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The re-creation of a long-lost instrument relies on research going back more than 4000 years
TOMOKO SUGAWARA PLAYS an ancient harp invented nearly 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. Variously named "angular harp," "chang," "konghou," and "kugo,'' the instrument can be seen in centuries-old Buddhist cave paintings and in artists' depictions from countries along the trade route known as the Silk Road.
The harp on which Sugawara performs is reconstruction of a kugo harp pictured on a reliquary box painted during the 6th or 7th century AD. The angular harp disappeared from the world stage some 300 years ago, was only evidenced in paintings from antiquity until Sugawara and I brought plans for a reconstruction to luthiers Bill and Catherine Campbell of Port Townsend, Washington, who worked closely with us to re-create a modern rendition that would honor the essence of an instrument that was revered for centuries.
The earliest harps
The first surviving instruments were made of bird bone or mammoth ivory. Harps, which can claim to be the first documented wooden instruments, appeared around 3000 BC in Mesopotamia and Iran. They were arched - bent like hunter's bows. Angular harps followed a thousand years later. Two pieces of wood were joined at a right angle, with the rod stuck through a hole in the body (Fig. 1). Angular harps lasted an extraordinarily long time, from 1900 BC to 1700 AD, and for most of that time they were confined to Asia. They had an advantage over arched harps because they left ample space for strings, especially short ones, and already at around 1400 BC angular harps had 20 strings.
Harp designers waited millennia to take the next logical step: connecting the angular harp's distal ends with a pillar. They did so in the 9th century AD and created the frame (also called triangular or pillar) harp, which had a more rigid structure that allowed higher string tension and more strings. (Actually, the Greeks could claim precedence, for around 450 BC the frame appeared on Attic vases, but it disappeared 50 years later.) Frame harps were a European phenomenon, and modern pedal harps are their direct descendants. The history of frame harps spans some 1100 years, while that of angular harps lasted more...