Eve Zaunbrecher

The harp has been in use in Western Europe since antiquity. In the eighteenth century, this ancient design was mechanised by German makers by adding pedals to alter string pitch, allowing for continuous playing with the hands while the feet operated the pedals. After this new instrument debuted in the Paris salons in the 1760s, the single action pedal harp became a fashionable instrument for wealthy Parisians at the same time that it became a freestanding piece of furniture, much like the harpsichord. It featured prominently in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie as an example of an ‘organised’ instrument that took advantage of engineering to improve the musical ability of a centuries-old design.

The majority of histories on the single action harp have focused on the technological development that resulted in Sébastien Erard’s double action harp – the ancestor of the modern concert harp – patented in London in 1794. This dissertation focuses on the social history of the single action pedal harp in Paris from 1760 to 1789, including its place in the larger discourse on mechanisation and scientific innovation, how music education defied social conventions of gendered knowledge, and how the pedal harp operated in a similar way to other domestic furniture in regards to sociability and entertainment. Through the use of existing pedal harps, archival material on instrument makers, harp method books, and the wealth of secondary literature on science, music, and sociability in Enlightenment Paris, this dissertation examines the pedal harp’s supposed role as an instrument of the Enlightenment. The problem of educating musicians on new instrument designs revealed the issues with mechanisation as progress, and the implications of gender for furniture-like instruments spoke to the unique relationship of large instruments to the human body. The pedal harp was in every way an instrument of the ancien régime, and sadly lost favour as its aristocratic owners met their own demise.