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One of the most treacherous solo pieces in the repertoire, pedal-wise, is Faure’s Une Chatelaine en sa Tour. Almost everybody who has ever performed it has messed it up at one time or another. Someone told me about hearing the legendary Zabeleta make a mess of it in a concert. After the performance he said to this person,”Well, the Chatelaine fell out of her tower tonight.”
I agree with you Paul. When I browse harp recordings, I look primarily for pieces that I don’t know. That is what is most likely to get me to buy the CD. If I see too many pieces that I know, I’ll let it pass.
The same thing is happening on a larger scale in classical music recording. I remember hearing a recording executive a couple of years ago say that there isn’t an orchestra in the world that can put out a recording of a Tchaikowsky symphony and sell more than 10,000 recordings worldwide.
A friend of mine who lives near where this harp is currently being kept went and looked at it this morning. Here is the text she sent me on it.
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It is badly beaten up but in relatively good shape.
The base does not seem to be pulling away.
The neck is not too bent to the left when viewed from the back.
No worm or water damage that I could tell.
The pedals all move smoothly and the strings basically cross over the
center screw of all discs.
Even the gilding is in good shape – except where it is banged and
battered.
The sound board is not bowed up and appears not to be cracked.
The base strings are all corroded and have cut through the wooden
discs intended to protect the soundboard
but have not damaged the board as far as I can tell.
The cover is a disaster but who cares?
Mostly there is wear. You can see on the right side where the finish
has been worn off from arm rubbing while playing.
There are many pits and gouges on soundboard, body and base but
nothing too severe except two places where the
body veneer has been literally cut out (see photo) and where the
gilding is pretty scraped off (see photo).
The entire mechanism is brown with age and covered with dust and junk
but still works just fine(!)
I reached into the sound holes in the back to remove a broken string
and found them to be very small – had a difficult
time getting my hand and arm in there. Is that common for a style
11? It would make changing strings a real pain.
Many strings were missing and none were in tune but the ones I plucked
sounded clear in the open position at least.
I don’t know why exactly but I don’t think it will have a very big
sound but it could be beautiful once it is fixed up.
I can’t figure out why it is so brown. Given that the arm wear on the
right reveals a lighter color, perhaps it was
finished in a darker shade to begin with?
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She sent me a lot of photos which I’m not even going to attempt to up load here. But one photo shows two patches in the curly maple veneer on the body shell(the rounded shell that the soundboard is attached to). I can’t tell if they are just on the surface or if they go all the way through the body.
The neck looks a little warped but of course there is basically no tension on the strings now. I’m bothered by the fact that all of the natural wood parts of the instrument are so dark. I’m guessing that this harp sat in a blindingly bright sunlit window for years. I’m also guessing that someone in the house smoked, which would also add to the overall dark color, in particular on the action plates. Overall it looks like this instrument was not well cared for and was really banged around.
I had been mildly interested in this instrument, but I’m going to let it pass. I think it is going to take way too much work to put back into good playing condition.
May I suggest that we all make a contribution to our local PBS affiliate, and mention in a note along with the check that this is in appreciation of the documentary “HARP DREAMS.” maybe that will inspire them to do more about the harp.
I agree with you Tony. What I’ve always found interesting is how international competitions like this are a very good indicator of who is going to have an important career on the harp. And it’s not just the first prize that interests me. it’s the first three prizes. As one of the judges said during that program: “If the final stage were held three different times on three different days, the results would probably change each time. What the final stage does is pick out the best at that moment.”
GOOD LORD! This thread is longer than the Brooklyn bridge. I’m not going to sit here and read every post. But I did scan the answers and my impression is your shooting in the dark. Here’s my experience with buzzes.
1) Make sure it’s the harp and not something in the room. Move the harp to a different room and try it. If the buzz is still there, it’s the harp.
2) Make the buzz happen-I think you said it was D natural, which octave I don’t remember- and while you are playing the note over and over again move each of the other pedals slowly through all of their positions. If the buzz gets better or worse when a certain pedal is in a certain position, then it’s probably something inside the action OR one of the rods inside the column. You will then have to try touching linkage inside the action with a thin screwdriver to see if touching one link or another stops the buzz.
3) Make the buzz happen as mentioned in 2 above and press your thumb against the side of the nut that the string goes over. Also, if the buzz is happening on natural or sharp, take a larger screwdriver with a flat blade, put it between the back of the disc in question and the action plate and twist the handle, which will force the disc forward and the spindle to which it is attached hard against the front action plate. If that stops the buzz, then the backplate screw for that disc has to be tightened a little. If the buzz stops when you press against the string nut, then tightening the two screws that hold it in place, OR putting a small piece of paper towel or cloth between the string and the nut may stop the buzz. You can also try wrapping the groove in the nut with thread to pad the string a little.
I’ll add to this later. Have to go now.
I really enjoyed it too. In the last several harp competitions, both in Israel and Bloomington, the winners-who of course all won harps as part of the first prize package-have been harpists who didn’t own their own instrument. The winning prize was the first harp they had ever owned, and I think that is really great.
I’m with you Sam. I thought the sound of the harps playing was kind of harsh. Harp is so difficult to record, and these of course were not studio conditions. The producers did the best they could. But over all, it was a great show, and puts the harp in a new spotlight.
Actually, I have a somewhat similar story. Years ago I played a run of Nutcracker with a local civic group. My own harp was being repaired(this was loooooong before I was repairing harps myself, or knew anything about them), and I was pinch hitting with an old but serviceable Erard that I had recently bought. When I bought it, the D pedal bar was broken off, and I had to take the pedal bar and the pedal and have a welder weld the two pieces of the pedal bar back together again.
For these performances they had pasted in the grand pas de deux which I think comes from Swan Lake or Sleeping Beauty. I don’t know those ballets as well, but I don’t think the pas de deux they did comes from Nutcracker. Anyway, I had just begun the movement and reached for the D pedal to change it. I heard a clattering on the floor and a second or two later realized that the D pedal had broken off again!
I found this in the index on my computer. I wrote it for a student a few years ago.
WRITING PEDALS
1) Write all pedals in simple, printed, block letters, straight up and down. Example: B#
2) Write all pedals in dark pencil.
3) Make sure that none of your markings touch any of the printing on the page. Mark pedals only where you have room to put them without touching anything else.
4) Write all pedals large enough to see easily
5) Write the pedals in where there is sufficient room to write them. They can be written between the staves or below the bass staff, as space permits.
6) Always write the right foot above the left foot. Be consistent about that.
7) Write each pedal change EXACTLY where you are going to change it. Sometimes this means writing it in the middle of a beat to avoid a pedal slide for example.
8) If one foot is going to move the same pedal again a few beats later, put a line from the first change to the second. Just write the accidental(not the letter) for the second change.
9) If one foot is going to move the same pedal again several measures later, put a short line after the first change, which will indicate that your foot can stay on that pedal, as in: B#-
Write the next pedal change of the same pedal with a short line before it, as in the example: -B#
The R and D that the Pleyel company did in the 1890’s is as valid today as it was then. They found out very early on that these harps had to be built like battle ships. They are heavy and rigid, with a huge metal ‘keel’ under the soundboard to support it. For this reason they have a completely different resonance than a pedal harp. You really can’t hear it on this recording. In person, they sound ‘tubby’, with a lot of resonance but not a really clear attack. Debussy hated them, but wrote several pieces for chromatic harp for the money.
I’ve had a Pleyel chromatic harp in my living room for 20 years or so and have been wondering what to do with it.
I think about the same amount of calories that are burnt by reaching out to a bowl of potato chips to pick up one at a time and eat it.
