Laura Place
Stretched Across Time:
A Brief, Tri-Culturally Oriented
History of the Harp
By: Laura Margaret O'Brien Place
HONR 288N Foon Sham
September 25, 2000
“You too, ye Bards, whom sacred raptures fire
To chaunt your heroes to your country’s lyre,
Who consecrate in your immortal strain,
Brave patriot souls in righteous battle slain,
Securely now the tuneful talk renew,
And nobler themes in deathless songs pursue.”
-Walker’s Memoirs of the Irish Bards (page 55), 1786
I dedicate this work to all those harpers and their loved ones who never let the English break their spirit, though they could not always keep their harps or their persons safe. It is utterly insufficient a memorial to their contributions to the Irish spirit and the world’s musical riches.
The harp is one of the earliest string instruments to be created. Its simplistic form, a curved piece of wood with taut strings stretched between the two ends of the curve, lent it beautifully to discovery by early civilizations without highly advanced mechanical knowledge. Over the centuries, there have been at least three major stepping-stones along the path of the harp’s development. These stepping-stones can be associated to three different cultures in three different periods of history: the ancient Egyptians, the Celts, and the monarchies of Western Europe to the beginning of democracy. The harp played different roles in each society, played different music at each time period, but has always played a special part in the hearts of all who have been touched by its music.
The best early representations of harps are tomb paintings of arched harps from ancient Egypt. Some of these are dated as far back as 3000 B.C. and have provided scholars with almost all of their knowledge about ancient harps. Oddly enough, these were once discredited, by the Irish academics in particular, circa 1780. They likely were uncomfortable with the idea that their beloved harp was not the original idea of an Irish ancestor. Historians of musical instruments now consider two once controversial paintings from the tomb of Rameses III to be helpful in understanding the history of the harp.
