The Weather Notebook: Aeolian Harp

Aeolian Harp
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That's the sound of perhaps the worlds only stringed wind instrument...the Aeolian Harp. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook. The Aeolian Harp was conceived around 1650 in Germany, not to played not by hand, but by the wind. This particular Harp was built by musician and sound recordist Jim Metzner:

Aeolian Harp
Jim: "I think the wonderful thing about Aeolian Harp's is they're like a bridge between man and nature."

Basically, it's like a long shoebox with strings stretched across the top.

Jim: "And when the wind blows over these strings, and the wind is powerful enough, we actually hear this vibration."

The vibration is enhanced by the Venturi Effect where wind speed increases as it passes through a small opening and this causes the strings to vibrate even more, up and down with the breeze.

Jim: "You should be able to hear them if you were plucking them. They're all tuned in unison. Stick that in the window and you'll hear this sound. That's the sound of an Aeolian Harp."

There is a poetic, if macabre, legend that the God Hermes invented the first stringed instrument, the lyre, after hearing the wind blow through the carcass of a dead animal, pulling musical tones from its dried sinews -- the body itself a stringed instrument, the wind the musician.

Jim: "Aeolian Harps are built for nature's hand to play them. We build them to hear the wind."

Jim Metzner is host and producer of Pulse of the Planet. Our Senior Consulting Producer is Jay Allison. Funding for The Weather Notebook is provided by Subaru, the beauty of all wheel drive and by the National Science Foundation.