Pre-Columbian America did not know the harp, and stringed  instruments played a marginal role in its cultures. Legend has it  that the first instrument of this kind reached present-day California  in 1579, left behind by one of the members of Francis Drake’s  expedition. Found by the indigenous people of that land, it was  held sacred. It is said they placed the harp at a headland jutting into  the sea, to listen to the wind drawing exquisite sounds from it. I like  to think that Adams’s Dances are something more than a folkloric  adaptation of traditional Inuit songs, and that Agnes Magalhães’s  Phare only pretends to be an etude. Let us make this music sacred.