Danilo- Barvo to you for recognizing that what you wrote was in fact for piano and not harp. Most composers never get that.

There are other threads on this site about the issue of writing for the harp. There are some books out there that try to explain (quite well) how to write for the harp. But I still maintain that taking harp lessons for maybe 6 months will teach you much more about what works and sounds good on the harp than any amount of reading. You don’t have to become a virtuoso yourself. You just have to know how to play well enough to think like a harpist and not a pianist. Good luck.

Tony- That’s great advice. I think, maybe in addition to taking some lessons, having a harpist play what you’ve written and tell you why it’s either unplayable or ineffective or both is a great education in how to write for the harp. I was just relieved that Danilo was aware that she had in fact written a piano part instead of a harp part. That’s what most composers do, without realizing it of course.

I think the biggest reason to take lessons for a few months is to change the thinking of the composer and get him/her to understand that it’s not the same as piano. I don’t think one has to be a virtuoso to understand some basic concepts about the harp. Ravel was a terrible pianist, but he wrote dazzling music for the piano. I think that the harp had a place of prominence in French music of Debussy’s and Ravel’s day and so they were quite aware of what the instrument could do. Both of them must have known Hasselmans and many of his extraordinary students, and that gave them a huge advantage. The problem today is that many composers don’t play any instrument. I suspect that many other instrumentalists(oboists, ‘cellists, etc.) have the same complaints about contemporary music as we do.

Danilo- There are many great composers who could not play the music they wrote for piano. Schubert and Ravel were both horrible pianists, but they understood how the hands worked on the piano and wrote gorgeous, and playable music for that instrument. I think that if you took some harp lessons, it would give you a concept of how the hands work on the instrument and also how the instrument resonates. You would then have to force yourself to forget(consciously) the physical aspects of playing the harp and just write what you hear in your head. The difference now is that you would be much more likely to hear in your head how the harp really resonates, and not just write piano music.