18th Century Harp, a demonstration

If you’re like me, the very thought of a harp creates a magical wistfulness inside. When I was twelve years old, I heard about an opportunity to take harp lessons, and something came alive inside me. Instantly, more than anything, I wanted–no, had–to learn to play. It’s been an ongoing love affair ever since.

Playing the harp takes years to master, and a great deal of time must be devoted to technique, not just learning to read music. It has been said that harp is the second most difficult instrument to learn to play. (Apparently bagpipes is the hardest.)

The earliest harps had very little versatility and had to be re-tuned to play songs in different keys. Later, harps had levers, which allowed the harpist to flip a lever attached to a string to make it either higher or lower (sharp, natural, or flat) depending on how it was tuned. Flipping levers using the hand takes a great deal of practice and timing. During the 17^th Century, some genius invented the pedal, which allowed a harpist to change keys using his or her foot, and it changed that note for every octave. For example, moving the F pedal made all the octaves of F strings a half step different. It still is difficult to master the timing, but allows for so much more versatility on pieces that can be played.

Until about a hundred years ago, harps had an eighth pedal which opened a panel in the back to allow access to changing out strings. This is the kind of harp my heroine in my book, Heart Strings, would have played.

Today’s modern harps have oblong holes that provides the same access. Strings must be fed through these access holes, through the holes in the soundboard, and wound around the little pegs in the picture below. Therefore, harps now only have seven pedals, one for each note.

In this video, harpist Frances Kelly takes us through some of the basics of her 18^th century pedal harp and performs a snippet of Mozart’s Flute and Harp Concerto with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.  I hope you enjoy the video.

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