Pedal setting for glissando

[Dianne Perry]

I have been asked to play the harp as part of the accompaniment for our church’s Christmas cantata. I need some help in understanding the pedal markings for the glissandos. The piece is in Ab Major. Several glissandos are marked as “Ab scale”, which I understand. Others are marked “Ab 6/9”. What do I do with these?

[Gregg Bailey]

How fun! The 6/9 means add-6 and add-9 to the Ab major chord, which is basically Ab major pentatonic. For this, you would set your pedals to Ab, Bb, C-nat, D#, Eb, F-nat, G#, or in pedal order from left to right, it would be D#, C-nat, Bb, Eb, F-nat, G#, Ab. The pentatonic gliss is the most idiomatic sound the harp can make!

Hope this helps!

-Gregg

[balfour-knight]

Perfect answer, Gregg, my friend! Dianne, enjoy playing the harp for your Christmas Cantata!
Harp Hugs,
Balfour

[Dianne Perry]

Gregg, Thanks for your very clear explanation! I am no professional harpist and don’t remember ever seeing the glissando information written in that format. I guess I was expecting to see pedal changes written in the music to make playing the gliss easy. I like this gliss sound much better than the “Ab scale” gliss!!

Balfour, thanks! This will be my first time to play harp for the cantata. I’ve played at church for special music, weddings, funerals, but never as part of a small instrumental ensemble! I better practice on counting numerous measures of rests!!

Dianne

[Alison]

and you can set the Ab pentatonic on a lever harp too, if the rest is playable, could save lugging a pedal harp……

[balfour-knight]

You would need to tune the lever harp in A flat Major, too, which is not often done in the USA, but it can be extremely useful! In this case, though, what would one do about the D flats–they cannot be made to do D sharps! This is why the pedal harp is so convenient.

[Alison]

That’s not what I meant Balfour ! With the lever harp tuned in Eb simply put levers D and G on so that the D# matches Eb and the G# matches Ab enharmonically, for a perfect Ab pentatonic scale and a delightful sound for junior pupils to discover glissandos..

[balfour-knight]

Thank you Alison. But if you go back to the original post, she needs to play in A flat. If the harp was tuned in E flat, it would be a mess to have to use C sharps every time she needed a D flat!

Happy Holidays,
Balfour

[Dianne Perry]

I do have a pedal harp! The glissandos are going well and I do appreciate all of your input. Thanks!!
Dianne

[balfour-knight]

Hello Dianne!

So glad you have a pedal harp, so you can avoid all the problems this would have on a lever harp. The main advantage I know about a lever harp is its easy portability. I would use my beautiful Dusty FH36S for short or non-demanding solo engagements, but I would usually take my concert grand pedal harp when I played an entire concert on harp or played with other musicians. They did not like the limitations of certain keys being impossible to play in on the lever harp!

Happy harping over the holidays,
Balfour

[Author]

Posts