 1991.
Makers of historical harps include Yves d'Arcizas (France), Ardival Harps (Scotland), David Brown (USA), Catherine Campbell (USA), Simon Capp (England), Arsalaan Fay (USA), Winifried Goerge (Germany), Tim Hobrough (Scotland), Claus Hüttel (Germany), Eric Kleinmann (Germany), David Kortier (USA), Lynn Lewandowski (USA), Pedro Llopis Areny (Spain), Antonio de Renzis (Italy), Rainer Thurau (Germany), Jay Witcher (USA) and Beat Wolf (Switzerland).
A Ancient harps. B Africa. C Asia. D Europe and North America: (i) General (ii) Middle Ages and early Renaissance (iii) Ireland, Scotland and Wales (iv) Spain (v) Late Renaissance and the Baroque (vi) From 1800 (vii) The Pleyel harp (viii) Local traditions. E Latin America.
MGG2 (‘Harfen’, §A; B. Lawergren)
SachsH
A.K. Coomaraswamy: ‘The Parts of a Vīnā’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 1 (1930), 244–53
H.G. Farmer: ‘Turkish Instruments of Music in the Seventeenth Century’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1936), 1–43
W. Stauder: Die Harfen und Leiern der Sumerer (Frankfurt, 1957)
M.V. Fontana: La leggenda di Bahrām Gūr e Āzāda (Naples, 1986)
O.R. Gurney and B. Lawergren: ‘Sound Holes and Geometrical Figures: Clues to the Terminology of Ancient Mesopotamian Harps’, Iraq, xlix (1987), 37–52
E. De Waele: ‘Musicians and Musical Instruments on the Rock Reliefs in the Elamite Sanctuary of Kul-e Farah (Izeh)’, Iran, xxvii (1989), 29–38
B. Lawergren: ‘The Ancient Harp from Pazyryk’, Beiträge zur allgemeinen und vergleichenden Archäologie, ix/10 (1990), 111–18
W. Bachmann: ‘Die skythisch-sarmatische Harfe aus Olbia’, Sons originels: préhistoire de la musique, ed. M. Otte (Liège, 1994), 111–34
B. Lawergren: ‘Music’, Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, ed. D.B. Redford (Oxford, 2000)
B. Ankermann: Die afrikanischen Musikinstrumente, Ethnologisches Notizblatt, iii/1 (Berlin, 1901/R) 3ff, 77ff, 105–6, 118ff, 131–2
A. Schaeffner: ‘Notes sur la musique des populations du Cameroun septentrional’, Minotaure, ii (1933), 65–70
G. Balandier and P. Mercier: ‘Notes sur les théories musicales maures à propos de chants enregistrés’, Conferência internacional dos africanistas ocidentias II: Bissau 1947, 139–92
J. Chaminade and J. Guillard: disc notes, Musique maure, Ocora, OCR-SOR 7–8 (c1950)
A. Leriche: ‘Instruments de musique et griots’, Bulletin de l'Institut français d'Afrique noire, xii (1950), 744
A. Leriche: ‘Poésie et musique maures: instruments de musique maure et griots’, Bulletin de l'Institut français d'Afrique noire, xii (1950), 710–50
K.P. Wachsmann: ‘An Equal-Stepped Tuning in a Ganda Harp’, Nature, clxv (1950), 40–41
G. Rouget: disc notes, Musique maure, Institut français d'Afrique noire MH 54 (1952)
M. Trowell and K.P. Wachsmann: Tribal Crafts of Uganda (London, 1953), 393ff, 412–13, pls.112–13
J. Kyagambiddwa: African Music from the Source of the Nile (New York, 1955),105ff
K.P. Wachsmann: Folk Musicians in Uganda, Uganda Museum Occasional Paper, ii (Kampala, 1956)
