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Range and gamut of small harps part 2

I restrung my tiny Anglo-Saxon “Winchcombe” harp. Because it is so small, its pitch is rather high – middle c as the lowest note.

This led me to think, a miniature harp has two possible different roles. Of course, a miniature harp like this can be used as a musical instrument in its own right, and many musicians and indeed harpmakers have this intent for their mini instruments. If you are less interested in the historical harp traditions and want to work on contemporary or traditional music then that is fine.

On the other hand, a mini harp is cheaper than a full size one, and so a student of the old Irish and Scottish harp traditions may well consider that a mini harp such as an Ardival Kilcoy is a lot more affordable than a full size instrument such as a HHSI Student Queen Mary.

Personally I think that a Queen Mary design instrument is quite manageable even by an 8 year old child – it is not too big. I have tended to dissuade people from purchasing the miniature designs for studying the old Gaelic harp curriculum partly because of ergonomic issues – a miniature harp has a number of posture and touch differences from a full size instrument. But the main reason to avoid a miniature design is because they simply lack the important bass range. In the first lesson, we start by finding the sister strings (na comhluighe) and placing our hands on the strings above and below them. This can instantly cause problems if your instrument has one of the sister strings as its very lowest note!

 If you are determined to use a miniature harp for studying the old Irish and Scottish harp traditions, I wonder about the possibility of thinking about it as sounding an octave high in pitch – a 4-foot or ottavino harp if you like. This will of course make everything very squeaky and shrill sounding, though that is pretty much inevitable anyway on a tiny harp with no bass.

For example, a 19 string Kilcoy design might be tuned as follows:

1   c”’
2   b”
3   a”
4   g”
5   f”
6   e”
7   d”
8   c”
9   b’
10   a’
11   g’
12   g’
13   f’
14   e’
15   d’
16   middle c’
17   b
18   a
19   g

Simply by turning strings 1 to 11 down one note. No need to change any of the strings.  Now this is enough notes to play Burns March and all its variations. Accept that it sounds squeaky, as a 4-foot or ottavino instrument is meant to, and you should do fine! You will also be able to fit in with a class of people playing full-size instruments no problem, you will just sound everything an octave higher than them.

If anyone tries this on a miniature harp, let me know.

Range and gamut of small harps

Discussing what is a suitable extra-small harp for a child (extra-small for both ergonomics of a child’s size, and also to make it cheaper to purchase), the question of the range of the instrument came up.

I think that the medieval gamut, from bass G up to treble e, is an important factor in thinking about the old music. It makes little sense to me to cut off the bass of the gamut only to add in extra treble strings above this, yet this is what many modern harp makers do.

The gamut (including the doubled sister strings) takes 21 strings (centre chart). If you need less than this, then cutting off the bottom as well as the top makes sense. To play Burns March, one of the key beginner tunes, in the usual position, requires from bass c up to treble a, 14 strings including the sisters. Add two more in the treble to get 16 covering 2 octaves (left hand chart).

I would set up a replica of one of the extant medieval Irish and Scottish harps as shown in the right hand chart. The extant continental medieval harps tend to have 26 strings, i.e. 3 less in the treble.


There’s more technical discussion about historical range and gamut on my other site

Pumpkin pie

Somewhere a long time ago I read that pumpkins were brought over to England from the New World, and were used to make pumpkin pie in Lincolnshire. This new recipe was subsequently re-exported back to the new world in the 17th century. I don’t know if it is true or not but it is fun to imagine this as an old Lincolnshire tradition.

Today I baked a small pumpkin pie following this recipe but with hazelnuts instead of walnuts (Hazels always seem more autumnal to me – I remember occasionally gathering them in the hedgerows).

I have not tried the pie yet; we will sample a slice later with a very fragrant malty tippy Yunnan tea.

The biggest pumkin was a gift from my mother who grew it at home; the others are from the local greengrocer. The pie used an orange pumpkin the same size as the two small ones here.

Margaret 1281 concert in Dundee

On Wednesday lunchtime I’ll be presenting my Margaret 1281 programme in the Wighton Centre, in Dundee Central Library. This is always a fun event, the free concert run by the Friends of Wighton on the first Wednesday of every month at 1.15pm.

I presented this programme back in June at St Andrews Cathedral and it worked very well. The idea is to present a dramatic episode of Scottish history in music and verse. All of the six items on the programme have strong connections to Scotland or Norway in the late 1200s and early 1300s.

As well as playing the replica Queen Mary harp, I’ll sing the traditional ballad telling a part of this story, and I’ll also pull out the jouhikko for a bit of old Scandinavian flavour.

Irish lyre

I have recently finished setting up an Irish lyre for a customer. This is my own speculative setup. The design is based on a generic Northern European early medieval lyre like the surviving historical instruments from Sutton Hoo in England or Trossingen in Germany, but I have strung and set it up using stringing principles from the historical and mythical Gaelic sources from Scotland and Ireland. The aim is to produce the type of instrument that you can see on the Clonmacnoise high cross, or the type of thing that might be described as cruit or tiompán in early medieval Irish texts.

Following medieval Irish and Scottish Gaelic practice, the strings are made from metal – in this case silver, latten (copper alloy) and soft iron. The instrument is tuned to a hexachord (g-a-b-c-d-e) and has a bright, open voice. The body of this instrument is an inexpensive import, but it is nonetheless a competent piece of work with a hollowed-out maple soundbox and a solid maple soundboard.

For this particular instrument, my customer asked for a reconstruction copy of the Skye lyre bridge fragment, discovered a few years ago in Uamh an Ard Achaidh (High Pasture Cave) on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. This broken lyre bridge dates from the iron age – one thousand years earlier than the surviving English and Continental lyres, but clearly showing the continuity of the lyre tradition in Northern Europe. I carved this bridge entirely by hand from some lovely local figured maple.


If you are interested in commissioning an early Irish lyre, whether an affordable imported student model like this or a full-specification professional model by a British instrument maker, or if you are interested in having a copy of the Uamh an Ard Achaidh lyre bridge, please get in touch with me and we can discuss the options!