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Kay- I don’t think the various ways of writing pedals has to do with one method or the other. It probably has something to do with how that particular person was taught.
It’s all well and good to have a system for writing your pedals in, and someplace on this site this was discussed and I posted a list of guidelines that ought to be observed in the interest of standardizing the way pedals are indicated. Good luck finding that post! But the bottom line, particularly if you play rented orchestra parts, is that you have to be able to read anything. ANYTHING! Left over right, right over left, below the bass staff, between the staves, both, in red pencil, green pencil, upper case or lower case, etc. Because those variations and more are what you will encounter, and life will be a lot easier if you can just read what someone else put down.
It’s not always possible to change a pedal exactly where it is needed. There may be 3 or 4 pedals that have to be changed at the same time, and to avoid a log jam you have to move a few of them ahead of time. Other times a pedal change has to be moved because it causes a buzz. So again, you should learn to change pedals in as many ways as possible so you can meet the needs of every situation.
I seem to remember hearing someplace that after he got that harp with the 8th pedal from Obermeyer, it took him 2 or 3 years to learn to use it. I suspect it had 2 functions. One would be to muffle the wire strings to stop sympathetic vibrations or bass notes that had just been played. But I’m willing to bet that he frequently left it on when he was not using any notes that low, either for passages in a piece or even for a whole piece. Zabeleta had a fetish with clarity, especially when recording. I think that worked for some pieces and not for others.
Edith- Do you have my book, A GUIDE FOR HARPISTS? It gives you step by step instructions for changing a rod.
You’re talking about the composer of The Sleep of the Infant Jesus(Busser)? That’s a dreadful piece. Did he write some other pieces for harp that are worth looking at?
Interesting footnote about Busser. When I was living in Paris in 1972, Henri Busser was celebrating his 100th birthday! He died the following year at 101. While there were musicians in Paris who could brag about studying with Debussy, Ravel, etc. Busser could brag about studying with the same people they studied with.
You’re talking about the composer of The Sleep of the Infant Jesus(Busser)? That’s a dreadful piece. Did he write some other pieces for harp that are worth looking at?
Interesting footnote about Busser. When I was living in Paris in 1972, Henri Busser was celebrating his 100th birthday! He died the following year at 101. While there were musicians in Paris who could brag about studying with Debussy, Ravel, etc. Busser could brag about studying with the same people they studied with.
You’re talking about the composer of The Sleep of the Infant Jesus(Busser)? That’s a dreadful piece. Did he write some other pieces for harp that are worth looking at?
Interesting footnote about Busser. When I was living in Paris in 1972, Henri Busser was celebrating his 100th birthday! He died the following year at 101. While there were musicians in Paris who could brag about studying with Debussy, Ravel, etc. Busser could brag about studying with the same people they studied with.
Jessica- Did you ever hear of Ida Presti? She was considered by many to be the greatest guitarist of her generation. She is probably best remembered as half of the duo of Presti and Lagoya, her husband being Alexander Lagoya. Tragically she died of a stroke in her late 30’s.
Don’t even THINK of polishing anything with the action assembled. All you’ll do is get brass polish all over the place, get streaky polish lines on everything, and make everything tarnish that much faster when you’re done. In addition, you run a high risk of getting brass polish, which is corrosive, into the joints of moving parts. The polish will corrode and rust any steel it touches, which means all of the screws, the spindles that the discs are screwed on to. etc.
As part of my harp rebuilding business I regularly overhaul harp actions. I can take an old tarnished action and make it shine like a cadillac hood ornament, but to do that I have to completely disassemble the action. I send the brass discs and adjustable nuts out to be gold plated. I don’t polish them. Chances are the new discs on your harp are gold plated too, not polished. I have a long proceedure for polishing the action plates to a high shine, and when I’m done I spray them with a special metal lacquer so that they stay bright and shiny for years to come with good care. I meticulously clean all brass polish out of the 225 holes in the front plate before spraying them, and then regrease and oil the moving parts and joints so the action will move smoothly when I’m done. I can’t tell you how many times i have worked on actions that some well meaning person tried to polish and it made an awful mess. If you want a shiny action, then hire a professional who knows what he is doing to do it for you.
Gorman- There are many ways to roll a chord. The roll can be very brisk and short, or stretched out, especially at the end of a phrase. The roll can start before the beat so that the top note lands on the beat, or the roll can begin on the beat and continue after. If the top or bottom notes are melody notes, then they can be played at slightly higher dynamic levels then the rest of the chord. You can also start the chord slowly and speed up the roll as it progresses. You can also make a crescendo from the bottom to the top of the chord.That’s the case with the final chord in the Parish-Alvars Serenade. If Renie indicated a roll on a chord, it probably means a longer roll then on other chords in the piece.
I could swear that silver strings sound better than tarnish resistant. But Eleanor Fell told me that they have done blind tests several times at Vanderbilt, with harp students trying to distinguish between tarnish resistant and silver strings, and no one has ever been able to hear the difference. In addition, even if you think that silver sound better, the C’s and F’s are not silver anyway. The thing to remember is that any harp sounds one way to the player and another way to anyone out in front of it.
All of the wire strings made for Lyon & Healy, Salvi, Vanderbilt, Venus, etc. come off the same machine in the same factory. So it doesn’t matter who you get them from. Only Pirastro wires are different.
