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If you want to practice like that, then you need a daily lesson. Or record your lessons so you can review them at home. You are definitely not going to progress very much at 15 minutes a day. Expand that by five minutes a day until you are playing at least an hour. If you want to improve.
Walter Pfeil outfitted one of his harps with lighting along the neck. Useful, but risky. Do you really want anything electric or powered touching your instrument? Especially with lithium batteries? I don’t think so.
I like the Manhasset stand lights, but mine keeps popping off when I turn pages or bump into it, perhaps because I have it on a Hamilton stand.I received another message saying someone wanted to donate a baby grand piano to me or my festival, but the name of the person belonged to someone in New Orleans, so I figure it was also a scam.
It is musically and technically challenging, on a par with the Danses Sacree et Profane but longer. There are very helpful markings by Carlos Salzedo, if you can find them. But the real question is, do you have a string quartet on hand? If so, you might try Glanville-Hicks Concertino Antico, Paul White’s Sea Chanty, and Reynaldo Hahn’s Prelude, Rigaudon and Valse (sic.).
Sean Connery’s character gives a lecture following a harp recital at a ladies club, not by Gerald Goodman, but by a man who is unidentified, even though he has another scene giving a lesson.
I would bet it’s in the contract and different with each orchestra. If they own a harp, then I would expect they would reimburse the harpist for strings or maintain a supply.
The overture to Die Meistersinger is all chords on one page. I think it was the first part I ever learned.
To my ears, harps made with anything but wood and metal sound unnatural and don’t respond well musically.
How much crackling? Minnesota harps would crack along the edge of the veneer in their first exposure to cold, but they were fine after. I never saw one entirely crackled. But finishes today may not be the same as they were, just as they were different before the 1980s than when changed.
He had more than one, I think the one he toured with, in the USA, at least, was his first Obermayer harp, which had the muffling pedal, a felt-covered flat piece covering all of the wire strings, if not more, that would abruptly stop them when he used the pedal. It was so abrupt and total, it did not sound musical at all. It was not a very good-sounding harp, like his later Horngacher. He had a leather cover that was put on it immediately when he finished playing so no one could look at it or dare try it or touch it. He was very dignified. A man started snoring during his first piece, and he stopped playing and yelled at him for several minutes, expecting him to get up and leave, and he did not. After a bit, he went back to playing his program.
It wasn’t a rhetorical question. I want people to say how much music they own, however they measure it.
Certainly, each harp is individual and can vary. The last time I visited the factory, which was several years ago, I tried every instrument and they were all of good quality, even the Chicago models, yes, and very consistent. There were two types of sound, one open and clear-pitched, the other, fuzzy and disorganized sounding, so to speak. Hard to describe, but I think basically they found a way to produce a harp that would either appeal to a Salzedo player or a “French” player.
The worst harps were by far the two Prince Williams there from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which felt like rocks with zero resonance.
I have heard from unreliable sources that the gold harps are now made for the Asian market who care about the looks more than the sound, so that the very best harps are the natural 23s, and that is because the wood has to be carefully matched, as the grain is exposed. That said, my walnut 23 has turned out to be a truly great instrument over time. It’s what you make of it.
But blindly disparaging remarks are an insult and injury to a great company we rely on for our very art and existence. While Salvis now run a very close second, to my ears, and have a very different quality, could take over in the future, the Lyon & Healy remains the ideal, the standard. Venus produced some fine harps, and it is a loss not to have them anymore. To me, a Camac is simply unplayable. (Did I say that?) They are imitations, not musical instruments. (Because they do not respond well to sudden changes in dynamics, and sound like plastic.)
By the way, I added a gold crown to my harp, and it was just enough to lend a hint of glamor to the sound, adding a tint of brilliance. If you can afford a fully gilded harp, get one, but just make sure they know what sound you are looking for. I would love to have a Style 3!
