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Thank you Biagio. I’m compelled by medieval scand, just as gaelic on wire harp.
Btw, I couldn’t find a “personal message” button, but I have some curiosity about the various examples – such as the different angles between Lamont and Trinity College styles: is there an inherent sound advantage to the lower head on the Lamont style, or is it simply a matter of enabling/accomodating a greater number of strings?
Many thanks, R
Randal, I’m not an expert and can only speculate – although in fact so do all those who have studied these ancient harps. They just have more experience in speculation ha ha. What we do know is that a) there are very few extant harps from the 16th century b) they are low headed and c) by the 17th century high-headed harps begin to appear in Ireland, presumably due to exchanges of ideas with Scotland and the mainland. Make of that what you will; I’d suggest it comes down to fashion at the time. Here are two places to begin further research:
http://www.wirestrungharp.com/
and
http://www.irishharp.org/shop/harp.htm
Getting closer to your question: a number of people have studied the low headed Lamont Trinity and Queen Mary harps closely and determined that those string lengths suggest either a bass C, or if a G the string might have been silver or even gold They are too short to ring nicely with brass or bronze, at least to modern ears. That might also “explain” the evolution to high-heads like the Downhill. Some of he folks who have studied this question most closely besides David are Ann Heymann, Simon Chadwick, Karen Loomis, Siobhan Armstrong, Paul Dooley, David Kortier and Guy Flockhart. Most except David K perhaps have written extensively on this subject.
There is also some question about how they were tuned: purely diatonically, in C or G with doubled root notes in the mid (“na cawlee”) whether or not with a flatted 3rd, the exact spacing, if the penultimate note was the root and the ultimate a fifth (eg G and D)….
I realize that is a whole lot of words that do not really answer the question! All I can say for my own (a 26) is that I settled on diatonic tuning in G with 1.1cm spacing, with four silver strings and four red brass, the rest yellow brass or bronze. It can be tuned na cawlee as well; perhaps the ancient harpers did this sort of thing too. Who can say?
I did design a 30 string na cawlee with root G but decided that was too much work at my skill in playing (mediocre). Besides, cast string shoes would have been about $100 each…nah.
Whew!
Cheers,
BOnly a few pieces from Rudiger Oppermann and Chris Caswell. I suppose the best way to get into that would be to listen to Nordic harp music by Beth, Erik Ask-Upmark, Harper Tasche and a few others. and think about how you would adapt it to the wire strung?
To help you get started here is a downloadable selection of 15 tunes:
https://www.harpcenter.com/product/midnight-sun-kolle-PDF/harp-music-books-scandinavian
Although Beth arranged these for lever harp you will notice that the harmony is very simply, readily adaptable to wire.
Have fun!
Biagio
Thx for link! Ya I’ll have to check it out.
*Oh is that notation? I only just play harp, fiddle and all that by ear – I haven’t read since I quit classical guitar 15 years ago. 🙂
**wrt the musicmakers publications, I didnt see exactly one of the titles you mention – is it the “Wire Harp Collection”?
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