During my six year tenure at the Imperial Opera in Tehran I had ample opportunity to speculate upon the origin of the harp and its spiritual usage in ancient civilizations lost beneath the cover of desert sand. In August 1978, before my departure from Tehran, I "confessed" to Tehran Journal: "For me the harp is like a spirit". From its physical manifestation as an open frame with strings of diminishing length fastened under tension to the resonance box, the harp becomes the carrier of life force, acting as one of the bridges between Heaven and Earth.

For some time, Andrew M. Kobos, Editor of   Zwoje - The Scrolls, has encouraged me to write these Notes of a Harpist. It seems almost impossible to write a comprehensive short essay about the harp because of its multifaceted complexity created through centuries of written and visual representation, often thoroughly mixing fact and myth. I invite you to read these Notes in which I share my thoughts resulting from my own research on my favorite instrument.

Liliana Osses Adams



ABOUT THE HARP

NOTES OF A HARPIST   (I)







LILIANA OSSES ADAMS



                                                            I dedicate these Notes to my sister, Dr. Janina Osses-Frei,
with my wholehearted thanks for her help in collecting
everything possible about the harp



The Origins of the Harp

The origins of the harp – as the origins of art and music – have become the subject of research, studies, theories, treatises, theses, and hypotheses by art historians, philosophers, musicologists, archaeologists, scientists, and experts in other fields.

It is said that the harp, as many other instruments, originated in Africa, and not surprisingly so since most probably it is Africa where man originated. Subsequently, from Africa to the Atlantic shores and the Americas, from Siberia, China, India and the Middle East to the European Continent the harp traversed in multiple shapes and styles, and was used in almost every context of human life and in all purposes of music.

The first known image of a musician (ca. 15,000 B.C.) is carved in the walls of a cave in southwestern France, in the French Pyrénées, at Ariège, in the area known as Les Trois Frères, discovered in 1914 in the cavern system of Le Tuc d'Audoubert by three brothers, Henri, Robert and Clottes-Jean Begouen. The central figure shows a prehistoric man donning an animal skin. He has an anthropomorphic nature and plays a musical bow, an ancient single-stringed instrument. Archaeologists have named the rock carving The Sorcerer, or The Dancing Shaman of Les Trois Frères. It is believed to depict a shamanic ritual in which musical instruments were often the catalysts for the shaman's medicine work.




Panel of superimposed engravings on the right-hand side wall in the cave of Les Trois Frères
at Le Tuc d'Audoubert, Montesquieu-Avantes, Ariège, French Pirénées, ca. 15,000 B.C.
Width of the panel, 285 cm.
The Sorcerer is above the red mark.
Original drawing by Abbé Henri Breuil;
reproduced from: A. Sieveking, The Cave Artists.




The Sorcerer of Les Trois Frères cave, ca. 15,000 B.C.
Original drawing by Abbé Henri Breuil;
enlarged reproduction from: A. Leroi-Gourhan, The Dawn of European Art, Cambridge, 1982.


Man discovered how to create musical instruments from what he had found in nature: animal bones, horns, animal gut, skin and hair, willow bark, tortoise-shell, wood, hide and horn; and from whatever utensils and raw materials they were using – bow, arrow, iron, bronze, stone, clay and limestone, copper, ivory (mamoth or elephant), lapis lazuli, gems, silver, and gold.

By observing and copying the objects of daily life man shaped his primary musical instrument as a bow, a boat-ship, a spoon-spade, a crescent or a triangle, beginning with a very primitive form of the harp with four strings to more developed, lavishly carved and gold covered harps with eleven, twenty or more strings.

Early man, certainly intrigued by the pleasant twang of his bow, quickly discovered that the sound varied with the length of the bow's string; the shorter strings producing the higher tones and the longer strings the lower tones.

