The harp was not so often seen as other instruments, on account both of the great cost of the instrument and of the difficulty of tuning it. It was not until 1720 that the pedal harp was invented by a Bavarian named Hochbriicker. By means of the pedal working a small plate set with projecting pins, the performer was able to raise the pitch of each string a semitone. The mechanism was concealed in the front pillar, and each note was affected in all its octaves. Erard made farther improvements. The harp shown in Figure 88 is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. It is a very handsome one, painted blue, and resting on four claw feet. The pillar is fluted, and the ornaments, three medallions of dancing girls, with wreaths below, are executed in brass. It has forty-two strings of gut and seven pedals. It was made by Naderman, Paris, France, late in the eighteenth century. Nader-man perfected the action of the first pedal harp invented by Hochbriicker. In the South Kensington Museum, London, England, is a harp which belonged to the ill-fated Marie Antoinette; it also was made by Naderman in 1780.

Figure 88. HARP.

The harp in its various forms is an instrument of great antiquity. The Greeks and Romans, ever alive to the possibilities of everything that tended to grace and beauty, admired this instrument not only for its sweet sound but for its pleasing form. We must look to Egypt for the origin of the harp, as there are representations in their picture writings of stringed instruments of a bow-form that support the idea that the first conception of a harp was drawn from the tense string of a warrior's bow. This very primitive instrument was borne on the performer's shoulder and played horizontally. Between this crude instrument and the splendid vertical harps shown in the frescoes of the time of Rameses III., painted more than three thousand years ago, there is a chain of pictures showing so many varieties of forms that the growth from the bow-form into the triangular harp is explained. The Assyrians, like the Egyptians, had harps without a front pillar, but differing from them in using sound-holes, and having the sound body uppermost.

We assign to King David the harp, but mediaeval artists more frequently depicted him with the psaltery, a horizontal stringed instrument, the parent of the piano.

The harp has always been the instrument of the Celtic race, and harpists were held in peculiar veneration. For many a long year harpists traveled from one castle to another, sure always of a welcome and seat in a warm corner. In return they not only amused the company with their songs, but brought the news, and isolated and remote families often heard from the outer world by such uncertain means as these. For centuries the English harpers were protected in many ways, and no one has taken advantage of such a picturesque class with the skill of Sir Walter Scott. The most renowned one he introduced as a character was Blondel de Nesle, in the " Talisman,' that wonderful picture of the days of the Crusades. The first greeting to the youth when he appeared at Richard's camp shows the estimation in which these knights of the harp were held.

"Blondel de Nesle !" Richard exclaimed joyfully "welcome from Cyprus, my king of minstrels ! Welcome to the King of England, who rates not his own dignity more highly than he does thine. . . And what news, my gentle master, from the land of the lyre? Anything fresh from the trouveurs of Provence? Anything from the minstrels of merry Normandy? Above all, hast thou thyself been busy?"

It is also said that Richard Cceur de Lion's place of confinement in Germany on his return from the Holy Land was discovered when Blondel sung beneath the Tower Tenebreuse a tenson which they had jointly composed, and to which the king replied.

Edward I. and his Queen were fond of music and encouraged musicians, as the following entries in their accounts of the household expenditures show:

"To Melioro, the harper of Sir John Mantravers, for playing on the harp when the king was bled, twenty shillings; likewise to Walter Luvel, the harper of Chichester, whom the King found playing on his harp before the tomb of St. Richard at Chichester Cathedral, six shillings and eight pence."

Henry V. was a performer on the harp at an early age, and his wife, Catherine of Valois, shared his taste, as an entry in the Issue Rolls reads:

"By the hands of William Menston was paid ,£8 13s 4d, for two new harps purchased for King Henry and Queen Catherine."

These harps were tuned with a key like the more modern instruments, and the player improvised his words to suit the taste of the company in which he found himself. Harpists were employed much at courts, and in 1666 Pepys says that for want of pay to the household "many of the musique are ready to starve, they being five years behind hand for wages; nay, Evens, the famous man upon the Harp, having not his equal in the world, did the other day die for mere want, and was fain to be buried at the almes of the parish, and carried to his grave in the dark at night without one linke, but that Mr. Hingston met it by chance, and did give I2d. to buy two or three links."

At the present day, though at no instrument does a graceful woman look more graceful, solo performers are very rare; but in the orchestra the harp has an important place on account of its tone, such composers as Gounod, Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner using it freely in their scores. In this country there are only occasional references in the old papers to it, and an advertisement by Signor Pucci in 1815 that he gives concerts on the "Fashionable and much admired King David's Pedal Harp", seems to be an effort to introduce it to the notice of music-lovers of the day.