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All I can say is that my teacher insisted that we buy the best standard harp, which is/was the Lyon & Healy Style 23 harp. I am so grateful that my parents listened because I have never been able to buy another harp, and it has served me superbly, and has become a truly great instrument. One cannot read the future, so I recommend following suit and buying the best possible harp now. They also retain their value the best, we were told, should you want to sell it later on. The style 100s can be as servicable, and the style 30. But you get the best quality of wood and workmanship on the more expensive harps, too. I would recommend a 23 or a Salzedo as the top choices.
It is best to go and choose the harp, but you can have someone do that for you, a harpist in Chicago. I believe if you speak at length with someone like Natalie Bilik at L &H, she will be able to pick out a suitable harp for you. But they also have European showrooms, one right there in Germany.
The 46-string harp will cover most repertoire, but not allow you to fully play such important works as the Hindemith Sonata and many others that require a 7th octave C, and others that require 0-octave g-sharps. I would not compromise, given that you seem serious about playing. It is worth the extra money.
I don’t like red woods. They seem to darken the sound too much. Red spruce, red maple, etc. I just want maple and spruce.
Lucile Lawrence always insisted on full-length performances of the Variations for as long as I knew her. The short version would only be done as required by competitions. She recorded the full-length version. Contrary to Sam’s opinion, I find the Barcarolle, Prelude, Fugue and Cadenza to be not only the most difficult, but the most exciting part of the piece by far. Miss Lawrence said to me that Salzedo regretted ever publishing the shortened ending because too many people opted for it. It was customary to do so in French publications for easiness. While the character of the variations shifts from technical to character with the Barcarolle and Prelude, no proper French Theme and Variations can be written without a fugue, classically speaking. And the meaning of ancien is old, but in the sense of classic, olden, traditional, not just elderly. Tchaikovsky used the word roccoco in his variations for cello.
Certainly, all the variations are printed in both editions. I use the Leduc edition. I dislike the altered harmonic notation. The revised edition has simplified tempi that, to me, do not work. The simplified fingerings aren’t really necessary and detract musically.
One more clue: the use of “harpege” and “harpeggio” in keyboard music. It means harpists were already indulging in complicated arpeggios at that time. Also, the piece by Mudarra, “”Contrahaze la harp da Ludovico” or something like that, is a depiction of the improvisation or playing by a famed Spanish harpists in the baroque period. That gives you an idea of what his playing was like.
Just as you say, when a library has a score and the music says harp or piano, it is catalogued under piano with no harp indication at all!
I looked at his discography and his recent cds. Not to turn off those who are interested, but there is so much literature for the harp, I see no reason to resort to gimmicks to fill a recording, and I am offended, in a way, when they say that he has somehow single-handedly revolutionised the way anyone sees the harp, I mean, they must be deaf, dumb and blind to think that just because he’s a guy or something else I don’t know of, it is suddenly a revelation. It’s just like they did to promote Markus Klinko in the 1990s, and it didn’t work too well then. But maybe they are just that ignorant about the harp in Europe. Maybe they have no exposure to the breadth of our literature or to male harpists (how quickly they have forgotten Maestro Zabaleta). More likely, it’s just silly public relations talk. I have been told they only want to hear the same old stuff on the harp, nothing new or different, no challenges, no broadening. Maybe that’s why so many cds have the exact same repertoire. What do I know about it?
There is a small book on the history of the Irish harp by Joan Rimmer, that was one of the earliest books I found, and Roslyn Rensch’s books. I think you need to frame your paper differently, as it reflects a contemporary view, not a contemporaneous view. The earliest manuscripts of classical music for harp that I can think of would be the Sonata by C.P.E. Bach and the Handel Concerto. If you go on to the Mozart Concerto and the early harp methods, you will then see the development of technique and figurations that continue through the 19th century. It is all about figuration and how composers fill time between chord progressions. Mainly, you see the repeated note 4111111 as in Dussek, and the arpeggiated chords and patterns 4321 and variants thereof. The next composers to write the most for harp are J. L. Dussek, a very important composer, and L. Spohr. By the 19th century, you also see a disparity of sorts or distinction between the serious composer and the harpist-composer, such as Nadermann, Bochsa, Dizi, etc.
The concept of designating a piece for performance on only one instrument and writing in an idiomatic fashion is a 19th-century one. Beethoven wrote about the need to separate harp and piano writing.
Concerti by many composers: Handel, Schenk, Mozart, Eichner, Albrechtsberger, J.C. Bach, Dussek, Spohr.
Solos by Handel, Bach, Beethoven, Dussek, Spohr.
Chamber music by J.C. Bach, Albrechtsberger, others.
They didn’t necessarily see the harp as limited, perhaps, until the double-action rendered relatively unlimited. Writing diatonically was perfectly suitable. I believe I have answered some of your questions. Catalog searching should turn up more sources, and check back issues of the American Harp Journal. We did have music by Telemann, Graun and other German composers that was lost in WWII. Here’s a tip: study old publisher’s catalogues to see what was in print. Some have been reprinted.
If you are looking to perform early music, you can play almost any single line in an ensemble piece, play bass, play octaves and fifths, it is wonderfully free.
Music was not written for the harp in antiquity. Music was created and it was played on what they had to play with, which was pretty often a harp. The harp was it, in my opinion. We ruled. It was only the organ that had specific music, because of its nature, and then the claviers of different types, and because they were new, music had to be designated as being for them, but everything was for the harp. Only as the keyboard instruments and guitars grew in popularity did harp music begin to be separated from the other instruments. That is my theory and I am sticking to it. In other words, back then, the harp was the norm, not the exception it is now.
