Harp

What it means

The harp is a plucked instrument whose strings are stretched vertically between the sound body and the neck. Today's concert harp has a good forty strings and seven pedals, one for each natural-note degree. Each pedal has three positions and changes all the strings of this degree at once by a semitone upward or downward. The basic tuning is C♭ major; from it all other keys are produced by pedal changes. For orientation the C strings are coloured red and the F strings dark. In addition there are lever harps and folk-music forms of construction without pedal mechanism.

Musical use

The sound is soft, colourful, and rings on for a long time; from this follows a way of writing that rests on broken chords, arpeggios, glissandi, and clear registers, while dense chord sequences easily blur. Firmly anchored in the orchestra since the nineteenth century, the harp provides lustre, binding, and tone colour; it also has a solo repertoire of its own and is at home in chamber music with flute and strings. Special ways of playing such as the whispered tremolo bisbigliando, damped playing, and harmonics extend the palette considerably.

Performance practice

It is plucked with four fingers of each hand; the little finger stays out. Plan the pedals like a part of their own: note every change in the score and decide when a foot is free. A pedal change while strings are sounding produces an audible sliding, which is sometimes desired but usually to be avoided. Damping belongs to the technique — without deliberate stopping the sounds overlap. Keep the nails short, because you pluck with the finger pad. Tune before every rehearsal, for the many strings react sensitively to temperature, and check the pedal positions in doing so.

Remember that glissandi are determined by the pedal setting: which notes sound is decided by the foot, not the hand, and a glissando in a particular scale demands corresponding preparation. Note such places exactly. Expect that instrumental parts for harp often have to be adapted, because some chords cannot be grasped in the written form. Settle such changes with the conductor. Keep spare strings ready, since string breaks occur during a concert.