Forty-seven strings rising straight out of the soundboard, and seven pedals at the harpist's feet that retune every string of the same name at once.
Forty-seven strings rising straight out of the soundboard, and seven pedals at the harpist's feet that retune every string of the same name at once.
Harpists pluck with the pads of four fingers of each hand (never the little fingers), usually near the middle of the string. Plucking at the middle cancels every even harmonic, which is why the harp sounds so round. Touching a string at its midpoint while plucking gives a harmonic an octave higher.
Strings of gut, nylon and wound wire, from about C1 to G7. The C strings are dyed red and the F strings dark, so the player can find their way along a wall of strings.
The strings pull straight up from the soundboard, so the board is bent by their tension and drives the air directly. The soundbox behind it widens towards the bottom to give the long bass strings a bigger board.
Harps are among the oldest stringed instruments: arched harps appear in Sumerian and Egyptian art around 3000 BC, and harps were found in the Royal Tombs of Ur. Pedals came in the 18th century; the single-action harp could raise each string by a semitone. Sébastien Érard's double action of 1810 lets each pedal raise its strings by one or two semitones, so the harp can play in every key.
| Strings | 47 |
|---|---|
| Pedals | 7 |
| Height | ~1.85 m |
| Range | C1 to G7 |
“Érard invented the double-action pedal harp.”
Contested. Charles Gröll filed a patent for a double action in 1807, three years before Érard's 1810 patent.
