Harp facts for kids
The harp is a beautiful musical instrument. It's one of the biggest string instruments you'll see in an orchestra. Harps are very old! People used them way back in 4000 BC in Egypt. You might also see angels playing harps in pictures of Heaven.
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What are the main parts of a harp?
A harp is a string instrument. Each string is pulled tight. This helps it make the correct sound or note. All the strings are attached to the harp's main frame.
The harp's strong frame
The harp's frame is usually shaped like a triangle. It's often made of wood. The frame must be very strong. This is because the many tight strings pull on it a lot. If the frame isn't strong, the strings could break it!
The sound-box and its purpose
The side of the triangle that rests against the player's body is called the sound-box. This part is hollow, like an empty box. Empty spaces help make sounds louder. So, the sound-box makes the harp's music louder and richer.
How the pegs make notes
The top side of the triangle has many small pegs. There is one peg for each string on the harp. The top of each string is tied to a peg and wrapped around it. The player turns these pegs. Turning a peg makes the string tighter or looser. This is how the player makes sure each string plays the right note. The bottom of each string is tied to the sound-box.
The pillar: a key support
The last side of the triangle is called the pillar. The oldest harps from Egypt didn't have pillars. Without a pillar, if the strings were too tight, they could break the harp. Adding a pillar makes the harp frame much stronger. This way, the strings won't break the instrument.
How do you play a harp?
Harp players use their fingers to pluck the strings. When a string is plucked, it vibrates and makes a sound. Each string makes a different note. Harp players create songs by plucking the strings in the correct order and at the right time. They can even pluck more than one string at once to make chords. When a player wants a note to stop, they gently touch the string. This stops it from vibrating and silences the sound.
What are the different kinds of harps?
There are many types of harps. The two main kinds are folk harps and pedal harps.
Folk harps: the older style
Folk harps are the older kind of harp. On a folk harp, each string plays just one note. They are usually tuned so that playing the strings in order sounds like playing all the white keys on a piano. This is called a diatonic scale. In some places, they are tuned to sound like the black keys on a piano. This is called a pentatonic scale.
Folk harps come in many sizes. The smallest ones can be less than half a meter tall. The biggest ones can be almost 1.5 meters tall. These larger ones often have a foot so they can stand on their own. They can be too big for one person to lift! Folk harps can have anywhere from fewer than 20 strings to more than 40.
Pedal harps: modern and orchestral
Pedal harps were invented in the 1800s in France. This is the type of harp you usually see in a Symphony Orchestra. Pedal harps are about two meters tall and have around 50 strings. The lowest and highest notes on a pedal harp are the same as those on a piano. They are very heavy and usually need more than one person to move them. The frame of a pedal harp is often made of metal.
A pedal harp is tuned like the white keys on a piano (a diatonic scale). But it also has seven pedals at the bottom. These pedals let the harp player change the musical key of the song. Each pedal has three positions. For example, the 'A' pedal:
- Position 1 makes all the 'A' strings sound like 'A'-flat.
- Position 2 makes all the 'A' strings sound like a normal 'A' ('A'-natural).
- Position 3 makes all the 'A' strings sound like 'A'-sharp.
This allows the player to play many different notes and songs.
Cross-strung harps
Cross-strung harps are a special type of harp. They have two rows of strings that cross near the middle without touching. These harps can play all the notes, like a piano. Their strings are arranged like piano keys (7 white plus 5 black) or in a 6-plus-6 system.
Instruments that are not harps
Some instruments have the word harp in their name, but they are not actually harps. The harp is such an old instrument that people sometimes use "harp" to mean any kind of instrument.
- A blues harp is actually a harmonica. It's often used to play jazz or blues music.
- A Jew's harp is not a harp, and it has no connection to Jewish people. It's a small instrument played by plucking a reed while holding it to your mouth.
- An Aeolian harp is just a box with tuned strings. No one plucks the strings to make music. Instead, an Aeolian harp is placed outdoors where the wind blows. The wind makes the strings vibrate and create sounds.
Images for kids
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The Queen's gold lyre from the Royal Cemetery at Ur. Iraq Museum, Baghdad.
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Lyres of Ur
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The harper on the Dupplin Cross, Scotland, circa 800 AD
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Individual sheet music for a seventeenth century baroque harp
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A medieval European harp (the Wartburg harp) with buzzing bray pins
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Paraguayan harp
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Andean harp
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A Mangbetu man playing a bow harp
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Saung musician in 1900
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Lavinia Meijer playing the harp
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Harpo Marx would run around performing zany slapstick pantomime comedy with his brothers, then sit down to play beautiful music on the concert harp.
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The medieval "Queen Mary harp" (Clàrsach na Banrìgh Màiri) preserved in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. It is one of three surviving Insular Celtic medieval harps, which serve as protypes for "celtic harps".
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A gravikord
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St. Maria (Weingarten/Württemberg)
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See also
In Spanish: Arpa para niños
