60 Fun Facts About Harp

How are the strings of a harp sounded?

Harps can be played seated or standing, and are almost always triangular and made of wood.

How many strings does a typical modern pedal harp have?

That gives a range of six and a half octaves.

How many pedals does a concert harp have?

Each pedal changes the pitch of every string of one note name, so pressing C sharpens every C.

On a pedal harp, what colour are the C strings?

The F strings are dark and the rest are white, so the player can find notes at a glance.

Roughly what total tension do the strings exert on a pedal harp's soundboard?

The instrument itself weighs only about 36 kilograms and stands about 1.8 metres tall.

The coat of arms of Ireland shows a gold harp with silver strings on a background of which colour?

The arms are blazoned Azure a harp Or, stringed Argent, and were registered with the Chief Herald in 1945.

Which Irish brewer has used a harp as its emblem since 1759?

Its harp faces right, the opposite way to the Irish state emblem.

Both the Irish state emblem and a famous stout's trademark are modelled on which medieval instrument?

It is a wire-strung Irish harp dated to the 14th or 15th century and displayed in the Long Room in Dublin.

The medieval Irish harp used as the model for the state emblem is popularly named after which High King?

George Petrie dismissed the link in 1840 as a clumsy forgery; the harp postdates the king by centuries.

Which English king adopted the harp arms when he declared Ireland a kingdom in 1541?

When the crowns united in 1603 the harp entered the royal arms, where it remains.

Which Irish airline, founded in 1985, features a stylised harp in its logo?

The Irish Independent has carried a harp in its masthead since 1961.

Which Scottish football club, founded by Irish emigrants, has a harp in its badge?

Donegal's Finn Harps also carry the instrument in their emblem.

Which Iraqi club took a harp as its emblem after a presenter compared its play to a harp?

They gained the nickname Al-Qithara, the harp, in the early 1990s.

Who patented the double-action pedal mechanism still used on modern concert harps?

His double movement lets each string be shortened by one or two semitones so a harpist can play in any key.

Who built the first single-action pedal harp in 1720?

Pedals for tuning had first been introduced in 1697; earlier hooks had to be turned by hand.

With no pedals pressed, a pedal harp's strings are tuned to which scale?

Harp parts are written in C flat rather than the enharmonic B major so the string names need not change.

Reading left to right, which three pedals sit on the left side of a concert harp?

E, F, G and A are on the right; each pedal has three notched positions.

Roughly how many parts make up the mechanical action inside a pedal harp's neck?

Rods run inside the hollow pillar from the pedals up to discs that pinch the strings.

What is the longest side of a harp, which supports the neck against the strings' pull, called?

On pedal harps it is hollow and encloses the rods that change the pitches.

Which of these so-called harps is really a zither, because its strings run parallel to the soundboard?

The harmonica, or blues harp, is a free-reed wind instrument and the Jew's harp a plucked idiophone; neither is a harp either.

A player of a folk harp is traditionally called what, as opposed to the pedal-harp's harpist?

The distinction is loose, and either may simply be called a harp-player.

The world's oldest stringed instruments, over 4,500 years old, came from royal tombs in which city?

Leonard Woolley's team found three lyres and one harp, now split between Baghdad, London and Philadelphia.

Mid-3rd-millennium BCE tomb paintings from which civilisation show arched harps like a hunter's bow?

They lack the third structural side found on modern European harps.

The triple harp originated in Italy but became the traditional instrument of which nation?

In Welsh it is the telyn deires, the three-row harp.

Which South American country counts the harp as its national instrument?

Its harps have around 36 strings and are played with the fingernails at lower tension than Western harps.

The arpa llanera, a 32-string harp used for joropo music, belongs to the folk tradition of which country?

Its strings were originally gut and are now nylon; the instrument is traditionally made of cedar.

Which Southeast Asian country regards the arched saung-gauk harp as its national instrument?

It descends from the ancient Indian veena, which survives nowhere else.

The kora, a 21-string West African instrument, is built from what?

It is classed as a double-bridged harp-lute because its strings pass over a free-standing bridge.

The ancient Chinese konghou was documented as early as which era?

A similar harp, the gonghu, was played in Korea from the Goguryeo period.

An Aeolian harp is played by what?

Named for the Greek wind god, it is the only string instrument that plays solely harmonic frequencies.

The Jew's harp most likely originated in which country?

The earliest examples are 4,000 years old, from Shaanxi, and the instrument has no link to Jewish people.

