Prevention first. Safe harpists have safe harps. Please remember you do not need to take action to disinfect a harp unless you have reason to believe that it might have been exposed to a contaminant. It is hard to imagine that your harp has actually been exposed. If you do not have the virus then who put it on your harp? No one but you has played your harp, you wash your hands frequently: your harp is safe.

Schools are the place of greatest concern to me. There the strings should be wiped down with hand sanitizer. Also the harp wood should be cleaned.  You can watch a video of the actual procedure on my YouTube channel, “Harp Doc.”

—Peter Wiley, the “Harp Doc,” is a certified member of the Lyon & Healy/Salvi Harp Technicians Guild.

Albuquerque, New Mexico

French musical instrument manufacturers are grouped together within a professional organization which, from the beginning of the crisis, has been extremely reactive in collecting and pooling knowledge on the subject of health safety in the context of musical practice. We are actively participating in this work, which has led to the publication of recommendations dedicated to each family of musical instruments, and which are available in French and English on the website www.csfi-musique.fr.

You will of course find a document dedicated to the harp, which I have also developed in a separate article published on the Camac website and social networks.

My answer to the question asked is unfortunately simple: to my knowledge, there is no effective way to disinfect a harp. It is impossible to guarantee that any particular product or procedure will totally eliminate the risk of contamination, as the harp is such a complex and heterogeneous instrument. All the recommendations are aimed at reducing the viral load as much as possible in order to avoid its transmission. In the case of a suspected exposure of the harp to the virus, the only way to guarantee the total disappearance of the virus is quarantine. At present, there is no scientific consensus on the lifespan of the virus, which varies according to the type of carrier and viral load. However, it is accepted that a period of up to nine days should be considered.

If total disinfection of a harp is not realistic, various products and procedures can be used to clean, disinfect, and thus limit the presence of a virus on harps. Manufacturers have widely communicated their recommendations, which should be applied as they are adapted to the types of varnish they use. Finally, the application of simple sanitary measures such as wearing masks and washing hands should allow teachers to give their lessons in good conditions.

—Jakez François is president of Camac Harps.

Mouzeil, France

The thought of sanitizing a harp might be daunting due to fear of causing damage to the finish or strings. We decided to perform a test to see what effect twice daily wipe downs of our finish with 70 percent alcohol swabs had. After a month of this treatment, there was no effect on the finish. The caution here is that different types of finishes may react differently to the use of alcohol. Our finish is nitrocellulose lacquer. Water or solvent based polyurethanes should perform as well, though we did not perform tests on finishes that we don’t use. From experience, however, I would not advise using alcohol on an oil or shellac finish. Also, do not use gel-based hand sanitizers as they contain emollients that can soften finishes as well as your skin! The key is to not use too much of anything and don’t leave a wet film on the surface for very long before you wipe it off with a soft cloth.

Nylon strings are impervious to solvents, so no problem there with alcohol wipes (or good old liquid hand soap if the squeaky feel of the alcohol cleansed strings bothers you). Gut strings have a urethane coating that would not degrade from quick wipe downs with either of these.

Some harpists are using hand held ultraviolet (UV-C) wands for disinfecting their instruments. This can be a very effective, hassle free, no-touch, and liquid-free method! •

—Ray Mooers is president of Dusty Strings Harps.

Seattle, Washington