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The Hochbrucker Family and the Adoption of the Pedal Harp before 1760. AMIS Conference 2022

Lewis Jone and I presented the above paper at this year's AMIS conference, 8-11 June 2022, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.


This paper examines the work of Jacob Hochbrucker (1673–1763), who invented the pedal harp in 1697, and his sons, Simon (1699–after 1762), Johann Christoph (1715–1762 or later), and Johann Baptist (1732–1812), in making and, through widespread performance and teaching, spreading use and awareness of the instrument. It seeks to integrate analysis of the design of Hochbrucker’s harps, of which four well-preserved examples are extant, with selective examination of the initial presentation of the new instrument in centers including Vienna, Leipzig, London, and Paris. Hochbrucker’s harp design, including the implications of his string scaling, is characterized in relation to the contemporary German hook harp and Doppelharfe, and his superbly engineered mechanism, demonstrating precision linkage work, is compared favorably with later designs. This collaborative project also attempts to replicate Hochbrucker’s harp for modern uses. Some suggestions will be offered on how a practice-led program of research into playing a range of early- and mid-eighteenth-century music using copies of Jacob Hochbrucker’s early-eighteenth-century harps, alongside contemporaneous hook, double, and later crochet-action counterparts, might be designed.


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3 Comments

simon
Mar 25, 2024

Only just seen this presentation. Very interesting and informative, and great to see the "received story" being straightened up.


Now of course I am wondering how this type of pedal harp relates to the later French developments, whether both continued in parallel, how much there was a direct transfer, how the different traditions of mechanism and workshop practice and concept were continued or abandoned.

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mike45804
Mar 27, 2024
Replying to

Thanks Simon, the Hochbrucker instrument certainly preceded the later French instruments. As such, the single-action harp is a German rather than French invention, albeit one developed and popularised in France. Hochbrucker's instruments were in use as late as the 1740s and possibly into the 1750s. A decade later French developments eclipsed the earlier pedal harp and remained in use into the nineteenth-century, crossing over with developments by Sebastien Erard.

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