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I would not recommend fluorocarbon strings on any instrument, and I wouldn’t use them on any instrument. In addition, if anyone uses them on a harp where I’ve replace the board or neck, then that breaks the warranty. The tension of those strings is MUCH higher than gut, which is already MUCH higher than nylon. There is a limit to how much tension the neck and soundboard can take, and the carbon strings will drastically shorten the life of both.
The cartoons in Sam Pratt’s book are fantastic, and they were done by one of the great animators of Hollywood, Don Bluth. He apparently was a relative of Sam Pratt’s. I’d love to know where the original artwork is of those cartoons.
Your story reminds me of an incident that happened many years ago when I was living in Paris. A very fine American college choir from Bemidji University in Minnesota was giving a concert at a large church in Paris(I can’t remember now which one). They were on the third or fourth number in the program, which was some contrapuntal 18th century a cappella work. Almost as soon as they started the number, the lights in the church started to get brighter and brighter, and I thought, Oh no!!! Maybe a minute into the work, every light in the church went out. The choir was singing this very complicated work in pitch darkness, and the poor conductor couldn’t even stop them without shouting out. So they continued to sing in the darkness, and the conductor just let them sing. They finished the piece perfectly. No hint that anything had gone wrong. By the end of the piece, several candles had been lit, so there was very dim light. The house exploded into applause and shouts. At the reception afterwards I talked to the conductor about the incident. He said that at the moment it happened he nearly fainted. “But now” he said” I’m thinking of having someone turn the lights off at every concert.”
Sid- Thank you. I agree completely. The current problem of course is the composer who writes sitting at a synthesizer and pushes the “harp” button and writes a harp part from that, often 5 finger patterns, often hands on top of each other, often undoable chromaticism. If a composer brought me what looked like an unplayable part, and told me that he had composed this on a synthesizer, I would tell him to perform the part on a synthesizer, since that was what he wrote it for.
I didn’t go to the harp to try it, but looking at the new example, my first inclination is to play it LH 4(E), RH 321(B,E,G),LH 321, RH 32123(the turnaround), etc. This shows you how the rhythmic baring does not conform to how the arpeggio is actually played. If the harpist is comfortable using the left hand for the turnaround, and the tempo is fast, then it could also be played LH 4321, RH 4321, LH212(the turnaround) and the rest the same fingering as the way up. This way there is only one hand(the left hand) crossing over, which is more efficient movement, and allows the player to glance at the conductor more easily.
Thank you Sid! The ugly fact for harpists is: Virtually all other musicians are hired to PLAY the part they are given. Harpists are hired to REWRITE AND PLAY the part they are given, except that they are only paid for the PLAY part. I think that if a violinist, trumpet player, etc. were given an unplayable part(unplayable as written) they would insist on being paid for the work they have to do to make it playable. But harpists are instead denigrated as being incompetent when they are constantly handed parts that were not written for the instrument and need a lot of work to make them playable.
You’re not counting it correctly. From the very bottom note to and including the very highest note there are 10 notes. The harpist doesn’t count the notes within beats. He counts all the notes in the run because that’s what he has to play.
On arpeggio runs that turn around at the top like this page, the harpist wants to organize it so that the right hand plays the last group of notes on the way up, turns around, and plays the first group of notes going down.
It can certainly be played on the harp.It may have been written for the harp by a non-harpist, because a lot of the arpeggios are 10 notes up and 10 notes down, typical of piano writing. A harpist playing this would have to work out how to break up the arpeggios between the two hands.
I messed up that quote! It comes from one of the last songs they wrote together. The whole verse goes:
A bell ‘s not a bell ’till you ring it
A song’s not a song ’til you sing it
Love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay
Love isn’t love ’till you give it awayI don’t know why this drives me nuts, but it does. To quote Rogers and Hamerstein,”A song’s not a song ’til you sing it!” If what you are talking about does not have words, and is not sung, then it’s not a song! It’s a piece!
My copy of Au matin, also called Etude de Concert, has a dedication to Mme. R. Benda. I met her many years ago when I studied in Paris. I’m sure she was a student of Tournier. The story I heard, I can’t remember where, was the Tournier gave her the manuscript for Au matin before he went off to serve in the First World War, telling her, “Make sure this gets published if I don’t return.” I wonder if R. Benda and Renie David are the same people, but one was a maiden name, and the other a married name.
The red cloth that is used to wrap pedals is piano bushing cloth. The reality is: It’s not a felt at all, but rather a woven wool cloth that is shrunk after weaving to make it very dense.
Leather was used on 19th century harps and is still used on them today(Erards and the other companies that made harps in the 19th century). You really have to use leather on them because it will not pack down, which is important to keep the Erard mechanism working without buzzing. But leather is very hard(like rock!) and so pedals wrapped in leather have to be moved much more carefully than when wrapped in bushing cloth. But the Erard mechanism moves very easily, and therefore the pedals are much lighter to move than 20th century pedals.
I think that leather on any 20th century instrument would sound like a team of horses galloping over cobblestones. Stick to piano bushing cloth.
Balfour- I passed on the names of the people who contacted me about that job to the woman in England who told me about it. I’ll try to find out how it turned out.
Aria- I’m sure its fixable. But without hearing it first hand,it’s difficult to diagnose. Is there anything you can touch on the harp with your fingers or hands that change or diminish the buzz? In other words, put the pedals into whatever position you need to to create the buzz, and then go around the harp touching or grabbing one thing after the other and see if anything you touch has any effect on the buzz(makes it worse or better). it’s easier to do this with someone helping you. One of you sits at the harp and plays the string over and over again, while the other goes around touching or holding one thing after another. I would try grabbing the column hard with both hands and see if that has any effect on it. Also, try touching(lightly) each of the pedals, without moving them and see if that has any effect. 90% of the work is locating the buzz. Once you have done that, fixing it is easy.
There are basically two types of buzzes. One is when something is loose, and the vibrating string makes it buzz. A typical buzz like this is say if you have the D pedal in natural and 5th octave D natural is buzzing. You tighten the disc on the string or the back plate screw for that string and it stops.
The other type of buzz is a sympathetic vibration on a certain pitch. So in this case, say the 5th octave D natural is buzzing, but it is the vibration frequency this time that is causing something else on the instrument to buzz(pedal rod tube in the column, pedal cap screw, wing nut, etc.). So the trick here is to locate whatever it is that vibrates on that pitch. That’s why you need to go around the instrument touching everything to see if you can alter the buzz at all. Buzzes will always sound like they are coming from inside the action. With this second type of buzz, the source can be anywhere on the instrument.
Here are a few general things to try:
1) If you move the harp to a different room or even just a different part of the room, is the buzz still there?
2) Does it buzz when the harp is standing upright, or just when it is pulled back, standing only on the rear feet?
3) If you grab the column hard with both hands, does it have any effect on the buzz?
4) Are there long string ends, or big string knots under the soundboard? Try holding each of those and see if there is any change.
5) Push your thumb hard against the adjustable nut for the string that is buzzing. Does that alter or stop the buzz?Let me know what you find when you try these things.
