Hook harp

Hook harp (Fr.: harpe à crochets; Ger.: Hakenharfe; It.: arpa a nottolini, arpa ad uncinetti), diatonic harp with a series of hooks set in the neck to permit raising the pitch of the strings by a semitone, allegedly invented in the Tirol (documentation on this point is lacking) in the second half of the 17th c. But while turning the hooks the player temporarily lost the use of one of his hands. This inconvenience was remedied ca. 1720 by the invention of a pedal mechanism controlling hooks that…