history of lever harp?

[Sylvia]

I tried to find this

[Tacye]

They sort of came both before and after pedal harps – there were of course many sorts of harp before pedals were invented, including hook harps, which had hand operated sharpening mechanism on the neck and developed into pedal harps.

[carl-swanson]

I’ll call Sam Milligan and see if he can put a post up about this. But I think if you are referring to the advent of lever harps in the 20th century(as I think you are) I think the earliest version was on Clark Irish harps, which were made in Syracuse New York in the 1920’s. Where Clark got the idea I don’t know.

The earliest modern lever harp was produced by Lyon & Healy starting in the 1950’s when Sam Pratt was head of the harp division. He was also responsible for the style 30, or Princess Louise, which originally had a square back on it. Anyway, Sam Pratt named the Lyon & Healy lever harp the Troubadour, and then, since there was absolutely no music available specifically for it, asked Sam Milligan to produce a book of tunes for it. That book was Fun From the First.

[Tacye]

Hmm, the view from Europe is rather different.

[carl-swanson]

Tacye- I don’t understand your post. Could you explain it? Are you saying that all the harps you mentioned function the same way, and without levers?

[Tacye]

It depends on exactly how you define a ‘lever’.

[carl-swanson]

Yes of course I’d consider that a lever harp. I suspect that there may have been a lot of such lever harps made in the 19th Century, but that they took a back seat to the pedal harp as it became more available. There may have even been a gap when no lever harps were being built before they started up again in the 20th century.

[Tacye]

I don’t think there was a gap – Morley stopped building pedal harps during WW1 to concentrate on small harps and repairs and I have found references to similar small harps at the very end of the 19th C.

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