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Harp,
musical instrument in which strings, sounded by plucking, run between a neck and a sound
box (also called the body or resonator). The strings run vertically down to the sound box.
Types
Harps
are made in three basic shapes: arched harps, in which the neck and body form a bow-like
curve; angular harps, in which neck and body form at least a right angle; and frame harps,
in which a third piece, the forepillar, is placed opposite the angle between the neck and
body, forming a triangle, to brace them against the tension of the strings. The modern
orchestral harp is a large frame harp having 46 or 47 strings (six and a half octaves,
with 7 strings per octave); the bass strings made of covered wire and the treble strings
of gut or nylon. To produce accidentals (sharps or flats) lying outside the harp's
seven-note scale, the instrument has a system of seven double-action pedals, each pedal
controlling one string in every octave. The harp is tuned to the scale of C-flat: when a
pedal is depressed one notch, each string it controls is raised by a semitone, as from C
flat to C natural; when it is depressed two notches, each is raised a whole tone, as from
C flat to C sharp.
Early
History
Arched
harps, the most ancient of all, were known in Sumeria and Egypt between about 3000 and
2000 BC: angular harps appeared somewhat
later. Arched harps survive today in Burma, parts of Africa, a few areas of Siberia, and
in an isolated part of Afghanistan. Angular harps were prominent in medieval Arabic and
Persian music and were played as late as the 19th century in Persia. Frame harps, almost
exclusively European, appeared by the 9th century and developed in two versions, one used
in Ireland and Scotland, and one on the Continent. The Irish harp, like its Scottish
counterpart, was a powerful instrument with a broad, deep sound box hewn from one block of
wood; a thick, strong neck; and a heavy, curved forepillar. Strung with 30 to 50 brass
strings that were plucked by the player's long fingernails to produce a brilliant, ringing
sound, it remained in use until about 1800. Medieval harps in other parts of Europe were
smaller and lighter, with from about 7 to 25 strings, apparently of metal, and narrower,
shallower sound boxes. By about 1500, gut strings came into use, and a taller form
developed with a straight forepillar that could support more string tension than a light,
curved forepillar. This Gothic harp is the ancestor of the folk harps of Latin America and
of the modern “Irish” and orchestral harps.
Later
Developments
As
music in the 16th to 18th centuries gradually demanded more notes that lay outside the
seven notes of the European harp's scale, attempts were made to enable the harp to produce
the additional notes. These included adding a second row of strings tuned to the sharps
and flats (chromatic harps), setting small hooks on the neck that could be turned to catch
a string and raise its pitch a half step, and providing pedals to which the hooks (or
later, rotating discs) were connected by levers and wires set inside the forepillar.
Devised in 1720, the first single-action pedal harp could raise the pitch of the selected
strings by a half step, allowing the harp to play in many, although not all, keys; this
was achieved with the double-action harp developed in 1810 by Sébastien ?rard
in Paris.
Harp