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I think Washburn was the name of either someone at the company, or a company that they took over. The early history of Lyon & Healy is very interesting and contains some surprises. Just as now, Lyon & Healy is not just a division of Salvi, but Lyon & Healy Corporation, which makes several lines of guitars and other things, which maybe what they needed the new building for.
I have mostly heard the Apollos. They definitely have a much bigger sound in the 3rd, 4th and 5th octaves. I have not heard one with nylon strings in the treble, but without them, the treble suffers in comparison with the mid-range and bass. Any harp I would buy new I would want to have made with a stirrup, a metal brace in the 7th octave on the center strip, which gives focus to those notes and projection to the 0 octave. My information is that the changes Salvi made were in accordance with Lyon & Healy design. They stopped using polyurethane finish, lightened the weight and planed the sounding board more. I believe they also widened the sounding board as Venus was, I think, the first to do. I do think that any new harp you order should have the glossy finish, as the extra polishing likely thins the finish so the sound is not inhibited, and the harp is formally presentable. With a matte finish, they look dusty. There is a problem on many harps now with the sound being inhibited, 5-10%, but enough to take the leading edge away that is so important. The “french polishing” is worth paying extra for. The question is, since they now use a water-based finish, will it have the same sound benefit?
As I recall, in the Philadelphia Orchestra recording under Ormandy, the harp doubles the flute with harmonics, or the flute doubles the harp. It has the right sound. Non-harmonics do not blend with the flute, and sound wrong.
I have two approaches: one is to be too busy to even think about it, and to only go on stage just as you are to start playing. The other is to have the music by heart. One does have to learn to be fearless in front of an audience and to connect with them. Experience works wonders; repeated performances of the same repertoire. Once I had performed pieces several times, I found there was a “performance zone” I could enter into, and play a piece I had performed before with no preparation.
I can top that, I used my right-hand to play in the left-hand position for a low harmonic, and it worked just great!
Find an occupational therapist you can trust, preferably one who has experience with musicians. Once you have some strength, then you need to work on basic technique and rebuild very slowly and gradually.
When you are doing that kind of playing, you need to be sensitive to the taste and desire of the patients and their families. Popular songs would seem very inappropriate to me unless they have a specific request.
I’ve been told they are a high-quality natural gut string with very warm tone. I would expect them to have a clear pitch, like Bow Strings have. I am so happy with my Bow Brand heavy-gauge gut strings, I can’t imagine changing brands. They are incredibly durable. Their finish is natural, too, not a polyurethane.
You should string it in accordance with the manufacturer, which is to say, pedal wire, gut and nylon strings.
A style 22 harp does not have different string gauging from any other Lyon & Healy Concert Grand. What you can do to clean wire string is to gently rub them with a nylon kitchen scrubber, or, to detune them, wrap the string around a bottle (glass Coke bottle with the convex middle is ideal) and slide the bottle up and down the string, which will cause the accumulated debris in the grooves to fall out. Then wipe it with a soft cloth to further clean it after you retune the string. This would refresh the sound for a few months. This is what we used to do in the 1970s. But you can simply put on new fresh silver and copper strings and not bring them all the way up to pitch. The question is, where are the cracks and how deep are they? You can take photos and send them to a harp technician for advice, such as the great Karen Rokos.
I conceived of what later became known as the Concedo brand of strings for two reasons: one was because I noticed that the colored strings were more flexible than the uncolored gut strings, and did not fracture while knotting them. The other reason was for increased visibility in performing in orchestra pits and other darkened lighting situations. Walter Pfeil’s answer was to employ fiber optic lighting on the underside of the neck…
I find that by adding a second loop over the knot, I don’t need string anchors at all. It makes the knot large enough that it can’t pull through. Add any kind of object adds another risk for buzzing, and a factor in the resonating of the string. I would not like to add a foreign material that would be held against the center strip. You could also do a third loop in making the knot, to make it larger yet.
This is the information I found on the New England Harp Association: Gerald Goodman, president; Reinhart Elster, vice-president; Edith Salvin Bloom, secretary; and Helen Silver, treasurer. They administered the Carlos Salzedo Scholarship Fund, of which I was a recipient. It may have been funded by money from Salzedo’s estate, or from friends of his. I heard one version from Alice Chalifoux, and the other from Lucile Lawrence. Perhaps both are true.