According to theory, the harp was born when the sound emitted by the stretched and vibrating string of an arrow-shooting bow, was heard. Whether it was a hunter's bow or a warrior's bow makes no difference. Most of all, it was the sound, the music, that mattered. However, so many conflicting stories about the origin of the harp exist that by no means can we establish positively where or when the first harp made its appearance.


The Harp in Ancient Times

The ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt are credited for introducing the harp, known to date from about 5,000 years ago.

Sculpted into the monuments of ancient Thebes, wall paintings of the harps, fashioned like the bent bows of archers, may be seen as the most ancient examples of the harp. The picture below, preserved at the British Museum, shows the finest example of an arched wooden harp. This harp found in the tomb of Thauenany, called Any, in a private cemetery at Qurna (Western Thebes), at the Valley of the Nobles in the necropolis of Sheikh Abd el-Qurna, from XVIII Dynasty, c.1534-1296 B.C.




Arched Egyptian harp made of wood, inlaid with bone and faience.
From the tomb of Thauenany (Any), Western Thebes,
The Tombs of the Nobles, New Kingdom, XVIII Dynasty, 1534-1296 B.C.
British Museum, London.


The ancient musicians tested and developed their own modifications in early Mesopotamian and Egyptian musical mode systems as they accompanied religious feasts, funeral lamentations, grandiose processions and festivities.

The illustration below shows a fragment of a banquet scene depicted on the wall painting from the tomb of Amenemhab, a young companion of the Pharaoh Tuthmosis III. The musicians playing two large harps, double-pipe (reed), and the lute are giving their service to the priest carrying the shrine of Amon, the god of Thebes, under the imperial splendour of Ramses II (1304-1237 B.C.)




The musicians (two harpists, a double-pipe player, and a lute player) from the tomb of Amenemhab at Karnak,
The Valley of the Kings, western rim of Luxor, Western Thebes. New Kingdom, 1552-1069 B.C.
Photo: Jacques Livet; reproduction from: Hassan el-Saady, The Tomb of Amenemhab No. 44 at Qurnah (1997).


The lyres, much popular instruments in Mesopotamia, often named harps, differ from the harps in having fewer strings and in being played mainly with a plectrum; they are divided into "bowl lyres" and "box lyres", with rectangular resonator. They can be traced back ca. 2800 B.C., when they first appeared on the mosaic panel in the now-famous Sumerian artwork, The Standard of Ur.

The ancient Greeks and Romans followed the style of the Egyptians in harps, using them at religious worship and at feasts and as a decorative icon. This said, the lyre and cithara seem to have been preferred and those instruments were of choice in public orations, and in lyric recitations, employed to sustain the voice.

In both Hellenistic and Roman eras the box lyre with a square, flat, wooden resonator was called kithara (in Greek) or cithara (in Latin), and was an instrument of professional players, the kitharoedes, who participated in many musical contests. The bowl lyre, with tortoise-shell resonator, according to the Greek tradition, came from Thrace, and was an instrument of amateurs, not used during Roman times. The classical lyres of Greece were attributes of Apollo and the Muses – the sources of inspiration for all the arts. Earliest representations of the lyre are found on vase paintings around 1200-800 B.C. The picture shown below, painted on the interior of a white kylix found in Delphi, comes from the Early Classical period ca. 470-450 B.C., and was executed in the painter Sotades' workshop. It shows the seated Apollo with a laurel crown on his head, playing the lyre and offering a libation from a phiale, a gesture symbolizing the participation of gods in the banquet. The bird may be Apollo's sacred raven, the Nyx – the Goddess of the Night, or a wild dove, like those that came to roost in Apollo's sanctuary in Delphi.




Apollo offering libation.
Interior of a white kylix found at Delphi.
Workshop of Sotades, ca. 470-450 B.C.
The Archaeological Museum, Delphi, Greece.
Reproduced from: Manolis Andronicos, Delphi (1976).


