What does this mean?

[jaydg]

Hi again,

Apart from growing extra fingers, what does this instruction want me to do please?
(my teacher’s touring, or I’d ask him)

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[carl-swanson]

The note next to the ff says “Glissando on both measures, crossing. I never played La Mer, but my guess is that you need to set the pedals for the notes he indicates, and then play continuous glissandos with both hands going in opposite directions for those two measures. But see if you can contact one or more full time orchestra harpists to see how they play that. What’s the key signature there? I tried to figure out the pedals, but I don’t know the key signature, so I don’t know if G and A are flat, natural, or sharp

[carl-swanson]

I just looked it up on Youtube, and it’s in the key of E major (4 sharps). So my guess is that your pedals, in order to play the harmony that he has written out, would be: E sharp, F natural, G sharp, A flat, B natural, C flat, D natural.

[jaydg]

Thank you, that was the instruction I wasn’t sure about – but your interpretation makes sense to me.

(The conductor can always say ‘what are you doing??’ if that’s not what he expected 😂 – it’s for an amateur orchestral residential, so fairly relaxed)

And that’s very kind of you to look up the pedals for me, that would have been my next job 👍🏽😊

[Victoria Herpsbun]

So this is from Sarah Bullen’s principal harp book, which is basically what Carl said

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[jaydg]

Excellent – thank you 👍🏽😊

[balfour-knight]

Beautiful effect on the harp–nice fully diminished 7th chord!

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