The orchestra and its instruments

“The harp,” writes Berlioz, “is essentially anti-chromatic, that is to say succession by half-tones are almost out of the question for it. Its compass was formerly but five octaves and a sixth. All harps were tuned in the scale of E-flat. The skilful manufacturer, Érard, seeking to remedy the inconvenience of this system, invented the mechanism which obviated these difficulties and proposed tuning the harp in C-flat, which has been adapted by all harp-players of the present day.

“To instruments so constructed was given the name of double-action harps. This is of what it consists and wherefore it allows the harp—if not to play chromatic successions—at least to play in all keys and to strike, or arpeggio, all chords. The double-action harp is tuned in C-flat; and its compass is six octaves and a quarter.

“The seven pedals with which it is furnished are made so that the player may, by means of each of them, raise at option each string a tone, or a semitone, only. By taking in succession the seven semitone pedals, the harp in C-flat can therefore be set in G-flat, in D-flat, in A-flat, in E-flat, in B-flat, in F and in C-natural.

“The nature of the instrument having been explained, we proceed now to the fingering, which many composers confound with that of the pianoforte, which it nowise resembles. With each hand chords of four notes may be struck, of which the two extreme notes do not extend beyond an octave. Also, by a great stretch of the thumb and little finger, chords of a tenth may be reached, but this position is less convenient, less natural, and, therefore, less sonorous, since none of the fingers can attack the string with as much force as in the ordinary position.

“The successive execution of the notes of a chord, either ascending, or descending, is perfectly in the character of the harp. It is even after its Italian name, arpa, that these passages have received the name of arpeggios. The shake exists for the harp, but it is only tolerable on the high notes.

“The effect of harps is in proportion better as they are in greater number. The notes, the chords, or the arpeggios which they throw out amidst the Orchestra are of extreme splendor. Nothing can be more in keeping with the ideas of poetic festivities, or religious rites, than the sound of a large body of harps ingeniously introduced. Alone, in groups of two, three, or four, they have also a most happy effect, either uniting with the orchestra, or serving to accompany voices and solo instruments. Of all known qualities of tone it is singular that the quality of horns, of trombones, and, generally, of brass instruments mingles best with theirs. The lower strings (exclusive of the soft and dull strings of the extreme depth), the sound of which is so veiled, so mysterious, and so fine, have scarcely ever been employed except for bass accompaniments of the left hand; and the more the pity! It is true that harp-players care little to play long pieces among those octaves so far removed from the body of the performer that he must lean forward with his arms at full length, maintaining this awkward posture for more or less time; but this motive can have had but little weight with composers. The fact is they have not thought to avail themselves of this especial quality in tone.

“The strings of the last upper octave have a delicate, crystalline sound of voluptuous freshness, which renders them fit for the expression of graceful, fairy-like ideas and for giving murmuring utterance to the sweetest secrets of smiling melodies, on condition, nevertheless, of their never being attacked with violence by the performer, as in this case they yield a dry, hard sound, similar to that of broken glass—disagreeable and snapping.

“The harmonics of the harp—particularly of many harps in unison—are still more magical. Solo players frequently employ them in the pedal-points and cadences of their fantasias, variations, and concertos. But nothing comes near the sonorousness of these mysterious notes, when united to chords from flutes and clarinets playing in the medium register.

“The best, and almost the only, harmonics for the harp are those obtained by touching with the lower and fleshy part of the palm of the hand the centre of the string, while playing with the thumb and two first fingers of the same hand, thus producing the high octave of the usual sound. Harmonics may be produced by both hands. It is even possible to produce two, or three, at a time with one hand; but then it is prudent to let the other have but one note to play.

“All the strings of the harp are not fit for harmonics—only the last two octaves should be employed for this purpose; they being the sole ones of which the strings are sufficiently long to admit of being divided by touching in the centre and sufficiently tightened for neatly producing harmonics.”

The framework of the double-action harp consists of the soundboard opposite which is the vertical pillar. Both support the “neck,” a sort of curved bracket, graceful in shape. The neck contains the “comb,” which holds the mechanism for raising the pitch of the strings. The pillar is hollow and holds, concealed within it, the rods working the mechanism. The pillar and soundboard are also united in the “pedestal,” which is the frame for the pedals. These pedals are levers, which are moved by the feet and move the rods in the pillar.

The wood used in a harp is generally sycamore, but the soundboard is pine. Along the centre of the soundboard a strip of beech, or other hard wood, is glued in which are inserted the pegs that hold the lower ends of the strings. The upper ends of the strings are wound round tuning-pins inserted into the wrest plank, which forms the upper part of the neck.

