Aeolian harp

The Aeolian harp or Aeolian Harp (also spirits, wind or weather harp called ) is a stringed instrument whose strings are thus made ​​to sound by the action of an air stream to the resonance and. The name derives from Aeolus, Latin Aeolus, the ruler of the winds in Greek mythology ago. According to their design Äols or wind harp belongs almost always to the family of zither instruments.

The Aeolian harp is often seen as emblematic of the poet. This relation is based on the concept of Afflatus.

Operation

An aeolian harp consists of a long, narrow resonance box (usually with sound holes ) on which an arbitrarily large number of strings is low density (for example, natural gut or nylon strings ) spanned by two bridges. The strings are of equal length, tuned to the same root, but different thicknesses in a rule and possibly different surface texture. The wind sweeps across the strings, producing the so-called Äolstöne due to air turbulence (see also Kármán vortex street ). By this, the strings are caused to vibrate, which in turn generate a sound. Depending on the wind speed occur melody strings or chords when the overtones of the various strings of the instrument are excited. The sound is of magical effect, since, depending on the strength of the wind swell the chords from pianissimo to forte and fade away again. By appropriate control surfaces on the strings of the air flow and thus the effect of a wind harp can be strengthened.

History

Aeolian harps were already known in antiquity. King David is said to have his instrument, the kinnor, hung over his bed at night to listen to the sound of excited by the wind strings can. Of harps that can be heard through the draft, reported the Middle Ages, where the sound of the Aeolian harp was often associated with witchcraft. St. Dunstan of Canterbury ( 10th century ) is said to have improved their mode of action. First theoretical explanations of the Aeolian harp was Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) in Musurgia universalis (1650 ) and Phonurgia nova ( 1673 ). Then fell into oblivion and mid-18th century by English poets ( James Thomson, William Collins, Tobias Smollett, and Alexander Pope ) was rediscovered. In the late 18th and in the 19th century the instrument reached new heights and learned instrument construction developments by the German music theorist Heinrich Christoph Koch and the Parisian piano maker Ignaz Josef Pleyel. ; as a symbol, it was often input into literary and musical works ( Novalis, Jean Paul, ETA Hoffmann, Herder, Justinus Kerner, Joseph von Eichendorff; uva Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt, Reger, Schreker, Cowell, Henze - see below).

In his 1976 album Dis the Norwegian saxophonist Jan Garbarek used recordings of Aeolian harp, which was situated in a fjord.

Giant Weather Harp

1789 described Georg Christoph Lichtenberg in Göttingen pocket calendar, visit the New inventions, physical and other oddities, a 15 -string, almost 100 meters long, on the one hand almost 50 meters high weather harp in a garden in Basel. The strings had strengths of about two, three and four millimeters, and a distance of about five centimeters. Since the intensity of the sounds of the time of day and the direction of alignment of the strings depended and Weather Harp worked with iron strings, but not with brass strings, the cause was seen for the tone not only in the air movement, but it was also all kinds of electrical, magnetic, and thermal effects be considered.

Ernst Florens Friedrich mentioned until 1825 Chladni in the journal Annals of Physics, that the cause of Tonentstehung is to look at these giant weather harp probably exclusively in the wind, as it blew predominantly in a preferred direction in the said garden.

Since iron has about twice as high elastic modulus such as brass, it can be assumed that the brass strings could not be sufficiently strongly excited due to the realizable at low load to be made ​​to sound.

Modifications

In conjunction with a keyboard it is called at a Äolsharfe also from a Anemochord. Another excited by the wind stringed instrument is played by the Khoisan in South Africa by blowing musical bow Goura. Also inspired by the wind, the East Asian dragons music sheets.

Known wind harps

The currently largest wind harp in Europe is in the Great Hall of the Old Palace in Baden -Baden. The 1999 established harp has a total height of 4.1 meters and 120 strings, it was developed and built by the residents in the region musicians and harp maker Rüdiger Oppermann. The nylon strings are excited by the draft of the basic notes C and G. Already from 1851 (?) To 1920 there were in the Old Palace, a small wind harp in the Great Hall. In the musical instrument collection of the Württemberg State Museum Stuttgart is one that historically have been particularly remarkable reconstruction of an Aeolian harp with windscreen, manufactured from the concert harp maker Rainer M.Thurau ( Wiesbaden, 1991).

Poetry

Eduard Moerike was the sound of a Äolsharfe so impressed that he has placed her with the poem to a Äolsharfe 1837 a monument that has been set to music by both Johannes Brahms and Hugo Wolf in the form of a song with piano accompaniment:

Goethe had in 1822 his poem Aeolian harps. A conversation written, and the lyrical contribution by the English romantic Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1796 was published on the subject of the Aeolian harp.

In Goethe's Faust 1 verse of dedication, reference is made ​​to the instrument in the fourth (last).

At the beginning of Faust 2 is Ariel's singing loud stage direction " accompanied by Aeolian harps ".