StringsClassical–Romantic (1750–1900)

Harp

Also known as concert harp · pedal harp · lever harp · folk harp

The harp is a plucked string instrument whose strings run in a triangular frame at an angle to the soundboard, one string for each pitch. Harps of many shapes have been played for at least four thousand years. The modern concert harp, with 47 strings and seven pedals, became fully chromatic in the early nineteenth century through a mechanism patented by Sébastien Érard. Smaller lever harps and regional harps continue in folk, sacred and popular music around the world.

Strings without a fingerboard

Every pitch on a harp needs its own string, because there is no fingerboard on which to shorten them. That single fact explains the instrument’s long puzzle: how to play in any key without adding hundreds of strings. Harps appear in the art of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, in arched forms that curve like a bow, and in later frame designs with a pillar that braces the neck against string tension. The earliest European harps were diatonic, tuned to a single scale, and fitted for other keys only by retuning.

Makers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tried hooks turned by hand, then pedals linked by rods to mechanisms in the neck. Single-action pedal harps could raise each note by one semitone. Sébastien Érard, a French maker working in Paris and London, patented a double-action mechanism in 1810 that gave each pedal a further position, letting a string be raised by either a semitone or a whole tone from its flat setting. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds an Érard harp of this type, and so does the University of Edinburgh’s collection.

A tonne of tension in a frame

Three pieces carry the load: the hollow, curved sound box, the neck at the top, and the pillar that rises at the front. Strings rise from the soundboard, a thin spruce panel, to tuning pins in the neck, and together they pull with almost a tonne of force, according to the Philharmonia Orchestra. The sound box is often of maple or sycamore, and the pillar and neck are heavily braced. Nineteenth-century examples often carry gilded carving and painted panels.

A modern concert harp stands about 1.8 metres tall and carries 47 strings of gut, nylon and wire-wound metal, graded by register. Coloured strings guide the eye: all the Cs are red and all the Fs are dark, usually black or blue. Seven pedals, one for each note name from A to G, operate rods inside the pillar. The rods turn small discs at the top of the neck, and each disc pinches a string to shorten its sounding length. Érard-type instruments are therefore complex devices, and require regular regulation.

Plucked, then left to ring

A harp string struck by a fingertip starts with a clear, defined pluck and then decays slowly, so each note sounds like a small bell with a long tail. The sound box and soundboard radiate the vibration, and in the low octaves strings ring with a full, warm resonance; in the upper octaves the tone turns thin and glassy. Because the notes do not stop on their own, harpists damp strings with the palm or fingers to keep harmonies from blurring.

Characteristic effects include the glissando, a sweep across many strings, which works because the strings of a pedal harp can be set to a scale with no wrong notes. Harmonics are made by lightly touching the middle of a string with the side of the hand and plucking, producing a pure note an octave higher. Players can also pluck near the soundboard for a hard, metallic attack called près de la table.

Six and a half octaves in seven letters

The concert harp’s compass runs from about C1 to G7, a span wider than that of any other orchestral string instrument and close to that of the Piano. Its open strings are tuned to the scale of C♭ major, the pedals being in the top, flat position. Each pedal has three notches: top for flat, middle for natural, bottom for sharp. Setting all seven pedals in the middle produces C major, and shifting individual pedals moves the harp into another key.

That design has consequences for composers. The harp can produce any chord, but only one version of each pitch at a time, because a pedal moves every octave of its note name together. Fast chromatic passages are therefore difficult, since they require pedal changes between notes. A cross-strung chromatic harp, patented in Paris in the 1890s, tried to solve this with two rows of strings, but the pedal instrument has remained the orchestral norm.

Four fingers and two feet

The harp sits against the player’s right shoulder, tilted back on its base. Both hands pluck with the thumb and first three fingers; the little finger is left out because it is too short to reach the strings comfortably. The left hand usually plays the lower strings, but the division is not rigid, and the two hands can overlap in fast passages. Where the finger meets the string changes the colour, from a soft, cushioned touch to a brighter attack.

