Harp on the Same Nt Again and Again

Aeolian Harps

This page is solely devoted to the Aeolian harp and its counterparts: the harp itself, historical groundwork, and how information technology is discussed throughout Romantic Poetry. In improver, it explains the literary allusions regarding its transcendence; and, in using visual aids, helps to bear witness how the Aeolian Harp realistically appears.

Picture courtesy of Robert A. Corrigan. Click on Movie for his site

What is an Aeolian harp?

An aeolian harp or air current harp is a stringed instrument played past the current of air. It is named after the Greek god of air current, Aeolus. (Soundscapesinternational.com) (Encyclopedia.com) "Information technology is usually a long, narrow, shallow box with soundholes and 10 or 12 strings strung lengthwise between ii bridges. The strings are the aforementioned length just different thicknesses and are all tuned to the same pitch; the current of air makes them vibrate in successively higher harmonics." According to (Nancy'south Musical Meanderings), there are two types of Aeolian harps. One kind is meant to exist placed on the window sill and the other is made to stay outside. The one made for exterior is often larger and considered to be a piece of art. Yous can buy the latter kind of aeolian harp here. Information technology explains, "It was intended to be played not by human hands, but past the God of Wind himself. Its melodies and harmonies were non those chosen by humans, but were held to exist the improvisations of Nature itself."

(Image from: http://members.aol.com/woinem1/index/eolsharf.htm)

(Courtesy of mochicanwindharps.com)

History of the Aeolian harp

According to (Encyclopedia.com) the get-go known Aeolian harp was constructed in 1650 past Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680). Carl Engel, in his article "Aeolian Music," describes Kircher'south original Aeolian harp that "consisted of a foursquare box mounted with 15 thin catgut strings" (Engel par. 9). Engel traces the roots of the wind harp to long before Kircher. While Engel does credit Kirchner with creating the most recent form of the Aeolian harp, which is unremarkably referred to in Romantic verse, he does not believe that Kirchner invented the instrument. Engel theorizes that it is "highly probable that the Egyptians, Greeks, and other nations of antiquity constructed some kind of Aeolian harp" (Engel par. i). Engel backs up this theory of its before existence by showing that the instrument is featured in the Bible. Information technology is believed that Rex David suspended his harp in the air and at midnight the north wind blew through these strings causing the harp to play past itself. According to Engel, "this so-called harp, the Hebrew kinnor, was probably a species of lyre, small and easily portable" (Engel par. 6). See picture below for a more than dramatic version of this harp.

Rex David and his harp.

(Image courtesy of Tony Morosco, Artistic Eatables)

The Aeolian Harp in Music of the Romantic Period

The Aeolian harp was recognized and referenced in the music of the Romantic period as well as in the literature. Frederic Chopin's Étude Op. 25, No. 1 is a beautiful piano piece that involves dexterous digits for it is often referred to as the "Aeolian Harp". This name was coined by Robert Schumann who believed the piece to sound strikingly similar to that of the air current instrument. (http://www.rzepkastrings.com/history.html) Below is a clip of Chopin's Étude performed by Miguel Campinho.

The Aeolian Harp in Literature of the Romantic Poets

Nature consists of the physical manifestations of a greater truth. Through nature, humans become a glimpse of this permanent, transcendent power that does not have a physical form. The physical object is but a representation of this power. Therefore, the Aeolian harp, is a device that translates truth. The Aeolian Harp by Coleridge shows that as the breeze flows through the harp, the speaker experiences this transcendent ability. The speaker becomes like an Aeolian harp, allowing his "indolent and passive encephalon" to feel the dazzler of the music and have over his body. As the wind passes through the harp, this greater power flows through the speaker. In his article entitled, "Romanticism and the materiality of nature," author Kurt Fosso writes that at that place is a "divide between material nature's otherness and the perceiving mind'southward uncanny alienation" (Fosso par. 7). Humans can only feel moments of this "otherness," and one style to exercise this is through the Aeolian harp.

This intangible power is a popular theme in Romantic poetry. The search for a greater truth merely yields momentary satisfaction, leaving Romantics bars to the limitations of their humanity. This puts poets in a difficult, and at times, frustrating situation, for as Fosso writes, "concrete proximity to nature reveals the observer's epistemological altitude from nature" (Fosso par. two). In the passages that follow, it is evident that the Aeolian harp and the search for a greater power had an undeniable presence in most Romantic poetry.

Examples of Specific Works Portraying the Aeolian Harp

Listed below are some representative works of the Aeolian harp in Romantic poetry. The almost articulate and feature poem is showtime, followed by others that further enforce the transcendent power represented by the harp. The references to the Aeolian Harp are bolded throughout the examples.

From The Aeolian Harp

-written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1795 and to Sara Fricker, his wife

-Stanza two to 4*
"And that simplest lute,
Placed length-ways in that clasping casement, hark!
How by the desultory cakewalk caressed,
Like some coy maid one-half-yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And at present, it's strings
Boldlier swept, the lond sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rising,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Country,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!
O the ane life within united states of america and away,
Which meets all motility and becomes its soul,
A light in audio, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all idea, and joyance every where –
Methinks, it should take been impossible
Not to beloved all things in a world so filled;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute even so air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

And thus, my love! equally on the midway slope
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my one-half-closed centre-lids I behold
The sunbeams trip the light fantastic, like diamonds, on the main,
And tranquil muse upon tranquility;
Total many a thought uncalled and undetained,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That cracking and flutter on this subject lute!

