{"id":12398,"date":"2019-08-11T16:24:27","date_gmt":"2019-08-11T16:24:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/?post_type=kbe_knowledgebase&p=12398"},"modified":"2019-08-11T16:24:28","modified_gmt":"2019-08-11T16:24:28","slug":"harps","status":"publish","type":"kbe_knowledgebase","link":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/?kbe_knowledgebase=harps","title":{"rendered":"Harps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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If one was\nanyone and I presume we can call our Miss Crawford “A Somebody” in\nLondon given the social circles in which she moved(!) she would ,IMO, have\nowned a harp made by Sebastien Erard, the premier harp manufacturer in London\nin our period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The double\naction pedal mechanism that we know today was first devisedand patented in 1810\nby S\u00e9bastien \u00c9rard who modified the single action pedal mechanism created by\nGeorg Hochbrucker in 1720 in 1794. With such a device each individual note can\nbe raised simultaneously by a semitone,and makes the harp a more flexible\ninstrument to play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

S\u00e9bastien Erard\naws born in Strasbourg 5 April 1752, the fourth son of the church furniture\nmaker Louis-Antoine Erard As S\u00e9bastien Erard was only six years old when his\nfather died, accounts of his having acquired his woodworking skills in his\nfather’s workshop cannot be substantiated. He was, however, brought up within a\ncommunity of skilled artisans, with uncles, cousins, his godfather and older\nbrother all being employed as joiners, cabinetmakers and gilders, for the most\npart in an ecclesiastical context. He may have known and worked with the\nyounger Strasbourg-based members of the Silbermann dynasty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erard most\nprobably arrived in Paris\nin 1768. The Duchesse de Villeroy was an early patron, providing him with\nworkshop premises at her mansion in the rue de Bourbon, and in 1777 he made for\nher an impressive five-octave bichord piano modelled on a Zumpe square. In 1779\nhe built his only known harpsichord, the clavecin m\u00e9canique (now in the Mus\u00e9e\nde la Musique, Paris).\nThereafter he began to exploit the new market for five-octave pianos, so\nsuccessfully overcoming the fashionable aristocratic preference for \u2018pianos\nanglais\u2019 that he was obliged to call on the help of an older brother,\nJean-Baptiste Erard .Together they moved first to 109 rue de Bourbon, and in\nNovember 1781 to 13 rue de Mail, which remained the headquarters of the firm\nuntil its eventual closure. Attempts by the jealously conservative guild of\nParisian luthiers to stem the Erard enterprise in 1784 were overcome by the\npersonal intervention of Louis XVI, who awarded S\u00e9bastien Erard a special\ndispensation dated 5 February 1785.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Royal\ncommissions followed. Erard’s special transposing piano designed for Marie\nAntoinette has not survived, but the instrument he made for her in 1786\u20137 is,\nwithout doubt, the finest extant French 18th-century piano (now in the Cobbe\nCollection, Hatchlands, Surrey). The form and action are exactly those of an\nEnglish square piano, but the cabinet work is of a sophistication not\nencountered on any surviving contemporary English instrument. The brothers\nformed an enormously successful business partnership in January 1788, operating\nhenceforth as Erard Fr\u00e8res, and in January 1791 they became proprietors of the\nrue du Mail premises they had previously rented. Registers for 1788 and 1789\nrecord 254 and 410 pianos respectively.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the\nFrench Revolution dramatically affected sales, and in 1790 only 76 instruments\nwere produced.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

S\u00e9bastien\nErard’s achievements in the improvement of the piano are paralleled by those he\nmade in the construction and mechanism of harps. He does not appear to have\nmade many harps before being obliged to leave revolutionary France for London,\nbut he had already observed in a letter that \u2018the mechanism of this instrument\nis too complicated; I have changed and much simplified it; this means it\ndoesn’t break strings like before. Once I have obtained the right to show my\ndiscovery, I will bring out my harps\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although he\nprobably first visited London as early as 1779 it was not until 1790 or 1791\nthat he finally settled there, founding an establishment at 18 Great\nMarlborough Street in 1792. There he concentrated on the manufacture of harps,\nwhich previously had almost all been imported from France, and it was there too\nthat in November 1794 he acknowledged the first ever British patent for a harp\n(Improvements in Pianofortes and Harps, patent no.2016).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\nstrengthened the neck by laminating the wood with the grain running in the same\ndirection, and his new rounded soundbox replaced the previous staved\nconstruction. The tuning mechanism, instead of being enclosed within the neck,\nwas placed between two brass plates and attached to it, thus giving the\ninstrument additional rigidity. Most remarkable was the new fork mechanism,\nwhich, when engaged by the pedal, brought two forked pins into contact with the\nstrings, thus shortening them the degree of a semitone; the sharpened strings\nremained parallel with the others, causing fewer breakages, and accuracy of\nintonation was greatly improved . The harp was tuned in E, and could be played\nin eight major and five minor keys. Erard introduced his new single-action harp\nto Paris on his return to France in 1795;\nhis first French harp patent, however, dates only from 1798.