Dear colleagues,
I wonder whether anyone might be able to help me to locate the Erard (London) double-action harp numbered 1955, if it still exists, or might have any information about its history after it was sold on 11 February 1824 to a Miss Shearman of 73 Guildford Street, [London]. Students of the Erard ledgers might note that this date is an exception to the prevailing chronological sequence of numbering; the number 1955 would otherwise have been assigned some nine years earlier, in the early months of 1815. The harp had previously been out on loan; it was returned to the maker on 27 February 1821 but as the start of the loan was not recorded, the precise date of manufacture is not known.
I am interested in this double-action instrument because I am investigating an extant single-action Erard harp which is consistently numbered 1955 in the usual places, with no other number or countervailing indication anywhere to be found. This single-action instrument was evidently built as number 1955, with no expectation at the time that the same number would subsequently be assigned to a double. The single numbered 1955 is apparently a prototype or experimental model which, though it escaped formal inclusion in the ledger, must eventually have left the workshop one way or another; its condition attests to a history of use and repair. If it might be of interest, I will prepare a blog post about it. Meanwhile, I'd be very grateful for your help regarding the double-action no. 1955.
Kind regards, Lewis.
This from 10 December 1894 - didn't take as long as I though to locate this entry.
Dear Lewis and Robert,
Please see the below photo taken of the 1892 Morley journal, listing the harps sent to the Royal Aquarium, more or less matching the 1st loan exhibition document on the Morley. website. I'll skim through the 1894 journal when I've a spare hour. With regards to the Erard chid's harp, a journal entry on 7 July 1892 prices them at £30 (around £10-£15 more than a fourchette single-action), Grecians at £40, and Gothics at £65. Incidentally, an actionless child's harp (maker unknown, though probably not Morley at this stage) could be had for £10.
Mike
Dear Robert,
Thank you; 1892 and 1894 would make sense of their being '1st' and 2nd' exhibitions. From the four catalogues I have seen, it is clear that Morley varied the instruments shown, presenting, between [1892] and 1904 a remarkable array of kinds of harp. Taking the exhibitions together, the 'almost complete' claim in the Musical News was, allowing for what would have been known and available in Britain at the time, not too great an exaggeration. If these lists might be of interest to others I will prepare a conspectus.
Best wishes, Lewis.
Dear Lewis,
Morley lent harps to a London exhibition in 1892. I believe this was held at the Royal Aquarium in Westminster. In a notice published in Musical News, vol. 3 (1892), we read that "Mr. Morley, the well-known collector of South Kensington, is exhibiting an almost complete set of harps of all ages." (p. 199). Unfortunately I cannot find any references to specific instruments, but this description seems to correspond to the list you referenced in your last posting.
Best, Robert
Erard partial-double-action harps
Dear Robert and all,
I am placing this under this heading not because it pertains directly to a harp numbered 1955 but because it is consecutive upon Robert’s helpful mentioning (4 Feb 2019, above) of Erard’s partial-double-action harps (made between 1813 and 1827), with two strings in each octave group (D and A) served by double action and five by single action.
Referring to the historical documents made available on the website of Clive Morley harps, I note that in what is described there as the 1st loan exhibition ('an unknown exhibition of stringed instruments') to which Joseph George Morley (1847-1921) loaned instruments for exhibition (http://0035926.netsolhost.com/Documents/1stLoanExhibition.pdf), the last item in the list of harps and related instruments, exhibit no. 123, is described as 'Erard’s child's sized PEDAL HARP, speciality, Single action on five notes, double action on D and A' (p. 28). As no measurements are given, it is not possible to tell which of Erard's three sizes this example was, although the description ‘child’s size’ might suggest the small model or the intermediate one.
The published pdf facsimile of the catalogue, which comprises just the section pertaining to harps and kindred instruments, does not include the title page, nor is the full title of the exhibition given. I have been unable to identify this catalogue among those of late nineteenth-century British loan exhibitions. As the 2nd loan exhibition, an excerpt of whose catalogue is also available (http://0035926.netsolhost.com/Documents/2ndLoanExhibition.pdf) was in 1894, it is implied that the first exhibition was earlier. I wonder whether anyone recognises the first catalogue and can provide particulars of date, organisers, and place of exhibition. Having checked a few accessible catalogues, I can confirm that none of the following are the same:
1. Guide to the loan collection and list of Musical Instruments, Manuscripts, etc. [edited by A. J. Hipkins], International Inventions Exhibition of 1885 (London: W. Clowes & Sons, 1885). This exhibition was held in the Lower Rooms of the Royal Albert Hall.
2. Crystal Palace. International Loan Exhibition of Musical Instruments, July to October, 1900. Official catalogue, with introductory article by Rev. F. W. Galpin... (Sydenham: The Crystal Palace Company, 1900).
3. A Special Loan Exhibition of Musical Instruments, Manuscripts, Books, Portraits, and other mementoes of music and musicians, formed to commemorate the tercentenary of the granting ... of a charter ... to the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 1604 ... June-July 1904 [A catalogue] ([London]: Worshipful Company of Musicians, [1904]).
J. G. Morley loaned several instruments for the second and third of these exhibitions. If the date of the ‘1st loan exhibition’ could be ascertained, it might help to trace the partial-double-action harp loaned the Morley ledgers.
One such harp, in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, is illustrated in Laure Barthel, Au cœur de la harpe au XVIIIème siècle (n.p.: Garnier-François, 2005), p. 138. Not surprisingly for a small instrument, it has 41 rather than the usual 43 strings; the lowest, which has no fourchette, is GG, so the top note is the normal eb''''. As the open ‘A’ and ‘D’ strings were apparently to be tuned a semitone lower than their normal single-action counterparts (this is implied by their sounding lengths in relation to their neighbours), they have a second, gapped row of fourchettes above the main row, which latter corresponds to that of the normal single-action instrument. The first five fourchettes (giving AA, BB, C#, D#, and E, assuming E flat major tuning) are placed near the lower edge of the neck; then, as in the double-action harp, there is an upward step in the line of fourchettes, corresponding to the same E-F transition from overwound to plain gut strings as in the 43-string harp.
Two features except this design from the principle of modular interchangeability of single- and double-action neck mechanisms found in Erard’s harps from about 1814 onwards: (1) the neck, though just wide enough to accommodate two rows of fourchettes, the nut pins, and tuning pins (the AA, D and A tuning pins are necessarily very close to the upper edge), is significantly narrower than that of the fully double-action harp; and (2) in order to achieve a reasonably consistent angle of side-draught from nut pin (arranged in two rows, separated by the linear equivalent of a semitone) to tuning pin, the pattern of spacing of the tuning pins (in a single row, apart from AA, D and A), though rational, is markedly uneven, in a way which would serve the continuous nut line of either the single or normal double action instrument poorly.
PS. Regarding the tuning and intended use of the 'A' and '