In the 2nd century B.C., at the return of the Druids (who emerged from the ancient Celtic tribes), the harp continued to flourish until the advent of Christianity, marked by destruction of the pagan temple of Alexandria in 391 A.D., during the reign of Theodosius I. The main sources about the Druids are the writings of Roman historians (Tacitus, Diogenes, and Posidonius), and the archaeological remains (such as the Stonehenge Altar – Island Magée, attributed by some to the Druids), and also the mythological literature recorded by monks in the 8th through 12th centuries. The Celtic Druids, drawn from the Indo-European cultures were an intellectual class comprising philosophers, historians, physicians, magicians, priests and priestesses, who would have sat in the depths of the woods by the lights of the fire and with the sound of the harp they would have dreamed magic for their people.


The Harp in the Middle Ages and Later

During the foundation period of Christianity around 400 A.D., the superior clergy, it is stated, were generally performers on the harp, which instrument they carried from place to place for use during religious services.

At the beginning of 12th century, for some unknown reasons, the harp was relegated to the hands of laymen and gradually disappeared from the precincts of the church. In the meantime minstrels and jongleurs, troubadours and trouvères, wandering seminarists and clergymen disguised as musicians carried harp through the towns and countries singing pastorals, canticles, ballads, and composing love poems. Their activities often inspired gifted members of the nobility, the households of chieftains and feudal lords, palaces, castles, courts, and kings and queens, such as Richard the Lion Heart, King Arthur of Bretons, and Henry VIII of England, Mary Queen of Scots, and Brian Boroimhe of Ireland.




The Harpist and the Lute Player in a domestic setting, ca. 1490.
(The illustration shows a slender gothic style harp.)
Copperplate by Flemish engraver Israhel van Meckenem, the Younger (1450-1503); 165 x 117 mm.
The Metropolitan Museum of Arts, New York, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1927.


The oldest known medieval harps from the British Isles survive till today. They are two instruments in the form of a triangle with 29-30 wire-strings. The High King of Ireland Brian Boroimhe, who died in 1014, following his defeat of the Vikings, became traditionally associated with the harp, even though he probably never touched the harp. The so-called Brian Boru Harp was made at a workshop in Scotland between 14th and 15th century, and became a national symbol of Ireland. It is preserved in the Library at Trinity College in Dublin. The Irish Flag carries an image of the Brian Boru Harp. The latter is also depicted on coins and all Irish government's official documents.




The Brian Boru Harp, 14th – 15th century.
Library of the Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.


Mary Stuart (1542-1587), Queen of Scots, daughter of James V Stuart and Marie de Guise Lorraine, at the age of six arrived in France with her ladies-in-waiting: Mary Seton, Mary Beaton, Mary Livingstone, and Mary Fleming (the four Mary's). She received an excellent education at the French Court of Henri II de Valois. With Elisabeth, her companion, (a daughter of Henri II and Catherine de'Medici, later known as Ysabel Felipe, Queen Consort of Philip II, King of Spain), Mary Stuart learnt to play the harp, lute, zithern and virginal, to write poetry, to knit in wools and sew in silk, and what she loved most, to embroider. She was taught the new Italian style of handwriting and she signed her name in French as Marie Stuart, instead of Mary Stewart in Scottish.

Queen Mary Stuart, traditionally associated with the harp, perhaps played the instrument shown below, now restored and preserved at the Museum of Anitiquities in Edinburgh. This harp, dated 16th century, similar in design to the Brian Boru Harp of Ireland, is ornamented with gems and has a geometric relief carving on its column.




The Queen Mary Harp, 16th century.
Museum of Anitiquities, National Museum, Edinburgh, Scotland.


Henry VIII (1491-1547), King of England, was well known to have played the harp. Preserved at the British Museum, the King's Psalter from the late 16th century, created probably after the death of Henry VIII, shows the King playing the harp in the company of the royal jester Will Somers.




King Henry VIII playing a harp in the company of the royal jester Will Somers.
From the King's Psalter, 16th century.
British Museum, London.