K.P. Wachsmann: ‘Harp Songs from Uganda’, JIFMC, viii (1956), 23–5
H. Pepper: disc notes, Anthologie de la vie africaine: Congo-Gabon, Ducretet-Thomson 320 C 127 (1958)
H. Tracey: disc notes, The Sound of Africa Series, International Library of African Music TR 1–210 (1958–)
G.P. Murdock: Africa: its Peoples and their Culture History (New York, 1959), 93, 227, 231–2, 275, 280, 329–30, 347–8
J. Laurenty: Les cordophones du Congo Belge et du Ruanda-Urundi (Tervuren, 1960), i, 72ff, 118ff, 146ff, 179ff, 195, 205ff, 215, 219ff; ii, pls.xxiii–xxxvi
R. Brandel: The Music of Central Africa (The Hague, 1961/R), 6, 37–8, 218, 255
E. de Dampierre, ed.: Poètes nzakara (Paris, 1962), 13ff, 211
T. Nikiprowetzky: ‘The Music of Mauritania’, JIFMC, xiv (1962), 53–5
G. Kubik: ‘Harp Music of the Azande and Related Peoples in the Central African Republic’, AfM, iii/3 (1964), 37–76
K.P. Wachsmann: ‘Human Migration and African Harps’, JIFMC, xvi (1964), 84–8
S. Arom and G. Taurelle: disc notes, Musics of the Central African Republic, UNESCO BM 30 L 2310 (1965)
J.W. Fernandez: ‘Symbolic Consensus in a Fang Reformative Cult’, American Anthropologist, new ser., lxvii (1965), 902–27
F.F. Georgetti: ‘Zande Harp Music’, AfM, iii/4 (1965), 74–6
C. Duvelle: disc notes, Anthologie de la musique du Tchad, Ocora OCR 36–8 (1966)
C. Duvelle: disc notes, Musique maure, Ocora OCR 28 (1966)
S. Arom: ‘Instruments de musique particuliers à certaines ethnies de la République Centrafricaine’, JIFMC, xix (1967), 104–8
M. Brandily: ‘Un exorcisme musical chez les Kotoko’, La musique dans la vie, i, ed. T. Nikiprowetzky (Paris, 1967), 33–75
L. Anderson: The Miko Modal System of Kiganda Xylophone Music (diss., UCLA, 1968)
H.T. Norris: Shinqīitī Folk Literature and Song (Oxford, 1968)
R. Barnett: ‘New Facts about Musical Instruments from Ur’, Iraq, xxxi (1969), 96–103
J. Jenkins, ed.: Ethnic Musical Instruments/Instruments de musique ethnique (London, 1970)
S. Swiderski: ‘La harpe, en sacrée dans les cultes syncrétiques au Gabon’, Anthropos, lxv (1970), 833–57
K.P. Wachsmann: ‘Ethnomusicology in Africa’, The African Experience, i, ed. J.N. Paden and E.W. Soja (Evanston, IL, 1970), 128–51
R. Knight: ‘Towards a Notation and Tablature for the Kora’, AfM, v/1 (1971), 23–6
K.P. Wachsmann: ‘Musical Instruments in Kiganda Tradition and their Place in the East African Scene’, Essays on Music and History in Africa, ed. K.P. Wachsmann (Evanston, IL, 1971), 93–134
R. Knight: disc notes, Kora Manding: Mandinka Music of the Gambia, Ethnodisc ER 12102 (1972)
J.W. Fernandez: disc notes, Music from an Equatorial Microcosm: Fang Bwiti Music, Folkways FE 4214 (1973)
M. Guignard: ‘Mauritanie: les Maures et leur musique au XIXème siècle’, Musikkulturen Asiens, Afrikas und Ozeaniens im 19. Jahrhundert, ed. R. Günther (Regensburg, 1973), 241–54
H. Tracey: Catalogue of the Sound of Africa Series (Roodepoort, 1973)
K.P. Wachsmann: ‘A “Ship-Like” Instrument from West Africa’, Ethnos, xxxviii (1973), 43–56
A. Ssempeke: ‘The Autobiography of an African Musician’, Music Educators Journal, lxi/6 (1974–5), 52–9
