Arpa doppia
As Arpa Doppia is chromatic double harp of Baroque Italy with parallel tense strings called.
In Italy, parallel strings with two (Arpa doppia) and later three strings (Arpa tripla or Arpa tre registri) prevailed in the Baroque period. The diatonic and pentatonic series were slightly shifted to one another so that the finger could reach into the space between two diatonic strings and pluck the pentatonic string (semitone).
With the Arpa Doppia, two rows of strings ran parallel to each other: In the treble (for the right hand) the right row was diatonic and the left row was pentatonic. From the middle of the range down to the bass (for the left hand), the diatonic switched to the left row and the pentatonic to the right row.
The Arpa Tripla had two rows of diatonic strings on the outside left and right, and the notes that complement the chromatic row in the middle. The harp was strung with about 75-95 strings and at least the two middle octaves were executed in three rows. The range is about five octaves, for example: 37 strings in the main row, which is on the side of the left hand (also called the bass row). The middle row, which contains the semitones in a different key, consists of 34 strings; and the treble row (left hand) has 27 strings. The outer rows are tuned the same and always in the diatonic scale (CDEFGAHC). To play a piece in a different key, for example in G major / E minor, all F-sides in the two outer rows are retuned to F sharp by raising them by half a tone. To go from C to F, every H side in the outer rows is made B by decreasing it by a semitone. For a tone other than the ladder, simply put your finger between two outer strings in the middle row. Since there is no semitone between E and F in C major, all three strings are tuned to F, so that when retuning to G major, F (= E #) remains in the middle row (applies analogously to B / C). The bass notes reached the so-called Monteverdi-G (for the harp solo in the opera L'Orfeo from 1607). The harp was up to eight feet tall. The string material used was almost exclusively natural gut, and very rarely silk or metal.
The distribution area of both chromatic harps reached in the 16th century from Sicily to Flanders and Wales, where the Welsh triple harp developed. The triple harp flourished in Naples in the 16th and 17th centuries and later in Rome . The first works specifically composed for the harp were published by the Neapolitan composers Ascanio Mayone and Giovanni Maria Trabaci . The Arpa Tripla was an integral part of the continuo of the baroque orchestras in Italy in the 17th century.
In the 18th century the sound box enlarged to almost misshapen dimensions and then went completely out of fashion.
Today's replicas refer to surviving specimens from the instrument museums in Bologna and Modena , and to the famous “Barberini Harp” in the Instrument Museum in Rome, which can also be seen in Lanfranco's painting “Venus Playing the Harp” (1630–1634).