—by Alison Wilson

In my spare moments as an orchestral harpist, I also play the trumpet. The best part about this is that I can continue counting bars even when there is no harp part in a work…I jest!

Actually, it’s really enjoyable to play in other pieces that I might never have explored. It also forces me to become proficient in transposition since many trumpet parts are written for instruments pitched in C, D, E-flat, E-natural, and F, while I play a B-flat instrument.

When I came across a particularly exposed section for trumpets in Hamish MacCunn’s The Land of the Mountain and the Flood (his Scottish overture) written in B major for a C instrument, I knew I would need to write out the transposition beforehand. Transposing the part up a tone from B to C-sharp major with accidentals and double sharps on the fly in the concert was not something I wanted to tackle.

Just for a bit of fun, I used the harp as my transposition computer. I set the pedals to B major, played the passage and then thought I’d try C-sharp major followed by D-flat major, which was the obvious key in which to rewrite the part.

As my feet depressed the B and E pedals into sharp, there was such a horrendous noise of metal fatigue and breakages, I thought there was a major meltdown in the top mechanism, and  I recoiled in horror. My partner in the next room rushed in, having heard the noise and my reaction. Of course, the clamor was just a pedal spring snapping, , but the awful fright is what I’ll recall forever. •