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It’s also very interesting to me that most pianists interpret the entire piece in a totally different way from the usual harp interpretation. For those who are interested, this is Victor Ryabchikov, from his encyclopedic recording of Glinka’s piano works, on youtube:
>the two versions were published in 1854 and 1856 respectively
Tacye, do you know which was published first?
The Mozart variations were an early work, one which was destroyed in a house fire many years after they were first written. They were reconstructed from the formidable musical memory of Glinka’s sister, Lyudmilla Shestakova. Nobody really knows if she tinkered with them at all, but both versions (the shorter one preferred by pianists and the longer one played by pedal harpists) were both in print in the composer’s lifetime.
I’ve never been able to find out for sure about which came first.
Incidentally, Glinka died in 1857, not 1828.
Ah, but is it new? From The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, talking about attending the opera at the Academy of Music in NYC in the early 1870s;
>As Madame Nilsson’s “M’ama!” thrilled out above the silent house (the boxes always stopped talking during the Daisy Song) a warm pink mounted to the girl’s cheek…
and
>”After all,” he heard one of the younger men begin behind him (everybody talked through the Mephistopheles-and-Martha scenes), “after all, just what happened?”
My old 23 was like that and I put up with it because I absolutely loved everything else about it. I found it easier to just not use the right thumb up there. For something like the scales in The Great Gate at Kiev, for example, I just did 234, 234 till I got down to where there was room enough.
You can adapt to it, but it takes awhile.
And also, when in the off position (the open disc position) still leave enough room for the string to vibrate without buzzing against whatever it is.
You might want to look at some of the 18th century harps to see some of the other ideas people have come up with (hooks, the crochet mechanism, etc.) as well as the many levers that are out there for the various ideas people have already had about how to deal with this problem.
> Anything capable of pressing hard enough against the string in the right location would suffice…
Not exactly. It would have to press hard enough without moving the string out of alignment, which is a different thing.
Oops:
>I don’t think you can expect to make a decent harp for much less than these makers charge.
Should have read:
I don’t think you can expect to make a decent harp of this type for much less than these makers charge.
>When you think of how it works, transferring movement from the feet up the column along a chain to simultaneously turn several discs, it’s actually brilliantly simple in light of the complex job it does.
I’d have to agree with you, Kreig.
Mike C, I’d point out that there are many harps without a pedal mechanism: lever harps, celtic harps, paraguayan harps, medieval harps, baroque harps, triple harps, etc., and their prices vary from a few hundred dollars to the same price range as a pedal harp, depending on the maker and the woodworking involved.
It is possible these days to buy a small harp for a couple of hundred bucks if you don’t care about levers or pedals or a lot of range (see harpsicleharps.com, for example), so there are a lot of options already out there. It’s never been cheaper to get started than it is now.
If you mean you want to build a harp without pedals that looks like a pedal harp, see the Camac Mademoiselle, the Lyon and Healy Prelude, Salvi Ana, Webster harps, Pratt harps, etc. There’s a limit to how cheaply this kind of a harp can be built, however, because the harp must be constructed both to sound good and to stand up to a LOT of tension from the strings. I don’t think you can expect to make a decent harp for much less than these makers charge.
Camac experimented for a long time with trying to build a computer controlled harp using a hydraulic system, but I believe they found that there just wasn’t anything that responded quickly enough.
And figure out how to end gracefully from the end of every phrase, for anything you use for processionals.
> One Memorial preferred fairly upbeat music.
Yes, they almost always say this now, in my experience. So it’s always wise to check with both the facility and the family, and to let the funeral home or church know what they’ve requested.
I had a friend who got in a lot of trouble for playing ‘Crazy’ during a service, although it was requested by the family and cleared by the clergyman, but the funeral home had no idea and they thought the harpist was just unfit for the gig.
