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LOL. Somebody (Dowland?) once said that if a lutenist lived to a certain age, he would have spent 1/3 of that time tuning his lute. If it was Dowland, he wrote for a 7-course lute, which is not such a big deal as the later Baroque lutes.
I’m curious what kind of harp Handel was writing for. Certainly not a pedal harp, which would not have been available to him. Double or triple harp? I’ve always thought Bach would have written for the harp if a more sophisticated harp had been available. Though he was born the same year as Handel, 1685.
Yep, that’s my understanding. Oddly enough, it was the (Desmond Dupre, lute; Osian Ellis, harp) recording that I FIRST heard, and I’ve since heard the Satoh/Witsenburg version on YouTube. The concerto works fine for harp alone, but it’s richer with the lute.
Saul, the lute is a Baroque lute in this case, so it would require quite a bit of time tuning. You don’t want to share the solo honors with a lutenist? Take it up with Handel!
Funny thing–I was listening to a CD with some particularly impressive harp playing on it when my daughter said (jokingly?), “You’re never going to play like that, so why bother? Stick to playing banjo on the back porch.”
I don’t get it. Especially since I play harp better than banjo. (And guitar better than harp; it’s a question of how long I’ve been playing each instrument.) I hope she was just being funny.
Actually, I do know of one harp arrangement for “Tumbalalaika,” but it’s a little too simple.
I forgot to mention
Yerushalayim shel Zahav (Israeli, Staneslow)Interesting too that Sunita shares your liking for both Celtic and Jewish.
… has made me a better harpist. So true! My three instruments are guitar, harp and banjo. All plucked strings, but all different. Speaking for myself, splitting practice time definitely slows you down, but after all I’m not in a race with some abstract standard.
Deb, I’m glad you’re not dropping the cello after all.
My vote goes to Sunita Staneslow, because she has arrangements of several of my favorites:
La rosa enflorece aka Los Bilbilikos (Sephardic)
Dodi Li (Israeli)
Erev Shel Shoshanim (Israeli)I know of no harp arrangements for the following, but they’d be great:
La vida do por el raki (Sephardic)
La serena aka En la mar hay una torre (Sephardic)
Rumeniya, Rumeniya (Yiddish)
Tumbalalaika (Yiddish)
Dona, Dona (Yiddish)Most of these are melancholy or poetic, but “La vida do por el raki” and “Rumeniya” are lively.
The bowed psaltery is what I take along when I have a space problem. I don’t play it otherwise, but then it’s strictly a melody instrument. (Some people add chords by laying the psaltery flat and playing with two bows.) It’s not an early instrument, BTW. It shares only the name with the mediaeval instrument. It was invented by a German music teacher in the twentieth century and it has a zithery sound.
I can’t afford more than one harp or I would try an ancient Irish/Scottish style harp. It wouldn’t do for my only harp.
After a fashion I did. I got a CD with the one and only lute and harp version of the Handel B-flat concerto (Desmond Dupre, lute; Osian Ellis, harp) on it. This is so hard to find that many harpists have never heard of it.
We spent Christmas Eve, which is the big day in our family, with my aunt and her boyfriend, who moved from New York into a retirement home down here a few months ago. My New Beetle is a bit small to be transporting harps, so I brought a bowed psaltery to sing carols with and German baked goods.
