Each combination of movements creates a different feel, from the uplift of down-up strums to the finality of up-down strums. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Physics Who invented the harp and when? Ben Davis April 19, Who invented the harp and when?
How did the harp originate? Who uses the harp? Who invented the Celtic harp? How old is a harp? Are Harps Irish? What culture is the harp from? Eventually, in the latter half of the seventeenth century a row of metal hooks was placed along the left side of the harp. When the player manually turned a hook against an individual string, the string's pitch was raised a half step.
Modern non-pedal harps are built with greatly advanced sharping levers installed for each string which produce a very good tonal quality when engaged. Levers are generally moved with the left hand and skilled players can achieve changes very quickly. The earliest known depiction of a frame harp in the British Isles is on an eighth century stone cross. Music was an important part of life in ancient Ireland and the harp was an aristocratic instrument, played in the courts of kings and before the chiefs of clans.
Harpers were required to be able to evoke three different emotions in their audience by their music: Laughter, tears and sleep. With the Anglicisation of the Irish nobility, the traditional harpers became minstrels and street musicians reciting poetry and singing folk songs to the accompaniment of their harps.
Sometime before a mechanism was developed in order to meet the growing demands from harpists for an instrument that was capable of a broader range of pitch. Seven pedals built into the base of the harp could raise the pitch by half a step. For instance, if the harp were tuned to C-flat, then depressing the pedal would raise the C strings to C-natural.
The single action harp was born. The pedals were connected to metal rods, which passed through the forepillar to the top where the chromatic action was housed inside the curved neck. The action pulled the string onto a fret by means of an adjustable crochet, or hook mechanism which, when engaged, shortened the length of the string and raised the pitch one half step. When tuned in the key of E-flat, the instrument could be played in eight major keys and five minor keys.
The single action harp achieved great popularity throughout the rest of the 18th century as was evidenced in the French Court by Marie Antoinette; perhaps, the most famous player of this instrument. The harps of this period were magnificently decorated with relief carving, lavishly gilded and hand painted. Besides being musical instruments they were undoubtedly prized as object d'art when displayed in the gilded salons of the era. As music evolved it was also necessary for the harp, if it was to maintain its popularity, to move with the times.
A harp is a musical instrument consisting of a triangular frame open on both sides which contains a series of strings of varying lengths that are played by plucking.
The length of the string determines how high or low a sound it makes. A modern concert harp stands about in 1. Smaller instruments similar to the harp include the lyre, which has strings of the same length but of varying thickness and tension; the psaltery, which has a frame open only on one side; and the dulcimer, which is similar to the psaltery but which is played by striking the strings with a hammer rather than plucking them.
The earliest harps probably developed from hunting bows and consisted of a few strings attached to the ends of a curved wooden body.
A harp used in Egypt about five thousand years ago consisted of six strings attached to this kind of body with small wooden pegs.
By B. By the ninth century, frame harps, which enclosed wire strings within a triangular wooden frame, appeared in Europe. They were fairly small [ ft 0. Many performers of traditional music who are usually known as harpers rather than harpists still use this type of instrument today. The inability of these harps to play accidentals notes a half-tone higher or lower than the notes of the scale to which the strings were tuned led to a number of experiments.
Harps were built with extra strings to play accidentals, either by increasing the number of strings in a single row or by adding a second row of strings parallel to the first to form double strung harps. In Wales, some harps had three rows of strings. Instead of increasing the number of strings, some harpmakers devised mechanisms for changing the length of the strings, thereby adjusting the pitch. By the end of the seventeenth century, hooks were used in the Tyrol region of Austria to shorten strings as needed, providing two notes from each string.
In , Celestin Hochbrucker added seven pedals to control these hooks. In , Georges Cousineau replaced the hooks with pairs of metal plates and doubled the number of pedals to produce three notes per string. He also reduced the number of pedals back to seven by devising pedals which could occupy three different positions each. In the late nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, innovations were made in harpmaking by the American harp manufacturing company Lyon and Healy.
These innovations included redesigning the stave back and the sound chamber of the harp. A harp is basically a large wooden triangle, usually made primarily of maple. The front, vertical side of the triangle is known as the column or the forepillar. The upper, curved side of the triangle is known as the neck. The third side of the triangle is known as the body. White maple is the best wood for these three sides because it is strong enough to withstand the stress of the strings.
The soundboard, which is contained within the body and which amplifies the sound of the strings, is usually made of spruce.
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