The forty-seven strings are of catgut colored for the convenience of the player. The eleven longest are covered with wire, or silk. The uncovered C-strings are colored red and the F-strings, blue. The harp player rests the instrument upon his right shoulder and plays from the treble side.

The harp is a very ancient instrument. It was played thousands of years ago in Egypt and Assyria. In fact it was the favorite instrument of the Egyptians and it was often magnificently ornamented. The Egyptian harp had no front pillar, and sometimes it looks in the hands of the player like a boat with a sail of strings. Sometimes it stood six feet high. There were a great many sizes and varieties, as are seen in wall-paintings and other decorations.

The big Egyptian harp, with its dull, heavy thudding sounds, was characteristic of Egyptian music, and Verdi has marvellously reproduced this effect in his opera of Aïda.

All ancient nations seem to have used the harp in some form, or another. And it never seems to have gone out of fashion. Cultured races and primitive peoples alike played the harp. The Greeks had three-cornered harps and the Romans had harps with a curved frame, pegs, and sound-box. The famous lyre was a kind of harp. The ancient Irish harp, called cruit, and also crwth, which in time became a sort of fiddle-harp and was played with a bow, seems to have been an ancestor of the violin. As early as 200 B.C. the Irish children were taught that “the spirit of song dwelt among the trembling strings of the cruit.”

The Irish harp was famous. So were the Irish harpers. Bishops and abbots travelled about the country with their harps, and the Irish bard with his harp was a familiar figure as early as the Sixth Century.

When the great gathering, or Parliament, was held periodically at Tara, County Meath, there was minstrelsy in the banquet-hall after every day’s business. The last Parliament, or Feis, of Tara, was held in 560 under Fergus; and never more after that gathering was the “harp heard in Tara’s halls.”

An Irish saga of the Seventh Century describes nine Irish harpers as having “gray winding cloaks, with brooches of gold, circlets of pearls round their heads, rings of gold around their thumbs, torques[89] of gold around their ears, and torques of silver around their throats.”

Trinity College, Dublin, owns a harp that is supposed to have belonged to King Brian, “Brian Boru,” the hero, who was slain in the hour of victory over the Danes at Clontarf near Dublin in 1014. His harp was rescued by his son, who took it to Rome and gave it to the Pope. It is the old hand-harp of the minstrels.

In 1185 Giraldus, appointed by King Henry II tutor to his son, Prince John, accompanied the latter to Ireland. On his return he wrote a book describing the remarkable things he had seen in that country and paid the following tribute to the Irish harpers:

“The cultivation of instrumental music by this people I find worthy of commendation. In this their skill is beyond all comparison superior to that of any nation I have ever seen; for their music is not slow and solemn, as in the instrumental music of Britain to which we are accustomed; but the sounds are rapid and articulate, yet at the same time sweet and pleasing. It is wonderful how, in such precipitate rapidity of the fingers the musical proportions are preserved, and by their art, faultless throughout, in the midst of the most complicated modulations and most intricate arrangements of notes; by a velocity so pleasing, a regularity so diversified, a concord so discordant, the melody is preserved harmonious and perfect; and whether a passage, or transition, is performed in a sequence of fourths or fifths, it is always begun in a soft and delicate manner, and ended in the same, so that all may be perfected in the sweetness of delicious sounds. They enter on and again leave their modulations with so much subtlety and the vibrations of the smaller strings of the treble sport with so much articulation and brilliancy, along with the deep notes of the bass; they delight with so much delicacy and soothe so charmingly, that the great excellence of their art appears to lie in their accomplishing all this with the greatest seeming ease and without the least appearance of effort, or art.”

The Welsh harpists learned from the Irish, as Wharton, in his History of English Poetry, testifies: “There is sufficient evidence to prove that the Welsh bards were early connected with the Irish. Even so late as the Eleventh Century the Welsh bards received instruction in the bardic profession (music and poetry) from Ireland.”

The typical harp of the Welsh was called telyn; but it does not seem to have differed much from the Irish harp. Harp competitions were a feature of the Welsh Eisteddfod that corresponded to the Irish Feis. In the Highlands of Scotland the harp was called Clarsach. It is mentioned in almost every poem, ballad, song, and story. Everybody played the harp; even the children eagerly tried to sweep the strings with their little fingers. In the Poem of Trathal the hero’s wife remains at home. “Two children with their fair locks are at her knees. They bend their ears above the harp, as she touches with her fair hands the trembling strings. She stops. They take the harp themselves, but cannot find the sound they admired. ‘Why,’ they ask ‘does it not answer us? Show us the string where dwells the song.’ She bids them search for it till she returns. Their little fingers wander among the wires.” There was hardly a household of the Highland chieftains which did not have bard, or harper; and in many old castles the “harper’s seat,” “the harper’s window,” or “the harper’s gallery” is shown with pride to visitors.

