Producing Sound

All over the world for thousands of years folk have been investigating methods for producing sounds which will formulate music. According to Vos (Making Musical Instruments: Experiments in Science and Technology, 1997, Greenwood, W.A., Ready-Ed Publications), one of the oldest string instruments is the simple musical bow played by a smaller bow, plucked by hand or tapped with a twig. Still utilised today in South America and Africa, lutes, lyres, harps, zithers, pianos and guitars employ varying ways of arranging the strings for plucking or tapping.

In Musical Instruments Through the Ages (1961, London, Cox and Wyman) Baines states that, in “contrast to zithers, harps are instruments with a neck and with the strings arranged in a plane which is perpendicular to the sound-board”. It is because of this detail that the primitive ground bow may be labelled a “harp”. An early illustration of a harp appears on a fragment of a Sumerian vase, dated approximately 3000 B.C. The vase shows an arched or “bow” harp.

Here is a sad account of the 2003 ransacking of some precious musical artefacts from Mesopotamian days (retrieved from http://drakenberg.weebly.com/ur.html ).

“In April, 2003, after a 48-hour long rampage and plunder at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, many priceless artifacts of Mesopotamian culture were stolen, badly damaged or disappeared, perhaps forever. Among the lost treasures are Sumerian harps and lyres. Some elements of the musical instruments, like silver plating and inlays of gems, ivory and mother-of-pearl have been stripped off. The solid gold head of a bull was stolen.”

Now for the good news :  “Fortunately, thanks to museum practices and archaeologists' foresight, hundreds of relics from ancient Sumeria had been previously distributed worldwide, following excavation by a British-American team. After more than forty-eight centuries, the world received not only a glimpse of the past, but many exact replicas of the best golden objects, including several harps and lyres. The man to whom we owe all of this is Sir Leonard Woolley.”

Sir Leonard Woolley holding a triangular frame from an excavated Sumerian harp, 1920s. (Plaster cast.)
Such a frame is an archetype for the more developed medieval and modern framed harps.

                   

     

                       

                         

                        

                         

                                                  

                        

    

                       

                       

          How it Sounds : When holding the back of the harp up near one’s ear when playing it, the notes seem warmer and richer. Supporting the harp on a table with a block of wood at one end creates a stronger sound. It is fun to place a microphone on the wood near the strings and pluck the harp.

Here is some unusual Harp music played on an instrument called a Bolon Batu. This is a four string bridge large gourd harp (harp lute) used in the Senegambian/Guinea region. It is a folk instrument used for dancing, singing and is sometimes played with other instruments like Balafons and Tam-Tam drums. This video shows the songster Souleymane Camara from Guinnee Conakry.

Great Lyre.
Sumerian, 2,750 B.C. (Restored).
University of Pennsylvania Museum, Philadelphia, PA