The device of musical instruments: how many strings does the harp have?

One of the most ancient stringed instruments - the harp - has a rich history. It's not at all surprising that now many classical music lovers do not even know how many strings a harp has. After all, over the centuries, the appearance and size of this instrument changed with melodic muffled sound.

How many strings did the harp have in antiquity?

It is believed that the ancient man, releasing an arrow from the bow, heard a string issued by the bowstring. So there was an idea of creating the first plucked instruments: harp, harp, lyre. The modern harp is a heavy instrument (weighing up to 29 kg), huge in size, having from 45 to 47 strings. But not always it was like that. In ancient samples, there were from 7 to 30 strings. At the same time, the dimensions were not so impressive.

Modern concert halls are equipped with spacious orchestral pits, so there is a place even for such a massive instrument as the harp. The strings once played only one octave of seven notes. Gradually the device changed and improved, as a result it became possible to produce a diatonic scale. But in order to extract chromatic intervals, we had to reconfigure the strings with the help of hooks or change the tension force. As a result, for more simple extraction of sound, the harp has pedals. With their help you could raise the sound to a semitone. Further improvements led to the fact that there were double pedals, thanks to which it became possible to raise the sound by a whole tone.

The device of modern designs

On the question of how many strings the harp has left after all the transformations, it will not be possible to give a monosyllabic answer. Nowadays there are small harps with 30 strings and big triangles with 44 strings. You can additionally use 45, 46 and 47 tension strings. In the mechanism there were double pedals. Stretch yarns are stiff, veined, sometimes nylon threads are used. The longest of them is the lower, has a length of 1503 mm. The shortest is the upper, 69 mm in length. They are all fixed on the deck and driven by a pinch.

With the help of special double pedals, the halo of the harp is changed. With the pedal pressed, the mechanism inside the vertical column is triggered. Rotary discs that use the pedal mechanism shorten the length of the string by 1/18 and the sound is increased by a half tone. With a decrease in length by 2/18, respectively, there is an increase in the whole tone.

What do the harp like?

For millennia this musical instrument has not lost its popularity. The appearance has changed, the form, weight and even design have changed, and the sound still impresses with its gentle timbre. You do not need to know how many strings a harp has, how much it weighs and how it is played, but its sound is difficult to confuse with any other.

Her sound was especially fond of the secular aristocracy of the 18-19th centuries. It played royal people, ladies of noble blood and members of the high society of tsarist Russia. The most famous composers did not bypass the attention of the majestic harp. Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Alyabyev, Rimsky-Korsakov, Liszt, Wagner and other brilliant composers included the sounding of strings in their works.