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Harpists hands come, as you would expect, in all shapes and sizes. I have large hands and thick fingers. I’ve seen very fine female harpists with hands like stone masons. I’ve seen incredible harpists with short stubby fingers(I won’t mention names), and a few with thin, almost boney fingers.
We all have to deal with buzzing. It can come from so many things: fingering, placing too early, placing in blocks rather than one finger at a time ahead of the one you are playing, not muffling individual notes with the tip of a finger, etc. Maybe your teacher can help you figure out where the problem is. I usually don’t worry about buzzing until I’m fairly well along in learning a piece and can play it pretty close to tempo. Then I take a look at where buzzes still occur and work on fixing them.
First off, if you sell or give away the carton, it has to be with all of the packing blocks. So don’t throw those out. I don’t think those boxes have a monetary value. But someone may be able to use yours, so you should let people know that it is available. Remember, if someone from somewhere else in the country, they are going to have to pay shipping costs, which will already amount to several hundred dollars.
Maybe I misunderstand, but do you have to wear false nails really long? Can you wear them so they look like normal short nails? If you can, then there shouldn’t be a problem. We harpists-men and women alike- have to wear our nails really short to play without the nail catching the string.
Maybe the thing to do when people ask that is say “Why don’t you take a guess.” Or, “How much do you think it costs?” Throw the ball back into their court. If they venture a guess, then just say “You’re way off.”
I wonder what model my Lyon & Healy number 300 is? It has a small bust of Wagner on the column. I don’t think I have ever seen model numbers for those early harps, and assumed that the model numbers started in 1910, when they went to a 4 digit serial number.
I seem to remember that when Lyon & Healy started selling harps to the public in 1889, they started with serial number 500. Between 1889 and 1910, there were 3 fires that wiped out their records. When they started building again after the first fire, they started with number 100. So the lower number harps are actually later than ones above 500. My best guess is that mine dates from maybe 1898 to 1900.
David,
I just read his response to your email, and I don’t even know where to start. Let’s try this:
1) What he calls the “harp arm” is called the neck. What he calls the “harp arm heel” is called the kneeblock.
2) It doesn’t matter whether you are building a pedal harp or a lever harp, the entire neck of the harp has to be one piece. There’s no way on God’s green earth that a glue joint anywhere along the neck is going to hold for the long run.
3) You can’t re-glue a joint that already has hardened glue on it. It won’t hold. You can only use wood glues-any wood glues- on raw wood surfaces. So that isn’t going to work either.
4) Reinforcing screws or dowels will not do anything positive in this situation. There will only be more of a mess when it comes apart again, and it will come apart again.
5) The only way to repair this is to replace the neck. The whole neck, including the kneeblock, and possibly the column as well. Anything short of this is a waste of money. I have no idea what you paid for it. But the repairs would likely cost more than what you paid for it. So this is probably a total loss on your part. Why don’t you rent something instead? There are doable monthly payments, and if anything goes wrong on the harp, it’s up to the owner, not you, to deal with it.
David,
I live in Boston. So if you can get it up to Boston I can take a look at it.
Biagio- I personally would not use any kind of laminated material for the column. I’ve seen too many lever harps with laminated columns warp terribly. I think you really need to have solid maple for that.
David- The first two pictures clearly show that the actual neck does not extend as one piece, into the kneeblock. It is a glue joint that has given out. There is not supposed to be a glue joint there. So I’m wondering if that neck was repaired before you bought it, and if it was, it was done by someone who didn’t understand the tension on the neck. It’s harder for me to tell what is going on with the column. But I suspect that the crack in the column is because the neck is giving out. The neck has to be replaced with one solid piece of wood that extends the entire length of the neck (from the column straight through the kneeblock). There is no way to “repair” the current neck,
Charles,
To answer your question: I haven’t given any thought to doing the second volume of Bochsa. I might do it at some point in the future, but I’m too busy right now with other projects for Carl Fischer. About a month ago, my edition of both Fauré pieces(Impromptu, and Une chatelaine en sa tour…) was released. I’ll do a big email blast for that probably in September. And I’m proofing the next edition, which will be released before the end of the year, which is 10 pieces by Marcel Tournier. I’m really excited about that one. The galleys that I have received so far look fantastic.
The soundboard decoration is a decal, which is applied on top of several coats of finish, and then more finish is applied over it, so that it is sealed all around by finish. It would be a lot of work removing it, and then once it is gone, there will be a “shadow” of the outline where the decal was. So my advice is to just leave it.
Evolene- You say that not every student, nor teacher, uses etudes, especially when an adult starts and stays on lever harp. That’s true. But the result is exactly what stardust describes. She is struggling to do what she wants to do on the instrument, and pieces are not the place to learn technique. Pieces are where you apply the technique you learned by doing exercises and etudes. When I wrote my book, Bochsa Revisited(published by Carl Fischer Music) I was half way through the pedal harp version when I realized we were missing a whole segment of the harp playing community. So I did a version for lever harp as well. That book is, to my knowledge, the only major technical study for lever harpists, after beginner level books. If stardust worked her way through that, with a teacher, the piece she wants to play would be a walk-in-the-park for her.
This is for a wedding. Do you think the bride or anyone else even cares about the left hand. Play the melody and some harmony and let it go with that.
This is shocking, and incredibly sad. Years ago, when Basel started posting here, I realized that he was a well trained harpist who didn’t own a harp. I managed to find a lovely Venus harp that the owner was willing to give to Basel. It needed some work, so I overhauled the action and Wally Krasicki very generously put a new soundboard on at no cost. I put out word here that I was going to be sending Basel a harp, and I wanted to send him extra strings, sheet music, CD’s, etc. Many of you sent me used but still good strings, sheet music, CD’s, to put in the shipping crate. I got a very good price for shipping it and told him he’d have to pay that in advance to get that rate. His whole family thought I was scamming them and his uncle said he would pay the transportation bill, but only once the harp arrived. So they had to make the transport arrangements themselves. When the harp arrived, the whole family was dumbfounded. Basel said he cried on the whole 2 hour trip from Damascus to Homs. He called me when he got home and his mother got on the phone and just said over and over again “Thank you,Thank you, Thank you…” Basel was very soon playing every day in a resort hotel in Homs and for the first time in his life earning a living playing the harp. After 2 or 3 years, he had saved enough money to buy another harp, and I found a second Venus that the owner was willing to sell to him for a few thousand dollars. So then he had 2 good harps and was a real working harpist in Syria.
Then the troubles started. Syria fell apart, and his family, who were Christian in an overwhelmingly muslim country, had to go into hiding. By the time he and his family got out, they had to abandon everything, including the harps. I don’t think Basel ever recovered emotionally from that. I don’t know why he died, but I’m very saddened by it.
