HARP

The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones (stringed instruments) and has its own sub category (the harps). All harps have a neck, resonator and strings. Some, known as frame harps, also have a pillar; those without the pillar are referred to as open harps. Depending on its size, which varies, a harp may be played while held in the lap or while it stands on a table, or on the floor. Harp strings may be made of nylon, gut, wire or silk. On smaller harps, like the folk harp, the core string material will typically be the same for all strings on a given harp. Larger instruments like the modern concert harp mix string materials to attain their extended ranges. A person who plays the harp is called a harpist or harper. Folk musicians often use the term "harper", whereas classical musicians use "harpist".

Various types of harps are found in Africa, Europe, North and South America and in Asia. In antiquity, harps and the closely related lyres were very prominent in nearly all cultures. The harp also was predominant with medieval bards, troubadors and minnesingers throughout the Spanish Empire. Harps continued to grow in popularity through improvements in their design and construction through the beginning of the 20th century.

Terminology

A number of non-harp-like instruments are colloquially referred to as "harps". Chordophones like the aeolian harp, (wind harp) and the autoharp (with the piano and harpsichord) are not harps, butzithers, because their strings are not perpendicular to their soundboard. Likely, the many varieties of harp guitar and harp lute, while chordophones, belong to the lute family and are not true harps. All forms of the lyre and kithara are also not harps, but belong to the fourth family of ancient instruments under the chordophones, the lyres.

The term "harp" has also been applied to many instruments which are not chordophones. The vibraphone was (and is still) sometimes referred to as the "vibraharp," though it has no strings and its sound is produced by striking metal bars. In blues music, the harmonica is casually referred to as a "blues harp" or "harp", but it is a free reed wind instrument; not a stringed instrument, and is therefore not a true harp.

[edit]Origins

The origin of the harp goes back to Mesopotamia, The earliest harps and lyres were found in Sumer c, 3500 B.C.^[2] Several harps were found in burial pits and royal tombs in Ur.^[3] The oldest depictions of harps without a forepillar are from 500 BC, which was the Persian harp of Perspolis/Persia in Iran and from 400 BC in Egypt. The Harp (Persian: چنگ Chang) flourished in Persia in many forms from its introduction, about 3000 B.C.E., until the 17th century. The original type was the arched harp as seen at Choghâ Miš and on later third millennium seals (fig. 1a-c). Around 1900 B.C.E. they were replaced by angular harps with verti-cal (fig. 2) or horizontal (fig. 3) sound boxes. By the start of the Common Era, "robust, vertical, angular harps" (fig. 2), which had become predominant in the Hellenistic world, were cherished in the Sasanian court. In the last century of the Sasanian period, angular harps were redesigned to make them as light as possible ("light, vertical, angular harps," fig. 4); while they became more elegant, they lost their structural rigidity. At the height of the Persian tradition of illustrated book production (1300 to 1600 C.E.), such light harps were still frequently depicted, although their use as musical instruments was reaching its end.^[4]