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The entry in A New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1754) is very similar to Grassineau's:
Bell HARP a musical instrument of the string kind, thus called from the common players upon it, swinging it about as a bell on its biass.
It is about three feet long; its strings, which are of no determinate number, are of brass or steel wire, fixed at one end, and stretched across the soundboard, by screws fixed at the other end. It takes in four octaves according to the number of strings, which are struck only with the thumbs, the right hand playing the treble, and the left hand the base[sic], and in order to draw the sound clearer, the thumbs are armed with a little wire pin.
This may perhaps be the lyra or cythara of the antients: but we find no mention of it under the name it now bears, which must be modern.
Although this description is very close to Grassineau’s, it omits some details. Nothing is said about the instrument being hung on a string, and there are no details of the soundboard. But the crucial details of length and compass are repeated and ‘four octaves’ for the range of the instrument are given, rather than Grassineau’s ‘three or four octaves’.
The Dictionarium Musica (John Hoyle 1770) is also very similar,
Bell Harp, an instrument which is so called from the common player’s swinging it about as a bell on it’s biass. It is about three feet long; the strings, which are of no determinate number, are of brass or steel wire, fixed at one end, and stretched across the soundboard by screws fixed at the other end. It takes in four Octaves according to the number of the strings which are struck only with the thumbs the right hand playing the Treble, and the left the Bass; and in order to draw the sound clearer, the thumbs are armed with a little wire pin.
Entries on the bell harp like this are to be found in the Chambers' Cyclopaedia, Rees' Cyclopaedia and as late as 1842 in Encyclopaedia Britannica.
The value of of all these descriptions depends on the reliability of Grassineau’s original definition. All the surviving instruments, today classified as bell harps, are considerably shorter and have a range of about two octaves, not three or four. The V&A 'bell harp' despite having 24 courses still has a compass of about two octaves but it is chromatic or nearly so (see Tunings).
There is a very interesting version of Grassineau's original description from the 1790s in Edward Jones's Musical and Poetical Relicks of the Welsh Bards (1794).
Edward Jones 1794
This description is still obviously based on Grassineau's but it is finally more in accord with surviving instruments. The bell harp, according to Jones, is a 'small flat instrument’ and 'its compass is about two octaves'. Yet, surprisingly, Jones still describes the instrument as ‘almost three feet long’.
In addition to the usual phrase, ‘swing it about as a bell on its bias', Jones adds. 'for the sake of varying the tone' (my italics). This could be the first attempt to describe the aural effect of swinging the instrument.
By describing the bell harp as a small flat instrument with a range of about two octaves, was Edward Jones correcting the earlier descriptions, or was he describing a different, smaller instrument? Was he describing an English harp rather than a bell harp?
John Simcock introduced his English harp around 1760 and some of his instruments have survived. They could fairly be described as 'small flat instruments', about 45cms in overall length, and with a range of about two octaves.
It has been suggested that Edward Jones owned the instrument that appeared in the Rees' Cyclopaedia illustration of a 'bell harp' in 1808. This illustration is very close indeed to the instruments made by John Simcock. In that case, could Edward Jones' description and Rees' illustration both be English harps?
The Rees' bell harp and Simcock's English harp.
There are a couple of ways of accounting for the differences between the Edward Jones description from the 1790s, and earlier descriptions, of the bell harp:
1) The bell harp, first described by Grassineau in 1740, and first recorded in Old Bailey trials in 1730, really was about three feet long with a compass of three or even four octaves. In that case, Jones was probably describing Simcock's English harp, not the older bell harp.
2) Grassineau's descriptions of the size and compass of the bell harp are incorrect and later descriptions in works of reference simply repeated these errors. The bell harp never was a large instrument with three or four octaves. Whatever differences or 'modifications' Simcock devised for his English harp around 1760, size and/or range were not part of them.
My guess would be that option 2) is the more plausible just because a three foot, three or four octave swinging zither seems very implausible. The length of three feet would be too long for anyone other than a giant to hold and swing with the instrument pointing downwards. Perhaps the instrument was held forward and waved rather than swung? The later fairy bells instrument was indeed waved and even rotated and there are written descriptions, illustrations and photographs of fairy bells players doing just this. But the fairy bells instrument, at about 65cms in length, although longer than a typical bell harp/English harp around 40-50cms, is still a lot shorter than three feet (c95cms).
