There were no female Irish Harpists in the golden era so I guess I should first shooo oft any wandering Nancyboy with the advice … a waste of yer time lass!
Some say the Harp was played with the right hand only, as the left damped the strings. Others say the hands were arranged the other way. Some say the strings were plucked while others argue that strings were struck with the finger nail alone.
I speculate that it could have been both ways. The Harper spent a decade just to learn to play, and like the African lute playing both in and plucking out esp with the weaker fingers would take many years to perfect.
However there also remains the problem of how the strings were made, since we know the material was brass and today we cannot discover any way to make these.
Really? I had thought that the “strings” in effect are brass wires. A small handfull of people still play brass wire harps - the predecessor of your more common “Celtic” nylon stringed harps. Paul Dooley of Ennistymon is one stunning example. I also have a friend who is learning on the brass wire harp with the fingernail techniques and stuff..
However there also remains the problem of how the strings were made, since we know the material was brass and today we cannot discover any way to make these.
We still do not know how the strings were made! eventhough a composite has been produced.
toasty wrote:"There were no female Irish Harpists in the golden era so I guess I should first shooo oft any wandering Nancyboy with the advice … a waste of yer time lass! "
As to the wire-strung harp revived, in a word: Minnesota’s own Ann Heyman (OK, 4 words. Flog me). It goes from there.
A friend of mine plays, among other things, wire harp. Pretty good at it, too. I once asked him about wiremaking tech past and present, and as I recall, the way brass wire was made in the past is said to be known after all. I’ll talk to him and get back to y’all about that. It was pretty interesting and a straightforward procedure, as I remember. His historic info creds are fairly reliable for a Nancyboy (metrosexual, really. His wife condones the long nails you have to grow to play the beast), if you count a Jesuit education and degrees in ethnomusicology worth anything…arguably the worse for him, heh.
He has a theory that the piobaireacht is a direct outgrowth of the Irish and Scots bardic traditions’ styles of harping, which is hinted at but not known outright. Evidently there’s enough out there (also looking to the well-documented Welsh tradition for more hints) that suggests a similar approach to laying the ground and applying variations according to expected ways of executing it. Even if this is purely the fruit of speculation, it works. If ever you get a chance to hear piobaireachd-inspired harping, I think you’d find it very haunting. It SOUNDS “authentic”, at least.
Just scroll down the PDF file to where the header says “Tech Edge”; it’s in the first entry (not in italics), and the link there will give more detail. Drawing wire through dies goes back quite a ways, apparently!
Bunting quotes Galilei as noting that sometimes the treble strings of Irish harps were strung with steel wire. This may have been due to the requirement for greater tensile strength.
If artisans of the 12th-13th centuries were making steel wire for harp strings, why would they not have been able to make brass strings? Artisans may well have kept their methods secret in order to secure their livelyhood, but that doesn’t mean they were incompetent.
Old Irish writings also refer to harpstrings of silver and gold, if we can take this to be more than mere poetic license. The friend I referred to, who also happens to build harps, has worked with gold wire in custom jobs for some of the bass strings, and said that the harmonics are especially rich. Obviously too cost-prohibitive to be a stock item, though.
Thanks, I know Chad, actually played in a small band with him briefly. I haven’t spoken to him in quite a while. I hope he is doing ok. He is a fine musician and harpist. I would like to get in touch with him, do you suppose you could forward my email address on to him for me? I’d appreciate it greatly.
Now all I have to do is figure out whether I have met you too or not.
Sorry for the hijack folks…back to wire strung harps.
My mother (…who’s name is Nancy by the way, ) plays Irish harp, and the good majority of her strings are gut. Very expensive and not too easy to find as I understand it (which is very little).
These timelines are offered without citing sources, so you’ll have to take them for what they’re worth, but again, it’s interesting reading, especially where repressive English laws start coming into play.
If you scroll (way) down to the date 1561, that is presented as the date of the first mention of female harpers and balladeers on Irish soil. Again, no sources, though. I imagine that there weren’t scads of lady harpers, as the tradition does seem to be a male-dominated one back in the day, according to accounts.
harpists?