The sisters
The Egyptian Athénaeus of Naukratis, indicates that the Greeks may have had an ancient
twenty string harp called the μάγαδις by quoting the lyric poet Anakréon: "I hold my magadis,
and sing, Striking loud the twentieth string.." He also quotes Telestes who calls this stringed
instrument 'horn-sounding' and later presents Phillis the Delian as saying that it produced a
diapason sound, ie, that of the octave.
The lyric poet Pindaros in turn says of the πακτίς (pektis) that it made ψαλμόν αντίφθογγον
(against-the-note string-music) because its music was accompanied in all keys by two kinds of
singers, namely, men and boys.
The diatonic scale used on the Gaelic harp makes its first appearance in recorded European
history in the late fifth century BC in the writings of the Greek music theorists where it formed
part of a tuning system for the Greek lyre. Greek musical notation shows signs of a range of
aa-GG having existed during a stage of its development. The men's vocal range in Latin
chant was standardly aa-GG.
The Greek letter Γ called γάμμα (gamma), being the third letter in the Greek alphabet, had an
equivalent position in that alphabet to C in the medieval Roman alphabet; but when the
Romans, in the 3rd century AD, introduced the letter G as the seventh letter of the alphabet,
gamma, which sounded like a G, was used in Latin speaking parts of Europe to designate not
the note C, the third letter of the alphabet, but the extra note GG at the bottom of the vocal
range of Latin chant. The term 'gamut' was coined to describe the whole Latin range but the
word is also applicable to the set of strings on the harp. On the Gaelic harp, the string which
carries this bottom pitch GG, or Γ, was termed 'the crónán' (drone) by Edward Bunting.
Liturgically, boys rather than women sang Latin chant with men but the boys' vocal range in
Latin chant was an octave higher than the men's, aaa-G as opposed to aa-Γ, regardless of
actual historical pitch. So although boys (and girls or women) would never sing in the octave
lower than G, men could sing more than an octave above it. This liminal element in the
western Christian musical tradition may be what lies behind the position at G given by Bunting
for the two unison 'sister' strings of the Gaelic harp, known by Patrick Byrne as 'na comhlaí'.
The system may even have given rise to a protocol for the use of the left hand on the harp,
meaning that it never descended to play below the sisters.