With the coming of the great composers of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, it was seen that the small medieval harp was not up to the requirements of advancing musical art. Numerous attempts were made by French and German harp makers to build a harp able to produce harmonic scales, instead of diatonic requiring continual retuning of the harp to the key of the piece to be played. In 1772, the invention of the first pedal harp with simple-action came through the efforts of several members of the Hochbrücker family. The simple-action mechanism raised the pitch of each string of the harp by a half-tone. About the same time, in Warsaw, Charles Groell (1770-1857), a musician, brought his idea to build a harp with the pedal mechanism of double-action to the attention of Polish Count Michal Kazimierz Oginski (1728-1800). Through the years, Oginski, great art protector and music lover, also tried to improve the harp mechanism, and he was the "first to think about adding pedals to the harp" (Wojciech Sowinski, cited in the Encyclopedia Méthodique). But times were out of joint, and the opportunities of the two Polish inventors suffered under the strains of war and the partitions of Poland. Charles Groell sold his patent to Sébastien Erard, a French piano and harp maker for (depending on the source of information) 10,000, or even 30,000 Polish red zlotys in cash.

Curiously, the note in The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, edited in London (1964) by P.A. Scholes indicates that, in 1788, in Paris, an unknown musical mechanic by the name of Rouelle ceded his rights to the double-action harp to the same Sébastien Erard. For the two names, Rouelle and Groell, sound so close, they may have referred to the same person.

During the centuries the harp underwent many transformations until has achieved its present-day refinement as an an approximately triangular form of singular beauty with 47 strings and a mechanism of seven double-action pedals to raise or lower the pitch by two semitones; finally patented by Sébastien Erard in Paris, around 1815.

A current model of the Grand Concert Harp; in gold, crafted
in Chicago by Lyon & Healy.


The Origins of Poland

At the time of Sumeria, considered as "the cradle of civilization", when the cuneiform script writings first recorded history, the Central European plateau held the earliest nomadic settlements, including those of pre-Slavic origin within today's Polish territory.

The Slavs, who settled north of the Black Sea, were closely associated with the Persians, and were descendents of Indo-European tribes. About 2,000 B.C. they invaded and populated Eastern Europe and, in the centuries that followed, became themselves the target of raids by Scythian and Sarmatian tribes from the East, as well as Celtic and Germanic ones from the West. The great destruction inflicted by the invaders was shortly replaced by new settlements and the assimilation with the indigenous inhabitants proceeded. Those invasions brought new developments in trade, social, and cultural life. The earliest traces of the so called Amber Road, a trade route linking the Baltic Sea with the Mediterranean Basin, date back to the 5th century B.C.

In the Dark Ages, particularly between 5th and 7th centuries A.D., the Slavs migrated west, south and east, and became increasingly differentiated as they expanded into new territories.

Around 800 A.D., the West Slavic tribes, known as Polanie, or Polianie ("People of the Plain") built their settlements between the Vistula and the Oder Rivers, within the current boundaries of Poland. (The East Slavs inhabited European Russia while the South Slavs settled in the Balkan Peninsula).

The newly established Polish state converted to Christianity in 966 under the reign of the Prince Mesko I, who became the first recorded in history Polish ruler of the Piast Dynasty.


The Origins of the Harp in Poland

The origins of the harp in Poland are shaded in obscurity. Even though, the most accepted theory is, that the Arabs, as they invaded Spain, brought with them all sorts of musical instruments, including small stringed instruments, mainly shaped like a harp-lyre. There is no proof, but there is a distinct possibility that the harp arrived in Poland from the Middle East, via the Moorish Spain. It could have spread throughout Western and Central Europe along the trade routes, through missionaries, travelers, pilgrims, and by numerous warriors carrying musical instruments along with their weapons.


* * *

In 965, an Arabic Jew from Tortosa in Spain, the merchant Ibrahim-Ibn-Jacob, on behalf of the Khalif of Cordoba, arrived on a diplomatic visit to the court of the Emperor Otto I and thence he traveled to Saxony, Prague, and possibly to Cracow. An account of his travels was compiled in Les Routes et les Environs by Abu Obaida al-Bekri (1040-1095). The author noted that stringed instruments played in Poland were similar to those from East, and resembled the oriental lyre or lute.