C. Nourrit and W. Pruitt: Musique traditionnelle de l'Afrique noire (Paris, 1978–85) [incl. discography]
S.G. Pevar: ‘The Construction of a Kora’, African Arts, xi/4 (1978), 66–72
B. Lawergren: ‘Acoustics and Evolution of Arched Harps’, GSJ, xxxiv (1981), 110–29
S.C. DeVale: ‘Prolegomena to a Study of Harp, and Voice Sounds in Africa: a Graphic System for the Notation of Texture’, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, v (1984), 285–315
R. Knight: ‘The Style of Mandinka Music: a Study in Extracting Theory from Practice’ Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, v (1984), 3–66
S.C. DeVale: ‘Musical Instruments and Ritual: a Systematic Approach’, JAMIS, xiv (1988), 126–60
S.C. DeVale: ‘African Harps: Construction, Decoration and Sound’, Sounding Forms: African Musical Instruments, ed. M.-T. Brincard (New York, 1989), 53–62
S.C. DeVale: ‘Power and Meaning in Music Instruments’, Music and the Experience of God, ed. M. Collins, D. Power and M. Burnim (Edinburgh, 1989), 94–110
J.H.K. Nketia: ‘The Aesthetic Dimensions of African Musical Instruments’, Sounding Forms: African Musical Instruments, ed. M.-T. Brincard (New York, 1989), 21–30
E.S. Charry: ‘West African Harps’, JAMIS, xx (1994), 5–53
P. Bruguière and J.-L. Grootaers, eds.: Song of the River: Harps of Central Africa (Paris, 1999)
J. Kunst: Hindoe-Javaansche muziekinstrumenten, speciaal die van Oost Java (Weltevreden, 1927; Eng. trans., 1963, rev. 2/1968)
B. Szabolcsi: ‘Osztyák és vogul dallamok: újabb adalékok a magyar népi siratódallam problémájához’ [Ostiak and Vogul melodies: some new data on the problems of Hungarian dirges], Etnographia, xlviii (1937), 340–45
A.O. Väisänen: ‘Die obugrische harfe’, Finnisch-ugrische Forschungen, xxiv (1937), 127–53
A.O. Väisänen: Untersuchungen über die Ob-ugrischen Melodien (Helsinki, 1939)
C. Marcel-Dubois: Les instruments de musique de l’Inde ancienne (Paris, 1941)
T. Alvad: ‘The Kafir Harp’, Man, liv (1954), 151–4
S. Kishibe: ‘The Origin of the K’ung-hou’ [The origin of the Chinese Harp], Tōyō ongaku kenkyū, xiv–xv (1958), 1–51
K. Vertkov, G. Blagodatov and E. Yazovitskaya: Atlas muzïkaly'nïkh instrumentov narodov SSSR [Atlas of the musical instruments of the peoples of the USSR] (Moscow, 1963, 2/1975 with 4 discs and Eng. summary), 96–102, 145–6
M.C. Williamson: ‘The Construction and Decoration of One Burmese Harp’, Selected Reports, i/2 (1968), 45–77
M.C. Williamson: ‘A Supplement to the Construction and Decoration of One Burmese Harp’, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, ii/2 (1975), 109–15
C.E. Patrick: ‘The Harp beneath the Ice’, Folk Harp Journal, no.32 (1981), 4–11
C.E. Patrick: ‘The Harp of the North Lands’, Folk Harp Journal, no.32 (1981), 12–20
L. Picken: ‘Instruments in an Orchestra from Pyu (Upper Burma) in 802’, Musica asiatica, iv (1984), 245–70
R. Knight: ‘The Harp in India Today’, Ethnomusicology, xxix/1 (1985), 9–28
T. Kido and others: Kodai gakki no fukugen [Reconstructed musical instruments of ancient East Asia] (Tokyo, 1994)
