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In the end, I bought a Pilgrim Clarsach.
I was able to play so many different harps, and finally it came down to the Camac Ulysse and the Pilgrim – there were others that sounded beautiful but no lighter than my current one.I was very glad to be able to play them though, because even the six Clarsachs I played were quite different. I loved the look of the very pale ones, but bought the walnut-stained one, which was the one I liked the sound of most.
And it’s just right – sounds great, and so easy to take to folk group etc. Plus I’m still on gut strings, which I’m used to. The Ulysse has fluorocarbon, which were very thin and the coloured strings washed out – not good for playing in dark pubs! (and it was £2.5k more expensive!)
Hi Balfour,
I’m lucky in that the Edinburgh harp festival is in a few weeks time, and is only 3 hours away.
So I’ve decided I’m going to go for a day, and ‘audition’ harps.Thanks Greg and Will.
So it seems the question might also be, ‘which lever harps are gut strung’?
I’ll start a list, please add to it.
Camac Korrigan
L&H Ogden
Salvi Gaia
Pilgrim Clarsach
All Starfish harps
Dusty Strings BoulevardIt helped me when another player pointed out that the goal is not to get your fingers into your palm, but to allow your finger to pluck and ‘follow through’, so as to get a good pluck.
Like a golfer swings past hitting the ball, they don’t stop dead at the ball, or they’d have a weak hit.
So we only close as much as our ‘finger swing’ needs on any particular note.
If you look at the score (I screenshot a page, but the file is too big to upload), that section is playing with the entire wind section including horns, at ff. In other words, no one’s going to hear the harp!
So I wouldn’t stress. I suppose the most likely notes to be heard are the highest.
Thank you, that was the instruction I wasn’t sure about – but your interpretation makes sense to me.
(The conductor can always say ‘what are you doing??’ if that’s not what he expected 😂 – it’s for an amateur orchestral residential, so fairly relaxed)
And that’s very kind of you to look up the pedals for me, that would have been my next job 👍🏽😊
I did that next – don’t know why I didn’t think of it first! It was outside office hours, so hopefully hear more today.
I do now, I didn’t when I asked the question.
But in fact, I can’t see it in her book. I suppose it’s not orchestra-specific.
I did do as she advised for the harmonic bit, and put the harp in Cb.
Thank you for spotting the missing treble clef – that makes a bit of a difference! And I like your idea of rolling the chords much better than two solid alternating chords – the celeste can do that, I’ll be more harpy.
Thank you, much appreciated 🙂
ETA: having played around a bit, I think I like them rolled, but as written, so LH and RH fingers interleaved.