King David's Harp in Europe

King David, believed to be the author of the Psalms, is the best-known and favourite Biblical hero. He was a warrior, poet, singer, and arch competitor. He is often mentioned to have played a harp, and is considered to have been a great musician of the time. His story is told in the Bible in The First and Second Books of Samuel.

It is noteworthy that the first translation of the Bible from Latin into Polish by Father Jakub Wujek, published in 1599, used the word gesle (or its diminutive gesliczki) to describe King David's harp.


* * *


The Harp in Irish Mythology

A compelling tale about King David's Harp, being part of the Irish and Highland Scot mythology, also included in ancient historical records of Ireland, might explain the transition of the harp from the South to the North, where legends, myths, and fantastic sagas abound and interweave.

According to some sources, in 583 B.C. the Prophet Jeremiah, known in Gaelic history as Ollamh Fodhla – Wise Teacher, began his journey to the British Isles to establish the Davidic Throne of Israel, after the fall of Jerusalem into Babylonian captivity of King Nabuchadnezzar (586 B.C.). He brought with him Princess Tea Tephi, daughter of Zedekiach, the King of The House of Judah. The Prophet and the Princess were accompanied by a servant of theirs, the biblical scribe of the Jeremiah Book, B'ruch, who came to be known as the Prophet Baruch. From the land of Israel they went to Egypt, where Tea Tephi became an Egyptian Princess. Later on, they sailed via Gibraltar to Ireland aboard the ship the Iberian Danaan. The distinguishingly equipped armada, carried a legendary stone called Lia Fail – The Stone of Destiny, known as Jacob's Pillar. Other extraordinary possessions included the Princess' harp, later known as David's Harp, and the holiest object of all – The Ark of The Covenant – the symbol of the Bible with the Ten Commandments.

The day after the journey, Tea Tephi was taken to Cathair Crofinn, known as The Hill of Tara, where she married the High-King of Tara, Eochaidh, who descended from the line of Judah, known also as Heremon (or Herman), the King of Ireland. They exchanged their marriage vows over the Lia Fail Stone and Tea Tephi received the name Tamar Tephi, the Palm Beautiful. Tephi and Eochaidh had four children. After her death on August 1, 534 B.C., her son Aengus became the King of Ireland. She was buried in a secret tomb at Tara's Hill along with David's Harp (also called The Harp of Tara) and with The Ark of The Covenant, of which the legend persists that it is now hidden in the Western Wall under the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, or in the Ethiopian town of Axum, or in Egypt. The mystery of the lost Ark continues to fascinate many to this very day...        

Antoine-Auguste-Ernest Hebert (1817-1908),
The Harp of Tara.


* * *


Putting the legends aside, it is likely that the expansion of Islam from Mecca and Medina in Arabia, through the Persian and Byzantine Empires, Syria, Palestine and Egypt carried the harp from North Africa to Spain around the 8th century. Later, the artistic evidence of the harp appeared in various records throughout Western and Central Europe, as well as in the British Isles.



Harp in Objects of Art

In the middle of the twentieth century, two archaeological discoveries shed light on the projection of the harp from the Crimea Peninsula to the Gulf of Gdansk on the southern Baltic coast.

  1. In 1964, Oscar Thompson, the Editor of The International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians, mentioned a small angular harp found in a heathen tomb in the Crimea, dated ca. 7th century.

  2. More importantly, in 1949, in the city of Gdansk in Poland, a wooden five-stringed musical instrument, dated ca. 12th century, and denoted in Gaelic as cruit (crwth), or chrotta (rota, rotte) was excavated. This primitively shaped instrument was made of the stem of an elderberry tree (sambuca nigra).

