Hi, Christy,
This all sounds so exciting! If you end up liking and purchasing the Prelude in natural finish, we will, in fact, be harp twins! 🙂 What is the age of the harp?
It sounds like you have an excellent plan for getting your daughter started with a good teacher. Personally, I don’t see any reason that a child should have to start with piano first. You’re right; if she’s not interested in that, she wouldn’t be motivated to practice. Now, if she were interested in BOTH, it would perhaps be advantageous in that situation to have her start with a bit of piano, but if she wants to go right to harp and there’s a good teacher willing to teach her, I say, “go for it!” I only wish I’d have discovered the harp sooner in life. I just turned 40 and really only started getting interested in harps back in 2018, and really only started working on developing technique over the past year, though intermittently, as I’m primarily a church organist/pianist and have to make that my priority.
I think you will appreciate the passage in the 1899 L&H catalog that immediately follows the previous passage I quoted. Again, it’s somewhat of a biased sales pitch, but I think it makes some good points:
“Is the Harp hard to learn? To this question we emphatically answer No! Thousands who expect to master the piano or to attain any degree of proficiency on it, expect and are willing to devote many years of close application to the task–whereas, with the Harp, two, or at most, three years’ study will produce more satisfactory results than will ten years at the piano. Harp instruction costs no more than guitar or mandolin instruction, and is usually less expensive than either the piano or violin. Moreover, there is this to be said, when you can play a Harp solo acceptably, you will command much more appreciation than you could for a performance of equal merit on any other instrument, and what is more to the point from a professional view, your pecuniary reward will be much greater. If you have studied any other instrument, particularly if you have been a piano student, you will find it of great assistance in your master of the Harp. A beginner of ordinary intelligence and application should be able to play an easy accompaniment in one, or at most, two terms of lessons.”
I think it’s funny how the writer always capitalizes the first letter of “Harp”!
I thought I should mention, there are harp groups on FaceBook in which you could get many more responses than you can here on Harp Column, particularly the American Harp Society. I doubt you have to be in the U.S. to be able to post on there!
I hope one of the Prelude harps works out for you! Will you be able to try both of them side-by-side?
I think one of the reasons the Prelude model doesn’t have levers on the bottom 2 (or top 2) strings is because the one 40-string pedal harp model that L&H still makes (Chicago Petite 40) doesn’t have any discs on those strings, either, so they make their 40-string lever harp the same way for consistency. Apparently, it’s just not possible to have discs on the bottom 2 strings of a pedal harp, no matter what the range is.
Please continue to keep us updated on what you end up doing!
-Gregg
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