Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The way the part is written apparently reflects the way Nicanor Zabaleta played the piece. It is not necessarily the best way. Try copying out passages and redistributing the notes and see what ways might make more sense. It will help you learn the piece.
There is no other edition. You may consult harpists who have experience performing and teaching the piece.
If your string is sharpened by your attack, you are attacking it too hard! I have certainly heard a harpist audibly bend the pitch in the bass by over-plucking. If you merely push through the string, you avoid the pressure and pulling that result in bending the pitch, and also pulling it out of tune.
Each ear is different, perhaps, but the first octave notes sound quite flat without some stretching, unless you have never heard it that way before.
Tuning by ear, the old-fashioned way, unless you have perfect pitch, is an audible nightmare. Having grown up when people still did that, from a tuning fork or pitch pipe, nothing was ever in tune. Listen to an old recording by Lily Laskine. A is the worst note to tune from. You are at the mercy of your regulation. I was able to find E and B tuning forks, which at least give me F-flat and C-flat, establishing the fifth.
It takes decades of playing and listening to refine one’s ear. We just don’t have that luxury. But relying on a strobe tuner creates a false reality. There is an old rule of thumb for octaves in the bass: you should be able to hear a beat or vibrato of three times per second.I am about to change strings on my pedal harp and my troubadour, so I could have plenty of 4th and 5th octave strings for you, not broken, though, but I will cut them in taking them off.
It’s not reasonable to beginners, but then again, if you adjusted the price of a troubadour to inflation from when I first got one, 1974, it might be higher than that.
For a serious lever harp player, there should certainly be a desire for one that is well made and beautifully decorated. For a student who plans to move to pedal harp, something like the troubadour is just fine.I will add on the previous “note” that, as lever harps began as an inexpensive way to begin learning the harp, I have been aghast to see the prices rise so far that even lever harps can be unattainable. For a student who will move on to pedal harp, a lever harp no longer seems worth purchasing unless they will use it later on.
Pedal harps have always been a major purchase, but so is any fine instrument, and harps are a bargain relative to other instruments. To be able to buy two new pedal harps in one’s lifetime is normal, if two are even possible. That’s assuming a full-time career or successful spouse. A harp is less than most new cars. I don’t think there’s too much to complain about, considering the quality and that it is mostly handmade. It is good to know they have gone up less than pianos have. The commitment that the harp requires also speaks to the dignity and respect we have previously had for the instrument. Now, people seem determined to make it ugly, painful to listen to, and degraded in every possible way. What a shame. I am sick of professional photos showing a harp being mistreated, on the floor, upside down, etc. It used to be that it was shocking to even see a harpist wearing rings or nail polish.
The problem is how to make the harp accessible for people of low income. But not people of low commitment. It’s galling, of course, to see people with money buy harps with no regard for this. There are those who should share.
Anyway, back to the transcription issues.
Another one is tempo. If you have to play a piano piece at half-tempo to make it playable on the harp, forget about it.
And then there is key. You have to consider changing the key. The tonal center of the harp is higher than the piano. Many pieces need to be raised a third or fourth or more. Guitar pieces, definitely.The Chopin pieces that can work are likely to have been orchestrated or arranged a hundred different ways already, like the pieces used for the ballet Les Sylphides, or the Minute Waltz. I like your points about pianists having a cow over their “sacred cows.” I guess they were just harp bashing, because, heaven knows, much of the piano’s success as an instrument came at the expense of the harp, which was once more popular. I would be curious to know if harp sales are steady or growing now, while piano sales are rapidly declining.
Transcribing warhorses is a bad idea, if only because their associations are so strong, and it is hard for a listener’s ear to make the switch. They also tend to be longer and louder than the harp or harpist can sustain. I have seen some rather poor choices made, sometimes frequently, as they seem to go in waves, and that inspired my post. Some harpists seem to spend a lot of time either copying each other, or perhaps sharing ideas. There was practically a tidal wave of Bach transcriptions in the last ten years or so. I think Bach doesn’t sound very well on the harp, most of the time. Handel and Telemann have a lighter texture and brighter sound that translates far better than often-ponderous Bach.
I, too, love transcriptions, as long as they are fine. It is an art. It require creativity and sensitive ears. There’s nothing worse than a dogmatic approach in which nothing is changed at all. Putting pedal markings and maybe a few fingerings in is not a transcription.
I have a problem with Liszt’s Le Rossignol, and that is the chromatic passages. Renie found as complex an approximation as one could probably find, but for me, it simply cancels out the piece as one that is usable. And as my harp approachs another re-riveting, I am loath to play too many pedal changes anymore. It never really occurred to me that the mechanism comes with a limited lifespan.
The real important point is, for anyone contemplating a recital, there are enough fine solos that go unplayed not to resort to another transcription. It is good to have a few, to have composers the audience knows, but not too many, unless that is your theme.
If someone really wants to make a splash, perhaps they should arrange a fantasy and variations on airs from a contemporary opera!I wouldn’t use any substitutes in performance. Do you use every finger or keep using the same ones over and over? You can gliss up with 2, 3 or even 4, though you pretty much need your thumb to come down. Play as lightly as you can until performance. You can toughen your skin, but that will also harden your tone.
You can certainly try something like E-Bay, or if you have a harp society chapter, suggest a rummage sale. However, I have found that whatever music I discarded, I ended up wanting it for something later on. I would keep it. You never know. Unless it is totally useless, in which case, feel free to line a birdcage with it.
Yes, you may request the publisher send you some pages, if they refuse to make the whole part available. I don’t know if they will or not, but perhaps they will feel like being helpful.
I loved playing the harp part in Walton’s Viola Concerto. I think he is the pre-eminent British composer of the 20th century, but sadly being overshadowed by Britten.Nicanor Zabaleta promoted himself for several years as a harpist who never performed transcriptions, but in truth, most of the time he played a great many of them.
I would as soon analyze a recording posted to youtube for my eyes only, I would think. I did that with someone from Malaysia, and it was apparently very helpful. But that is more like giving a master class.
I love how publishers clamp down on players copying parts, and only allowing excerpts, as if that was enough to prepare from. They are apparently afraid one might go to the trouble of acquiring all the parts in order to have a performance. If they sold copies of parts, they wouldn’t have to worry about losing rentals, would they?
