![]() It stood upright on the floor, with the player kneeling behind it. In the Old Kingdom, the arched harp had a shovel-shaped form. The arched harp, the archetypal music instrument of Ancient Egypt, existed from the Old Kingdom into the Greek-Roman era. "Egypt can be considered the largest harp culture of all times. ![]() The HARPA web site contains a summary of an article featured in their newsletter on the Egyptian harp, an excerpt of which follows: Since many of the harps depicted in ancient Egyptian pictorial sources are quite large, and lacking the support of a pillar, it probably suggests that they were very loosely strung and, with such long strings, likely in the bass range. Two of its notable features are its size and lack of pillar. To the left and below are depictions of the ancient Egyptian harp. Oddly enough, the violin-shaped cruit is the older of the two, dating from the 12th Century, while the lyre-like crwth is a Welsh version from the 18th C.įor more information on crwths and lyres, you can visit 3. As you can see, the one on the right looks more like a lyre, while the one on the left is very suggestive of a violin. Other forms of the word include croud, crowth, and crouth. There are many variations on the word crwth (the w is pronounced "oo") - the English crowd, the Irish crot or cruit* (pronounced "crit") (*see Medieval Harps, below), and the Medieval latin chorus. " an ancient Celtic six-stringed violin, four of the strings being bowed and two struck by the thumb in playing also written croud, crowth, and (Welsh) crwth." One of my students has a 1904 Noah Webster, from which we get this definition (listed under "crowd"): "An ancient plucked and bowed stringed instrument which had a more or less rectangular frame, the lower half of which was filled in as a sound-box, with flat (or occasionally vaulted) back, the upper half being left open on each side of the strings." The Oxford Companion to Music defines a crwth as: One of the most notable things about the crwth is that it is considered to be an ancestor of both the harp and/or the violin, depending on who you talk to. The lyre is thought to have been invented by the Sumerians around 3200 B.C. You will notice, for instance, how much similarity there is between the crwth (see next section) and the lyre. ![]() The lines between ancient instruments are often fuzzy and hard to define. However, many lyres are more like the one on the left, in which the strings do cross the soundboard, often going over a bridge as well. One reason for this is that some lyres, as you can see on the right, strongly resemble a four-sided harp, in that the strings appear to be open on all sides, and seem to run away from the soundboard more than across it. The lyre is perhaps the single instrument most commonly thought of as the main ancestor to, or relative of, the harp. The same goes for crwths, zithers, psalteries, and dulcimers. A lyre, on the other hand, has strings which run across the board, and often over a bridge. Thus the term "harp" can refer to four-sided, triangular, and bow-shaped harps (common in ancient Egypt, Turkey, and other countries). A harp has strings running away from the soundboard, and exposed on both sides. They distinguish harps from other similar instruments based on the relationship of the string to the soundboard. To keep things simple, I use the definition put forth in Sanger and Kinnaird's Tree of Strings. To avoid confusion, we should begin by defining just what a harp is, since the term has been used throughout history to refer to a range of different instruments. Pedal Harps / Rare and Unusual Harps / Electric Harps / Bibliography Different Kinds of Harps Kinds of Harps - Ancient to ModernĪncestors of the Harp / Medieval Harps / Harpa DoppiaĬontemporary Non-Pedal Harps: Lever/Celtic Wire Multi-course Paraguayan/Latin-American
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