DICTIONARY OF MUSIC - El Atril

326 HARP HARP
execution, to give tlie harp thirteen strings in
each octave, by which each would have been
a sliarp to its next lower and a flat to ita
next higher string. The first step towards the
reconstruction of the harp ^vas due to a Tyrolese,
who came upon the idea of screwing little crooks
of metal {crotchets) into the neck, which when
turned against the string would cause the
shortening necessary for a chromatic interval.
Still the harpist lost the use of one hand while
placing or releasing a crook, and one string only
was modified, not its octaves. About the year
1720, one Hochbrucker, a native of Donauworth
in Bavaria, conceived and executed the first
pedal mechanism, and rendered the harp fit for
modulation, by using the foot to raise each open
string, at will and instantaneously, half a tone
higher, and leaving the player's hands free.
This brought about a very remarkable revolution
in harp-playing, giving the instrument eight
major scales and five minor complete, besides
three minor scales descending only. Hochbrucker's
mechanism acted upon crooks which
pressed the strings above nuts projecting from
the neck. But there were inconveniences arising
from this construction ; each string acted upon
by a crook was removed from the plane of the
open strings, an impediment to the fingering,
and frequent cause of jarring, and the stopped
strings were less good in tone than the open.
A fault no less serious was due to the mechanism
being adjusted to the w^ooden neck, which was
intractable for the curving required ; if too much
bent it was liable to break, and if not bent enough
the middle strings would break when tuned up
from being too long.
The first to make harps without crooks, and yet
to stop halftones, were Frenchmen— the Cousin-
eaus, father and son. They passed each string
between two small pieces of metal (JjeqiiiHes)
placed beneath the bridge-pin. Then by the
pedal action these metal pieces were made to grasp
the string, and shorten it the distance required.
The Cousineaus also introduced a slide to raise
or lower the bridge-pin regulating the length
of the string, and placed each system of levers
belonging to strings of the same name between
metal plates which were bevelled to make them
lighter. Thus the neck could be curved at
pleasure, and its solidity being assured, the
proportions of the strings could be more accurately
established. About 1782 they doubled the pedals
and connected mechanism, and thus constructed
the first double-action harp. The pedals were
arranged in two rows, and the tuning of the
open strings was changed to the scale of Cb
instead of Eb, as in the single-action harps.
But it does not appear that the Cousineaus made
many double-action harps ; they were still too
imperfect ; and the Revolution must have closed
their business, for we hear no more of them.
AVe now arrive at the perfecting of the harp
by that great mechanician Sebastian Erard,
wdiose merit it was to leave this instrument as
complete as the Cremona school of luthiers left
1. Cb. 2. Ci). 3. CS.
the violin. His earliest essays to improve the
harp date about 1786, and were confined to the
single action. He worked upon a new principle,
the fork mechanism, and in his harps which
were finished about 1789, the arrangement of
it was chiefly internal ; the studs that shorten
the strings alone performing their functions ex-
ternally. He patented in London in 1794 a
fork mechanism external to the plate. He made
a double-action harp in 1801, patenting it in
1809 [in his early specimens the double movement
only artected the notes A and D], and it
was not until 1810 that he introduced the double
action throughout in the culmination of his
beautiful contrivance, which has since been the
model for all harp-makers. In this harp, as in
the single-action one, Erard maintained seven
pedals only, and simply augmented the extent
of movement of the cranks and tringles (or
levers) acted upon by the pillar-rods, to give
successively a portion of revolution to the
disks from which the studs project ; the first
movement of the pedal serving to shorten
strings of the same name, to produce the first
half tone, the second movement of the pedal
for the second half tone, the contrivance being