A $24,000, 100,000-Piece Harp Is No Instrument for a Musical Lightweight

Over the years, I’ve found playing an 80-pound harp with 47 strings and seven foot pedals has its heavy and light moments. But any inconvenience is eclipsed by the exhilarating experience of producing heavenly music and, nowadays, even jazz.

The ancestry of the harp goes back thousands of years. According to Scripture, the shepherd boy David played the smaller stringed lyre for King Saul. There were harp players in ancient Egypt 3,500 years ago. Marie Antoinette studied the harp before she went to the guillotine in 1773; staying with it might have saved her head!

The harp probably evolved from the bows and arrows used during battles in millennia past. The tautly drawn strings twanged a musical note. The harp’s predecessor was probably the smaller lyre, evoking images of peace, love and heavenly bliss.

Harpo Marx would have been 100 years old this November. He was known for his buffoonery, but listen to his harp music when a Marx Brothers’ classic appears again on late-night TV. Self-taught, he was a serious musician.

Until he discovered the correct position, Harpo rested the instrument on the left shoulder rather than the right. He once humbly wrote to a great harpist, “You have more talent in one finger than I have in four.” He had learned that harpists today use only four fingers; the pinkie is not long enough.

We harpists don’t use any finger guards or picks, so we’re all proud of calluses. Then there are seven pedals, each with three positions that give each of the 47 strings a potential for three different sounds.

I was born in Chicago. My family moved to Omaha, Neb., and then to Gary, Ind. At the age of 8, I began piano lessons. At 14, I started on the harp.

I moved to Canada in 1945 when I married Maxwell, a Canadian. I became the founding president of the Toronto chapter of the American Harp Society in 1973. All of my four children are musical, and my husband has always been supportive of my harp playing. When any member of my family is in the audience, it is particularly meaningful to me.

I begin tuning my harp at least a half-hour before a concert, using a key similar to the ones kids used to use to tighten the shoe clamps on roller skates. I remember playing once with a radio orchestra whose maestro, before starting the program, asked if everyone was ready. He turned to me, looked at my seven foot pedals, and asked, “Are you in gear, my dear?”

And it’s a bit of trouble hauling the ungainly instrument around. A professional really needs two harps--one to ship ahead to the next appearance and another to keep at home for constant practice.

Gluyas Williams wrote a poem about harpists that ends:

A harpist must have lots of pluck,

A black silk costume and a truck.

A station wagon is often used for transport, with a mattress and pillows to cushion the instrument. The harp is very delicate and expensive, with more than 100,000 moving parts in the concert models. Concert models, which take up to a year to make, cost up to $24,000; some have gold leaf and ornate decorations.

Once, in Gary, I was invited to give a harp concert at the school where I was teaching music. The local Fire Department graciously offered to transport my harp on a fire engine, with my mother--a frustrated opera singer--riding protectively next to it, since I could not leave my classroom. Turning the corner of 5th and Broadway, the firemen caught the mood and began doing ballet leaps for the startled and amused passers-by.

I’ve learned enough to know that the harp is a difficult instrument, not for the faint or weak of heart. One of my teachers once told me: “If you want to play like an angel, you have to work like the devil.”