Composer looking for a collaborator

[roger-illingworth]

Hey there,

I’m a student composer, currently trying to learn how to write for harp. I’d like to find a kind and open-minded soul willing to look over a score as I work on it over the next few days. It won’t be focused on extended techniques, just quite chromatic which is where I need help – trying to work out what’s possible and what’s not!

I posted an early draft yesterday but got shy and pulled it down when the comments confirmed very publicly the mountain I have to climb! So I’d rather communicate via private messages.

Hope someone can help!

x

[carl-swanson]

If you really want to write for the harp, then take some harp lessons. You don’t have to become a virtuoso harp player. You just have to take enough lessons to think like a harp player and to hear what the instrument can and cannot do.

[Gretchen Cover]

Carl and others,

Roger needs help right now. Lessons won’t solve his immediate need although in the long-term it would be great if he could learn about the instrument first hand. As harpists, we should be THANKFUL that a composer wants to write for the harp. Roger is brave to admit he doesn’t know about the harp and secure enough to ask for advice. I hope someone experienced in orchestration will help him out. A composer writing harp parts deserves to be supported.

[jennifer-buehler]

Are there any harpists at your university or a sister university?

[Tacye]

It seems to me that a large part of the art of being an orchestral composer is writing for instruments you don’t play.

A composing friend told me of a trick – draw out a 7 x 3 grid and label it up for the notes x flat, natural and sharp, then put seven pennies down for the available notes. Everytime you move a penny to get a different note write in a pedal change. How many pedal changes you can use depends on how difficult you want the piece to be for the harpist, and the easier you make it the more likely it is to be played, and played well.

[roger-illingworth]

Thanks so much guys, some really helpful suggestions. I particularly like the grid idea Tacye – will give that a go straight away.

In the long run, I’d love to get a lesson or two on harp (and all the dozens of other instruments I don’t play), but I’ve got a deadline looming, so there’s some pressure (plus a 3 month old baby, so it’s crazy days!). I live a long way from uni, and it’s the summer break, otherwise I’d definitely look there for a collaborator.

A kindly student harpist has replied in a pm, and already offering some great suggestions, so I’ve got someone to work with. If I get something I’m happy to have publicly scrutinized at the end of it, I’ll be sure to post it here!

Thanks again guys, and any more practical hints like the grid idea would be gratefully received!

[carl-swanson]

Gretchen- There are literally thousands of compositions written for the harp, many of them chamber music or concertos, that don’t fit the instrument, either sound wise or technically or both, written by well meaning and sometimes famous composers, who frankly were thinking piano-keyboard-with-harp-sound while they wrote their piece. Nearly all of these pieces got one or two performances and then were never heard again, because they just didn’t sound good on the instrument. There are new compositions commissioned all the time for harp competitions in particular, which end up in the same boat: never heard again after the initial performances.

There has got to be a better way to add repertoire. If composers would take a few months of lessons so that when they finally compose something for the harp, they can hear in their heads the sound of the harp, can hear what the harp can do in different registers, and can ‘feel’ what their notes are going to feel like on the instrument, they would have a better chance of writing something worth listening to and which might actually enter the repertoire. Edna Phillips and her husband commissioned something like 28 well known composers to write for the harp. Only one of those 28, Alberto Ginestera, wrote something that lasted.

[Gretchen Cover]

Carl.

In a perfect world, your suggestions would work very well. But how many composers are going to take the time to learn all the instruments. The only composer I can think of who did that is Alan Hovanhess.

Meantime, Kimberly, if you are reading this do you think a link in Harp Column titled something like “composer resources” might be helpful? I know a few people here have suggested some excellent books on harp composing. Maybe that might be a first step. There seems to be enough composer inquires to merit such a link IMHO.

[edith-zonneveld]

I am not a professional harpist and I only started to compose/arrange for a few months.
It is hard to find good recources (books/advice) on this item. So for me it would be great to have a topic arranging/composing for the harp.

[Tacye]

There must be even more piano compositions which justifiably have faded away – I wonder if the proportion of ‘good’ ones is any higher?

Personally, I doubt how useful a beginning ability to play the harp is when composing advanced music for it – listening attentively to harp pieces and parts while following the score is a start to developing an ear for real harp playing. [It strikes me that this may be related to all the harp parts which seem to me to be effectively written for the sound of the instrument, but then slip up and insert 10 note chords or something.] Then as mentioned finding a local harpist who will collaborate, play different things for you and discuss the effect you really want.

