Harp

"To maintain bowstrings in direct contact with fingers and the harmonic box with the performer body and heart turns harp into an ideal instrument to express most private feelings. Because of these features it was considered a very valuable instrument in the Romanticism, in a professional level as much as in the domestic one.

Pedal introduction in harp construction, as a reply of new music tonal requirements, was dated in the second half of the XVIII century. Pedals let modify the height of bowstrings notes without hands intervention. This innovation matched harp tones and polyphonic possibilities with the ones of the keyboard instruments.

In the year 1810 Érard brothers family company, founded in Paris in the year 1768, registered a patent of a new seven pedals harp model, replacing the old beaks by disc mechanism with gyratory forks, which you can see in current harps. The harp preserved in Can Llopis music hall, present Romantic museum of Sitges, corresponds to this seven pedals harp model."