Part 7

Pleyel's chromatic harp, patented in 1894 and improved in 1903 by Gustave Lyon, manager of the firm of Pleyel, Wolff & Co., is an instrument practically without mechanism which has already won great favour in France and Belgium, notably in the orchestra. It has been constructed on the familiar lines of the pianoforte. Henry Pape, a piano manufacturer, had in 1845 conceived the idea of a chromatic harp of which the strings crossed in the centre as in the piano, and a report on the construction was published at the time; the instrument, however, was not considered successful, and was relegated to oblivion until Mr Lyon revised the matter and brought out a successful and practical instrument. The advantages claimed for this harp are the abandonment of the whole pedal mechanism, a metal framing which insures the strings keeping in tune as long as those of a piano, and an easily acquired technique. The chromatic harp consists of (1) a pedestal on castors, (2) a steel pillar without internal mechanism, (3) a wide neck containing two brass wrest-planks in which are fixed two rows of tuning pins, and (4) a soundchest in which is firmly riveted the steel plate to which the strings are fastened, and the soundboard pierced with eyelet holes through which the strings are drawn to the string plate. There is a string for every chromatic semitone of the scale of C major, the white strings representing the white keys of the piano keyboard, and the black strings corresponding to the black keys. The tuning pins for the black strings are set in the left side of the neck in alternate groups of twos and threes, and those for the white in the right side in alternate groups of threes and fours. The strings cross half-way between neck and soundboard, this being the point where they are plucked; the left hand finds the black notes above, and the right hand below the crossing. There is besides in the neck a set of twelve tuning buttons, each one of which on being pressed gives out one note of the chromatic scale tuned to the pitch of the diapason normal. It is obvious that the repertoire for this harp is very extensive, including many compositions written for the piano, which however cannot be played with any legato effects, these being still impossible on this chromatic harp.

_History._--While the instrument is of great antiquity, it is yet from northern Europe that the modern harp and its name are derived. The Greeks and Romans preferred to it the lyre in its different varieties, and a Latin writer, Venantius Fortunatus,[1] describes it in the 7th century of our era as an instrument of the barbarians--"Romanusque lyra, plaudat tibi barbarus harpa." This is believed to be the earliest mention of the name, which is clearly Teutonic,--O.H.Ger. _harapha_, A.-S. _hearpe_, Old Norse _harpa_. The modern Fr. _harpe_ retains the aspirate; in the Spanish and Italian _arpa_ it is dropped.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

The earliest delineations of the harp in Egypt give no indication that it had not existed long before. There are, indeed, representations in Egyptian paintings of stringed instruments of a bow-form having affinities with both primitive harp and _nefer_ (a kind of oval guitar) that support the idea of the invention of the harp from the tense string of the warrior's or hunter's bow. This primitive-looking instrument, called _nanga_, had a boat-shaped sound-chest with a parchment or skin soundboard, down the centre of which one end of the string was fastened to a strip of wood, whilst the other was wound round pegs in the upper part of the bow. The nanga was played horizontally, being borne upon the performer's shoulder.[2] Between it and the grand vertical harps in the frescos of the time of Rameses III., more than 3000 years old, discovered by the traveller Bruce[3] (fig. 1), there are varieties that permit us to bind the whole, from the simplest bow-form to the almost triangular harp, into one family (see fig. 2).

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

The Egyptian harp had no front pillar, and as it was strung with catgut the tension and pitch must necessarily have been low. The harps above-mentioned depicted in the tomb at Thebes, assumed from the players to be more than 6 ft. high, have not many strings, the one having ten, the other thirteen. What the accordance of these strings was it would be hard to recover. We must be content with the knowledge that the old Egyptians possessed harps in principle like our own, the largest having pedestals upon which they bestowed a wealth of decoration, as if to show how much they prized them.