And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of All?"

From Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

– by Percy Bysshe Shelley, in 1817
-from stanza 3*
"Thy light alone – like mist o'er mountains driven,
Or music by the night wind sent
Through strings of some nonetheless musical instrument,
Or moonlight on a midnight stream,
Gives grace and truth to life'south unquiet dream."

From Dejection: An Ode

-by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in 1798
-from stanza five*
"O pure of heart! thou need'st non ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!"

"Joy is the sugariness vocalisation, Joy the luminous cloud-
Nosotros in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light."

-from stanza 7*
"Hence, viper thoughts, that whorl around my mind,
Reality's night dream!
I turn from you, and mind to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony past torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that ravest without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree,
Or pine grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely business firm, long held the witches' home,
Methings were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of night brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
Mak'st Devils' yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among."

From Ode to the West Current of air

-by Percy Bysshe Shelley, in 1819
*from canto five
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its ain!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be g, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Exist thou me, impetuous i!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new nativity!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words amidst flesh!
Exist through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Leap be far behind?

(all text is as printed in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 8th Edition, 2nd volume, 2006)

Emerson and the Aeolian Harp

Ralph Waldo Emerson is some other poet that addresses the Aeolian harp in his works. Emerson uses the concrete form of the Aeolian harp played by an Orphic poet, whose name is derived from Orpheus, an ancient Greek hero who sang and played the harp so well that it could charm the divinities of the underworld. By using the physical course of the harp, he symbolizes a melodious and lyrical connection between the Orphic poet, the harp, and the Over-Soul. The Over-Soul is essentially when man accepts "the tide of being which floats us into the secret of nature" and when he finds his centre, the "Deity will shine through him." This angelic light is known as the Over-Soul. The homo volition no longer lead "a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity." Emerson, in his poetry, suggests that a harmonious relationship with nature and the Over-Soul perchance be achieved by individuals who are willing to heed to the message of the Over-Soul in nature through sources such as the Aeolian harp. Emerson views the harp as non merely an instrument, just as a symbol of beauty, wisdom, and divine harmony. The music of the Aeolian harp is not tainted by human being's impurity because is it produced by nature. Emerson once stated to Moncure Conway, "A single jiff of bound fragrance coming into his open window and blending with strains of his Aeolian harp had revived in him memories and reanimated thoughts that had perished under turmoil of the times." Emerson, in his last book of poesy entitled Selected Poems, writes from the bespeak of view of the personified instrument. This particular Aeolian harp mentioned in this poem, is refusing to be played by the paw of a human.

From The Maiden Spoken language of the Aeolian Harp

-by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Keep your lips or finger-tips
For flute or spinet's dancing fries;
I look a tenderer bear on
I ask more than or non so much:
Requite me to the atmosphere.

Pictures of Aeolian Harps Today

Aeolian Harp past the Ocean

Modernistic Day Current of air Harp

(Image 1 courtesy of Lysha, Artistic Commons; Image 2 Courtesy of M. Kelly, Creative Commons)

Online sources:

http://www.appalachianheritagealliance.org/wind_harp_links.html

Caracci, Annibale. Polyphemus c. http://www.umich.edu/~homeros/Representations%20of%20Homer's%
20Ideas/Paintings/Paintings.htm (thumbnail film of Aeolus)

Cavanaugh, Cynthia A., "The Aeolian Harp: Beauty and Unity in the Poetry and Prose of Ralph Waldo Emerson." 1997. 7 December 2007. http://rmmla.wsu.edu/ereview/56.i/articles/cavanaugh.asp

http://www.encyclopedia.com/dr./1B1-354642.html

Engel, Carl. "Aeolian Music." The Musical times and Singing Course Circular 23 (1882): 479-483. v Nov 2007
<http://links.jstor.org>

Fosso, Kurt. "Romanticism and the Materiality of Nature." Studies in Romanticism 44 (1996): seven pgs. 5 November 2007
<http://lion.chadwyck.com>

http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/Strasse/7353/Aeolian.html

http://world wide web.harmonicwindharps.com/about.htm

http://www.harpmaker.internet/windharp.htm

Lysha. "Aeolian Harp." 3 December 2007. Retrieved through creativecommons.org
<http://world wide web.flickr.com/photos/lysha/208328535/>

http://members.aol.com/woinem1/index/eolsharf.htm

1000. Kelley. Aeolian Harp." iii December 2007. Retrieved through creativecommons.org
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/sonikcycle/173046528/>

http://mohicanwindharps.com/?gclid=CJerjfC0vI8CFRIUagodXhgFTw

Morosco, Tony. "Types of Harps." 25 November 2007. Retrieved through creativecommons.org.
<http://members.aol.com/tonymorosc/harppage/KingDavidTripleHarp.jpg>

http://www.oddmusic.com/gallery/om01000.html

http://world wide web.rzepkastrings.com/history.html

http://www.encylopedia.com/dr./1B1-354642.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_harp

Interesting and Informative links:

http://world wide web.ronaldecker.com/harp.htm

Contributors:
Libby Nelson, Kathryn Kummer, Michelle Hector, Jessica Delli Santi, Jennifer Brown, and Fred Melchiore

leeaeled1968.blogspot.com

Source: https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/aeolian-harps-and-the-romantics/