B. Lawergren: ‘Buddha as a Musician’, Artibus Asiae, liv (1994), 226–40
B. Lawergren: ‘The Spread of Harps between the Near and Far East during the First Millenium A.D.: Evidence of Buddhist Musical Cultures on the Silk Road’, Silk Road Art and Archaeology, iv (1995–6), 233–75
B. Lawergren: ‘To Tune a String: Dichotomies and Diffusions between the Near and Far East’, Vltra terminvm vagari: studi in onore di Carl Nylander, ed. B. Magnusson and others (Rome, 1997), 175–92
B. Lawergren: ‘Music in the Buddhist and Pre-Buddhist Worlds’, History of Civilizations of Central Asia, iv (Paris, 2000)
MGG2 (‘Harfen’, §B; S. Sowa-Winter and H.J. Zingel)
F. Harrison and J. Rimmer: European Musical Instruments (London, 1964)
S.O. Pratt: Affairs of the Harp (New York, 1964)
H.J. Zingel: Harfenmusik (Hofheim, 1965)
R. Rensch: The Harp: its History, Technique and Repertoire (London and New York, 1969)
H. Charnassé and F. Vernillat: Les instruments à cordes pincées (Paris, 1970)
Folk Harp Journal (1973–)
H.J. Zingel: Lexikon der Harfe: ein biographisches, geographisches und historisches Nachshlagewerke von A–Z (Laaber, 1977)
A Checklist of European Harps (New York, 1979) [pubn of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York]
S. Gunji, ed.: ‘Harp – Lyre’, Gakki shinyō shū [Musical instrument resource collection], v (Tokyo, 1985)
Historische Harfen: Basle 1986
Aspects of the Historical Harp: Utrecht 1992
The Historical Harp: Proceedings of the International Historical Harp Symposium, Berlin 1994, ed., A. Riesthuis (Berlin, 1998)
G. Lawson: ‘Medieval Tuning Pegs from Whitby’, Medieval Archaeology, xxii (1970), 139
M. Morrow: ‘The Renaissance Harp: the Instrument and its Music’, EMc, vii (1979), 499–510
C. Page: Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 1986)
M. van Schaik: The Harp in the Middle Ages: the Symbolism of a Musical Instrument (Amsterdam,1992)
R. Evans: ‘A Copy of the Downhill Harp’, GSJ, 1 (1997), 119–26
C.A. Fulton: ‘Basic Practical Advice on Playing the Late Medieval Harp’, Historical Harp Society Bulletin, viii/1 (1997), 3–15
R. Trench-Jellicoe: ‘Pictish and Related Harps: their Form and Decoration’, The Worm, the Germ and the Thorn: Pictish and Related Studies Presented to Isabel Henderson, ed. D. Henry (Balgavies, Angus, 1997), 159–72
E. Jones: Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (London, 1784/R, enlarged 4/1825)
E. Bunting: A General Collection of Ancient Irish Music, i (London, 1797), ii (London, 1809), iii (Dublin, 1840); ed. D. O'Sullivan and M. O Súilleabháin as Bunting's Ancient Music of Ireland (Cork, 1983)
J. Parry [Bardd Alaw]: The Welsh Harper (London, 1839)
R.B. Armstrong: Musical Instruments, i: The Irish and Highland Harps (Edinburgh, 1904/R)
R. Griffith: Llyfr Cerdd Dannau [Book of music for the harp] (Caernarvon, 1913)
A.O.H. Jarman: ‘Telyn a Chrwth’ [Harp and violin], Llên Cymru, vi (1960–61), 154–75
J. Rimmer: ‘The Morphology of the Irish Harp’, GSJ, xvii (1964), 39–49
