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The paraguayan harp is generally quite a bit cheaper than a celtic style harp with the same range (I have a good friend who plays the Paraguayan harp who lets the bride and groom buy the harp played at their wedding for a souvenir), but it is a totally different instrument with a totally different technique and repertoire.
Incidentally, Sam, if you search for “passacaille” rather than “passacaglia” you’ll get more results.
The Magistretti is a big ornate version. The standard pedal harp editions today are the Tiny Beon or the one by Yolanda Kondonassis, which is in her collection. You could also play the real keyboard version, which is readily available as part of the Handel Keyboard Suite no. 7 in g minor, although harpists seem to shun it for some reason.
>Are there lever harps where the use of a lever does not affect the quality of the sound?
Yes, but it’s a question of the levers as much as the harps, though. Levers like the camac levers or some of the other metal levers don’t affect the tone of the string any more than the disc affects the tone of a pedal harp string.
>what is the difference between Grandjany and Salzedo
Oh please, please, please, Mr. S, don’t get them started again!
> His technique was completely self taught.
Yes, so he said, but I’ve always wondered. I have to say I’ve always been a bit agnostic about much of the harp-related stuff in the book, like his claim that he was playing on the left shoulder till he saw an angel in a picture in a store window. Given how much more uncomfortable a pedal harp is that way, I can’t believe that anyone who wasn’t an idiot (and he was a very, very intelligent man, although he concealed that, too, in his stage persona) wouldn’t have said, “Hmm, this hurts. Let’s try it on that shoulder–ah!”
Hi, Bonnie. It was one of the well-known male harpists who just sat and listened to him–he never identifies the person. Mildred Dilling was a good friend; when Harpo (who played by ear and didn’t read music) couldn’t remember how part of a piece goes, he’d call her and have her play it for him over the phone till he got it in his ear enough to go back to the harp and figure it out, according to the book.
>Is this more common than just occasionally touching it?
That’s a combination of technique and personal conformation. Some people do, some don’t.
On a pedal harp you would have to kneel down or something to rest your left arm on the board, Maria.
With the right arm, you’re not actually pressing the arm on the soundboard, it just touches it. In any method your arm needs to support the hand in order for you to have the fullest range of motion for your fingers and for moving up and down the range of strings. If it doesn’t, the weight of your arm pulls your fingers away from where you want them to be and you’re working against yourself.
If you actually press on the edge of the soundboard as I’ve seen beginners and self-taught harpists do sometimes, you’re asking for trouble eventually from compressing the carpal and/or ulnar tunnels.
If your left arm is touching the soundboard on a pedal harp that’s the right size for you (there may be exceptions with tiny people playing very big harps, for example), you generally aren’t giving the hand the support it needs, and you almost certainly aren’t playing in the optimum area of the strings (unless you’re doing a special effect or something.)
As a matter of fact, you can see the first page at harp.com:
From any store that sells pedal harp music. Follets by Hasselmans is a very standard work. Don’t ask for “Fireflies”, though. That’s her invention, probably because they thought “Will-o’-the-wisp” (the actual translation of the title) wouldn’t be understood.
