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Insurance would certainly have covered it. But she didn’t have any. There is a long back story to this about the harpist herself, which I simply can’t go into here. But she has a first prize from the Paris Conservatory! She’s an incredible harpist. I wish there was a way of collecting some money for her to get the work done to get this instrument stabilized and working in good shape for her.
Hurricane Sandy was in 2012, and the last time I saw it was sometime before that. I don’t know what they did initially to dry it out and clean it up. The owner told me that they “oiled EVERYTHING.” So mechanically it was not “rusted shut.”
What is the current condition? I just spent about 10 hours regulating it and so far so good. The action should be completely taken apart, cleaned and relubricated. There is supposed to be grease in certain parts of the action, and oil in others. I doubt that there is any grease left anywhere. Also, the salt water corroded the lock screws in the center of the discs, and I broke many screw heads off during the regulation. When I work on the action, I’m just going to replace all of the screws. But it is currently playable.
Gretchen- I completely agree with you. I always tell students that you can get away with murder at the beginning. You can use your fingers any old way, hold whatever hand position feels good, wave your hands and arms around, because the pieces are very easy and slow, and there is plenty of time to recover. But as the pieces get harder, there is less and less room for error, and very quickly, there is no room at all. That’s why it is so important to study with a good teacher right from the beginning. The teacher will demand “correct” finger movement, hand and arm position, etc. “Correct” simply means that it will work for whatever you play, at any level.
At the risk of seeming egregiously self-promotional: Kate, get my Bochsa Revisited(Carl Fischer Music publications) and take it to a good teacher. That book and the teacher will set you straight and get you on the right path, and in the end, you’ll play the harp much better and get more enjoyment out of it.
Kate- The first question that pops into my head is this: Are you studying with a teacher, or have you worked with a teacher in the past, or are you completely self taught?
I’m not sure, but I think this is explained in the Salzedo Method for the harp. Untying and then retying a knot in a gut string(if you can. It’s not always possible) does not weaken the string. So you don’t have to worry about that. You have to start by knowing how to tie a figure 8 knot. There are explanations on line about that. Here’s my explanation of tying a figure 8. Hold the string in a vertical position in your left hand, with the end of the string pointing up. With your right hand, take that end and bend it down and cross it over the string held in your left hand. Hold the two pieces of the string in place(the long part of the string and the short end crossed over it) with the index finger and thumb of your left hand. You now have a loop of string pointing up and the short end pointing down and crossing the long part of the string. Take the loop in your right hand and twist it a half turn so that the short end is now wrapped fully around the long part. Now push the short end through the loop and pull it tight. The knot will look like the number 8.
First off, the broken string has to be long enough so the knot is above the adjustable nut, i.e., between the adjustable nut and the tuning pin. Sometimes you have to untie the knot at the bottom end(if you can) and retie it to get a little more length to make this happen.
You need to know how to tie a figure 8 knot. If you don’t, go online and find an explanation. You can use the figure 8 knot to tie the knot at the bottom end of the string(under the soundboard) as well as the knot you will use to patch the string.
To make the patch, tie a figure 8 knot in the broken string, and leave it loose. It may not be above the adjustable nut now if you stretch it out, but if it’s close, then tightening the string will pull the knot above the adjustable. Now use another piece of gut string(it can be thicker or somewhat thinner than the string you are patching) and push one end of it through an opening in the figure 8 knot. Now tie a figure 8 knot in that string as well, making sure that the knot wraps around the string you are patching. What you should have now is two figure 8 knots, each one with the other string going through it. Now pull them tight. Put the end of the patch string through the tuning pin and pull it up to pitch. If the knot ends up right on the tuning pin, you can wind the string down and retie the knot at the bottom end of the string, tying that knot a little further up the string so that the patch knots are a little farther from the tuning pin. You’ll get the hang of it by doing it once or twice. It gives you a lot more milage on the expensive strings. As I mentioned before, I’ve got patched strings that are at least 5 or 6 years old.
Nobody has mentioned this yet as far as I can see, but John, you should definitely learn to patch strings. When a string breaks at one end or the other(but not in the middle), and there is enough length to go from the knot at the bottom to somewhere past the adjustable nut, then you can patch the string by tying it to another piece of gut string. It’s especially helpful in the 4th and 5th octaves, where the strings are so expensive. I’ve got several patched strings on my harp that have been there for 5 or 6 years.
I don’t know. When a harp is brand new, everything works fine. In other words, on a brand new harp, you can use thin slot felts, thick slot felts, or whatever, and they will all do the job. But on an older instrument that is not the case.