J. Rimmer: The Irish Harp (Cork, 1969, 3/1984)
A. Schaefer: Le Musica neu Beroriaeth de Robert ap Huw (diss., U. of Paris, 1973)
A. Griffiths and A. Schaefer: ‘Gwilym Puw's “Trefn Cywair Telyn”: a Seventeenth Century System for Tuning the Harp’, Welsh Music, iv/8 (1975), 22–30
O. Ellis: The Story of the Harp in Wales (Cardiff, 1980, 2/1991)
Y. Morvan: ‘Renaissance de la harpe celtique’, Breizh, ccliii (1980), 6–9; Eng. trans. in Folk Harp Journal, no.31 (1980), 5–13
A. Griffiths: ‘John Parry’, American Harp Journal, viii/2 (1981), 11–25
E.E. Roberts: With Harp, Fiddle and Folktale (Clwyd, 1981)
C. Polin: The ap Huw Manuscript (Henryville, PA, 1982)
J. Rimmer: ‘Telynores Maldwyn: Nansi Richards, a Welsh Harper 1888–1979’, Welsh Music, vi/10 (1982), 18–32
A.O.H. and E. Jarman: The Welsh Gypsies: Children of Abram Wood (Cardiff, 1991)
D.R. Saer: The Harp in Wales in Pictures (Dyfed, 1991)
K. Sanger and A. Kinnaird: Tree of Strings: a History of the Harp in Scotland (Shillinghill, 1992)
A. Mudarra: Tres libros de música en cifras para vihuela (Seville, 1546/R); ed. in MME, vii (1949)
J. Bermudo: Declaración de instrumentos musicales (Osuna, 1555/R)
L. Venegas de Henestrosa: Libro de cifra nueva para tecla, harpa, y vihuela (Alcalá, 1557); ed. in MME, ii (1944, 2/1965)
A. de Cabezón: Obras de música para tecla, arpa y vihuela (Madrid, 1578); ed. in MME, xxvii–xxix (1966, 2/1982)
B. Jovernardi: Tratado de la música (MS, 1634, E-Mn 8931)
L. Ruiz de Ribayaz: Luz y norte musical para caminar por las cifras de la guitarra española y arpa (Madrid, 1677)
D. Fernández de Huete: Compendio numeroso de zifras armónicas, con theórica y prática para arpa de una orden de dos órdenes y de órgano (Madrid, 1702–4)
P. Nassarre: Escuela música, según la prática moderna (Zaragoza, 1723–4/R)
R. Stevenson: Juan Bermudo (The Hague, 1960)
M.S. Kastner: ‘Harfe und Harfner in der iberischen Musik des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Natalicia musicologica Knud Jeppesen septuagenario collegis oblata, ed. B. Hjelmborg and S. Sørensen (Copenhagen, 1962), 165–72
N. Zabaleta: ‘The Harp in Spain from the XVI to XVIII Century’, Harp News, iii/10 (1964), 2–10
R. Pérez Arroyo: ‘El arpa de dos órdenes en España’, RdMc, ii (1979), 89–107
A. Griffiths: ‘El arpa de una orden: the Single-Strung Harp in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, American Harp Journal, ix/2 (1983), 10–26
M.S. Kastner: ‘A harpa em Portugal, séculos XIV–XVII’, II encuentro nacional de musicología de Portugal (Lisbon, 1984), 12–16
L. Jambou: ‘La lutherie à Madrid à la fin du XVIIe siècle’, RdMc, ix (1986), 427–52
C. Bordas Ibañez: ‘The Double Harp in Spain from the 16th to the 18th Centuries’, EMc, xv (1987), 148–63
B. Zableta Zala: El arpa en España de los siglos XVI al XVIII: antecedentes históricos (Madrid, 1988)
M.R. Calvo Manzano: El arpa en el barroco español (Madrid, 1992)
H. Devaere: ‘An Organological Study of Baroque Double Harps in Spain and Italy’, Zur Baugeschichte der Harfe: Bankenburg, Harz, 1992