The ancient Assyrians had harps like those of Egypt in being without a front pillar, but differing from them in having the sound-body uppermost, in which we find the early use of soundholes; while the lower portion was a bar to which the strings were tied and by means of which the tuning was apparently effected.[4] What the Hebrew harp was, whether it followed the Egyptian or the Assyrian, we do not know. That King David played upon the harp as commonly depicted is rather a modern idea. Medieval artists frequently gave King David the psaltery, a horizontal stringed instrument from which has gradually developed the modern piano. The Hebrew "kinnor" may have been a kind of trigonon, a triangular stringed instrument between a small harp and a psaltery, sounded by a plectrum, or more probably, as advocated by Dr Stainer in his essay on the music of the Bible, a kind of lyre.

The earliest records that we possess of the Celtic race, whether Gaelic or Cymric, give the harp a prominent place and harpists peculiar veneration and distinction. The names for the harp are, however, quite different from the Teutonic. The Irish "clairseach," the Highland Scottish "clarsach," the Welsh, Cornish, Breton "telyn," "telein," "telen," show no etymological kinship to the other European names. The first syllable in clairseach or clarsach is derived from the Gaelic "clar," a board or table (soundboard), while the first syllable of telyn is distinctly Old Welsh, and has a tensile meaning; thus resonance supplies the one idea, tension the other.

The literature of these Celtic harps may be most directly found in Bunting's _Ancient Music of Ireland_ (Dublin, 1840), Gunn's _Historical Enquiry respecting the Performance on the Harp in the Highlands of Scotland_ (Edinburgh, 1807), and E. Jones's _Musical and Poetical Memoirs of the Welsh Bards_ (London, 1784). The treatises of Walker, Dalyell, and others may also be consulted; but in all these authorities due care must be taken of the bias of patriotism, and the delusive aim to reconstruct much that we must be content to receive as only vaguely indicated in records and old monuments. There is, however, one early Irish monument about which there can be no mistake, the harp upon a cross belonging to the ancient church of Ullard near Kilkenny, the date of which cannot be later than 830; the sculpture is rude, but the instrument is clearly shown by the drawing in Bunting's work to have no front pillar. This remarkable structural likeness to the old harps of Egypt and Assyria may be accidental, but permits the plausible hypothesis of Eastern descent. The oldest specimen of the beautiful form by which the Irish harp is now recognized, with gracefully curved front pillar and sweep of neck (the latter known as the harmonic curve), is the famous harp in Trinity College, Dublin, the possession of which has been attributed to King Brian Boiroimhe. From this mythic ownership Dr Petrie (see essay in Bunting) has delivered it; but he can only deduce the age from the ornamentation and heraldry, which fix its date in the 14th century or a little later. There is a cast of it in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The next oldest is in the Highlands of Scotland, the _Clarsach Lumanach_, or Lamont's Clarschoe, belonging, with another of later date, to the old Perthshire family of Robertson of Lude. Both are described in detail by Gunn. This Lamont harp was taken by a lady of that family from Argyleshire about 1460, on her marriage into the family of Lude. It had about thirty strings tuned singly, but the scale was sometimes doubled in pairs of unisons like lutes and other contemporary instruments. The Dalway harp in Ireland (fig. 3) inscribed "Ego sum Regina Cithararum," and dated 1621, appears to have had pairs of strings in the centre only. These were of brass wire, and played with the pointed finger-nails. The Italian contemporary "Arpa Doppia" was entirely upon the duplex principle, but with gut strings played by the fleshy ends of the fingers. When E. Bunting met at Belfast in 1792 as many Irish harpers as could be at that late date assembled, he found the compass of their harps to comprise [music notes] thirty notes which were tuned diatonically in the key of G, under certain circumstances transposable to C and rarely to D, the scales being the major of these keys. The harp first appeared in the coat of arms of Ireland in the reign of Henry VIII.; and some years after in a map of 1567 preserved in a volume of state papers, we find it truly drawn according to the outlines of the national Irish instrument.[5] References to the Highlands of Scotland are of necessity included with Ireland; and in both we find another name erroneously applied by lexicographers to the harp, viz. "cruit." Bunting particularly mentions the "cinnard cruit" (harp with a high head) and the "crom cruit" (the curved harp). In the Ossianic MSS. of the Dean of Lismore (1512) the word "crwt" occurs several times, and in Neill M'Alpine's _Gaelic Dictionary_ (1832), which gives the dialect of Islay, closely related to that of Ulster, the word "cruit" is rendered "harp." The confusion doubtless arose from the fact that from the 11th century cithara is glossed _hearpan_ in Anglo-Saxon MSS., a word which, like _citharisare_ in medieval Latin, referred to plucking or twanging of strings in contradistinction to those instruments vibrated by means of the bow. In Irish of the 8th and 9th centuries (Zeuss) cithara is always glossed by "crot." The modern Welsh "crwth" is not a harp but a "rotta" (see CROWD). An old Welsh harp, not triple strung, exists, which bears a great resemblance to the Irish harp in neck, soundboard and soundholes. But this does not imply derivation of the harp of Wales from that of Ireland or the reverse. There is really no good historical evidence, and there may have been a common or distinct origin on which ethnology only can throw light.[6] The Welsh like the Irish harp was often an hereditary instrument to be preserved with great care and veneration, and used by the bards of the family, who were alike the poet-musicians and historians. A slave was not allowed to touch a harp, and it was exempted by the Welsh laws from seizure for debt. The old Welsh harp appears to have been at one time strung with horse-hair, and by the Eisteddfod laws the pupil spent his noviciate of three years in the practice of a harp with that stringing. The comparatively modern Welsh triple harp (fig. 4) is always strung with gut. It has a rising neck as before stated, and three rows of strings,--the outer rows tuned diatonic, the centre one chromatic for the sharps and flats. Jones gives it 98 strings and a compass of 5 octaves and one note, from violoncello C. As in all Celtic harps, the left is the treble hand, and in the triple harps there are 27 strings on that side, the right or bass hand having 37, and the middle or chromatic row 34.

