Victor Salvi, who reigned for decades as the world’s foremost maker of harps, died on May 10 in Milan. He was 95.
His death was announced by his company, Salvi Harps, of Piasco, Italy.
Mr. Salvi, a former member of the New York Philharmonic who was equal parts harpist, artisan, engineer and evangelist, established the company in 1956. With his acquisition in 1987 of Lyon & Healy, the venerable Chicago harp maker and his only major competitor, he came to preside over a genial global monopoly.
Prized for their power and sonority, Salvi harps are played today by many of the finest soloists and orchestral musicians in the world. Prince Charles became the owner of one in 2006, when Mr. Salvi presented him with an ornate, heavily gilded instrument known as the Prince of Wales harp. That instrument has since been played by the official royal harpist at many imperial functions, including the wedding reception of Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011.
More than any other orchestral instrument, the harp is a machine, weighing some 90 pounds and comprising more than a thousand moving parts. Though it typically has only 47 strings, it is able to achieve a six-and-a-half-octave range by means of a set of pedals, which control a sophisticated mechanism that raises or lowers the pitch of the strings.
The harp has long been considered dainty, but it must be built to display grace under pressure, quite literally. Over the years, Mr. Salvi, assisted by a team of Italian cabinetmakers and Swiss watchmakers, made a number of technical innovations that remain hallmarks of his instruments. These included increasing the harp’s acoustic vigor while simultaneously reinforcing its delicate neck. (The more than 2,000 pounds of pressure exerted when the strings are taut puts the neck at chronic risk of warping.)
He also strove to democratize the instrument, long associated in the public mind with drawing rooms and those who can afford drawing rooms. Though a harp is hardly an impulse purchase — prices for Salvi pedal harps range from $11,500 to more than $100,000 — he created several models with far less gilding and ornamentation than was traditional. He also introduced an electronic harp that is well suited for jazz and pop music.
Unlike the violin, on which the efforts of a beginner can sound like feline altercation, the harp, Mr. Salvi stressed, is companionable from the start. As he told The New York Times in 1957, “Anyone can sit down to the harp and make sounds so that people don’t want to jump out of the window.”
Vittorio Salvi was born in Chicago on March 4, 1920, to a harping dynasty. His father, Rodolfo, had been a maker of harps, pianos and bowed stringed instruments in Venice. An older half brother, Alberto, was a distinguished professional harpist who made his career in the United States after the family moved there in the early 1900s.
“The kid was a genius,” Victor Salvi told the British magazine The Economist in 2006. “He was making $1,000 a night, until the Depression.”
Young Victor received his first harp lessons from his older sister Aida, also a professional harpist. During World War II he was a member of the United States Navy band, and after the war he toured as a soloist with the St. Louis Sinfonietta, a chamber ensemble.
By this time, Mr. Salvi had become a skilled tinkerer. Wartime shortages had meant that harp parts were seldom available, and he learned to jury-rig them.
“Playing the harp in orchestras you get a lot of measures of rest, time to think about how the instrument is constructed and how it could be improved,” he told The Times in 2005.
In the mid-1940s, while continuing to perform, Mr. Salvi opened a harp repair shop in Chicago. In about 1950 he moved to New York, where he played in the Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos and the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini. He opened a repair shop on the West Side of Manhattan and in 1954 built his first harp.
Not long afterward, wanting to secure the services of European craftsmen, Mr. Salvi moved his business to Italy — it was originally in Genoa — and recruited a staff of fine cabinetmakers to carve and veneer the harps’ maple-and-spruce bodies. To build the mechanical works, he later established a factory in Switzerland, where he employed artisans accustomed to making watches, music boxes and automatons.
Mr. Salvi’s first marriage, to Martha Perazzo, ended in divorce; at his death he was separated from his second wife, Julia Torres. His survivors include two children from his first marriage, Marco and Nicoletta Salvi; a son, Victor, from his second; a stepdaughter, Ana Maddox; three grandchildren; and two step-grandchildren.
In 2006, Mr. Salvi established the Victor Salvi Harp Museum in Piasco, in northwest Italy. Salvi Harps, which will remain in business, produces about 2,000 instruments a year. Lyon & Healy harps continue to be made under that name in Chicago.
Through his company, and through the Victor Salvi Foundation, which promotes the work of young harpists, Mr. Salvi was long a luminary in the classical-music firmament. In postings since his death, music bloggers have expressed bittersweet pleasure at picturing Mr. Salvi, presenting his credentials at the Pearly Gates, fast becoming the most sought-after skilled worker the Hereafter has ever seen.
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