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If you are talking about the jump up to the B, I think your solution should work just fine. I think most harpists jump, since it is too far to reach for most of us. I tried various solutions but I went back to jumping.
Debussy’s Afternoon of a Faun has two lovely harp parts that, combined, would make a nice audition piece for a student. It’s not difficult, but it’s got a showy quintuplet section at the beginning.
Isn’t it crazy that an orchestra would attempt this piece without 2 harps? I started to write out a part for Mercury with the two parts combined, just to see if it could be done. I think it is doable, with some editing, but it always floors me to see orchestras trying to do without such an integral piece of the puzzle.
Stravinsky wrote another version of Petrouchka with two harps, and parts of that don’t work, either. As Elinor says, it’s up to the harpist to edit the part to create the effect that the composer wanted. Read Beatrice Schroeder Rose’s book The Harp In the Orchestra to get more examples of how we adapt standard orchestra parts. For that beginning passage, I just play the top line, and if there’s a 2nd harpist, he or she takes the bottom line. I practiced it with both lines, but it is very tiring and doesn’t make the slightest difference to the overall sound. It’s supposed to be a chaotic scene at a fair, and the harp is buried in the orchestration.
My 3rd to 4th fingers can just barely reach 4 strings, and I have met harpists with fingers even shorter than mine. Also, you can’t have large spans between every finger or you would get no grip on the strings, and risk having a tinny sound. Sometimes, when presented with huge chords that I can’t reach, I have to leave out a note or re-voice the chord. So, write what you want, within reason, but be prepared for the occasional edit by the smaller-handed harpists.
The other solution is to put the outside note in the other staff, to be played by the other hand. Sometimes you can make your chord smaller by using an enharmonic note. For example, if the bottom note is an E natural, make it an F flat and now your span is smaller.Sinead O’Connor’s rendition of this is absolutely wonderful. It’s on the Chieftains’ recording “The Long Black Veil”.
Interestingly, I have found a small number of mistakes in Prokofiev’s 5th Symphony. At reh. 61, the time signature is missing. It should be a 9/8. Three bars before reh. 63, in the bass clef, the eighth notes should be quarter notes. But they are such small mistakes that I am sure they have gone mostly unnoticed.
The harpist is usually placed to the conductor’s left side because (a) it is easiest to hear the cues which are written into the harp part, and (b) it is near the violinists, who play the detailed melodic figures that we accompany. When I have been placed on the opposite side, I can’t hear those figures at all if the brass are playing, and it becomes difficult to achieve the tight ensemble that is easy when I am near the violins. Also, being on that side forces me to keep an eye on the baton constantly because I can’t hear as well. That can make an erstwhile easy part into a difficult one. Also, the soloist is usually to the conductor’s left, so that is another reason why it is best to be on that side as well, for ease of accompaniment.
Thank you, Clinton! I would imagine that, if this is indeed a mistake, it would not be noticeable to anyone but the harpist. It flies by very quickly, and the harmonies are so crunchy there that either note would work fine.
There are different orchestrations; I used to play in a ballet orchestra for six years, and I saw two, and I have heard another. There is one that has a difficult solo harp part, but another one gives most of the notes to the strings and the harp has an easy part. At the AHS Convention in San Francisco, Olga Ortenberg Rakitchenkov played the solo from the Don Quixote Pas de Deux absolutely brilliantly.
I have seen these types of rests in some orchestra parts occasionally, for example in the Danse Bacchanale from Samson and Delilah by Saint-Saëns.
I started with a “C” tuning fork, tuned middle C, then a slightly flattened fifth (G), then through a cycle of perfect fifths, always slightly flattening each one, so that the end result is a perfectly tempered scale. Then I tuned in octaves all the way down and then all the way up. This takes practice! If you don’t flatten the fifths enough, you get the dreaded “Pythagorean comma”.
