Today, when we think of harps, images of wingéd angels and heavenly clouds inevitably come to mind.  But the harp has for centuries been an important secular instrument in Europe and beyond.

Especially popular in 16th and 17th century courts was the Gaelic harp.  A harp native to Highland Scotland and Ireland, the "clairseach," pronounced KLAR-shuck, is strung with metal strings, usually made of brass. These instruments are played with long fingernails and a strikingly different technique than that of the Italian triple harp. Little of this native Gaelic music survives, and pieces are often adapted from the bagpipe and lute tradition. Alison Kinnaird plays a bagpipe lament, perhaps originally for harp, on the release from Temple Records, The Silver String.

In the 17th century, English penal laws dismantled the native Gaelic aristocracy, and the wire harp tradition of the Gaelic speaking people began to wane. Some of the music once played by court harpers was taken up by the lute and the bagpipe. Precious few of these tunes have survived in lute tablature from Scotland. The Rowallan Consort's William Taylor performs music written for lute on a wire strong clairseach on his CD release entitled Notes of Noy, Notes of Joy.

In Ireland, where the wire strung harp survived until the beginning of the 19th century, organist Edward Bunting was given the task of notating tunes at eh 1792 Belfast Harp Festival, where he met Dennis O'Hampsey, the last of the harpers to play with the ancient Irish fingernail technique. Wire harper Ann Heymann performs songs O'Hampsey himself played at the festival on a recording from 1995 entitled Queen of Harps. Dennis O'Hampsey lived to the ripe old age of 112, and passed away in 1807.

The Robert Ap Huw manuscript preserves the oldest harp music in all of Europe. Scholars place some of the music contained in the manuscript from as early as the 14th century. You may recall that Harmonia interviewed the foremost interpreter of this manuscript, William Taylor, in 1997. He performs this repertoire on his gut strung harp on a Dorian release entitled Two Worlds of the Welsh Harp.

Listen to a brief excerpt of music by Robert Ap Huw:

Finally we arrive at the 17th century triple harp called arpa doppia, the Italian triple harp that was three rows of gut strings. Welsh harp players have been playing this harp in an unbroken tradition since the 17th or 18th century. Cheryl Ann Fulton performs music from John Parry's 19th century collection of Welsh harp Music on the CD release, The Airs of Wales.  Harpist Andrew Lawrence-King performs a variety of pieces by English baroque composers on the Harmonia Mundi release entitled His Majesty's Harper.

This week's new releases come from the Harmonia Mundi label. First, Theatre of Voices are joined by Fretwork on a CD of Orlando Gibbons' Cries of London. Next is a new recording of J.S. Bach's Goldberg vartions and Goldberg canons by Richard Egarr, on which he plays a harpsichord tuned to a recently deciphered temperament believed to have been used by the Bach family.