Words Edel Cassidy
On 11 June 1905, the celebrated French composer Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) wrote to the music critic Jean Marnold:
‘I was terribly busy during the few days which preceded my departure, because of a piece for the harp commissioned by the Érard Company. A week of frantic work and three sleepless nights enabled me to finish it for better or worse.’
The composer was referring to his recent composition Introduction and Allegro for harp, accompanied by string quartet, flute and clarinet. It was commissioned by the Érard harp manufacturers to demonstrate the latest developments in harp technology.
I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend a live performance of this piece at the Killaloe Music Festival earlier in 2022, led by Geraldine O’Doherty, principal harpist with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. Indicating nothing of the hurry in which it was written, the piece perfectly showcases the exquisite sound that emerges from this unique blend of instruments.
So why was it important for Érard to show off its new chromatic double-action pedal harp? Throughout its history, the harp has undergone many changes and developments in size, shape and construction. This was especially so when music from the late Renaissance became more chromatic, outside the seven-note diatonic range of the harp. Many efforts were made to modify harps to accommodate the more elaborate and intricate music of the era, including harps with two or three rows of strings. In 1720, single-action pedal harps were introduced, and almost 100 years later, the double-action pedal harp was invented. This model continues to be today’s standard concert harp.
Fourteenth century: Gaelic harp
The early Celtic harp can be traced back through history to the eighth or ninth centuries. However, the Gaelic harp dates back to the fourteenth century in Ireland. It has a distinct style, with a curved fore pillar and a large sound box relative to its size that is hollowed out from a single block of wood. This design helped bear the tension from the heavy metal strings that were played with the fingernails, unlike the modern Irish harp or European harp, which are strung with gut or nylon and played with the fingertips.
All present-day harps use a ‘right orientation’, similar to the piano keyboard where the right hand controls the treble and the left hand controls the bass, but with the Gaelic harp, the left hand played the treble and the right played the bass. It was strung diatonically, with seven notes per octave, representing the white keys on a keyboard instrument.
The Trinity harp, also known as the Brian Boru harp, is one of the finest surviving examples of the Gaelic harp. The maker is not known but there is a fascinating array of stories about its origins, including one that claims it once belonged to Brian Boru, High King of Ireland. This isn’t likely as the harp is believed to date from the fourteenth or fifteenth century and Brian Boru was killed at the battle of Clontarf in 1014. The harp changed hands many times and was presented to Trinity College Dublin by William Conyngham of Ennis, Co. Clare, in 1782; it can now be viewed in the Long Room Library.
Late sixteenth century: cross-strung harp
The first cross-strung harp is believed to have been created in the late sixteenth century in Spain by Juan de Rojas Carrión. The cross-strung harp, or chromatic double harp, has two rows of strings that intersect without touching. One row features diatonic notes only, usually attached to the left side of the soundboard; the other row, attached to the right side, features semitone notes.
The playing technique for the cross-strung harp requires a unique skill as the strings must be plucked specifically above or below the crossing line depending on the note required. However, all notes can be played by either hand.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Henry Greenway, an English-born American harp maker, built several copies of his exaggerated version of the cross-strung harp. There are only two known surviving examples of this model, one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and one at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota.
A more simplified version was introduced in the late nineteenth century, where the two rows of strings were attached to either side of a wider neck. This version had just one fore pillar and one sound box.
Sixteenth–seventeenth centuries: triple-strung harp
Triple-strung harps were developed in Italy in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries. They followed the invention of the double-strung harp, which had two rows of strings – one diatonic, and the other for sharps and flats, like the black keys on a keyboard instrument. For the treble range, the right row was diatonic and the left row was pentatonic. From the middle down – the bass range – diatonic switched to the left row and pentatonic to the right.
The triple-strung harp had three rows of strings; the two outer rows were tuned to the same diatonic scale while the harpist reached into the middle row for the semitones. The double outer rows meant that it was easier to play tunes with rapidly repeated notes. Also, the facility to play the same note from both outer rows enabled amplified sound and increased resonance. Despite this invention greatly facilitating the ornamentation required for the more elaborate music of the late Renaissance and Baroque eras, the instrument had to be retuned if a key change was required.
