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If you have a harp with full levers, you have eight major keys you can set the levers to. Eb (all levers open) to E major (7 levers engaged) is common because this gives you some flat keys and some sharp keys. C only gives you keys with sharps. Some people use Ab, Bb or F. Most harpists choose a home key according to what they find they need (or according to what their teacher told them to do years ago) and as explained above mostly avoid the other keys – which is easy to do if you are playing music written for the lever harp because it just doesn’t tend to get published in Db major.
These harps can be restored and make lovely playing instruments, for people who want their voice and feel – people who prefer modern instruments will prefer modern instruments, this doesn’t mean the old ones aren’t lovely, but they are different. Whether the restoration is worthwhile will depend particularly on the state of the mechanism – and how much you want a working antique. Well restored antiques sell for the same ball park price as new pedal harps, and most of that is the cost of restoration. They are usually described as Erard Grecians if you want to look up pictures.
A number of strange previous bits of work can be seen in the photos – the spacer at the top of the body, the soundboard as mentioned, the cylinders on the front of the base and the front feet look odd too. However, replacing soundboards is a not uncommon need on these elderly harps and only someone who saw the instrument could tell you if the work done had made a future rebuild harder or not.
Without strings to help hold the instrument together do be careful moving it to be sure the frame stays together and the joints aren’t overly strained.
It is a pain loading, but if your back seat has a 2:1 split sometimes you can lift the harp in base first, rather than top first and then put the small section of the back seat up again.
Another interesting order to add to the consideration is this of an Egan Royal Portable harp -ABCD on the left and EFG on the right or AEBFCGD depending on how you look at it. (Makes much sense to me for being tuned in Eb)
http://keimages.ram.ac.uk/emuweb/php5/media.php?irn=22356
More images for this on here:
https://www.ram.ac.uk/museum/item/25404The double action Egan Royal Portable has ditals which run FGAB on the left CDE on the right or FCGDAEB. This looks to me like an arrangement designed for Cb tuning.
http://webapps.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/explorer/index.php?qu=egan&oid=77335If you are considering an electric harp for portability, don’t forget to take into account what elecronics you will also need to lug around.
The Camac Ulysse might be worth looking at too.
I think my top two tips to players teaching themselves are
1) Elbows – keep them free and out in ‘cutting a tough steak’ position.
2) Play loud (but try to avoid blisters). All sorts of things work when you are gently tickling the strings which don’t when you play harder, but toning volume down is generally straightforward and those Pilgrim Clarsachs can take fairly strong playing.Have you thought about attending the Edinburgh Harp Festival next year? They are very varied and have something for everyone.
Also how long ago did you buy your Clarsach from Pilgrim? They sold one for me last year from I think 1985 so I am wondering if it might be the one.
Have you found Eleri Turner’s tutorials on youtube for Telynau Teifi? There are also huge resources of older scanned music if they count, including the aptly named ‘The First Six Weeks’ by Bochsa.
I think you could clean your thoughts up a lot if you took into account that when the pedal order was devised the pedals had only two positions, not three. You either had flat and natural, or natural and sharp. Most commonly the single action harp was tuned in Eb major, like fully levered harps today, but other tuning were possible and known including Ab or Bb (again like lever harps today).
The earliest reference I can find to a pedal harp in a very brief look is 1697 with Hochbrocker constructing a 5 pedal harp – my secondary source says tuned in F with pedals for BbFCGD. Your logic could give bcd to one foot and f and g to the other which I find worth noting. Adding the other two pedals they could either be tacked onto that pattern, or if I surmise the first 7 pedal harp may have been intended to be tuned in Bb (choosing a key is a balancing act between flexibility of keys and accidentals and a preference for playing open strings) running your pattern on the circle of 5ths EbBbFCGDA and the pedal order drops out immediately, simply alternating feet and centre out.
It is a simple circle of 5ths starting in Bb major. Which makes sense to me for a single action harp of 300 years ago, perhaps not where the circle would be started devising the instrument from scratch today.
You can see the parts here, but not print them due to copyright: http://archives.nyphil.org/index.php
Shorter harps do of course have shorter sounding lengths on many strings (and very useful it is too when I can take a broken string off my pedal harp and retie it for a lever harp when I am feeling stingy or short on spares). There is of course a difference in sound and playing characteristics between different types of harp, but I would expect a high tension gut strung small harp to be closer in playing technique to a high tension large gut strung harp than a low tension nylon strung harp is to either.
Specifically, when I sat down at the Boulevard and asked it how it wanted to be played it responded fine to a technique that is pretty much what I usually use on a modern pedal harp.
Andres’ Epices are low to middling intermediate and his Danses d’Automne possibly slightly more advanced and among my current favourites.
