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Photo: ENCYCLOPEDIE DE DIDEROT, Paris, Le Breton, 1751-1772

 

HARP 1750-1790

The newly invented pedal harp (la harpe à crochets) had its golden age in Paris in 1750-1790. This instrument was popular both in the professional and domestic music making. There were regularly harp soloists in Concert spirituel (the concert series in Tuileries) and Concert des Amateurs and the harp was included in the various opera, theatre and vaudeville performances. There were also chamber music concerts in the famous salons held by noble ladies, the masonic lodges and the occultic events. The majority of the professional harp players and composers were men, although there were also many women playing the harp as amateurs with both aristocratic and bourgeois background.

During the 1780's only in Paris there were as many as 46 harp teachers and many harp builders (Naderman, Cousineau, Holtzman, Louvet, Saunier, Renault et Chatelain) as well as some 50 new harp pieces published in a year.

The harp had seven pedals, each of them raising the pitch of a string a semi-tone. The gauge was in general much lower than in the modern concert harp and the pitch varied from 415 to 430 Hz. The general tuning for the harp was E flat major and it was possible to play in the five major and three minor keys plus there was also a general habit of manually lowering the D string to D flat and thus achieving A flat major.

The interesting original harp litterature of the period consists of sonatas, concertos, chamber music, solo variations and accompagnement pieces.

Some harpists (hp) and harp composers (c) from the late 18th century Paris:

Jean-Baptiste Krumpholtz (1747-1790): hp, c
Anne-Marie Steckler (c.1766-1813): hp, c
Jean-Baptiste Cardon (1760-1803): hp, c
François Petrini (1740-1820): hp, c
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis (1746-1830): hp, c
Philippe-Jacques Meyer (1737-1819): hp, c
Georg Adam Gaiffre (Goepffert) (c.1727-c.1809): hp
Jean-Baptiste Hochbrucker (1733-1812): hp, c
Jacques-Georges Cousineau (1760-1836): hp, c
Jean Baur (c.1719- after1773): hp, c
Louis-Charles Ragué (1744-1793): c
Marie Elisabeth Duverger-Cléry (1761-c.1809): hp, c
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799): hp, c
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778): c
François-Joseph Gossec (1734-1829): c
André Ernest Modeste Grétry (1741-1813): c
Wolfgang Amadé Mozart (1756-1791): c
Christoph Willibald Gluck (1714-1787): c
Johann Christian Bach (1735-1782): c
François-Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834): c
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790): hp
Maria Hadfield Cosway (1760-1838): hp, c
Marie Antoinette (1755-1793): hp
Madame Victoire (1733-1799): hp
Louise Marie Thérèse Bathilde d'Orléans (1750-1822): hp, c
Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763-1814): hp
Juliette Récamier (1777-1849): hp
Maximilien Gardel (1741-1787): hp,c
François Nicolas Racine de Monville (1734-1797): hp,c
Marie-Justine Favart (1727-1772): hp
Amélie Julie Candeille (1767-1834): hp, c
Martin-Pierre Dalvimare (1772-1839): hp, c