A four-octave instrument, if divided equally for each thumb, would give 15 triple, or even quadruple, courses to play with the hand in a fixed position, grasping the sides of the instrument. Would it be physically possible to hold an instrument in the hands and have the thumb reach over 15 courses? Nine courses is certainly possible but any more is seriously stretching credulity as well as the thumbs.
Nine triple courses on the right side.
(Thanks to the Horniman Museum for allowing me to take this photograph). Of course this would not matter if the instrument was placed on a table and with each hand free to move around. But all the descriptions refer to playing the instrument while swinging it.
Although Simcock's English harps are 'small flat instruments' with a range of about two octaves, earlier bell harps were probably not so very different. Whatever differences Simcock made to the bell harp around 1760 to make it an English harp must have seemed important at that time but far less so decades later. So, to both Edward Jones (1794) and later to the illustrator of the bell harp in the Rees' Cyclopaedia in 1808, English harps were just bell harps.
There is another reference to the bell harp from the eighteenth century which is quite independent of Grassineau. It is from William Tans’ur’s Elements of Musick, first published in 1767. The date is especially interesting in that Simcock's English harp was in vogue at that time. It was possible to buy an English harp, not only from Simcock himself but from dealers too. It was also possible to have tuition on it and some music was published for it (see English harp). Nothing like this is known for the bell harp. Yet Tans'ur makes no mention of the English harp.
Tans'ur mentions the bell harp in three places.
Unlike the descriptions based on Grassineau's, Tans’ur gives no indications of the size of the instrument nor its compass. Tans'ur explains that the bell harp is a wire-strung, bell-shaped, diatonic instrument, swung when played, and played with plectrums attached to the thumbs.
The phrase, ‘tolerably good harmony’ is a standard phrase and Tans'ur uses it in other places. It probably does not mean ‘harmony’ as in music with several voices or chords. According to Tans'ur, even the rigols, a small xylophone-like instrument held suspended and struck with a single hammer, makes 'tolerable harmony'.
Tans'ur uses the phrase ‘Kept twinging whilst play’d on' but in another place writes,
Here he writes, ‘swung with both Hands Whilst playing’. So his word ‘twinging’ means ‘swinging’. and so he means, ‘kept swinging whilst played on’. Twinging and twinges do not seem relevant. But this could be the origin of the bizarre reading given by A.J. Hipkins (1888) (See References). Hipkins reads ‘twinging’ as ‘twanging’ and writes, ‘...the performer…while twanging the strings rapidly’ swings the instrument. This is, surely, a wholly speculative and impractical guess.
While this may clear up the 'swinging, twinging and twanging' issue, this particular mention of the bell harp in the Tans'ur's Glossary states that the wires of a bell harp are ‘stretched over several Bridges', This is puzzling and perhaps Tans'ur is confusing the bell harp with the dulcimer. Or, perhaps, Tans'ur was simply referring to the two hitch pin planks.
Tans'ur's other mention of the bell harp is very brief.
Of all the 18th century descriptions of the bell harp this is the only one that explicitly claims that the bell harp sounds like a bell.
Conclusions
Conclusions
What do these 18th century descriptions of the bell harp not tell us?
Nothing is said about what kind of music was played on the instrument. Did it have its own unique repertoire, for example? Nothing is said about who played it, nor in what contexts it was played.
Sometimes descriptions of instruments from the 18th century add details beyond physical parameters, e.g. that the (wire-strung) guittar was mainly played by women and that the dulcimer was often played at puppet shows. Sometimes instruments are described as 'low'. But nothing like this is included in the descriptions of the bell harp.
Most surprisingly there is no discussion of the strange, or even unique, stringing arrangements of bell harps where the scale first ascends in one direction and then in the opposite direction.
With the exception of Tan’sur in his comment that the bell harp 'sounds as a Bell', the only connection with bells seems to be that the bell harp looks like a bell or is shaped like one. There is nothing to suggest a connection with bell ringing and certainly not with change ringing. William Tans’ur, in his Element of Musick, discusses bells, bell-ringing and change-ringing immediately after his brief description of the bell harp but he doesn't take the opportunity to suggest a link.
None of the descriptions suggest the possibility of playing the instrument on the lap or table but both of the bell harps in the Edinburgh Collections (see Home and Instruments 1) might have been played this way.
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