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In London the harp had\nremarkable success. Sales took off from November 1800, when the Princess of Wales paid \u00a375\n12s. for harp no.357. The decoration, which appears to have been standardized\nearly, comprised a circle of rams’ heads around the capital of the fluted\ncolumn, and the most popular model of harp, as noted in the London Order Books\n(RCM, London), was \u2018noire, bordures etrusques\u2019. The brass plate was engraved\nwith the serial number, address and anglicized form of the maker’s forename.\nBetween 2 February 1807 and 24 April 1809 single-action harps amounting to\n\u00a320,152 14s. 8d. were sold. By September 1810 Erard’s London outlet had sold 1374 harps.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Paris, under the Consulate\n(1799\u20131804), pianos continued to be the firm’s prime concern. Two main models\nof grand piano, still known as forte-pianos en forme de clavecin, were produced\n(with compasses of five and a half, and six octaves respectively), in addition\nto squares. An Erard piano completed in November 1800 was presented to Haydn in\n1801, and in 1803 an almost identical one was given to Beethoven\n(Ober\u00f6sterreichisches Landesmuseum, Linz).\nThese pianos were trichord, equipped with an English mechanism, and, like the\npre-revolutionary ones, had four pedals. The last two movements of Beethoven’s\nConcerto in C minor op.37 were rewritten for this piano, and it also inspired\nthe Waldstein and Appassionata sonatas.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1807\nS\u00e9bastien Erard returned to London\nwhere he spent five years concentrating on developing the harp. By that time\nits only remaining defect was that it lacked adequate means of modulation,\nowing to the single-action mechanism. Although Erard took out several\nsuccessive patents in England\nand France\nbetween 1801 and 1808, it was not until 1810 that he perfected the first\ndouble-action mechanism based on the fork principle (patent no.3332). Tuned in\nC this harp could be played in 15 major keys and 12 minor ones, and with little\nmodification Erard’s principles are still used by modern pedal-harp makers.\n3500 of the 43-string \u2018Grecian\u2019 model, so-called because of its ornamentation,\nwere sold between 1811 and 1820. (See Harp, \u00a7V, 2(ii) for a more detailed\ntechnical description).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the\nmeantime, S\u00e9bastien Erard’s Paris concern was\nseriously compromised by the imposition of trade and industrial restrictions\ndue to the Napoleonic wars, and in 1813 it was declared bankrupt; business was\nallowed to continue, however, and all debts incurred by the Paris\nenterprise were reimbursed by 1824 thanks to the profits made in England.\nDirection of the London\nestablishment from May 1814 until 1829 was taken over by the son of\nJean-Baptiste, Pierre [Orph\u00e9e] Erard (b 10 March 1794; d 15 Aug 1855), who took\nout his own patent for harp improvements in 1822.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Paris, S\u00e9bastien\nsuccessfully subjected his inventions to examination by a Commission drawn\njointly from the Acad\u00e9mie des Sciences and the Acad\u00e9mie des Beaux-Arts in April\n1815. From 1815 to 1820 he worked at combining the expressive touch of the\nEnglish-type escapement action with a more facile repetition, and eventually\nachieved this with his repetition mechanism, for which Pierre took out a London\npatent on 24 October 1822 (see Pianoforte, \u00a7I, 6, fig.20). A seven-octave piano\nwith the new mechanism was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exposition of\n1823, and the 12-year-old Franz Liszt made his sensational Paris d\u00e9but on one\nof Erard’s new instruments, following it up with his first London appearance on\n21 June 1824. Liszt was so impressed by the precision, speed, vigour, clarity\nand sensitivity of touch made possible by the new instrument’s repetitition\naction, that he was inspired to compose his Huit variations op.1, dedicating\nthem to S\u00e9bastien Erard. S\u00e9bastien was made a Chevalier of the L\u00e9gion d’Honneur\nin 1824, and an Officer in 1827.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See:Ann\nGritthis :”Sebastien Erard”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and\nMusicians ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London:\nMacmillan, 2001),<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Royal College of Music has its own Erard harp which was owned by the Duke of Wellingtons family,and the link below takes you to a picture of it and also to more information about Erard and his firm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If one was anyone and I presume we can call our Miss Crawford “A Somebody” in London given the social circles in which she moved(!) she would ,IMO, have owned a harp made by Sebastien Erard, the premier harp manufacturer … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","kbe_taxonomy":[256,271,268],"kbe_tags":[487,393,486],"class_list":["post-12398","kbe_knowledgebase","type-kbe_knowledgebase","status-publish","hentry","kbe_taxonomy-arts-leisure","kbe_taxonomy-northanger-abbey","kbe_taxonomy-pride-prejudice","kbe_tags-entertainment","kbe_tags-music","kbe_tags-musical-instruments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase\/12398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/kbe_knowledgebase"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase\/12398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12400,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/kbe_knowledgebase\/12398\/revisions\/12400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"kbe_taxonomy","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkbe_taxonomy&post=12398"},{"taxonomy":"kbe_tags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pemberley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fkbe_tags&post=12398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}