The triple-strung version became so popular with Welsh harpists that by the eighteenth century it was commonly known as the ‘Welsh triple harp’. Harp makers from Wales adapted the triple harp for the Welsh style of harp playing, where the instrument rested on the left shoulder (on the Continent, the harp was played resting on the right shoulder). One of the most famous harp makers at this time in history was John Richards (1711–1789) of Llanrwst in North Wales.
Early eighteenth century: single-action pedal harp
The German instrument maker and musician Jacob Hochbrucker (1673–1763) is credited with the invention of the single-action pedal harp.
He added pedals at the base of the sound box which controlled a mechanism that shortened the strings, thus raising the pitch by a semitone. The seven individual pedals allowed all the notes of the same name to be altered at the same time. This invention dramatically transformed the instrument as it could now be played in eight major and five minor keys without retuning. Only four Hochbrucker instruments survive, all housed in museums.
Late eighteenth–early nineteenth century: double-action harp
Although the single-action harp was a major technological and musical advance, not every key could be achieved without retuning, and as musical compositions became more demanding it was important that the harp could be played in all keys.
Until recently, it was generally accepted that the French instrument maker Sébastien Érard (1752–1831) invented the double-action harp, as he patented it in London in 1808. This instrument was fitted with pedals that had three positions, enabling three variations per string (flat, natural and sharp). This mechanism allowed the harpist to play in all twenty-four keys.
However, it seems that the story really began when Parisian harp maker Georges Cousineau (1733–1800) built a double-action harp with fourteen pedals, arranged in two rows of seven, as early as 1782. This very instrument was recently discovered in a private collection; curiously, it is believed to have once belonged to Érard. It wasn’t until 1799 that Cousineau patented a version of the double-action harp that he worked on with the Belgian engineer Michel-Joseph Ruelle.
In 1807, a patent was registered by the Polish inventor Charles Gröll (1770–1857). This patent, although mechanically different, describes a similar invention to Érard’s – a doubling action of the pedals. Further investigation by historians has revealed that Gröll sold his patent rights to Érard because Gröll was not an instrument maker and did not have the facilities necessary to manufacture harps. Érard then abandoned his original prototype and quickly submitted a patent for his second double-action harp in 1810.
Érard’s ownership of the Cousineau fourteen-pedal double-action harp and his acquisition of Gröll’s patent indicates his ability to recognise and develop the ideas of others rather than being the visionary inventor he was once credited to have been.
Nineteenth-century Ireland: the Egan harp
The harp has long held huge significance in Irish history and culture, and in 2019 UNESCO formally recognised the cultural importance of the Irish harp by including it on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Long before this acknowledgement, the Irish harp was well recognised internationally; according to the testimony of the great Italian poet, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), ‘This most ancient instrument was brought to us from Ireland, where they are excellently made, and in great numbers, the inhabitants of that island having practised on it for many and many ages.’
In 1531, when Henry VIII declared himself King of Ireland, he recognised its importance by minting coins that, for the first time, carried the harp as the emblem of Ireland. The symbol became increasingly associated with Irish patriotism and eventually came to represent resistance to the British Crown. Because of this, it was banned at the end of the medieval period and the old Celtic harp tradition began to die out. Queen Elizabeth I herself gave the order ‘to hang the harpers wherever found, and destroy their instruments.’
In the early nineteenth century, when the native Gaelic harp had almost become obsolete, the self-taught harp maker John Egan (active 1801–1841) started producing harps from his Dawson Street, Dublin, workshop.
At first, Egan manufactured French-style pedal harps with decorative neoclassical designs similar to the models manufactured by Érard. However, he perceived a need for a modern Irish harp with chromatic capabilities and invented the Portable Irish Harp. This was a small gut-strung instrument in the shape of the old Gaelic harp with a bowed fore pillar and decorated with golden shamrocks on lacquered wood of either green, blue or black. Instead of pedals, the harp was fitted with ‘ditals’, or levers, that pinched the strings to produce semitones and allow key changes.
- ‘History of the harp’ is published in Anthology Volume 18. Read more features from this volume or buy it now.
- Browse more features in culture
- If you enjoyed this feature, we’d love it if you would share it!