The oldest instrument?
In the interest of keeping things somewhat light and pleasant around here on a holiday-weekend Friday night, enjoy something truly gorgeous.
Simplicity itself; just variations on a most basic theme, yet heartbreakingly lovely just the same—calming, elegant, mellow, engaging, and utterly spellbinding. This is one of those pieces that really bring Congreve’s old “music hath charms to soothe the savage breast” adage right on home.
Claudia Antonelli, in case you didn’t know, is generally regarded as one of the world’s best-ever harp virtuosos, and rightly so. If you’ve never seen a harp being played live, it’s a helluva mind-blowing experience. The European pillar harp with pedals, see, is one of what I refer to as a full-body-involvement instrument—fingers, arms, back, legs, feet, all come fully into play for the harpist, as with the pipe organ, say, or the double-neck, ten-string (per neck, that is) pedal-steel guitar. It all depends on which variant of the harp they might be playing at the time; some of the four or five-string handheld harps are so simple and basic they can look downright primitive in comparison. Because, y’know, they are.
Don’t hate it me ’cause it’s beautiful, y’all.