Page 74

Focus Spring 2015

Page 74

Circa 1720 a mechanism was developed in order to meet the
growing demands from harpists for an instrument that was capa-
ble 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 was tuned to C-flat, then depressing the pedal would raise
the C strings to C-natural. 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. This way, when
tuned in the key of E-flat for example, the instrument could be
played in eight major keys and five minor keys. This was the birth
of the single action harp.

The single action harp achieved great popularity throughout the
rest of the 18th century as was much in evidence in the French
Court by Marie Antoinette, who was perhaps the most famous
player of this instrument at that time. 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 beauti-
ful 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. Instead of only
being limited to eight major keys and five minor keys, it had
become vitally important for it to encompass all the keys. As a
result of this need, the French instrument maker Sebastian Erard
obtained a patent in 1810 for the Double Action pedal harp.
Erard redesigned the single action mechanism replacing the
crochets with two rotating pronged discs. The strings, now each
equipped with two discs, were able to produce a flat, a natural
and a sharp depending on the position of the corresponding
pedal, allowing the harpist to play in every key. This ingenious
invention revolutionized the harp and is still in use today.

We would like to invite you to come and listen to the outstanding
harpist Danielle Perrett play an evening of music by various
composers including Bach, Rossini, Dussek and De Falla. The
concert will take place in Stoke by Clare Village Hall on Saturday
4

April at 7.30. The tickets cost £15 and include food during the

interval. There will also be a display of art work by local artists
available for purchase during the evening.
You can reserve your tickets online by visiting our website at

www.stokemusic.net

, you can also buy the tickets at our village

shop in Stoke by Clare during normal opening hours, or you can
telephone 01787-277745 for your reservation.
We very much hope you can come and help make the evening a
memorable event.

The harp is one of the oldest musical instruments on
our planet. The earliest evidence of the harp was
discovered in ancient Egypt from around 2500 BC.

Those instruments were of course very different from the harp
we know today. They consisted commonly of a piece of wood
onto which strings of various lengths were attached – much like
what a hunting bow looked like but with several strings instead
of just one.

The frame harp, or a harp that included a straight forepillar first
appeared in medieval Western Europe in the 8th to 10th centu-
ries AD. Although there are very few remaining in existence,
paintings from that time indicate they utilized about ten or
eleven strings. Stiffer string materials like copper and brass were
used and these changes enabled the instrument to produce
greater volume and a longer-sustaining tone. Paintings of these
harps appear in many early manuscripts and their shapes hardly
differ from those of the Celtic harps that are still played today.

As the early harps had no mechanical devices for providing the
player with different keys (tonalities), harpists found it necessary
to re-tune the strings they required for each piece. 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 or lowered a half step.

The earliest known depiction of a frame harp in the British Isles
is on an 8th century stone cross. Music was an important part of
life in ancient Ireland and the harp was an aristocratic instru-
ment, played in the courts of kings and before the chiefs of clans.
Harpists were required to be able to evoke three different emo-
tions in their audience by their music: Laughter, tears and sleep.
With the Anglicisation of the Irish nobility, the traditional harp-
ists became minstrels and street musicians, reciting poetry and
singing folk songs to the accompaniment of their harps.

The first harp to feature a hollow sound box that amplified the
instrument's sound dates back to Ireland in the 14th century.
Those harps also included a curved forepillar, a stronger neck
and 30 to 36 brass strings.

The concert will take place in Stoke by Clare

Village Hall on Saturday 4

April at 7.30.

Danielle Perrett