In Polish language instruments similar to chrotta/cruit were called gesle, while in other Slavic languages they were known as gusli, guslica, husle. The gesle resembled a little fiddle played with a bow, called sometimes rebec; over the centuries they kept changing their names and shapes.

In Latin gesle were called sambuca; in Greek sambyke became a horizontal angular harp. In 14th century sambuca was compared to cruit – a triangular lyre, but recently it was classified by a music scholar, Carl Sachs, as an early triangular harp. The cruit was also known as cithara, or cythara (in Latin) and as kithara (in Greek). The cruit was occasionally named hurdy-gurdy.

One of the masterpiece representation of hurdy-gurdy is an oil painting by French painter George de la Tour (1593-1653) which portrays an old and blind hurdy-gurdy player with the medieval style instrument.




Georges de la Tour:   The Hurdy-Gurdy Player, 1631-1636,
oil in canvas, 162 x 105 cm.
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes, France.


An earlier representation of hurdy-gurdy (in the style of master-player Marcello Bono) is shown in the allegorical painting The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516). This large instrument, along with the meticulously depicted medieval harp and lute, is a detal of the Hell's panel, where the souls of the dead, who degraded their art, are being tormented in hell. The small tortured, naked figures, strung on the harp, pierced and crushed between the lute and hurdy-gurdy, are the sinners of making falsely divine or deceptively erotic music. Condemned to eternal punishment they were tempted by the pernicious pleasures of secular music, which could lead to lecherous behaviour. Bosch's inclusion of the harp, lute and hurdy-gurdy into the musical's inferno does not represent his judgement upon these instruments, but rather upon music in general. Bosch and his contemporaries viewed music as sinful, and associated it with other sins of flesh and spirit.




Hieronymus Bosch: The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych, 1504-1510,
detail of Hell on the right outside wing
(musical instruments: lute, harp, and hurdy-gurdy);
oil on panel, 195 x 220 cm (total).
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid   (from 1593 to 1939 in Escorial).



King David's Harp – kinnor or nevel

The traditional association of King David with the harp – his attributed instrument – began in 12th century medieval Europe. The theologians of the Holy Scripture strongly supported and cultivated the message that David was the one being able to reveal God's Eternal Word. Young shepherd David, into whose tribe Jesus was to be born, used to play the harp to soothe King Saul, when the evil sprit came upon him because of disobedience to God. David was anointed by the Prophet Samuel as the Second King of Israel, and was chosen by God to be the Shepherd of His people. He transferred The Ark of The Covenant to Jerusalem, and placed it in the Western Room of the First Holy Temple, called The Most Holy Place – Holy of Holies, where it is believed to have remained hidden till today.

King David's many-faceted persona has inspired generations of faithful, as well as artists. In the Middle Ages he became a central figure in the literary and pictorial arts having often been portrayed with harp and/or various musical instruments. In The Book of Psalms, David's harp is described as kinnor or nevel. The word kinnor, translated harp in the Psalms, is derived from a root-word meaning "to twang". The word nevel, translated harp in the Psalms, is the lyre or psaltery or psalterion (in Greek), derives from a Greek root-word meaning vase, or bottle-shaped. In modern Hebrew nevel means harp. The strongest evidence of David's harp – Kinnor of David – are the ancient silver coins from the Second Temple era, known as For the Freedom of Jerusalem, and used during the revolt of the Jews against the Romans in 132-135 C.E. led by Simon Bar Kochba.




Silver coin (shakel) with Kinnor of David.
A Simon Bar Kochba's coin For the Freedom of Jerusalem, ca. 132-135 C.E.




King David's Harp in Two Polish Historical Records

  1. The parchment miniature from the Plock Biblia (1148)

    The earliest historical record in Poland of King David's Harp, dated 1148, is found in an extant parchment, a miniature from the manuscript of the so called Plock Biblia. Now, it is preserved at the Library of the Clerical Seminary at Plock, in Masovia (Mazowsze), Poland, under catalog no. 211/MS 2. The Plock Bible itself perished in 1944, at the end of World War II.




