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60 free Harp trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This harp trivia quiz spans the instrument from the royal tombs of Ur to Joanna Newsom. The easy questions are for anyone who has stood near an orchestra: how the strings are played, why some are red and some black, roughly how many a concert harp has, which country puts a harp on its coins and which stout puts one on its cans. From there it moves into the mechanics of the pedal harp, the difference between a harper and a harpist, and why an autoharp, a Jew's harp and a blues harp are not harps at all. The harder end covers the history and the players: Hochbrucker's first pedals, Sebastien Erard's double action, the Trinity College harp and the coat of arms of Ireland, Turlough O'Carolan, the Welsh triple harp, the Paraguayan and Venezuelan harps, the West African kora, the Chinese konghou, the Aeolian harp, Ravel's Introduction and Allegro, Salzedo's Curtis department, Zabaleta, Harpo Marx and the twelve harp notes that open Danse macabre. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the harp, its variants and its players before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our musical instruments, classical music and Ireland quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How are the strings of a harp sounded?
Plucked with the fingers
Harps can be played seated or standing, and are almost always triangular and made of wood.
Q 02How many strings does a typical modern pedal harp have?
47
That gives a range of six and a half octaves.
Q 03How many pedals does a concert harp have?
Seven
Each pedal changes the pitch of every string of one note name, so pressing C sharpens every C.
Q 04On a pedal harp, what colour are the C strings?
Red
The F strings are dark and the rest are white, so the player can find notes at a glance.
Q 05Roughly what total tension do the strings exert on a pedal harp's soundboard?
About a ton
The instrument itself weighs only about 36 kilograms and stands about 1.8 metres tall.
Q 06The coat of arms of Ireland shows a gold harp with silver strings on a background of which colour?
Blue
The arms are blazoned Azure a harp Or, stringed Argent, and were registered with the Chief Herald in 1945.
Q 07Which Irish brewer has used a harp as its emblem since 1759?
Guinness
Its harp faces right, the opposite way to the Irish state emblem.
Q 08Both the Irish state emblem and a famous stout's trademark are modelled on which medieval instrument?
The Trinity College harp
It is a wire-strung Irish harp dated to the 14th or 15th century and displayed in the Long Room in Dublin.
Q 09The medieval Irish harp used as the model for the state emblem is popularly named after which High King?
Brian Boru
George Petrie dismissed the link in 1840 as a clumsy forgery; the harp postdates the king by centuries.
Q 10Which English king adopted the harp arms when he declared Ireland a kingdom in 1541?
Henry VIII
When the crowns united in 1603 the harp entered the royal arms, where it remains.
Q 11Which Irish airline, founded in 1985, features a stylised harp in its logo?
Ryanair
The Irish Independent has carried a harp in its masthead since 1961.
Q 12Which Scottish football club, founded by Irish emigrants, has a harp in its badge?
Hibernian
Donegal's Finn Harps also carry the instrument in their emblem.
Q 13Which Iraqi club took a harp as its emblem after a presenter compared its play to a harp?
Al-Shorta
They gained the nickname Al-Qithara, the harp, in the early 1990s.
Q 14Who patented the double-action pedal mechanism still used on modern concert harps?
Q 21A player of a folk harp is traditionally called what, as opposed to the pedal-harp's harpist?
A harper
The distinction is loose, and either may simply be called a harp-player.
Q 22The world's oldest stringed instruments, over 4,500 years old, came from royal tombs in which city?
Ur
Leonard Woolley's team found three lyres and one harp, now split between Baghdad, London and Philadelphia.
Q 23Mid-3rd-millennium BCE tomb paintings from which civilisation show arched harps like a hunter's bow?
Egyptian
They lack the third structural side found on modern European harps.
Sébastien Érard
His double movement lets each string be shortened by one or two semitones so a harpist can play in any key.
Q 15Who built the first single-action pedal harp in 1720?
Jacob Hochbrucker of Bavaria
Pedals for tuning had first been introduced in 1697; earlier hooks had to be turned by hand.
Q 16With no pedals pressed, a pedal harp's strings are tuned to which scale?
C flat major
Harp parts are written in C flat rather than the enharmonic B major so the string names need not change.
Q 17Reading left to right, which three pedals sit on the left side of a concert harp?
D, C, B
E, F, G and A are on the right; each pedal has three notched positions.
Q 18Roughly how many parts make up the mechanical action inside a pedal harp's neck?
Over 1,400
Rods run inside the hollow pillar from the pedals up to discs that pinch the strings.
Q 19What is the longest side of a harp, which supports the neck against the strings' pull, called?
The pillar
On pedal harps it is hollow and encloses the rods that change the pitches.
Q 20Which of these so-called harps is really a zither, because its strings run parallel to the soundboard?
The autoharp
The harmonica, or blues harp, is a free-reed wind instrument and the Jew's harp a plucked idiophone; neither is a harp either.
Q 24The triple harp originated in Italy but became the traditional instrument of which nation?
Wales
In Welsh it is the telyn deires, the three-row harp.
Q 25Which South American country counts the harp as its national instrument?
Paraguay
Its harps have around 36 strings and are played with the fingernails at lower tension than Western harps.
Q 26The arpa llanera, a 32-string harp used for joropo music, belongs to the folk tradition of which country?
Venezuela
Its strings were originally gut and are now nylon; the instrument is traditionally made of cedar.
Q 27Which Southeast Asian country regards the arched saung-gauk harp as its national instrument?
Myanmar
It descends from the ancient Indian veena, which survives nowhere else.
Q 28The kora, a 21-string West African instrument, is built from what?
A halved gourd covered in cow skin
It is classed as a double-bridged harp-lute because its strings pass over a free-standing bridge.
Q 29The ancient Chinese konghou was documented as early as which era?
Spring and Autumn
A similar harp, the gonghu, was played in Korea from the Goguryeo period.
Q 30An Aeolian harp is played by what?
The wind
Named for the Greek wind god, it is the only string instrument that plays solely harmonic frequencies.