How Many Types of Harp Are There?
Nine. And the harp is the oldest concert instrument still played at the highest level — Sumerian carvings from 3500 BC, in continuous professional use ever since. The word "harp" also refers to six other things, almost none of which are this instrument. We sort those out, too.
Quick Answer
9 types of harp are in regular use: pedal harp (the orchestral standard, 47 strings), lever harp / Celtic harp, wire-strung Celtic harp (clàrsach), Welsh triple harp, cross-strung chromatic harp, lyre harp, electric harp, folk / lap harp, and Aeolian (wind) harp. The concert pedal harp has 47 strings and 7 pedals; the pedal mechanism was perfected by Sébastien Érard in 1810. Looking for the harp seal, the jaw harp, Harp Lager, or "Piano Man" harmonica tabs? All covered near the bottom.
The two sounds that say "harp" in under a second
Below: eight strings of an orchestral pedal harp, colour-coded the way real harpists need to navigate 47 of them — every C string is red, every F string is blue. Below that: the rolled arpeggio (Debussy, Ravel, every romantic-comedy soundtrack) and the full glissando (every cartoon dream sequence). Same instrument.
The red-C / blue-F colouring is a working-harpist tradition that goes back well over a century. With 47 strings in front of you, you need landmarks.
The rolled arpeggio is what makes the harp the harp in classical writing — a chord that arrives one note at a time, the strings ringing into each other. The glissando is the harp's party trick: a flat-palm sweep across the strings, three octaves in under a second.
Synthesis is approximate — a real harp has 47 strings vibrating sympathetically against each other in a wooden body. That sympathetic ring is the unique acoustic signature an oscillator can't fake.
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The oldest professional instrument still being played at the top level
Sumerian cylinder seals from around 3500 BC, discovered in the city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia, show players holding harps that look essentially like a modern Celtic harp — a triangular wooden frame with strings running between the soundboard and the neck. That is older than written music. Older than the wheel-driven cart. Older, comfortably, than any other instrument played professionally today.
Egyptian wall paintings from about 2500 BC show full-size standing harps with as many as 22 strings being played in ceremonial contexts. The Bull-Headed Lyre of Ur — recovered from the Royal Tombs of Ur in modern-day Iraq, dated to roughly 2500 BC — survives and is currently held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum. The harp has been in continuous professional use across at least 11 cultures from then to now.
The orchestral pedal harp you might see in a symphony concert is the latest in this unbroken chain. The frame is the same triangle. The strings still run vertically. The player still plucks them with the fingers of both hands. What changed in the last 200 years is one mechanism: the foot pedals that let one harpist play in every key.
The 9 harp types in working use
From the 47-string orchestral pedal harp at one end to the wind-played Aeolian at the other.
| Type | Strings | Where you find it |
|---|---|---|
| Pedal harp (concert grand) | 47 | Orchestras, solo classical, film scoring. Approximately 180 cm tall, 38 kg, 7 pedals |
| Pedal harp (semi-grand / petite) | 40–46 | Smaller homes and chamber settings. Same pedal mechanism in a more portable body |
| Lever harp / Celtic harp | 26–36 | Folk, Celtic and beginner playing. Levers above each string raise pitch by a semitone |
| Wire-strung Celtic harp (clàrsach) | ~30 | Historical Irish and Scottish instrument. Brass or silver strings, fingernails not fingertips. Bell-like tone |
| Welsh triple harp | ~98 in three rows | Traditional Welsh chromatic harp — three parallel rows of strings, outer two tuned diatonically, middle row provides chromatics |
| Cross-strung harp | varies | Two angled rows of strings crossing in an X. Fully chromatic without pedals or levers. Rare |
| Lyre harp | 7–22 | Small lap instrument shaped like a lyre. Folk and educational use; often confused with ancient lyres |
| Electric harp | 32–47 | Solid or semi-acoustic body with pickups. Crossover, rock, jazz. Andreas Vollenweider, Joanna Newsom |
| Aeolian (wind) harp | varies | Played by air movement across the strings. No human performer required. Installed outdoors as sound sculpture |
Folk / lap harps (small, 22–26 strings, portable) are essentially small lever harps and are often counted as a 10th type. The historical bow harp and the angle harp survive in early-music contexts but are not part of the mainstream working repertoire.
How the 7 pedals on a concert harp actually work
The pedal mechanism is the single feature that separates the modern concert harp from every harp before about 1800. There are seven pedals, three on the left side of the base and four on the right, operated by both feet. Each pedal controls one note name — one for every C string, one for every D, and so on through B.
Each pedal sits in one of three notches: up = flat, middle = natural, down = sharp. Setting the C pedal to "down" simultaneously makes every C string on the instrument sound a C♯. Setting the F pedal to "up" makes every F sound an F♭. The harpist can reset pedals during a piece — sometimes silently in rests, sometimes audibly as part of the music — to modulate to a different key.