M. Esses: Dance and Instrumental Diferencias in Spain During the 17th and Early 18th Centuries, i (Stuyvesant, NY, 1992), 185–234
C. Bordas and others: ‘Arpa’, Diccionario de la música española e hispanicoamericana (Madrid, 1999)
ApelG
BurneyFI
BurneyGN
Grove6 (‘Macque, Giovanni de’; W.R. Shindle)
MersenneHU
L. Rossi: Libro di canzone franzese del signor Gioanni Demaque (MS, GB-Lbl Add.30491; facs. in SCKM, xi, 1987)
R. Rodio: ‘Cinque ricercate, una fantasia’, Libro di ricercate (Naples, 1575); ed. M.S. Kastner (Padua, 1958)
V. Galilei: Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna (Florence, 1581/R; partial Eng. trans. in StrunkSR1)
A. Mayone: Primo libro di diversi capricci per sonare (Naples, 1603); ed. C. Stembridge (Padua, 1981)
G.M. Trabaci: Ricercate, canzone franzese, capricci (Naples, 1603)
A. Mayone: Secondo libro di diversi capricci per sonare (Naples, 1609); ed. in Orgue et liturgie, lxiii, lxv (Paris, 1964)
G.M. Trabaci: Il secondo libro de ricercare & altri varij capricci (Naples, 1615)
V. Giustiniani: Discorso sopra la musica de' suoi tempi (MS, 1628, I-La); pr. in A. Solerti: Le origini del melodramma (Turin, 1903/R), 98–128; ed. and Eng. trans. in MSD, ix (1962), 63–80
G. Strozzi: Capricci da sonare cembali, et organi (Naples, 1687/R); ed. B. Hudson, CEKM, xi (1967)
J. Hawkins: A General History of the Science and Practice of Music (London, 1776, 1853/R)
H.J. Zingel: Harfe und Harfenspiel vom Beginn des 16. bis ins zweite Drittel des 18. Jahrhunderts (Halle, 1932/R)
N. Fortune: ‘Giustiniani on Instruments’, GSJ, v (1952), 48–54
N. Fortune: ‘Continuo Instruments in Italian Monodies’, GSJ, vi (1953), 10–13
W.L. Woodfill: Musicians in English Society from Elizabeth to Charles I (Princeton, NJ, 1953/R)
J. Rimmer: ‘James Talbot's Manuscript, vi: Harps’, GSJ, xvi (1963), 63–72
J. Rimmer: ‘Harps in the Baroque Era’, PRMA, xc (1963–4), 59–75
J. Rimmer: ‘The Morphology of the Triple Harp’, GSJ, xviii (1965), 90–103; xix (1966), 61–4
H.J. Zingel: Die Entwicklung des Harfenspiels von den Anfangen bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1969)
H.J. Zingel: Harfenspiel im Barockzeitalter (Regensburg, 1974)
E. Durante and A. Martelotti: L'arpa di Laura: indagine organologica, artistica e archivistica sull'arpa estense (Florence, 1982)
A. Griffiths: The Development of the Non-Mechanised Harp from 1546 (diss., U. of Birmingham, 1982)
R. Jackson: ‘The Harp Variations of Trabaci’, Folk Harp Journal, no.37 (1982), 21–3
D.W. Music: ‘Handel and the Harp’, American Harp Journal, viii/3 (1982), 6–15
T. Swartz: ‘Double and Triple Harps: Extant Instruments and Illustrations’, Folk Harp Journal, no.37 (1982), 31–5
C.A. Fulton: ‘For the Harpe, Base Violl, Violin and Theorbo: the Consorts of William Lawes (1602–1645)’, American Harp Journal, x/2 (1985), 15–20
D. Fabris: ‘L'arpa napoletana, simbolismo estetico-sonoro di uno strumento musicale del primo Seicento’, Modernità e coscienza estetica, ed. F. Fanizza (Naples, 1986), 211–62
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