[Illustration: FIG. 3. Irish (Dalway) Harp.]

[Illustration: FIG. 4. Welsh Triple Harp.]

The first pattern of the modern harp is discovered in German and Anglo-Saxon illuminated MSS. as far back as the 9th century.[7] A diatonic instrument, it must have been common throughout Europe, as Orcagna, Fra Angelico, and other famous Italian painters depict it over and over again in their masterpieces. No accidental semitones were possible with this instrument, unless the strings were shortened by the player's fingers. This lasted until the 17th century, when a Tirolese maker adapted hooks[8] (perhaps suggested by the fretted or bonded clavichord) that, screwed into the neck, could be turned downwards to fix the desired semitone at pleasure. At last, somewhere about 1720, Hochbrucker, a Bavarian, invented pedals that, acting through the pedestal of the instrument, governed by mechanism the stopping, and thus left the player's hands free, an indisputable advantage; and it became possible at once to play in no less than eight major scales. By a sequence of improvements, in which two Frenchmen named Cousineau took an important part, the various defects inherent in Hochbrucker's plan became ameliorated. The pedals were doubled, and, the tuning of the instrument being changed from the key of E[flat] to C[flat], it became possible to play in fifteen keys, thus exceeding the power of the keyboard instruments, over which the harp has another important advantage in the simplicity of the fingering, which is the same for every key.

It is to Sebastian Erard we owe the perfecting of the pedal harp (fig. 5), a triumph he gained in Paris by unremitting studies begun when he adopted a "fork" mechanism in 1786 and ended in 1810 when he had attained complete success with the double action pedal mechanism already described above. Erard's merit was not confined to this improvement only; he modified the structure of the comb that conceals the mechanism, and constructed the sound-body of the instrument upon a modern principle more advantageous to the tone.

[Illustration: Fig. 5. Modern Erard Harp.]