The mechanism was perfected by Sébastien Érard in Paris in 1810 — the "double-action" pedal harp. Before Érard, harps had been built with single-action pedals that could only raise pitch by one semitone (limited keys) or no pedals at all (one key only). Érard's double-action design — patented just as Napoleon was at the height of his power — let one instrument play in every major and minor key. Almost every concert harp built since has used Érard's design with only minor refinements. The Érard, Lyon & Healy and Salvi names dominate harp manufacturing today.
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The six players who shaped the modern harp
Two technique-defining classical figures, the woman who put the harp into jazz, the current classical standard, the man who took it onto pop charts and the singer-songwriter who put it on the indie rock charts. Tap to read more.
The six things "harp" doesn't mean
"Harp" gets attached to a lot of unrelated things. Most of them outdraw the orchestral instrument in web searches. Here is what each of them actually is.
1. Harp seal — an animal
Pagophilus groenlandicus. An Arctic mammal that lives on the pack ice across the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. Adults grow a dark, wishbone- or harp-shaped marking across their backs — the source of the name. The pups, born white, become a recurring image in wildlife photography every spring. The species has nothing to do with music; the search overlap is entirely accidental.
2. Jaw harp / mouth harp / Jew's harp — a different instrument entirely
A small frame held against the front teeth, with a single flexible metal tongue ("trump") that the player flicks with one finger. The mouth acts as a resonating chamber — changing mouth shape changes the perceived pitch. Found across nearly every culture in the world (in English variously called Jew's harp, jaw harp, mouth harp, trump, juice harp or guimbarde). Acoustically classified as a plucked idiophone, not a stringed instrument. Shares only its name with the orchestral harp.
3. "Harp" = harmonica (blues and folk slang)
In the American blues, country and folk traditions, "harp" is the standard slang term for the diatonic harmonica — Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Sonny Terry, Charlie Musselwhite. When someone asks for the "harp solo" on a Bob Dylan or Billy Joel record (the "Piano Man" intro, for instance) they mean the harmonica, not the orchestral instrument. Two completely unrelated instruments sharing one slang term.
4. Harp Lager — an Irish beer
A pale lager first brewed by Guinness in 1960 at the Great Northern Brewery in Dundalk, Ireland. Named for the gold harp on its label — the same harp that has appeared on Guinness products since 1862, and the same harp that is the official symbol of the Republic of Ireland. Now part of the Diageo beverage portfolio. The Irish harp on the bottle is the orchestral-style harp, but the beer brand is not the instrument.
5. Restaurants and pubs called "The Harp"
Many Irish-themed pubs and restaurants worldwide use the harp in their name — Harp & Crown (Philadelphia), Harp and Fiddle (Park Ridge, IL), The Harp and Bard (Dorchester, MA), Harp and Hound and dozens more. The harp is on the Irish coat of arms, on every Guinness bottle, and is the most recognised cultural symbol of Ireland. Hospitality businesses know this; the name is shorthand for Irish identity.
6. Harp constellation = Lyra
Lyra, one of the 48 classical Greek constellations, is sometimes informally called "the Harp" in English-language star guides (it represents the lyre of Orpheus, which is technically a different instrument, but the naming overlap got muddied centuries ago). Visible in the northern sky during summer, containing Vega — one of the brightest stars in the sky.
Sources
- Roslyn Rensch, Harps and Harpists (Indiana University Press, 2007 revised edition) — the standard modern scholarly history, from the Ur lyres to the modern concert harp.
- Mike Parker, Child of Pure Harmony: A Source Book for the Single-Action Harp (Independent, 2005) — primary-source documentation of pre-Érard pedal mechanisms.
- Sébastien Érard, French patent No. 868 (1810) — original double-action pedal harp specification.
- Sir Leonard Woolley, Excavations at Ur (Ernest Benn, 1954) — original archaeological reports on the Bull-Headed Lyre of Ur (c. 2500 BC), now at the University of Pennsylvania Museum.
- Carlos Salzedo, Modern Study of the Harp (G. Schirmer, 1921) — the foundational modern-technique textbook still taught at conservatory level.
- Lyon & Healy Harps (Chicago, founded 1864) — manufacturer documentation on the 47-string concert grand and the petite-to-concert-grand size hierarchy.
- Diageo Ireland — corporate history of Harp Lager (Great Northern Brewery, Dundalk, 1960 onwards).
- Charles Q. Choi, "Harp Seal Population Tracking" — Science magazine, 2014 — primary biological background on Pagophilus groenlandicus.
Continue exploring
Forty-seven strings, seven pedals, five thousand years. The triangle hasn't changed.