(Hasslemans and Faure anyone? Or, I understand, Zabel and Tchaikovsky.)

[kimberly-rowe]

Hi everyone! Thanks for weighing in on this thread, and thanks to Roger for coming here for input. Gretchen, that’s a great idea. I will definitely consider it! I don’t want to make promises since we currently have a long “to-do” list for the site (seriously, it is PAGES long–back me up @[[hugh-brock:User:Hugh Brock]]!), but I do like the idea and will think about ways we could implement it. Please keep the ideas coming.

Roger, please let us know how your project goes!

[Janis Cortese]

There’s also the issue that sometimes a piece of music that sounds wonderful to a listener actually doesn’t “fit” an instrument naturally. Nikolai Rubenstein apparently told Tchaik that his piano concerto (which has since turned into one of the most popular piano pieces ever) was unplayable, incompetently written, and didn’t suit the instrument at all. And I remember Perlman talking about the different flavors of difficulty of a Paganini piece versus something by Brahms (I think, or possibly Tchaik) — the Pag piece was hard but sat well on the instrument since it was written by a violinist, while the other thing sounded great but felt clunky no matter how many times he played it.

A composer should have a good grip on what sits well on an instrument; you don’t want to be completely callous as to what you’re asking the performer to do. I’ve filled in many a measure myself by thinking not of what sound I wanted but of how my hands seemed to want to move. But it’s more important that a piece sound good and flow well to the ears than that it meet the technical peculiarities of a given instrument. Of course, it’s best when it does both, but I keep thinking of Rubenstein’s brutal skewering of Tchaik’s concerto, and Perlman’s comment about how certain parts of an “unviolinistic” piece will just never sit well on that instrument, no matter how beautiful it sounds.

ETA: Here it is, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0omSs7fHkps — he starts talking about it at 1:30 in. Now, it’s not an excuse to write difficult stuff for no reason, but it does indicate two things:

1) It’s okay to make the instrumentalist swear a few times, but
2) If you’re going to make them swear, you’d better be making them play a cracking good piece of music as consolation. 🙂

[Sylvia]

I wonder if Roger is writing for solo, orchestra, small ensemble, or what?
Another thing no one has mentioned is it has to be enough to lug a harp in for.

A good place to look for examples would be to first look at listings of harp parts. (I couldn’t find a link on Lyon&Healy or Holywell, but maybe someone has links for the music catalogs.) See what composers (forget Wagner) wrote harp parts, and then go to IMSLP and look at the parts.

I don’t like writing that is linear, chromatic, fast repeated notes (no sonority), right hand so low you have to be a gorilla to play it, and tricky rhythms. Lots of harmonic changes often have to be dealt with by using enharmonics….because you can’t change two pedals on the same side at once (yes, I know the E, but it’s awkward). Vibrating strings is what we’re dealing with, and they have to have time to vibrate to get the sonority. You can’t bang on them like a piano, or just blow or bow the note and leave it behind.

I agree that we should encourage composers, but I also agree that there is much written that is unplayable or doesn’t sound beautiful, so no one wants to hear it again.

[carl-swanson]

Gretchen- The larger problem I think is that today’s composers really don’t know anything about any of the instruments they are writing for. Most composers are not performers themselves. They rely on orchestration manuals to tell them the range of the instrument, special effects, etc. But since they don’t work on a regular basis with performers, and often compose far removed from performers, they write things that don’t work for any of the instruments they are writing for. 18th and 19th century composers, and even those of the early 20th century worked very closely with performers and performance organizations and had a clear concept of what each instrument could or could not do. After World War I, when most of the music schools and Conservatories were formed, composing became an academic institution and not one geared to live performance, and more importantly, making money. The result has been an endless supply of all kinds of compositions, written in and for academia, winning all kinds of academic awards, none of which have entered the standard repertoire, and which have not gotten more than a handful of performances.

[roger-illingworth]

Carl, you’re being a little bit trollish… I’m here to talk to and work with performers. I’m a woodwind player and pianist, so I’ve come here looking for help on the harp. Admittedly, I’m writing music that is esoteric and probably wouldn’t be most people’s cup of tea, but then neither is Wagner. I’m only a student. I don’t expect this work to get a huge amount of air time, but I have to start somewhere, and a handful of performances would be an amazing thing.

By the by, I’ve got a harp lesson booked for later in the week. Can’t say I’m not trying!

Thanks again for all the words of encouragement everyone.

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