Editing Harp (section)

==== Europe ====
{{See also|Origin of the harp in Europe|Medieval harp}}
[[File:DupplinHarper.jpg|thumb|left|The harper on the [[Dupplin Cross]], Scotland, {{circa|800 CE}}]]
[[File:Archive-ugent-be-F10D9E4E-7E68-11E5-B44A-58F8D43445F2 DS-4 (cropped).jpg|thumb|Individual sheet music for a seventeenth century baroque harp<ref>{{Cite web |title=Muziek voor barokharp |url=https://lib.ugent.be/viewer/archive.ugent.be:F10D9E4E-7E68-11E5-B44A-58F8D43445F2#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-3926,0,12970,7241 |access-date=27 August 2020 |website=lib.ugent.be}}</ref>]]

While the angle and bow harps held popularity elsewhere, European harps favored the "pillar", a third structural member to support the far ends of the arch and soundbox.<ref name="Montagu 2002 564">{{Cite encyclopedia |year=2002 |title=Harp |encyclopedia=[[The Oxford Companion to Music]] |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=London, UK |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780198662129/page/564 |editor-last=Latham |editor-first=Alison |page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780198662129/page/564 564] |isbn=0-19-866212-2 |oclc=59376677 |author-last=Montagu |author-first=Jeremy}}</ref><ref name="Boenig_1996">{{Cite magazine |last=Boenig |first=Robert |date=April 1996 |title=The Anglo Saxon Harp |volume=71 |issue=2 |pages=290–320 |doi=10.2307/2865415 |jstor=2865415 |periodical=Spectrum}}</ref>{{rp|page=290}} A harp with a triangular three-part frame is depicted on 8th-century [[Pictish stones]] in Scotland<ref name="Montagu 2002 564" /><ref name=Boenig_1996 />{{rp|page=290}} and in manuscripts (e.g. the [[Utrecht Psalter]]) from early 9th-century France.<ref name=Boenig_1996 /> The curve of the harp's neck is a result of the proportional shortening of the basic triangular form to keep the strings equidistant; if the strings were proportionately distant they would be farther apart.

[[File:Wartburg-Harfe.JPG|right|thumb|A medieval European harp (the [[Wartburg harp]]) with buzzing bray pins]]
As European harps evolved to play more complex music, a key consideration was some way to facilitate the quick changing of a string's pitch to be able to play more chromatic notes. By the [[Baroque]] period in Italy and Spain, more strings were added to allow for chromatic notes in more complex harps. In Germany in the second half of the 17th century, diatonic single-row harps were fitted with manually turned hooks that fretted individual strings to raise their pitch by a half step. In the 18th century, a link mechanism was developed connecting these hooks with pedals, leading to the invention of the single-action pedal harp.

The first primitive form of pedal harps was developed in the Tyrol region of Austria. Jacob Hochbrucker was the next to design an improved pedal mechanism around 1720, followed in succession by Krumpholtz, Naderman, and the Erard company, who came up with the double mechanism, in which a second row of hooks was installed along the neck, capable of raising the pitch of a string by either one or two half steps. While one course of European harps led to greater complexity, resulting largely in the modern pedal harp, other harping traditions maintained simpler diatonic instruments which survived and evolved into modern traditions.