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John- I too would love to know the difference. It would be nice to see a list of the string gauges for each of the Premier gut strings, and also for the Bow Brand strings. Michael, could you put the string gauges up here? If you do, I’d prefer to see them in thousands of an inch rather than metric. But I’ll take whatever you’ve got.
I’m in Italy right now. When I get home, I’ll see if I have the gauges for Bow Brand, which I think I do. That way, we can compare them. The other solution is to take a micrometer and measure the thickness of each of the Premier strings. Anyone want to do that?
For the purposes mostly of regulating, I use the old fashioned Peterson with the radar like screen on it. Many other tuners I’ve tried have a needle to show you what pitch is coming out of the harp. But the needle jumps all over the place and so that type of machine is useless for regulating. The Peterson, if I hold it very close to the instrument, will clearly read the pitches right to the top of the instrument. It gets kind of fuzzy on the lowest notes on the instrument. But I can still read it.
I’m curious: with these other tuning machines, what exactly are you looking at to tune? Is it a needle that shows if you are sharp or flat? Is it a light that goes on on the right side of the screen if you are sharp, and on the left side if you are flat? The visual image, and how stable it is, is very important. For regulating, many of these machines just won’t work.
SueBlane- That’s basically what my editor at Carl Fischer told me recently. But he also said that that apply’s only to the United States. The rules are different in different countries. it does get very complicated.
There’s got to be some book out there that answers all of your questions, and gives you a list of places to contact to deal with copyright. I’m very lucky. My publisher, Carl Fischer Music, deals with that for me. So I have never had to deal with it myself.
Well gosh, I never thought about it, but I guess I do have a name for my harp. When I’m practicing and keep messing up the same passage over and over again, I call out it’s name. It contains 4 letters and starts with the 19th letter of the alphabet.
I don’t know if this has any information in it that might help you, but years ago Kim Rowe asked me to write an article for Harp Column called THE BIG DAY! It was to be about preparing for an audition/recital/exam/performance/etc. It appeared in the March/April 2002 issue, Volume 9, issue 5. It talks about exactly this kind of thing and the things you can do to remedy the situation. If you go to my web site, http://www.swansonharp.com, you can find it there on the Articles page.
Balfour- Thank you for the compliment on the new Danses edition. I have to say, the people at Carl Fischer Music are a dream to work with. Proof reading music is a travail of Hercules, and the people I work with there have enough patience to be nominated for sainthood! But because of that, every edition I have done has been of high quality. My editor there encourages me to write as much as I want to explain the piece(both for the Sonate and the Danses) as well as the Bochsa Revisited volumes, and they always come up with gorgeous cover art.
I’ll let you know when the Danses are released. My editor said it should be sometime in May.
Biagio- I played Cavaleria many years ago, at one of the first seasons for Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown New York. The tenor stood behind me in the orchestra pit to sing that first solo, because we didn’t have a second harp to put behind stage. Once the aria started, the conductor just stopped conducting and let me and the tenor go at it. In the middle of the aria, the tenor accidentally cut a beat off the end of one of the phrases, and so came in on the next one a beat early. I instantly skipped a beat so he and I were never apart. The conductor looked up in alarm at the moment the tenor came in wrong, and then gave me a thumbs up for catching it.
I’m going to try uploading the cover art for the new Debussy Danses publication. Let’s see if this works. OK, I just tried again. I think it worked this time.
Jerusha-Thank you so much. It’s going to be a really great edition. It’s the first edition of the Danses to have ALL the pedal changes included, in letters large and dark enough to read from across the room! We also reduced the number of systems per page from 5 to 4, which makes it so much more readable. If I knew how to upload images(I’m a caveman where computers are concerned) I’d upload the front and back covers for this edition. The artwork is really gorgeous.
Biagio- I didn’t know that about Cavaleria.
Adolfo- The Prokofiev Prelude in C is one piece that comes to mind as one written for harp which is also played on Piano. But in looking at the larger picture, ours is really the first age where we tend to be very rigid about what instrument plays what music. Generally we tend to look down our noses at transcriptions as well. That was not true at all in earlier ages. I just finished work on a new edition of the Debussy Danses for Carl Fischer Music (which will be released sometime in May) and in my research I discovered that Debussy himself made an arrangement of the Danses for two pianos. In addition, he was not the least bit bothered by the piece being performed with piano and orchestra.
I think a good deal of the looseness in people’s thinking in earlier ages comes from the fact that there was no radio, no television, no recording. So if you wanted to hear for example a Beethoven symphony in the 19th century, you were most likely to hear it in a version for piano/4 hands. Again, Debussy and his friends(Vincent D’Indy, Ernest Chausson, etc.) spent many evenings playing through Russian symphonies, Wagner Operas, etc. in 4 hand piano arrangements.
The shoes I use for performance are made for dance and theater. They’re like slippers, with a soft flexible sole. Heels definitely make pedaling easier, although I use a standard low heal. You might have to get a pair of dance shoes and then have a cobbler add the height heal you want.
