How the Harp Found Me #2

(Yes, I'm breaking my own rules, but for this particular endeavour I think it makes more sense to post these separately from my monthly notes.)

#2  So.... what did I read?

I wish I had written down the titles of the books they brought me that day,  but most of them were filled with  ‘the usual’ information., covered in such fine books as the Yeats, listed below. Thus there was plenty of information about the evidence for development of the stringed instruments, photos and drawings of carvings from Egypt and regions of the Middle East.... mostly two, three string curved, plucked instruments - from which all the stringed instruments gradually evolved.   In fact, all cultures have some kind of stringed instrument, along with wind and drumming.  As a child we certainly made music blowing on blades of grass.  Many believe that the bow and the harp have a close relationship - wonderful metaphorically as they both drive straight into the heart.   The most interesting book they brought me, for reasons I cannot think why, was one which showed how, in the late middle ages, once the ‘do re mi’ musical notation system was evolved that monks and others would hide messages in the music.  I spent a magical afternoon thumbing through these books, looking at pictures, reading text here and there until in the middle of all this reading, the lightbulb came on and I thought, What am I doing? Shouldn’t I be listening?

A Short Bibliography:

Story of the Irish Harp and Its History and Influence, Nora Joan Clark

Harps and Harpists, Roslyn Rensch

The Harp of Ireland  Grainne Yeats

The Belfast Harper’s Festival, 1792, and the saving of Ireland’s Harp Music, Edward Bunting

Tree of Strings, Crann Nan Teud, A History of the Harp in Scotland Keith Sanger

Carolan, the Life and Times and Music of an Irish Piper, Donal O’Sullivan

If anyone has more good ones to add, please let me know!