Elletaria- I think I would have a difficult time remembering what notes are sharp or flat with a key signature like that, and no accidental in front of the note. I’m guessing that harpists playing his pieces with non-traditional key signatures like that end up writing some of the accidentals again in front of the notes just as a reminder.
Sylvia- Slot felts-the white felt pad that the pedal rests on in FLAT position-are there simply to prevent the mechanism from opening up completely, causing a noise or knock. Each chain of the mechanism(C chain, D chain, etc.) can go only so far in the flat AND the sharp direction. If it goes all the way in either direction, you will hear a click or metallic noise. So the slot felt is there to prevent that in the flat direction. But the slot felt, because it is there, will move both the natural and sharp chains in the direction of closed position. If the slot felt is very thick, then in flat position the discs are going to be awfully close to the strings. If the strings are not dead center through the discs, and are instead slightly left of center, as happens to aging harps, then you run a big risk of the string, particularly in the 5th octave, slapping against the lower prong of the sharp disc. So the slot felt only needs to be thick enough to keep the mechanism from opening up completely in the flat direction. I hope this makes sense.
Dear Manskou- I just reread your post. I think I understand what you are getting at. Let’s say your piece is in E flat major, and you have chromaticism in one measure that is E flat, E natural, F natural, and G flat, and the measure is quite fast. The theoretical way of spelling these notes “properly” is the way I stated them. But what the harpist wants to see is how the note is actually played. So to get those notes the first note will be spelled D sharp, because that is what the harpist is going to have to play: the D string in sharp position.
In printed harp music, there are spellings that would drive anyone else nuts. Things like B sharp, F flat, E sharp, etc. But those spellings are in harp music because that’s the only way to be able to play the note. I just finished transcribing Gollywogg’s Cakewalk from Debussy’s Children’s Corner Suite, and the work that I had to go through to get the middle section playable was unbelievable. But I got it to work. My next publication from Carl Fischer Music is going to be the entire Children’s Corner Suite for solo harp, and I really wanted to publish the entire suite, not just excerpts, if it was possible. Well, it is! But in the middle section of Gollywogg’s Cakewalk, there are places where, in very quick succession, you have things like D natural, D sharp, E natural, F natural, and G flat, and so the actual notes you have to play are not spelled like that.
There are two trains of thought on printed harp music. There is a very small minority of (very good) harpists who want to see the harmony of the piece, no matter what. So if the piece, or measure, is in E flat major, they don’t want to see D sharp, even though that is what they are going to have to play. My preference, as is with the majority of harpists, is to see what string you put your finger on. So for us, if you put your finger on E sharp to play the note, then we want to see E sharp printed, regardless of how off-the-wall it looks to non-harpists on paper. I just finished a new edition of the Danses of Debussy(which should be released any day now from Carl Fischer Music), and in preparing the new edition, I was comparing the Renie transcription to the original manuscript. Renie used a lot of these non-standard spellings to make some of the thornier passages playable, but often wrote the note with standard spelling, putting it in parenthesis. I decided to spell all of the notes exactly as they are played, so as to unclutter the music. This way, the notes to be played are spelled exactly the way you play them.
My advice to you is to have several harpists look at what you’ve written and let them tell you how the notes should be written. Only a harpist can figure this kind of thing out.
I don’t understand your question. Are you talking about actually retuning the D string so that in flat position it produces an E flat? If you want an E flat to be played on the D string, then write it as D sharp. The E natural 1/16 later could be played E natural or F flat. If you’re talking about literally retuning the D string in the middle of the piece, it will never be in tune. Retuning any harp string to a different pitch will take 2 or 3 days to settle onto that pitch. Really, I can’t understand why you composers can’t simply write for what the instrument can do. There are literally thousands of pieces, mostly concertos, written in the last 40 or 50 years for the harp, all of which “stretch” what the instrument can do, and not ONE of them has gotten more than 2 or 3 perfomances at most. Write within the scope of what the instrument can do and make it interesting to listen to, and that way it will get more performances.
Michael- That’s really helpful. Thank you, Have the Bow Brand strings been the same gauge for a long time now? Or have the gauges been changed in any way? Also, do you happen to have the gauges for the Bow Brand Lever Gauge strings? I sometimes use those on older pedal harps, and frankly really like them for a fuller sound and better initial attack. Having strings too close to their breaking point makes the string sound thinner and makes a weaker attack. If you have the gauges for the lever strings, in millimeters just like the other two, I’d really like to see that for the sake of comparison. Thanks.
