Issue 42: Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By Medulla Vesuvius

“…Wounds My Harp with a Monotonous Languor”

Dear Readers, do you ever take the time to stop and think about the possibility that the universe and the people and events contained therein are converging in a suspiciously meaningful way in your own tiny life?

I don’t.

But I do find it amusing that within the last couple of months I have found myself engaged in conversation with someone about the harpsichord. And in both cases, the other person has deferred to me as if I was some kind of expert. I don’t know where they got that idea. I’ve never even played one before. But I do know a little about it. The one common question people have is- “what’s the difference between the harpsichord and the piano?”

“Why, it’s the method of tone production of course, you nit,” I say in my best academic voice. You see, both instruments have long strings stretched over a resonating sounding board, but they are very different in how they get those strings to start vibrating. Essentially, pianos have a complicated mechanism for hammering the strings, whereas the harpsichord plucks the strings, kind of like having a few dozen guitar players, picks in hand, scrunched-up in a wooden box.

The differences in sound are quite pronounced. Compared to the piano, notes on the harpsichord are quieter and have very little sustain. The “attack” of the sound is the thing with the harpsichord, whereas the piano is able to play all kinds of different volumes and lengths of notes. But philosophically, it’s really the difference between clinical properness and wild-man Romanticism, which is appropriate, since the musics employing these instruments developed more wildness and “emotionalism” as the development of the piano followed that of the harpsichord. Just as the early Baroque and early Classical individual was dissuaded from expressing the unspeakable visions and longings of the heart in favor of rational control of the body and mind, the Romanticist felt a newfound freedom to discuss the full spectrum of being human from quiet reverence to “Song of Myself” Whitman-esque self expression, so the embrace of dynamism.

But this article isn’t about the harpsichord comparative philosophy. Rather, it’s about the word “harp.” I don’t know if the harpsichord was named from the plucking motion used to make noise with it. If so, it could just as easily have been called the guitarichord. But I do know this: there are all kinds of instruments referred to as a “harp.”

First of all, there is the harp harp. In my opinion it’s one of the sexiest of all orchestral instruments, (besides maybe the cello. Think about the posture one assumes while playing that instrument.) The harp is a beautiful looking instrument-curvaceous, the strings gradually making their way from tiny and high-pitched to long and booming. There is an elegant “rightness” to its conception. (A rightness that costs you quite a bit of money, I might add. I recently met a guy whose wife plays the harp for our local orchestra and her instrument cost more than the car they transport it around in.) Not to mention the sound. I maintain that if I were to ever become an eccentric billionaire I would hire a harpist to gently wake me up in the mornings with a tranquil pastorale.

But there are other “harps” out there. Autoharp, anyone? (Think Mickey in A Mighty Wind. Or my second grade music teacher.) This is a rather simple instrument to play, as all of the buttons are labeled with the chord that they form. For all you rock band readers, I implore you to please find a way to incorporate this instrument in your music. I suspect Andrew Bird is already working on it…

In my research for this article I also discovered the existence of an instrument called the Aeolian harp, (also known as the “wind harp.”) This, my friends, is a fabulous idea! Basically, it’s a group of strings that play random harmonics whenever the wind blows, kind of like wind chimes. They’ve been around for hundreds of years, yet the idea of randomness and drones in music is still very avant-garde. (Continuing on in my make-believe scenario of myself as eccentric billionaire, I would also own a cottage in the fields of Scotland with nary a neighbor for miles around and I would have a giant wind harp right smack dab in the middle of my property, randomly espousing beautiful music from the breeze.)

But if nature is the performer, is the result really random? While that question blows your mind, read what Samuel Coleridge had to say in 1795 in his poem The Aeolian Harp:

And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic Harps diversly fram’d.

That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps

Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze

At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

On the opposite end from the pastoral sounds of the Aeolian Harp, I remember the sound of the Jew’s harp, also known as the “Mouth harp,” or “Jaw harp.” It’s another simple idea, you strike a piece of metal and your mouth serves as a resonating chamber. (Think: a group of nabobs on the front porch playing jug band music. This is the instrument that sounds like a rubber band.) I learned how to play this instrument in about fifteen minutes and have found it completely useless in wooing the ladies. Yet, there is a certain rusticness to the sound. The charming sound of simple fun. Or I could be full of crap.

Now is the point in this essay where things get confusing. Up until now, all of the “harps” have involved strings vibrating, (or at least a thin, metal strip.) For some reason there is also the tradition of calling the harmonica a “harp,” as in “Boy, Dan Akroyd sure plays a mean blues harp.” What the connection is I don’t know. If anyone out there can enlighten me, please do.

There is also the Greek mythological creature that is half woman, half bird—known as the “harpy.”

And finally I come to the ARP synthesizer, which has nothing to do with harps, really, except for three common letters. The company’s name is merely the initials of its inventor Alan Robert Pearlman. Yet the history of music would be drastically different had the ARP Odyssey and 2600 never come along. Contemporary with the development of the Moog synths, these can be famously heard on The Who’s album Who’s Next and Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein”, as well as on songs by Genesis, Pink Floyd and Stevie Wonder. Even more famously, an ARP serves as the method by which earthlings first communicate with extraterrestrials in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Therefore, such an awesome instrument demands inclusion with a list of instruments as affecting and beautiful as the “mouth harp,” no?

That sums up what I’ve been thinking about today. Stay classy, Nerd City and thanks for stopping by.