AHJ, Vol. 5 No. 3, Summer 1976

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It stirred up quite a tempest in a teapot,
for the adherents of the older
harp with pedals attacked the new
invention immediately. It is a strange
coincidence that the two works by
Pierne and Debussy which figure in
the Symphony Society's programmes,
are dedicated to the two champions
of the old and the new systems
respectively.
The pedal harp is, by reason of
its construction, essentially diatonic.
It never has more than seven tones
available within the octave at any
one time. It has only seven strings
to the octave, each of which, however,
throughout the whole compass of the
instrument, can be raised at will
through two successive half-tones by
means of a double action pedal.
There are thus seven pedals. All the
strings lie in one vertical plane.
The chromatic harp does away
with the pedals and adds five strings
for each octave, thus filling out the
twelve chromatic steps of the octave.
To adjust the new strings between
the old ones in the same plane
~oi!ld bring them all too close
together for, the insertion of the
player's finger. To equalize the
spaces by increasing the span of the
octave would remove the farther end
of the scale beyon~ the player's reach.
The difficulty is overcome by disposing
the strings, without increasing the
octave span, in two oblique planes
which intersect like a thin le~ter "~.:".
All the diatonic strings, corresponding
to the white keys on the piano, lie in
one plane. All the chromatic strings,
;...,:responding to the black keys, lie
in the other. By running his finger
along the line of intersection the
player can execute a perfect chromatic
glissando.
From 1894 to 1897, the inventor
labored to perfect his instrument: In
1897 it was exhibited at Brussels at
the Exposition of Arts and Industries,
where, at first, it attracted attention
as a curiosity beside another Pleyel
exhibit, a double piano wi.th two keyboards
so disposed that the players
faced each other. However, performances
upon .. the new instrument at
the Exposition by Jean Risler brother
of the pianist, Edouard Risier soon
revealed its possibilities. The' harp
players of the old school began to
grow uneasy. The Nestor of French
harpists, Alphonse Hasselmans, . for
many years professor of the harp at
tha Paris Conservatoire ( from which
position he retired in 1912 at the age
of sixty-seven), took up the cudgels in
defense of the pedal harp, and a lively
polemic ensued between him and theinventor.
Hasselmans insisted that
the innovation "completely denatured
the character of the instrument and
made it scarcely a reduction of the
piano".
Criticism of the new harp was directed
chiefly against the impossibility
of securing the extremely varied
and striking arpeggio and glissando
effects which the use of the pedals
made possible, and against its alleged
lack of sonority as compared with the
old instrument. Lyon denied these
weaknesses and cites a performance
"in the Cathedral of Orleans on the
feast of Joan of Arc, -when four chromatic
harps were placed side by ,side
with four pedal harps and in the
performance of Gounod's 'Redemption'
and Cesar Franck' 'Procession'
the results were absolutely conclusive".
In spite of the opposition the new
harp found favor. Richter and Mottl
tried it out as an orchestra instrument.
It has not, however, up to the present,
succeeded in crowding the pedal harp
1
out of the orchestra. In 1901, Fran­