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I have absolutely no idea of what these are like, but a simple search on “cherbourg” over at harp.com produced this:
If your harpmaker says you need to use a certain brand, then you do. You shouldn’t ask us about alternatives, you should ask them, since they’re the ones who warranty the harp. Using the wrong gauge of strings can void your warranty for any harp (and damage it, too), so you must check with the maker about what works and what doesn’t.
I should maybe have said that the reason I would guess Magistretti came first is that both Magistretti and Beon have the some of the same very non-Handel variations, although the Beon ones are not so big, and it’s always seemed to me that Beon was probably trying to make the Magistretti more accessible, rather than Magistretti elaborating on Beon’s inventions.
Of course, there may have been a popular keyboard edition back then that both were copying from.
FWIW, some of the chords in that version are fuller than in the urtext editions I’ve looked at.
BTW, re Beon, although the Passacaille is her only transcription that’s still available/performed, I have some very old sheet music with five or six other Beon transcriptions (Mozart and such) listed, so she must have been fairly prolific in her day.
The only information I’ve ever been able to find is that she was Belgian. I think Jane Weidensaul once told me Beon was female, and an orchestral harpist, but I sure wouldn’t swear to those last two details.
Anybody else know anything?
I’d suggest contacting the AHS to get the program from the conference that year or the preceding or following year (don’t remember if ’93 was a conference year). The recitals at the conference usually include a relatively high percentage of world premiere performances, so if you look at what was being debuted around then, it would give you some points of reference (although you might have some trouble following up on some of them, since a lot of those pieces sink without a trace after the premiere.)
My own guess would be the Magistretti and that Beon used that as the basis for his/her version, but it’s hard to know, since there’s not much biographical info available for either of them these days.
Yes, it’s best to put the levers down when you’re finished practicing and very important to put them down when moving your harp, since the handles are vulnerable to getting snapped when they’re up.
Hi, Linda. If you tune the B strings to B-flat in the open string, then put up the B lever when you want a B natural (like in the key of C or G), you can put the B levers down and play in the key of F (one flat).
Don’t wait till he comes. Email or call him now and find out. It’s going to be almost impossible for him to get a good regulation on a just-on new nylon string, so it’s best to know in time to make any changes and let things settle in.
(If you have wound nylon in the bass, I’d consider changing those, since oils from your hands and little bits of your skin get into the windings where you play, which can affect the sound after a while.)
I should mention that while those may be popular in North America, the South American trained harpists I know mostly tried them and went back to taquitos or the ring for accidentals. It’s an awkward reach way back there and hard to see when the levers are under the neck, especially if you play standing up as most of them do.
Looking at that last line in my last post: I don’t mean that it’s somehow inferior, just that it’s itself and not a celtic harp. They have a great many wonderful ornaments that are just about impossible on a higher tensioned harp, for instance.
No, you don’t have to stick to Latin music, but they don’t have semitone levers, you know (except by various awkward devices like adding an extension underneath the neck to allow for installing them), and most Paraguayan harpists just play everything in the same key all the time. It’s a very different sound–I’ve never heard a South American harpist who plays much in the way of celtic or classical music, although they do play some pop tunes and lots of latin jazzy stuff.
But it is not the same as buying a celtic harp. If you want to play the paraguayan harp, that’s great, but you can’t buy one of those and go to your celtic harp teacher and expect things to work out well. The strings are much closer together, they use nails on the treble hand, the tension is hugely lighter (the whole harp only weighs about 7 lbs), etc. The people I know who are Paraguayan harpists (and I’m in an area where it’s pretty nearly the dominant harp form) are wonderful musicians, but they’d agree in a heartbeat that it’s not a celtic/lever harp substitute.
