Our 2009/2010 lecture season ended on – literally – a high note. In the lovely setting of Libertas at Buckland-tout-Saints, by kind permission of Johnny and Rosalind Spears, we were treated to “An Hour with the Harp and David Watkins”. Professor Watkins fell in love with the harp in his late teens and has devoted his life to it ever since. His knowledge was encyclopaedic; his musicianship superb; his enthusiasm infectious and his audience enraptured.

The origin of the harp was the bow and arrow. Its music was so important to the ancient Egyptians’ journey to the next world that harpists have been found walled up in Pharaonic tombs. Later, harp music helped set the tone at Roman orgies. Our own King Alfred played a harp … for more relaxing reasons. Harps were used symbolically in some of Hogarth’s paintings. Marie Antoinette was mainly responsible for their introduction into France. The instrument was steadily developed and refined over the centuries, adding texture to music and becoming integrated into orchestras from around 1850. Mr Watkins described it as imparting a sense of musical sculpture, claiming (by which time we were all utterly convinced) that the harp is the only instrument that communicates directly with the heart.

The modern harp now has seven pedals, each with three alternative positions, making it an extremely complex instrument to play, though the professor made it appear utterly simple as he illustrated his talk by playing several pieces for us, ranging from some of the earliest published harp music, dating from the 16th Century, to some of his own landscape-inspired compositions. At the end of the talk, most unusually, we were all invited to try playing his harp ourselves: heavenly, in both senses of the word! Our 2010/2011 lecture season starts in September with a talk by Rosemary Ransome Wallis on the development of Contemporary Silver in the 20th and 21st Centuries.