A chromatic Gaelic harp in Germany, 1619

by Simon Chadwick - 01:12 on 05 August 2006

Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) was a prolific German composer. He also was interested in classifying and studying music and instruments, and published his treatise in three volumes called Syntagma Musicum (which means, a systematic collection of musical knowledge). Volume two, published in 1618/19, presents "the Nomenclature, Tuning and Character of all Ancient and Modern Musical Instruments, foreign, barbarian, rustic and unfamiliar as well as indigenous, artistic, agreeable and familiar", and includes a set of woodcuts illustrating these instruments.

Plate 18 shows three instruments, "Gemeine harff" (Ordinary harp), which is a 24 string Gothic bray harp; "Irlandisch harff mit messinges saiten" (Irish harp with brass strings) and "Hockchreit" (hammered dulcimer). The Irish harp, reproduced here, is 48 inches high according to the scale on the picture, and has 43 strings, which unusually are strung on the right hand side of the neck. All the other surviving instruments and illustrations show the strings on the left of the neck, as is still the norm for most harps today; we may surmise that either the picture was reversed during the engraving process, either by mistake or for compositional reasons, or that specially-made reversed harps were being made for European performers who rested the harp on their right shoulder, in contrast to the Irish and Scottish harpers who played on the left shoulder.

The description of the Irish harp in the text is unfortunately very short, but it does tell us that the harp was strung with "great thick brass strings, to the number 43, and one of the most beautiful resonances", and there is a list of the notes of the harp. They are listed in a jumbled order but re-arranged are:

C D E F G A Bb c d e f g a bb b c' c#' d' d#' e' f' f#' g' g#' a' bb' b' c'' c#'' d'' d#'' e'' f'' f#'' g'' g#'' a'' bb'' b'' c''' c#''' d''' e'''

This chromatic tuning explains the number of strings, which is much greater than any of the surviving Gaelic harps except the Cloyne harp. This harp, which was made in 1621 and has has 45 strings plus an extra 7 in a second rank, is normally reconstructed as a chromatic instrument, and sometimes with a diatonic bass like the one described by Praetorius.

Simon Chadwick 2002  

References.

Michael Billinge and Bonnie Shaljean, "The Dalway or Fitzgerald harp", Early Music Vol XV no.2 (May 1987) discusses all the evidence for chromatic Gaelic harps, and puts forward some arguments about their set-up and tuning.
 

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