The feet work the pedals throughout, so a harpist thinks about pitch twice: in the fingers, to select the string, and in the feet, to choose which version of each note name is available. Pedal changes have to be planned in advance and executed silently, sometimes with a fraction of a second to spare. Reading music is demanding as well, since the player reads both hands’ staves like a pianist while tracking a separate layer of pedal instructions.

Lever harps and the wider family

Smaller harps replace pedals with levers at the top of each string, flipped by hand to raise a note a semitone. The Dublin maker John Egan, active between about 1804 and 1841, produced a portable harp around 1820 that used hand-operated levers; a surviving example at the Victoria and Albert Museum has 34 strings and stands about 90 centimetres tall without its base. The design proved popular for its light weight, and modern lever harps, often called Celtic or folk harps, follow the same principle.

Other harps differ widely from the orchestral model: the arched saung of Myanmar, the ennanga of Uganda, the arpa paraguaya with its bright, rippling strings, and the wire-strung harps of early Ireland and Scotland. The West African kora, sometimes classed as a harp-lute, has strings that rise from a bridge set in a calabash body, a construction that differs from all the harps above.

One instrument, many rooms

Orchestras usually include one or two harps, used for colour and for emphasis: a rippling arpeggio, a glissando or a bright chord to mark a phrase. Tchaikovsky wrote an extended harp cadenza in the Waltz of the Flowers, and Debussy featured the instrument prominently in his Danses sacrée et profane. Mozart’s concerto for flute and harp, from 1778, pairs it with the Flute in a work written during his stay in Paris.

Chamber music gives the harp quieter roles, from duos with flute or Violin to larger ensembles in which it supplies harmonic support. In the Irish, Scottish and Welsh traditions the harp accompanies song and dance, and it has been a national emblem in Ireland for centuries. Latin American harps lead ensembles in Paraguay and Venezuela, and the concert harp also appears in jazz, film music and pop arrangements that want a clear, shimmering sound.

Regulating the machine

A concert harp is tuned before every session and often during it, because temperature shifts pull so many strings out of line. Strings break often, particularly in the upper octaves, and players keep spares. Gut strings, which respond to humidity, need more attention than nylon. The pedal mechanism has to be regulated by a technician so that each disc grips the string at the right point in each notch, or intonation suffers.

Moving a harp is a matter of tilting it onto its back edge and wheeling it on a dolly, never lifting it by the neck or pillar. A padded cover protects it in transit. Like other wooden instruments, the harp dislikes sudden changes of humidity and direct heat, which can crack the soundboard or shift glued joints.

Odd facts and curiosities

A V&A Érard harp of 1858 has a Gothic-style pillar decorated with two angels, and is inscribed with the date 19 December 1833, when Pierre Érard first published the model.
John Egan advertised himself in 1822 as portable harp maker to the King, and his instruments were sold with their levers as an alternative to a pedal harp.
An Érard harp in Edinburgh is catalogued with 43 strings and eight pedals, showing how the layout of the nineteenth-century instrument differed from the modern 47-string standard.

Terms used in this entry

diatonic: Tuned to the seven notes of a single major or minor scale, with no sharps or flats available.
double action: A pedal system in which each pedal has three positions, so a string can be flat, natural or sharp.
glissando: A rapid sweep of the fingers across many strings, producing a rippling scale.
harmonic: A clear, bell-like tone an octave above the string’s pitch, produced by touching its midpoint while plucking.
lever harp: A smaller harp whose strings carry levers flipped by hand to raise the pitch by a semitone.
pedal harp: A harp with foot pedals that change the pitch of every string of one note name at once.
regulation: The adjustment of a pedal mechanism so that each string is stopped at precisely the correct point.
soundboard: The thin wooden panel that the strings are attached to, which amplifies their vibration.