Composer looking for a collaborator

[Tacye]

I don’t find Wagner harp parts that bad any more – my first encounter, immolating Brunhilde with my youth orchestra, was very daunting but now I have played the entire Ring and they do have their own effectiveness. Admittedly they could do with a bit of practice and I don’t often give them that. Then there is the problem with concert organisers who seem to think 1+1=6, but that isn’t Wagner’s fault.

Schoenberg’s Pelleas and Mellisande, now there are harp parts illustrating how not to do it!

[andy-b]

Hi, Roger:
There are two books you might want to look into: Harp Scoring by Stanley Chaloupka and Writing for the Pedal Harp by Ruth K. Inglefield and Lou Anne Neill. It may not help with this particular project, but they’d be worth having if you write more for the harp. I think they may be available through Vanderbilt Music, but I’m not sure. Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Andy

[carl-swanson]

Roger- Congratulations on taking a harp lesson. That’s a good first step. And I’m glad to hear that you are a performer as well. That’s generally not the case. That one fact will give you a huge leg up on writing effectively for any instrument. I didn’t mean to suggest that you couldn’t write for the harp unless you were a high level harpist. But if you just take a few lessons on the instrument, you will be able to ask a harpist more articulate questions, and be able to understand the answer so much better.

[roger-illingworth]

Tacye, can you tell me more about what’s wrong with Schoenberg’s writing in P&M? In the first few pages can see quite a few contrary motion five note arpeggio figures which are presumably not fun, and a few 11 note chords, which are outright impossible. How do you deal with those?

But otherwise it looks relatively idiomatic – glissandos, arpeggios, etc… What is it that makes this bad harp writing?

Thanks for the book titles Andy, will have a look in the uni library. No UK shops seem to stock them.

[Janis Cortese]

What is it that makes this bad harp writing?

How much harp music do you listen to? I’m definitely not in the camp of “you must play the X to write for it,” although I do think it helps certainly. However, I definitely do think that you should listen to X to write for it. The best way to develop a good sense of an instrument, as well as your own distinctive voice on that instrument, is to listen to it being played in many styles, and pay mind to when you sit forward and go, “Oh, I like that bit … “

Hie thee off to YouTube and search on “harp contemporary,” “harp boulez,” “harp schoenberg,” “harp serial,” “harp tone row,” “harp fill-in-the-blank,” and see what turns up. As in all cases of playing music, you have to have a sense of the sound you want in your mind before you can write it down, and you can build that up by listening. See if you can’t take an esoteric, unusual piece that you like and let your mind wander to get a feel for how you might arrange it for harp as well; that’s always fun.

[Tacye]

That Schoenberg was in 2004 and has faded rather in my recollection but the main things wrong with it were too many notes in patterns which were not harp friendly at the speed, too many pedal changes and too heavy orchestration. Which boils down to just about everything, doesn’t it! This is what I wrote at the time:

“My first thought was that despite being already pedalled this was a *really* bad idea as the part had me in hysterics. 12 note chords far to fast to do hand over hand, 9 against 8 (tutti ff), 10 pedal changes a bar, all runs written as octaves… This piece has the distinction of being the only one I have ever come across where the published hire parts also came with a redivision of the two harp parts for four harpists to make them more manageable, of course we only had two harpists. (I was particularly impressed with the bar in the edited parts which contained both A sharp and B flat below the range of the harp!!!)”

ETA what do you hear of the harps when listening to the piece with the score in hand and how could Schoenberg have got the same effect with easier parts?

[carl-swanson]

Tacye- Your description of the Schoenberg is a classic case of the composer thinking like a keyboard player. Schoenberg may have been an awful piano player, but having studied it somewhat, that’s what he imagined when he wrote the harp part. So why are we so resistant to insisting that a composer who wants to write for the harp should know enough about playing the harp that he can imagine playing, on the harp(and not the piano) the part that he is writing.

[Janis Cortese]

Tchaik, piano, violin, eh?

[Tacye]

Carl, I don’t think anyone is resisting the idea that a composer should know about the harp. I, at any rate, am resisting the idea that the only way, or even the best way, for a composer to know about an instrument is to be able to play it him or herself. How many orchestral composers have indeed played every instrument in the orchestra? As you say yourself, working in close collaboration with an instrumentalist has a long and honourable history. I think that having a good composer (with an ear for reality and an academic understanding of an instrument’s technical potential) being kept in order by a good instrumentalist may well give superior results to a good composer with basic ability to play the instrument working alone.

[roger-illingworth]

Tacye, I totally agree.

[Tacye]

I have got the impression, Carl, that you don’t much like orchestral playing. I enjoy it, and would think it a great pity if composers got scared off and wrote more pieces without harp. There are too many nice pieces I don’t get to play in as it is!

[Gretchen Cover]

Roger, a translation here of Tacye’s comments above:

A harp part does not have to be complicated or difficult to play to be effective. Think of what you want to hear and place the notes effectively.

My comment on scoring: Don’t overuse glissandos. And when you put them in the score, pls. put the chord such as G gliss or G7 gliss. You can also write out all the notes – there are a couple ways of writing glisses that your student harpist can show you. Just be clear to the harpist what you want played.

[Tacye]

Roger, I thought of these two old threads which you might find useful, or entertaining.

http://musicstand.harpcolumn.com/forums/professional-harpists/posts/51367
http://musicstand.harpcolumn.com/forums/professional-harpists/posts/50714

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