Playing the harp was a general accomplishment.

George Buchanan, in his History of Scotland, published in 1565, says the people “delight very much in music, especially in harps, of their own sort, some of which are strung with brass wire and some with intestines of animals. They play on them either with their nails grown long, or with a pectrum. Their only ambition seems to be to ornament their harps with silver and precious stones. The lower ranks, instead of gems, deck theirs with crystal. They sing poetical compositions celebrating the exploits of their valiant men. Their language is that of the ancient Gauls, a little altered.”

In England the harp was a regal accomplishment, and every gentleman as well as prince could sing to the harp and play his own accompaniment. Every one knows how King Alfred, who was a fine musician, explored the Danish camp in the guise of a minstrel. All the early literature of England is full of allusions to the harp and harp-playing. The harp always appeared at ceremonies. For instance, in 1413, at the Coronation of Henry V, “the harmony of the harpers drawn from the instruments struck with the rapidest touch of the fingers, note against note, and the soft, angelic whisperings of their modulations, were gratifying to the ears of the guests.”

In 1251 the new coinage of Ireland “was stamped in Dublin with the impression of the King’s head in a triangular harp.” The arms of Leinster on a field vert, a harp, or stringed argent, were subsequently applied to the whole kingdom of Ireland.

At the end of the thirteenth century Vincenzo Galilei writes: “This most ancient instrument was brought to us from Ireland (as Dante says), where they are excellently made, and in great numbers, the inhabitants of that island having practised on it for many a century. Nay, they place it in the arms of the kingdom and paint it on their public buildings and stamp it on their coinage, giving as a reason their being descended from the royal prophet David. The harps which these people use are considerably larger than ours and have generally the strings of brass and a few of steel for the highest notes, as in the clavichord. The musicians who perform on it keep the nails of their fingers long, forming them with care in the shape of the quills which strike the strings of the spinet.”

The harp appears frequently in illuminated manuscripts. It is played by ladies as well as by gentlemen, and by amateurs as well as by professional musicians. It is always of the type shown in the illustration of King David, facing page 286, taken from a manuscript of the Fourteenth Century.

Another Mediæval harp is shown in our illustration, facing page 280. This picture is taken from a beautiful illuminated manuscript of the famous Romaunt of the Rose, by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung, made in the Fifteenth Century. The first minstrel is playing the harp; the second, the flute; and the last the “pipe and tabor.” They are richly dressed. The first minstrel is wearing purple and black hose, scarlet mantle, green sleeves, and black velvet cap; the second in purple and green hose, pink and black mantle, green sleeves, and red velvet cap; the third minstrel is wearing purple and green hose, green and purple mantle, and black velvet cap. The small, green leaves of the trees over the brown wall show that the time is early spring.

The Mediæval harp had but one scale; and the only way to shorten the string was to press it down firmly with the finger.

Gradually people tried to improve the harp. The first idea of pedal mechanism is due to a Bavarian named Hochbrucker in 1720. Further improvements were made by Cousineau, a French harper, and his son, who doubled the pedals and the mechanism connected with them and practically originated the idea of the modern harp. Cousineau also arranged the pedals in two rows.

Then came Sebastian Érard, born in Strassburg in 1752, but who went to Paris and became a famous maker of pianos. During the Revolution he fled to London, but in 1796 returned to Paris, where he died in 1831. His improvements in the harp date from about 1786 and were at first confined to single action. He made his first double-action harp in 1801; and in 1810 produced the perfect model that has never been surpassed.

Handel introduced the harp into his orchestral scores. In the oratorio of Esther, produced at Cannons for the Duke of Chandos in 1720 and performed in London in 1732 he used it in combination with the theorbo in “Breathe soft, ye winds”; Mozart wrote a Concerto for the Flute and Harp for the Duc de Guisnes and his daughter. Spohr wrote much for the instrument (his wife was a harpist). Meyerbeer, the first to use the double-action harp, called for two in Robert le Diable. Berlioz introduced a lovely trio for two flutes and a harp in L’Enfance du Christ.

Liszt treats the harp most poetically; and it occurs in almost all of his works. Wagner makes it conspicuous in Das Rhinegold and Die Walküre. It is strikingly used by Richard Strauss and Debussy. The modern school of Russian and French composers treat the harp as an orchestral instrument rather than as a solo instrument, making its voice a part of the woven web of melody and harmony.