    Miniature from the Plock Biblia, a parchment, 1148.
    Clockwise from the top: King David, Pythagoras, Jubal, Tubelcain.
    Library of the Clerical Seminary, Plock, Poland; cat. no. 211/MS 2.


    The 12th century parchment, showing four figures dressed in Slavic Piast style. King David, the central figure with crown on his head, sits on the throne and holds on his knees a triangularly shaped string instrument, the psalterium. (The word is thought to have designated a small vertical harp, or the cruit.) This elaborate artwork, in a two-dimensional setting, symbolizes the purpose of music in two very meaningful ways. The upper part, which belongs to the celestial sphere, represents harmonious music, music sacré; the lower part belongs to the terrestrial sphere and represents rhythmical-beat music, music profane. King David, with the divine and harmonic sound of his harp, belongs to the celestial sphere, which can be reached only by prayers. The terrestrial sphere belongs to three figures: Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher and mathematician; Jubal, the biblical inventor of the harp and all musical instruments; and Tubalcain, his peer, an artisan-master in brass and iron. In this sphere, music is symbolized as music of senses, formed by rhythm and melody. Pythagoras, a bell-ringer with seven bells, symbolizes the transmigration of the soul from Earth to Heaven. Jubal, playing panpipes (an instrument of small, graduated in size wooden tubes, also known as syrinx, syringe or panflute), along with Tubelcain, beating an anvil – thus calling for prayer, represent an approbation to the artistic forms of earthly music. This entire instrumentarium can be accepted by the Holy Church providing it serves religious purposes.

  2. The tympanum Portal Davidowy at Trzebnica (1218-1230)

    One of the masterpieces of architecture in Poland, and indeed in Central Europe, influenced by the art of the courts of France, and art provençal, in particular, is the tympanum Portal Davidowy at the Basilica in Trzebnica in Lower Silesia, built 1218-1230. This original and beautiful bas-relief is the oldest representation of musical instrument carved in sandstone. It portrays two sitting figures: King David and Queen Bethsheba, his wife; the person standing next to the royal couple being a maid-servant. King David with his right hand plucks the strings of a North-European lyre while his left hand touches the lyre across the sound hole. This instrument, initially painted black, has a large body with two arms extending from it. The soundboard has two sound holes cut in the shape of the letter "D". The sculpture of King David and Queen Bethsheba symbolizes the great founders of the Silesian Abbey, Duke Henry I the Bearded and Duchess Hedwig. The young Bavarian princess, Hedwig, daughter of Berthold IV Count of Andechs, came to Poland to marry the dashing monarch, Henry I. The basilica and the adjacent cloister of the nuns of Cistercian Order were founded by King Henry and Queen Hedwig. The queen spent the last years of her life at the Trzebnica monastery. Since she was canonized in 1267, she came to be venerated as Saint Hedwig of Silesia. The tympanum Portal Davidowy, once painted in blue, green and purple, remained concealed for centuries. It was exposed for a public viewing by a German art scholar and conservator Alfred Zinkler in 1935.




    Tympanum Portal Davidowy, 1218-1230.
    Basilica, Trzebnica, Lower Silesia, Poland.




    Tympanum Portal Davidowy, 1218-1230.
    Basilica, Trzebnica, Lower Silesia, Poland.
    (Photo: Janina Osses-Frei, 1995)


Closing Comments

The iconography of musical instruments in Poland is closely related to the usage of fine arts, figurative sculpture, literature, poetry, miniature drawings, and paintings in Western Europe. The harp, making its way into the Celtic North – Ireland, Scotland and Wales, was an instrument small in size, easy to carry, with four to eleven strings, and easier to tune, than the lyre inherited from ancient Greece. The more developed Gaelic harp called clarsach came to Poland from the British Isles and Scandinavia along with the triangularly shaped psalterium with five, ten, or thirty strings. The medieval angular harp in Persia was called chang or arpa; the harp in Arabic is called oud; although oud is more like a lute and derives its name from the Arabic word al'ud, meaning wood; however the name arfa is generally the word of choice among the Arabs. The psaltery, a plucked zither, which could be also struck with mallets, is Persian, though its name derives from Greek psalterion.

