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Are you the Hank I think you are? Please get in touch with me, and with Don H. Wonderful to hear from you.
Parts can come at any time. But if you have a specific need, like at least two days, you must communicate that clearly as a condition of playing. It takes a lot of experience with playing and with parts to sight-read comfortably in rehearsals. Most parts come well marked, which helps, but a new piece won’t be marked at all.
I sometimes go downward to rest my arm, but only during practicing. As a listener, I have always felt a downward motion as very negative. At the end of Lamentation, Salzedo has the harpist drop their hands to the sounding board deliberately, to express death and mourning. It’s all in how you do it.
Musical intention can be even more specific. Do you intend a note to be perceived as an eighth-note or a whole note? I find I can express every aspect of a note’s character physically.
You can change hand position when the harmonics get high and play them with the left hand the same way you would with the right hand. However, with enough practice, I can make them without doing that, but I have nylon strings, which makes them much easier and clearer.
Savarez apparently makes two different kinds of strings, gut and the synthetic kind (I keep forgetting what they are made of). I have not tried their gut, but that’s what Vanderbilt is using to replace Bow, which is having hopefully temporary production problems. I cannot play on the synthetic strings, the tension is too high. I prefer nylon strings from Pirastro in the 0-3rd octaves (and 4th octave E), so I am not having any problems of any kind. And all of my gut strings from Bow were acquired before the problems, thankfully. Strings are much too expensive nowadays.
To play an octave with a harmonic top note, use the opposite side of the fourth finger. Place your hand in an upward-curving arc with the outside of the fourth finger on the string, and use your normal callous, but come off the string on the wrong side of it, playing the harmonic with the thumb in the normal way.
As for your student, avoid the octaves until her hand grows. You can gradually increase the stretch through exercises, if she can reach a fifth, use that, then a sixth, then a seventh, until the octave becomes possible. The hand can stretch a lot between the thumb and the fingers. Break the octaves greatly and she should be able to jump from one to the other string. Eventually, it will become a reach, and then eventually placeable.How secure is a column-loaded harp? Does it never wobble from side to side? Does the neck not vibrate with the road? Lyon & Healy always recommended (in the past), to lay the harp on a well-padded surface, it should be completely level and the neck completely supported, because that is the most vulnerable part of the harp. It is easy to load if you bring the harp up to the back of the car, then set it down, sit down in the back of the car, and lower the harp to your lap, then slide out from under it and lower it gently the remaining distance, then you can get up and slide it in the rest of the way. You can only move one harp at a time, usually, but it is the safest way, without building a special carrier.
Are people doing column loading putting padding under the column? Carpets are not enough. If you need to replace your neck, it may not show up for twenty years, but its not a repair you want to make unnecessarily. The deluxed covers with some padding are not sufficient, either. I like a thick mattress, though it requires at least full size to be wide enough, or a thick foam pad with a vinyl cover. A couple of layers of gym mats might be good, but I don’t think they are probably soft enough. Treat your harp like a baby.On the other hand, so to speak, listen to how it feels. If you have a correct position, but hold it with tension, play with tension or strain, it can hurt. Try playing so it doesn’t hurt and let your body tell you what to adjust. See what works as you perhaps know what doesn’t work.
It doesn’t sound normal. You were not playing enough to cause that kind of injury. It must be something in how you were practicing, or an unrelated cause. See a doctor.
It can be hard at any age. I know older harpists who are losing work because contractors give a break to the young graduates and try them out, or use them to pay less.
Yes, I practice that same way, it is essential. It also helps to do the supple slide along the strings between the notes, that instantly relaxes the hand. When learning a chord or arpeggio where you place eight notes, it also helps to apply the principle of the first exercise in the Lawrence/Salzedo method, page 8, where you repeat each note you have placed eight times in slow motion; by the time you have done all of the notes, it will be in your muscle memory.
If you don’t like his arrangements, then I would just play something else. His fingerings and voicings are the essence of what he was after. I wondered the same thing and it took a while to find the sources. If you want something by Bach, the Chaconne by Dewey Owens is a masterpiece. There is also the Suite edited by Sioned Williams. I don’t think most Bach sounds well on the harp, it is too heavy and low in register.
I think Handel may have written it. I can’t think of anyone else who could have. The Pastorale, on the other hand, is from a Sonata by J. P. Meyer/Mayer. The copy it was edited from may have bound the unrelated pieces together in one volume, as it was customary for a harpist to have all their music bound together into one book. It was edited by Dewey Owens, and I think its purpose was to create an alternate edition to the Zingel. I have prepared my own realization of it, which I will get around to publishing one of these days. It is possible that there is no original to the work, just as we have none for the sonata by CPE Bach. The “experts” are not so expert when it comes to the harp, so I take their views with a lot of salt. If someone else wrote it, if it was Mayer, it was certainly in the style of Handel, and most effectively so. But the figurations are comparable to those used by Handel in writing for harp, so there are definite musical grounds for its attribution. Further, it doesn’t do us any good to question its origin, we need it as a piece by Handel, so let it be that.
