Arched harps is a category in the Hornbostel-Sachs classification system for musical instruments, a type of harp. The instrument may also be called bow harp. With arched harps, the neck forms a continuous arc with the body and has an open gap between the two ends of the arc (open harps).
Arched harps are probably the most ancient form of the harp, evolving from the musical bow. The first bowed harps appeared around 3000 B.C. in Iran and Mesopotamia and then in Egypt. India may have had the instrument as early as Mesopotamia.
The horizontal arched-bow from Sumeria spread west to ancient Greece, Rome and Minoan Crete and eastward to India. Like Egypt, however, India continued to develop the instrument on its own; undated artwork in caves shows a harp resembling a musical bow, with improvised resonators of different shapes and different numbers of added strings.
When the angular harp replaced the arched harp about 2000 B.C. in the Middle East and spread along the Silk Road, the arched harp was retained in India until after 800 A.D. (a form of ancient vina), and in Egypt until the Hellenistic Age (after 500 B.C). It can still be found today in Sub-Saharan Africa.
From India the arched harp was introduced into Malaysia, as well as Champa and Burma (as early as 500 A.D.) where it is still played under the name of saung, and in 7th-century A.D. Cambodia as the pin
Bhuddists were involved with the spread of the arched harp in Asia. Artwork depicting the arched harp that survived in China, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, and Cambodia comes from Buddhist communities. The harp disappeared in India about the time when Hinduism displaced Buddhism. The Buddhists took the harp north from India along the silk road to China, where it was painted in the Mogao Caves and Yulin Grottos. Additionally, Buddhist Burma sent two types of harp to Chinese court to perform, including the phoenix-headed harp. The latter became known in China as the Phoenix-headed konghou.
Portable bowed harps may have made their way from Egypt up the Nile to East Africa and, branching off from this route, also to Central and West Africa.
Alternative, the arched harp may have entered Sub-Saharan Africa from Indonesia, during trade in the Middle Ages.
Description
Classification
The harp is a compsite chordophone. It has string-carrying neck permanently attached to a resonator body that receives the vibrations of the strings and emits them as sound. Its strings are stretched between the neck and the body. What distinguishes it from lutes is that the plane of its strings is not parallel to the sound-emitting surface of the instrument's body, but perpendicular to it. The body and neck form an arch in arched harps, or two sides of a triangle in angular harps. If the triangle is completed, with a third side joining the body and neck, it is a frame harp. Harps without the third side are open harps.
Structure
The body of the bowed harp is resonator. Its shape is varied, and it can have the shape of a spade, spoon or ladle, boat or box, among others. A leather soundboard is stretched on its open surface facing the direction of the strings, and a string-holding rod usually runs along its center line, to which the strings are tied. Their other end is connected to the neck via a tuning device - which can be a special loop, rotating leather ring or tuning peg. The defining characteristic of the bowed harp is that its neck starts more or less in the direction of the longitudinal axis of the body, and then curves.
Bow harps have relatively few strings, usually fewer than 10, compared to angular harps, which usually have 15 to 25 strings. Historically, strings were made of sinew (animal tendons). Other materials have included gut (animal intestines), plant fiber, braided hemp, cotton cord, silk, nylon, and wire.
Variations
Bowed harps are diverse in both size and shape, from instruments small enough for a child to hold in their arms to harps made from logs, left lying flat on the ground.
Similar to the angular harps, a vertical and horizontal variant can be distinguished here. The strings of the vertical bowed harp are more or less vertical, and most of the time the resonating body of the instrument is below the neck. The high notes are closer to the musician, the low notes are further away, just like in the case of today's Western harp. The body of the horizontal bowed harp is in a horizontal position, and the neck typically grows out of the end of the instrument body farthest from the musician.