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Up to the 14th Century
- Began as an aristocratic art
- Patrons hired harpers
Old Irish/Bardic Harp
- Wire Strung
- No dance tunes
- Only 1 key
- Lots of ornamentation and dynamics
- Bell-like sound
- Played with fingernails
After 14th Century
- English discouraged from adopting Irish culture
- Harping went into decline
Turlough O’Carolan
- Blind itinerant harper
- Last of the great harper composers
- Music combined traditional and classical music
- Poems set to pieces (Gracie Nugent)
- Wrote planxties in honour of people “Planxty Irwin”
- “Carolan’s Concerto”
1792 Belfast Harp Festival
- Revival of Irish music and poetry and preservation of harping
- Only ten Irish harpers and 1 Welsh harper
- Hundreds of tunes collected by Edward Bunting
- Tunes preserved for future generations
Modern/Neo Irish Harp
- Levers make change in pitch possible – all keys possible
- Played with fingertips
- Nylon strings
- Mellow tone
- New techniques – Paul Dooley and Maire Ní Chathasaigh