Which harp company commissioned Ravel's Introduction and Allegro in 1905?

Rival Pleyel had commissioned Debussy's Danses sacrée et profane a year earlier for its chromatic harp.

Saint-Saëns' Danse macabre opens with a harp playing a single D how many times?

They represent the strokes of midnight before Death tunes up his fiddle.

Which composer's use of the harp in his 1888 Symphony in D minor was described as revolutionary?

Mozart and Beethoven had used the instrument only a handful of times.

In which 1935 Marx Brothers film does Harpo play the song "Alone" on the harp?

Nearly every Marx Brothers stage and film outing included a harp solo from him, starting with The Cocoanuts in 1929.

What did Harpo Marx copy to learn how to hold a harp?

Nobody in town could teach him, so he tuned it as best he could from a single note.

Which Metropolitan Opera harpist founded the Curtis Institute's harp department in 1924?

He also ran a summer harp colony in Camden, Maine, from 1931.

In which year was the blind Irish bard Turlough O'Carolan born?

He was born in Nobber, County Meath, where his father was a blacksmith.

Which Spanish harpist commissioned Josef Tal's Concerto for Harp and Electronics?

He premiered the concerto in Munich in 1971.

Which American singer-songwriter and harpist released the acclaimed albums Ys and Have One on Me?

Ys reached number 134 on the Billboard 200 and earned a Shortlist Music Prize nomination.

Which Swiss harpist brought the concert harp to big new-age and jazz audiences in the early 1980s?

Jazz had first heard the pedal harp with Casper Reardon in 1934.

Which 1967 Beatles single famously features a harp?

Björk later used harpist Zeena Parkins on several works.

Which Breton musician, son of harp maker Jord Cochevelou, became the most influential Breton harp player?

His father developed what he called the Breton Celtic harp in the mid-20th century.

What is the Irish-language name for the traditional Gaelic harp?

In Scottish Gaelic it is clarsach, in Breton telenn and in Welsh telyn.

The Queen Mary and Lamont harps, two of the oldest surviving medieval harps, are kept in which city?

Together with the harp in Dublin they are the three surviving medieval Gaelic harps.

According to Genesis 4:21, who was "the father of all who play" the harp and flute?

He was a son of Lamech, and heaven is often pictured with harp-playing angels.

The harp seal gets its name from what?

Its pups are white for the first two or three weeks until their first moult.

Who first described the Aeolian harp in print, in Musurgia Universalis (1650)?

It became a popular household instrument during the Romantic era.

Whose 1882 US patent first used the name of the chord-bar zither now popular in folk music?

It was the earliest patent for any zither with a mechanised damping device for playing chords.

Modern folk harps without pedals raise a note's pitch by what means?

Each lever shortens its string just enough to raise the note by a semitone.

What are the three parts that every harp, whatever its type, must have?

Only frame harps add a pillar; open harps such as bow and arch harps do without one.

The Utrecht Psalter and 8th-century Pictish stones are early depictions of which harp feature?

European harps added a third structural member; harps elsewhere favoured bow and angle designs.

Roughly how much does a concert pedal harp weigh?

It stands about 1.8 metres tall, with the lowest strings wound in copper or steel and the middle strings usually catgut.

On a pedal harp, which note's strings are coloured black or blue as a visual guide?

The C strings are red, so a harpist can locate the octaves at a glance across all 47 strings.

By the 1500s, the strings of Gaelic wire-strung harps were most commonly made of what?

Sources describe a cheap, simply made 'red brass'; the strings were plucked with long fingernails.

How were the wire strings of the traditional Gaelic harp plucked?

The instrument had a reinforced curved pillar and thick brass cheek bands on the neck to withstand the string tension.

Who was the card dealer who gave Arthur Marx the nickname Harpo during a poker game?

Harpo's autobiography places the game in Rockford, Illinois, though the more common version puts it at the Orpheum in Galesburg.

Which professional harpist finally taught the self-taught Harpo Marx proper technique?

Harpo had tuned his first harp wrongly for three years and never learned to read music; Dilling also helped him compose.

Lyon & Healy, the famous Chicago harp maker, began in 1864 as what kind of business?

George Lyon and Patrick Healy set up in Chicago for publisher Oliver Ditson; the firm built its first harp only in 1889.

In which year did Lyon & Healy introduce its long-running Style 23 harp?

The 47-string model has floral carving on the column, base and feet; the company had built its first harp the year before.