Stringing

Johan Philipp Bendeler was quoted in M. Goodway and J.S. Odell, "The Historical harpsichord vol. II: The Metallurgy of 17th and 18th Centiry Music Wire." Pendragon press, New York, 1987.

History

Gerald of Wales, Topographica Hibernica, Wales c.1186, quotation and translation from C. Page, "Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages", London 1987

John Monipennie, 1594, in his translation of George Buchanan's History of Scotland, quoted in Keith Sanger & Alison Kinnaird, "Tree of Strings (Crann nan Teud)", Kinmor Music 1992

Táin Bo Fraich, Ireland, c. 8th - 9th Century, quoted in Ann and Charlie Heymann, Strings of Gold, in "Journal of the Historical Harp Society", Summer 2003.

The Vulgate Merlin, France, early 13th Century, quotation and translation from C. Page, "Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages", London 1987

Zoilomastix, quote and translation by Nicholas Carolan in Éigse Cheol Tíre - Irish Folk Music Studies, vols. 5-6, 1986-2001 p.53-6

Ralph Ouseley, early 1780s, in a manuscript copy by J. Hardiman, 1820, British Library, ms Egerton 74 f184.

19th century

1. Keith Sanger & Alison Kinnaird, Tree of Strings, Kinmor 1992, p.167

2. MacDonnell's letter is printed in Fox, Annals of the Irish Harpers, 1911, p.281

3. Sydney Owenson, The Wild Irish Girl, 1806. Vol. 1, available online at www.sydneyowenson.com/TheWildIrishGirl.html

4. Robert Bruce Armstrong, The Irish and Highland Harps 1904, p. 102-5

5. Robert Bruce Armstrong, The Irish and Highland Harps 1904, p. 107-9, ‘Harp in the National Museum, Edinburgh’

6. John Bell's notebook, quoted in Keith Sanger & Alison Kinnaird, Tree of Strings (Crann nan Teud), Kinmor Music 1992. Also in H.G. Farmer, Some Notes on the Irish Harp, ‘Music & Letters’ vol XXIV, April 1943.

7. Patrick Murney's Rules, dictated in July 1882 and published in James O'Laverty, The Irish Harp, in "Denvir's Monthly", 1903

8. ‘Report on the Birmingham Wire Gauge’ in The Journal of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, Vol. VIII, London, 1879, p. 476 - 504. See also: http://www.sizes.com/materls/wire.htm (refs from Karen Loomis)

9. ‘English Mechanic and World of Science’, Vol. XV, London, 1872, p. 510-11. Available on google books in some contries. Thanks to Karen Loomis for sending me this.

10. Robert Bruce Armstrong, The Irish and Highland Harps 1904, p. 105-7 & fronticepiece.

11. John Egan advertisement, from Pigot & Co's 1824 City of Dublin and Hibernian Provincial, facsimile in "United Kingdom Harp Association" February 2002. Italics are original.

 

 

Archaeology

Bob Evans details his work on the Balinderry wire in the "Wire Branch Newsletter" no. 4, June 2001. Brass Wire and in "A Copy of the Downhill Harp", Galpin Society Journal 50, March 1997.

The finds of wire are not very well published. Best is that from Fast Castle, by Graeme Lawson, in K, Mitchell, K.R. Murdoch and J.R. Ward, "Fast Castle: Excavations 1971-86". Edinburgh 2001, p. 115-116. The Oxford wire is mentioned briefly in Brian Durham, Archaeological Investigations in St. Aldates, Oxford, in "Oxoniensia" XLII, 1977, p. 165 and p.194-5. The Castle Sween wire is mentioned in Ewart and Triscott, Castle Sween, Knapdale, Argyll and Bute, in "Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland", 126, 1996, p. 535-6

Compositions of wire analysed can be compared to the modern alloys used by harpsichord makers: Yellow brass is approximately 70% copper, 30% zinc, while red brass is around 90% copper, 10% zinc. The Fast Castle wire contained 19% zinc while the Oxford wire contained 17%. The Balinderry wire was around 10% zinc. Full results are not available for the Castle Sween wire, but it has no zinc at all.

For analysis and discussion of surviving harpsichord wire fragments, see M. Goodway and J.S. Odell, "The Historical harpsichord vol. II: The Metallurgy of 17th and 18th Centiry Music Wire". Pendragon press, New York, 1987.

 

 

Practice

Robert Evans's complete string chart for the Downhill replica is published in Robert Evans 1997 A copy of the Downhill harp "Galpin Society Journal" no. 50, 1997

Mike Parker's stringing details are from his postings to the Harp mailing list, 18th Dec 1995: "I'm using .33 gauge red brass for all but the last 4 strings on my Q.M., using sisters tuning and decending to G an octave below violin G. I aso occasionally tune it from the sisters up, to a 9 note octave with f sharp and b flat for late 17th C. music and later. The slow string scale and the single gauge allows for this with no difficulties."

Christopher Warren was quoted in Charles Acton, Rediscovery of Harp Tradition, in "Éire-Ireland" vol VII part 4, 1972.

Ann and Charlie Heymann, Strings of Gold, in "Journal of the Historical Harp Society", Summer 2003, discusses the issues surrounding the stringing of low-headed Gaelic harps and suggests how precious metal strings should be investigated. Read the article online.

Ann Heymann's website is www.clairseach.com, Ardival's website is www.ardival.com and Cynthia Cathcart's is www.cynthiacathcart.net. Joan Rimmer devised the 3-fold classification of "low headed", "large low headed" and "high headed" in her article The morphology of the Irish harp, "Galpin Society Journal" no. 17, 1964. Examples of each of the three types are the Trinity College harp, the Castle Otway harp and the Sirr harp respectively.

Materials

For an overview of medieval string materials with many source texts see C. Page, "Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages", London 1987, appendix 4. See also www.nrinstruments.demon.co.uk/About.html

Amy Hopkins has documented her experiments making gut strings at home: www.mimf.com/library/gut_strings.htm

For psaltery stringing references from medieval Europe and Arabia see Nelly van Ree Bernard, "The Psaltery", 1989, Knuf. page 13-14. Materials mentioned are brass, silver, gut, metal, silk and copper.

Alexander Rakov is working on manufacturing silk strings for early European instruments.

Historical brass and iron music wire is produced in England by Malcolm Rose; his wire is available in the USA from The Instrument Workshop.

Technical

NRInstruments produce a very useful string calculator for juggling these variables. Hhistorical stringing decisions and criteria for harpsichords is discussed well in M. Goodway and J.S. Odell, "The Historical harpsichord vol. II: The Metallurgy of 17th and 18th Centiry Music Wire." Pendragon press, New York, 1987.

Advice

ths page is based on my experince stringing and re-stringing my replica of the Queen Mary harp with brass, silver gold and most recently experimental historical bronze wires, and subsequent work for private individuals and the Historical Harp Society of Ireland, on replicas of the Trinity, Otway and Downhill harps as well as various modern designs.

Arthur O'Neill's comment is from his Memours, published in Donal O'Sullivan's "Carolan the life times and music of an Irish harper", Routledge and Paul, London, 1958, p.165

Ann and Charlie Heymann are much more knowledgable than I about stringing, having worked for much longer on many more instruments, and I'd like to thank them for their assistance and comments on my own stringing experiments and on these pages.