2 - Plucked strings

Summary

THE HARP

This instrument is essentially anti-chromatic, that is to say, movement by semitone steps is almost forbidden. We will explain this in a moment.

Its range used to be only five octaves and a sixth, from F′ to d″″ on a scale of E♭, the key in which all harps were in fact tuned. Then the clever harp-maker Erard, trying to overcome the limitations of this system, thought up the mechanism which has provided a solution. He proposed tuning the harp in C♭, the system now adopted by almost all harpists.

On the old harp chromatic intervals can only be obtained by the use of seven pedals operated by the player's foot one by one. Each pedal raises the note to which it belongs by a semitone, not just one note at a time but throughout the range. Thus the F pedal cannot sharpen an F without sharpening all the other Fs over the whole range at the same time. As a result, any chromatic scale (except at extremely slow tempos), any chord progression which moves chromatically or involves different keys, and the majority of ornaments which include appoggiaturas with accidentals or little chromatic notes, are impracticable or, in exceptional cases, extremely difficult. They are also horrible to listen to. On the E♭ harp there are even four major seventh chords and four minor ninth chords which are completely impossible and are therefore excluded from its harmonic vocabulary. They are set out in Ex. 55 a–h.