oldest harp still being played?

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This topic has 6 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 16 years ago by katerina.

Viewing 7 posts - 1 through 7 (of 7 total)

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October 2, 2010 at 10:49 am #73380

deb-l
Participant

just curious, if anyone knows, what is the oldest harp still being played?

October 2, 2010 at 2:35 pm #73381

jessica-wolff
Participant

Quite a few nineteenth-century and some eighteenth-century harps are still or again being played–you can see some of them on YouTube. Very few of them are all-original–original soundboard, original neck &c.

Take good care of your harp. That’s the best guarantee.

October 2, 2010 at 4:11 pm #73382

deb-l
Participant

thanks Jessica, there’s a great thread on humidifyers here:

harp column / humidity helps!

I need to start shopping and get something set up before we start the woodstove and furnace later this month.

October 4, 2010 at 10:53 am #73383

Ken H.
Participant

Salvi harps has a mseum in Italy that has a number of old harps.

October 4, 2010 at 8:08 pm #73384

Saul Davis Zlatkovski
Participant

I have a recording made on a harp that had belonged to Marie Antoinette.

October 6, 2010 at 3:26 pm #73385

sherry-lenox
Participant

My new=old Wurlitzer was built before 1920 and all of its main parts are original

and in my opinion it sounds like a million bucks.

It was brought back to life by Howard Bryan and when he realized that it was so well preserved he gave me the choice of a new soundboard or not.

I decided for several reasons that I’d like to know what it was like when it was new from the factory. So far, that’s worked fine. When and if it needs it, I’ll have the soundboard replaced.

I’m so grateful that someone bought it and then it was apparently never played. I just hope the previous owner(s) didn’t experience some unfortunate event that kept it from being played.

Maybe this topic would be a good plot for a novel!

October 7, 2010 at 3:48 pm #73386

katerina
Participant

I recently restored 3 single-action harps. The oldest one was dated something like 1764 or so, not sure about the last one digit. The harp is absolutely playable and has superb tone.

Not sure about if somebody owns rather much older original instruments from earlier periods. Rainer Thurau told something about restoring the instrument of 1740s, I’m not sure of the exact year and if he had older ones.

Queen Mary harp was not long ago strung with gut strings to make some recording (originally it was with wire strings). In ESMUC in Barcelona there are quite a few Spanish baroque harps of ~17th century in storages, some of them are in fairly well condition, possible to be restored to playable.

The problem of really early harps is that those which were really playied a lot and not kept mostly as a decoration is that the instruments-to-travel-with were very lightweight, and hardly survived as a result. So, what we see are mostly like Barberini and Bologna harps – amazingly decorated, huge and heavy like a mortal sin.
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