College of Harpers

Harpers are professional musicians. Most earn their living as performers, although some specialize in the crafting of fine musical instruments such as the harp, flute, drum, horn, and lute. Truly great harpers can make instruments of seemingly awesome enchantment and play them with such skill as to coax any emotions they wish from their listeners.

The College of Harpers is a member organization of the Mangai, the association of Lythian guilds. The College has a monopoly on the production and sale of musical instruments but not on singing or making music in general, even when done for profit. Nonetheless, membership has its benefits, as many civic leaders will hire only guilded harpers to entertain at fairs and other events they sponsor.

Harpers are an essential part of the musical traditions of virtually all Lythian cultures. Master harpers are part of royal households and many landholding noblemen employ the services of a personal bard to entertain them and their families. Other harpers find regular employment at houses of courtesans or accompanying thespian troupes.

Many harpers support themselves by traveling about and performing in inns or taverns or wherever they can find an appreciative, and paying, audience. The College has guildhalls in towns and cities across the Hârnic realms to provide itinerant members with accommodation and rehearsal space. The public can visit these guildhalls to hire musical entertainment and purchase musical instruments.

Itinerant harpers play an important role in the conveyance of news, tales, legends, and oral histories. Minstrels from afar are always in great demand by audiences eager for songs and tales of strange folk and exotic places. The veracity of the tale is less important than the entertainment the harper provides in recounting it. Ivinian skalds, noted for their epic tales of heroes and villains, are welcome novelties in the southern realms. Sindarin harpers seldom play for outsiders but are without doubt the best at these arts, beloved for their beautiful but often unfathomable songs.

Harpers can use their talents to praise good leaders or damn those who have done poorly. Busking musicians offer social commentary to delight or incite the crowds. The opinion of the authorities is expressed in how quickly the town guard is sent in.

Guild Badge

Journeyman harpers are given an engraved and enameled pin bearing the emblem of the College of Harpers. A master harper’s badge has a gold border to denote his or her rank. Guildsmen who desire anonymity can adopt a stage name and the appellation “of the Black Harp” but will often display the badge to acknowledge their status.

Income

An average bonded master harper can expect to earn 42d per month, plus room and board. A journeyman receives 30–60% of a master’s wages, depending on experience, plus room and board.

Townsfolk can visit a local guildhall to hire harpers to entertain at their feasts and civic events. The negotiated fee (typically 3–12sp per performer) may be supplemented if the performance was especially well received.

Harpers also offer lessons to the public in singing and playing instruments. Typical clients include children of wealthy families, courtiers, thespians, and courtesans.

String

• Harp: A wooden stringed instrument of roughly triangular shape. Like those of other stringed instruments, harp strings are made of gut. The harp sits on the ground or the musician’s lap and is played with both hands plucking the strings.

• Lute: The lute has a neck, deep round back, and strings stretched across a sound hole in the body. It is played by plucking or strumming the strings.

• Lyre: The lyre is similar to the harp but has a crossbar that attaches to two arms to support the strings. It is usually smaller and more portable than a harp.

• Rebec: The rebec has a narrow, boat-shaped body and a neck. It is played by drawing a horsehair bow across the strings.

Wind

• Bagpipe: Bagpipes use a reservoir in the form of a bag to feed air across enclosed reeds. Primarily used by the Jarin and Khuzdul.

• Flute: A cylindrical tube stopped at one end, with a mouth-hole and fingerholes. There is a great variety of tonal ranges, sizes, and styles, including the fife and ocarina. Flutes can be made of wood, bone, or metal. Flutes are often held laterally, with the player blowing across the
mouth-hole.

• Horn: A family of instruments made of a tube, often curved in various ways, with one narrow end into which the musician blows and a wide end from which sound emerges. Most musical horns are metal but can be fashioned from animal horn. Horns come in many pitches and sizes. Small horns, like the atan, are also used as signaling devices by military units. Large horns, such as those used to deliver ceremonial fanfares, can be many feet long.

• Pipe: Similar to a flute but held in front of the body, with the player blowing into the mouth-hole. The recorder is the most common style.

• Shawm: Shawms are similar in appearance to recorders but have a double-reed mouthpiece and a flared bell. They produce loud, piercing tones akin to those of a horn.

Percussion

• Drum: A wooden shell enclosed at one or both ends by a stretched skin. The skin is struck either with the player’s hands or with a mallet. Drums range from small models held in one hand to large kettle drums that rest on the ground.

• Tambourine: A wooden hoop covered by a stretched skin similar to a hand drum but with small copper rattles or bells fixed to the frame. Can be shaken or struck.

Regional Preferences

The people of the Hârnic realms differ in their musical tastes, and a successful harper will take the audience’s tastes into consideration when performing. Although a few crafters build instruments for the pure enjoyment of producing a piece of exceptional quality, most are also looking to make a living and will make instruments their market demands.

The Sindarin prefer lutes, harps, and flutes and rarely make or play percussion instruments. Khuzan music often features deep bass chanting accompanied by heavy percussion, sometimes using an actual hammer and anvil.

