The harp is one of the oldest instruments in the world and has been played throughout history by almost all cultures. The wide variety of harps is amazing: the ornately carved harps of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Spanish had harps with two crossing rows of strings, the Italian Baroque with two to three parallel rows of strings, the light hook harps of the traveling harpers with hooks on the neck to change the pitches, and the list goes on..

The history of the harps goes back thousands of years. The harp is the oldest known stringed instrument. The piano, the guitar, the violin and all other string instruments evolved from the harp.

Harps have long been known for their soothing quality and have been instrumental in the healing process, in celebration of birth, as comfort in passing, and to make people feel better. No other instrument has been so closely associated with so many positive things - with a profound sense of beauty, with peace and tranquility, with love, with enchantment, with goodness and with heaven. The word "harp" comes from Anglo-Saxon, Old German, and Old Norse words whose root means, "to pluck". Harps in my definition are multi-stringed-instruments, with open strings (no frets), where each string plays one note and where the strings are plucked with the fingers.

Pictures of harps dating back to prehistoric time (15,000 BC) have been discovered on rock paintings in France. Many believe that the harp had its origins with the hunter's bow.