The Triple Harp: Wales’ Most Iconic Instrument

Article by Robin Huw Bowen

The idea of a harp having two rows of strings to facilitate chromatic playing was certainly known in Renaissance Spain and Italy, but the design of having three full rows – two rows of diatonic unisons with the third row sustaining the accidentals in the middle, making them playable by either hand – was devised in Italy during the late Renaissance.

The Triple Harp then spread through Europe and became the harp of the Baroque, as used by Monteverdi and later Handel. It reached London in England by the middle of the 17th century, where Welsh harpists had been accustomed to travel ever since their traditional patrons amongst the Welsh gentry had turned their interests there after Henry VIII’s English annexation of Wales in 1536. They certainly would not have been averse to taking up the latest Continental fashion in music and instruments.

When it was then brought home to Wales, the Triple took hold amongst the harpists in the north initially, in Meirionnydd in particular. By the middle of the 18th century, having fallen out of use in the rest of Europe, it was crowned as the national Welsh harp by the antiquarians of the period, its actual history (either genuinely or conveniently!) forgotten.

But despite its Italian roots, the Triple Harp settled firmly in Wales, and was accepted and indeed nurtured as a Welsh instrument. Its style of playing, a common repertoire, and the interpretation of its music were all forged by our native creativity over time into something particularly, and eventually recognizably, Welsh. As a result, it is fair to say that the Triple Harp is the only true Welsh harp. By now unique to Wales as a still unbroken oral folk tradition for over three hundred years, the ‘shimmering’ voice of its three rows of strings is truly as unique as the Welsh language itself.

Senedd yr ymrysonau – y ddeudu O ddedwydd gydleisiau, Anian i gyd yno’n gwau Iaith enaid ar ei thannau. Dewi Wyn o Eifion / Senate of all discord – the two sides Of joyous unisons, All passion there weaving The Language of the Soul on her strings

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Below are some quotes about the Triple Harp, as well as three videos - one with Robin as part of our project Tune Chain, the second from Ty Gwerin, and the third of prodigy Cerys Hafana.

  • “Both hornpipes and bagpipes had formerly a far more general distribution in Europe, the result of a gradual migration westward, surviving only in the more remote regions, amongst pastoral people, as, for example, in Brittany the Pibcorn and Biniou (bagpipes), in Wales Pibgorn and Pibau (bagpipes); in Scotland the Stock-horn and Scotch Bagpipes. It would seem that these instruments were brought to the British Islands with the Celtic immigration and they have survived particularly in those regions in which the Celtic blood has held its own.”

    - Henry Balfour (1891) The Old British “Pibcorn” or “Hornpipe” and its Affinities.

  • “What is known as the horse wedding took place in 1852. There was all the mirth and jollity of bygone days. But one feature was missing, that appealed to the ear as well as the eye; where was old Edward of Gwern, y pebydd (the piper), who, mounted upon his white steed and pouring forth the wild music of the bagpipe, had headed many a wedding party in their half frantic gallop over hill and vale.”

    - Theophilus Jones, Carnhuanawc

  • “Mabsantau, neithioirau, gwylnosau, were their red-letter days, and the rude merrimaking of the village green the pivot of all that was worth living for in a mundane existence. I do not remember much about the gwylmabsant and the gwylnos – I came a quarter of a century too late for those wonderful orgies – but I remember the neithior with its all-day and all-night rollicking fun. We did not have the crwth, but we had the fiddle, and occasionally the harp, or a home-made degenerate sort of pibgorn. I myself am a tolerable player on the simplified bibgorn alas the pibgyrn are all gone today and I doubt whether there is one left of the old shepherd players.”

    - William Meredith Morris, Cwm Gwaun, Cwm Rhondda

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