The harpers of the eastern kingdoms make a variety of instruments. Over the centuries, Lythian harpers visiting the ports of Melderyn have introduced new instruments to the Hârnic tradition. Many of these are now relatively common, including the rebec and shawm.

Stringed instruments are popular in Kanday and are used in many Laranian temple services. Woodwinds are common among the lower classes but brass horns suffer from an association with Agrikanism. Drums produce sounds considered too coarse for the ears of ladies.

In Rethem, drums and brass horns are popular. Kettledrums, snares, and cymbals are featured in Agrikan liturgical music, while hand drums known as burhyn are used for dances.

Popular dances in the Thardic Republic are usually accompanied by a quartet of lute, flute, tambourine, and chakett, a percussion instrument that produces a ratcheting noise of variable pitch. Harps are typically used for dances among the wealthier classes. Skilled harpers are in high demand and no society event worth attending is complete without a harp quartet to provide pleasing background music.

The harp, bagpipe, whistles, rattles, and drums are the traditional instruments of the Jarin of Orbaal. Ivinian skalds recite sagas and ballads while backed by lyre, pipe, and tambour (a type of drum).

Folk instruments like shepherd’s pipes, fiddles, simple flutes, and a variety of whistles and drums are played by unguilded musicians throughout Hârn and Ivinia. Many guilded harpers also skillfully employ these instruments to the great delight of crowds at fairs and inns.

The College of Harpers has little presence in Ivinia or Orbaal, yet music is no less important to the viking culture. Ivinian harpers, known as skalds, are masters of eddas and sagas. Skalds wander the land and sea, spreading news and retelling history. Some are said to practice magic, and it is considered bad luck to harm one.

Most skalds travel from clanhold to clanhold and are rewarded with gifts of food, strong drink, clothing, and a warm bed. Those who entertain jarls and kings can be richly rewarded and may be invited to stay as their guest for an entire winter.

A skald’s education is deemed incomplete until he or she has read the Idjarheim stones. These standing stones were carved by Idjar, one of Sarajin’s sons. They bear an incomplete but unique record of Ivinian folk history, although the oldest stones are severely weathered. Some of the eddas were brought to Idjar by wandering skalds; having one’s name inscribed below such a work is a great honor.

Jarin bards in Orbaal sing allegorical tales illustrating elements of their culture and sagas about the ancestors of the audience. Although tragic warriors fighting against impossible odds and failing heroically are a common theme, satiric or whimsical songs are also popular. Jarin bards are welcomed in Kaldor by immigrants nostalgic for songs in the old styles.

Skaldic poetry and on the livelihood of skalds

For Ivinian jarls and kings, reputation is paramount. Performing acts of valour in battle and rewarding one’s followers are both important aspects of being a successful ruler. To give presents such as rings, swords and shields to their hird is a way for jarls and kings to ensure loyalty and friendship. To be seen as a generous king or jarl is of great importance, as this communicate both how wealthy a ruler is, and how willing he is to reward warriors who fight for them. A positive reputation means more followers, more allies, and ultimately, more political success. This explains why skalds are keen to stress not only the bravery in battle but also the generousity of their patron in gold, treasure and slaves.

For most Lythian societies, famous deeds are captured and spread in writing: saints and kings are commemorated in literary works called vitae—literally, ‘lives’—that are read, and stored for posterity in libraries. In Ivinia the manuscript culture is not as widespread as in continental Lythia, instead the traditional method of old, the carving of runes into wood (näverbark) and stone, do not make for an ideal medium for recording or spreading information. Instead the recording of famous and heroic deeds is based on an oral tradition upheld and carried out by skalds.

The skald make his living by performing skaldic poetry in praise of rulers in their halls. Kings and jarls pay handsomely for a poem which they think will give them a good reputation. It is said that some kings offer gold rings and swords in exchange for poems, and others gift ships and even whole islands for great poems.

Skaldic poetry is composed in a complicated alliterating metre called dróttkvætt (literally ‘retinue-metre’, in reference to the fact that this poetry was performed before the huscarl's in the hall).  Dróttkvætt is considered one of the most elaborate metres in Lythia, and so skalds are respected in the craft of poetic composition. Composing in this metre require very precise consideration of syllables, stress, and sound. This means that skaldic poems have to be remembered exactly, or written with the utmost care. If words or syllables are changed, then this poetry becomes corrupted, and its metre and its meaning face the risk of being misread, misunderstood or confusing - a rather bad strategy in Ivinian clanhouses.

It should be said that the role of skalds is not always about positive praise. Their skills could easily turn sinister. There are stories about unwise jarls who offended their skalds by not paying an appropriate amount for a praise poem, then the skald passionately created defamatory poetry about that ruler (typically known as ‘níð’ poetry). Nid poetry could criticise jarls and kings for being cowardly in battle, for being stingy or for their lack of generosity, in direct opposition to the kind of praise poetry a king wants.