A bronze mounted wooden 'Pleyel, Lyon & Cie' chromatic harp, France, about 1900

Dimensions:

H 178,5 - L 100 cm

The harp marked 'Pleyel, Lyon & Cie Paris', 'Harpe syste. Gve. Lyon breveté' and numbered '690'.

At the end of the 1800s Pleyel, under the direction of Gustav Lyon (1857-1936), manufactured a chromatic cross-strung harp with two rows of strings. This new harp took advantage of two rows of strings that corresponded to the notes of the white and black keys of the piano respectively. In spite of the institution of some schools of chromatic harp in the conservatories of Paris, Brussels and Parma and the commission to Claude Debussy of the composition of the Danses Sacrèe et Profane (1904), after the 1950s this instrument was rarely used (link).

Compare:

A similar harp (num. 742) is part of the collection of the Conservatorio di Musica Arrigo Boito, Parma, Italy (link).

Harp '689' was sold at Kodner Galleries, Florida (USA) on 13 December 2006 (lot 181) for a hammer price of $3,800 (link).