Erard Harp with Original Wooden Shipping Case

[Sherj DeSantis]

Carl,

Can you post a picture of this harp? Either here or on your website? Thanks!!

[Bonnie Shaljean]

Egan used them too. I played an Egan Grecian (made in 1837 at 30 Dawson Street, Dublin) which was beautifully restored, including the functioning swell doors (whose hinges were bits of – ?? – vellum, or some similar material). It was a lovely instrument with a particularly full resonant bass (for a Grecian) and excellently-behaved pedals.

Apart from the historical interest & fun in trying out this feature, I discovered that it didn’t add much in the way of tonal colour, and was fairly ineffective. It certainly didn’t “swell” in the sense that one understands the term, and I soon abandoned it altogether and just left them open. I had public performances to prepare on this instrument and the music was pretty pedally, and I found that the little eighth pedal, situated as it was in the middle, made it more diffiult to distinguish the other seven, which means increased risk of – everyone’s worst nightmare – pedalling boo-boos.

The man who restored it said the door feature was just one more thing that could potentially go wrong, rattle, get stuck etc, and he wasn’t surprised that it had become obsolete. File this one under one-of-those-great-ideas-that-doesn’t-quite-work.

[Bonnie Shaljean]

I made a small error in my post above: The Dublin-born Grecian I spoke of was actually made in 1835, not 1837. It’s my own Grecian, an English Erard, which is dated 1837.

I mention this because my harp does not have the swell-doors and never did. Obviously Pierre Erard (nephew of Sébastien, who had died in 1831) did not feel the necessity to continue putting them on his instruments.

[carl-swanson]

Sherj- I tried to post a picture of the Erard, but no luck. Maybe someone can explain the process for putting pictures up here. Hugh?

[Krysty Kolesar]

Carl,

How fortunate to own such a harp!

[Tacye]

A quick dive into the catalogue of the Salvi collection to get some evidence turns up an 1875 Paris Erard with doors and an 1897 Paris Erard without (and I am not going to conclude they were put on all harps up to some date between these two and on none afterwards, I refuse!)

[Bonnie Shaljean]

I’ve just been corrected by my partner (a harpmaker) who happened to see my post above. He says my antique harp definitely DID have the doors at one time, and then proceeded to show me. I have to admit I’d only taken a glance at it and just assumed – from what looks to me like a smooth back-of-pedal box etc – that they had never been there. So they WERE still featured on 1837 English-made Grecians. *red face*

[Evangeline Williams]

So harps with doors, do they also have openings in the back of the harp that are not swell door thingies (sorry for lack of proper terms)?

[carl-swanson]

Evangeline- My sense is that the Erard Grecians, and all of the Erard Knockoffs of the period(Dodd, Cousineau, Erat, etc.) probably had swell doors. I’ve been told that they don’t really make a discernable difference in the volumn, at least to modern ears. I had always thought that the Erard Gothiques never had swell doors, but that apparently is not the case. Some of them did. But the whole Swell door thing was eventually abandoned,partly because they just didn’t make that much of a difference and partly because they were prone to rattling or buzzing. I have an unplayable London Erard Gothic here as well as the Paris Erard on the other thread. Neither one had swell doors.

[Evangeline Williams]

Now swell doors-did they require an 8th pedal to open?

[carl-swanson]

The swell doors operated with an 8th pedal, which was between the B and E pedals.

[unknown-user]

Is anyone interested in

[Evangeline Williams]

I’ll take it absolutely!

[Evangeline Williams]

So if my harp has no 8th pedal (no sign of one)…no swell doors?

[Evangeline Williams]

ps-totally ignore the names of the photos.

[Author]

Posts