The same instrument is denoted by two names – psaltery or psalterion. It is also known under a third name – psalterium. St. Jerome (340-420) in his translation of the Holy Scripture (383-405), accepted by the Church at the Trent Council as the only authentic one, the so-called Vulgata, translated David's nevel (which probably is of Egyptian origin) as psalterium.

The primitive harp from the lyre family played in Poland came from the Orient, disseminated by the Arabs and the Crusaders. The harps were most likely transported along the Vistula and Warthe Rivers and across the Baltic Sea.

The word harpa (harp) was invented, or developed from older roots by the Teutons; it is not yet clear to what instruments they gave the name harp, for although they invented the word, they did not invent the instrument. From that time on, the old Germanic word harfe proliferated, infiltrating the roots of a great many other languages. Harp, in old Polish was spelled arfa; from 16th to 19th century it was spelled arpa; at by the turn of the previous century as harfa due to the Germanicized guttural "h".

According to some myths, the Harp of David – a kinnor or nevel – was brought to the Irish shores and Scottish Highlands by the last princess of one of Israel's lost tribes, named Tea Tephi.

In the literary and artistic works the authors portrayed King David with many different stringed instruments such a lyre, kithara, lute, psalterium, rebec, chrotta or gesle, and they often employed all these terms interchangeably while describing King David's Biblical harp.




Miniature King David with musical instruments: harp, rebec, psaltery, 1360-1370.
Master Jean de Mandeville, Paris.
Tempera colours, gold leaf and gold paint on parchment.
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA.



Note on a New Theory

In the January 1999 issue of the International Magazine HARPA, published in Switzerland by Rudolf Frick, the section "Harpa News" carried a surprising note entitled: "The End of the Legend of David's Harp". Here is a summary, quoted with the Editor's permission:

During the winter semester 1998-1999, Professor Joachim Braun, historian from the Bar-Ilan University in Israel, the leading expert on Biblical musical instruments, and the author of Music in Ancient Israel and Palestine gave a series of lectures on the music in the Bible at the Theological College of the University of Lucerne. According to him, in recent years new disciplines and methods have emerged, in particular music-archaeology, which have proven productive in Israel, where to date approximately seven hundred musical finds have been unearthed. It can now be shown with much certainty that David's kinnor, considered to be a harp... was not a harp. The harp was put into David's hands only some two thousand years later. Since the Middle Ages, this prolific error has led to thousands of illustrations in which David's harp is depicted. But also the other Biblical stringed instrument, the nevel, considered to have been a lyre or a harp... was not a harp. Thus, in all probability, there was no harp at all in the Biblical Israel.




Marc Chagall: David with Harp
colour litograph, 1956.
Chagall Museum, Vitebsk, Bielarus.


And so, the legend of the harp continues...






Liliana Osses Adams		 Harp and harp related stories have been the subject of pictorial and literary art in Europe over the centuries. In Poland, throughout her tumultuous history, the harp, entrenched in legends, eposes, and fantastic tales, inspired artists, poets, painters and wandering storytellers.

The twang of the hunter's bow, so intriguing to ancient man, still casts its spell, and this is perhaps the most compelling characteristic of the harp. Although the modern concert harp is such a far cry from the primitive bow harp, both instruments, in very similar manner, are given life only when human fingers touch their strings.

My forthcoming notes will dwell on these themes as well as on the harp in antiquity, i.e. in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.


© 2004   Liliana Osses Adams
California, February 2004


Biographical note on the author




Articles and poems by Liliana Osses Adams published in   Zwoje – The Scrolls





Copyright © 1997-2007 Zwoje