Harp

Harp, a musical stringed instrument, much esteemed by the ancients. In Egypt it attained an early and unequalled maturity, and is delineated in the sculptures from the earliest ages in many different forms. The great Egyptian harp stood nearly 7 feet in height, and carried 18 sonorous bass and tenor strings. Its immense frame shimmered with all the colours of the rainbow, and was further ornamented with massive carvings, gold, and precious stones. The Assyrian and biblical harp was a small instrument, easily carried in the hand, and resembling more a Lyre (q.v.) than a true harp. The harp was not in use among the Greeks and Romans; but the kantela, to which the Finns chanted the Kalevala, was a sort of primitive harp. The Celtic bards held the instrument in the greatest honour. The old Scottish harp was about 3 feet high, a foot and a half broad, and carried about thirty strings. Seven harps earlier than the 18th century are in existence, and are described in Hipkins' Musical Instruments, Historic, Rare, and Unique (1889). The Welsh triple harp is a large instrument, furnished with three rows of strings. Of these, two rows are tuned in unison and in the diatonic scale, the remaining one in the sharps and flats of the chromatic. In Ireland the harp was so celebrated an instrument in the remotest times that the Italians of the middle ages believed their harp to be derived from Ireland. The most familiar forms of harp are the Italian, the medieval, and the pedal harp. The first is strung with two rows of wire-strings, separated by a double sound-board; this kind is now little used, being very imperfect. The second is in the form of a triangle, with a sound-board and gut-strings; it is always tuned in the principal key of the music, while the strings are altered to suit any modulations out of the key, by pressure of the finger, or turning the tuning-pins of certain notes. The adaptation of the harp to the modern chromatic scales led to the invention of the pedal harp, which has seven pedals, by which each note of the diatonic scale, in all the different octaves, can be made a semitone higher. The compass of the pedal harp is from contra F to D of the sixth octave above. In order to have the B flat, it must be tuned in the key of E flat. The music for the harp is written in the bass and treble clef, the same as pianoforte music. A celebrated harpist, Hochbrucker, in Donauwörth, invented the pedals in 1720; others say they were invented by J. Paul Verter, in Nuremberg, in 1730, who at least added the piano and forte pedal. The facility of playing chromatic intervals, and in different keys, was still more completely attained by the invention of the double-action pedal harp by Erard in Paris, in 1810. By means of Erard's invention, each string can be sharpened twice, each time a semitone, so that the C string may be C flat its full length, C natural by the first movement of the pedal, and C sharp by the next movement. The double-action harp is tuned in the key of C flat.