Notwithstanding these improvements and the great beauty of tone the harp possesses, the domestic use of it in modern times has almost disappeared. The great cost of a good harp, and the trouble to many amateurs of tuning, may have led to the supplanting of the harp by the more convenient and useful pianoforte. With this comes naturally a diminution in the number of solo-players on the instrument. Were it not for the increasing use of the harp in the orchestra, the colour of its tone having attracted the masters of instrumentation, so that the great scores of Meyerbeer and Gounod, of Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner are not complete without it, we should perhaps know little more of the harp than of the dulcimer, in spite of the efforts of distinguished virtuosi whose devotion to their instrument maintains its technique on an equality with that of any other, even the most in public favour. The first record of the use of harps in the orchestra occurs in the account of the _Ballet comique de la royne_ performed at the chateau de Moutiers on the occasion of the marriage of Mary of Lorraine with the duc de Joyeuse in 1581, when harps formed part of the _concert de musique_.

See in addition to the works already referred to, Engel's _Musical Instruments in the South Kensington Museum_ (1874); and the articles "Harp," in Rees's _Cyclopaedia_, written by Dr Burney, in Stainer and Barrett's _Dictionary of Musical Terms_ (1876), and in Grove's _Dictionary of Music and Musicians_. On the origins of the instrument see _Proceedings of British Association_ (1904) (address of president of anthropological section). (K. S.; A. J. H.)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Poemata_, lib. vii. cap. 8, p. 245, Migne's _Patrologiae cursus completus_ (Paris, 1857-1866, vol. 88).

[2] A few nangas (c. 1500 B.C.) are preserved among the Egyptian antiquities at the British Museum, fourth Egyptian room.

[3] Bruce's harps are reproduced by Champollion, tome iii. p. 261.

[4] Representations of these may be seen among the musical scenes in the Nimrod Gallery at the British Museum.

[5] See also a woodcut in John Derrick's _Image of Ireland_ (1581), pl. iii. (Edinburgh ed. 1883).

[6] See the fine volume _Musical Instruments_ on the Irish and Scottish harps by Robert Bruce Armstrong (1904), vol. i. Vol. ii., which deals with the Welsh harp, has unfortunately been withdrawn from sale.

[7] See for the medieval harp a careful article by Hortense Panum, "Harfe und Lyra im alten Nord-Europa," in _Intern. Mus. Ges._ vol. vii. pt. 1 (Leipzig, 1905); and for references as to illuminated MSS., early woodcuts, paintings, &c. see Hugo Leichtentritt, "Was lehren uns die Bildwerke des 14-17 Jahrhunderts uber die Instrumentalmusik ihrer Zeit?" ibid. vol. vii. p. 3 (Leipzig, 1906).

[8] See Nauwerk, "Die Hakenharfe, Die Vervollkommnung des Mechanismus an der deutschen Harfe." in _Allg. musik. Ztg._ (Leipzig, 1815), p. 545 seq.

HARPENDEN, an urban district in the Mid or St Albans parliamentary division of Hertfordshire, England, 25 m. N.W. by N. from London by the Midland railway, served also by a branch of the Great Northern railway. Pop. (1901) 4725. It is a favourite outlying residential district for those whose work lies in London. The church of St Nicholas is a modern reconstruction with the exception of the Perpendicular tower. In the Lawes Testimonial Laboratory there is a vast collection of samples of experimentally grown produce, annual products, ashes and soils. Sir John Bennet Lawes (d. 1900) provided an endowment of L100,000 for the perpetuation of the agricultural experiments which he inaugurated here at his seat of Rothamsted Park. The success of his association of chemistry with botany is shown by the fact that soil has been made to bear wheat without intermission for upwards of half a century without manure. The country neighbouring to Harpenden is very pleasant, including the gorse-covered Harpenden Common and the narrow well-wooded valley of the upper Lea.

