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There are many solo arrangements of this piece available, as well, for both pedal and lever harp. And there are whole books of the accmpt in many keys, arranged for either pedal or lever harp.
But is this a harp harp? It sounds to me like those might actually be the string numbers themselves, not anything to do with pedal/lever harp numbering. In sequence F=3, G=4, A=5. Are you sure that’s not meant to go along with some kind of special notation for playing this? If it’s like a kantele it’s an auto harp, not a harp as the folks around here mostly understand it.
Those usually have music that you put under the strings and it gives a kind of paint by numbers approach to what strings to pluck or strum.
It was probably a wooden tuning key. You put the key against the string, pluck, and slide to change the pitch.
I thought of you this morning, David. I went to our local greenmarket and one of the shelters had brought a whole family of wirehaired standards looking for a home. They were spoken for before they’d been walking around for ten minutes, I’m happy to say.
One of my favorite stories about Mr. Grandjany and his supposed method was told me by a harpist who studied at a major conservatory with another teacher. Her teacher knew she hoped to go on to do study with Mr. Grandjany after graduation, so the teacher pointed out that Mr. Grandjany always held his thumbs in a particular way which was quite different from the student’s usualy position (can’t remember whether he bent his thumbs and she held hers straight or vice versa).
Anyway, she worked and worked and worked to copy his position, and when she got to her first lesson she played a while, and then he stopped her and said, “But why do you do that with your thumbs? You look so uncomfortable.”
There isn’t a “Grandjany method”. Mr Grandjany played and taught the French method, but the desire to create gurus causes some people to assign his name to standard French-style playing especially if they know little about it.
He would have been the very first to disavow this whole idea, based on everything I’ve ever heard about him from his students. There are a great many people still around who studied with him. If you get in touch with any of them they will be happy to set the record straight, I’m sure.
Well, you’d really need to define “original” because all the published editions are somewhat realized and edited.
The Le Dentu is entirely in only two voices, which I myself find rather thin sounding. I would say the van Campen is closer to most of the usual pedal harp editions than the Le Dentu. Of the published pedal harp versions, I would say that the van Campen is most like the edition by Lucile Lawrence. It does have some clunky spots where I think the lever changes could have been handled better.
Both include all of all the movements, as far as I can remember off the top of my head, so you could play either with orchestra, but neither has much in the way of a cadenza. (Sorry, I don’t use either of these when I play it so haven’t looked at them very recently.)
I don’t know the Griffiths, so can’t comment on that.
I don’t know if they rent, but Archets sells camac and salvi. You might want to contact them:
I painted the soundboard of my prelude when I got it, with the board on. It was a terrible job to get the finish back on afterwards, but it didn’t hurt the sound any. (Back then, they didn’t come with the decal.)
Hi, Kathy. No, L&H sent the soundboard to the artist and he painted it and sent it back before the harp was assembled. It’s all original, and it’s really worth seeing in person.