HARPER'S FERRY, a town of Jefferson county, West Virginia, U.S.A., finely situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers (which here pass through a beautiful gorge in the Blue Ridge), 55 m. N.W. of Washington. Pop. (1900) 896; (1910) 766. It is served by the Baltimore & Ohio railway, which crosses the Potomac here, by the Winchester & Potomac railway (Baltimore & Ohio) of which it is a terminus, and by boats on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, which passes along the Maryland side of the Potomac. Across the Potomac on the north rise the Maryland Heights; across the Shenandoah, on the West Virginia side, the Virginia or Loudoun Heights; and behind the town to the W. the Bolivar Heights. A United States arsenal and armoury were established at Harper's Ferry in 1796, the site being chosen because of the good water-power; these were seized on the 16th of October 1859 by John Brown (q.v.), the abolitionist, and some 21 of his followers. For four months before the raid Brown and his men lived on the Kennedy Farm, in Washington county, Maryland, about 4 m. N.W. of Harper's Ferry. The engine-house in which Brown was captured was exhibited at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago and was later rebuilt on Bolivar Heights; a marble pillar, marked "John Brown's Fort," has been erected on its original site. On Camp Hill is Storer College (state-aided), a normal school for negroes, which was established under Free Baptist control in 1867, and has academic, normal, biblical, musical and industrial departments.

The first settlement here was made about 1747 by Robert Harper, who ran a ferry across the Potomac. The position of Harper's Ferry at the lower end of the Shenandoah Valley rendered it a place of strategic importance during the Civil War. On the 18th of April 1861, the day after Virginia passed her ordinance of secession, when a considerable force of Virginia militia under General Kenton Harper approached the town--an attack having been planned in Richmond two days before--the Federal garrison of 45 men under Lieutenant Roger Jones set fire to the arsenal and fled. Within the next few days large numbers of Confederate volunteers assembled here; and Harper was succeeded in command (27th April) by "Stonewall" Jackson, who was in turn succeeded by Brigadier-General Joseph E. Johnston on the 23rd of May. Johnston thought that the place was unimportant, and withdrew when (15th June) the Federal forces under General Robert Patterson and Colonel Lew Wallace approached, and Harper's Ferry was again occupied by a Federal garrison. In September 1862, during General Lee's first invasion of the North, General McClellan advised that the place be abandoned in order that the 10,000 men defending it might be added to his fighting force, but General Halleck would not consent, so that when Lee needed supplies from the Shenandoah Valley he was blocked by the garrison, then under the command of Colonel Dixon S. Miles. On Jackson's approach they were distributed as follows: about 7000 men on Bolivar Heights, about 2000 on Maryland Heights, and about 1800 on the lower ground. On the 13th of September General Lafayette McLaws carried Maryland Heights and General John G. Walker planted a battery on Loudoun Heights. On the 14th there was some fighting, but early on the 15th, as Jackson was about to make an assault on Bolivar Heights, the garrison, surrounded by a superior force, surrendered. The total Federal loss (including the garrisons at Winchester and Martinsburg) amounted to 44 killed (the commander was mortally wounded), 12,520 prisoners, and 13,000 small arms. For this terrible loss to the Union army the responsibility seems to have been General Halleck's, though the blame was officially put on Colonel Miles, who died immediately after the surrender. Jackson rejoined Lee on the following day in time to take part in the battle of Antietam, and after the battle General McClellan placed a strong garrison (the 12th Corps) at Harper's Ferry. In June 1863 the place was again abandoned to the Confederates on their march to Pennsylvania. After their defeat at Gettysburg, the town again fell into the hands of the Federal troops, and it remained in their possession until the end of the war. On the 4th of July 1864 General Franz Sigel, who was then in command here, withdrew his troops to Maryland Heights, and from there resisted Early's attempt to enter the town and to drive the Federal garrison from Maryland Heights. Harper's Ferry was seriously damaged by a flood in the Shenandoah in October 1878.