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I was taught to roll the two hands simultaneously before I was taught to roll them sequentially, I also spent as much time right at the start learning to arpeggiate downwards as up.
What I am thinking about most from this thread is the importance of explaining why you are asking a student to do something, or being able to do so if it seems necessary.
I am not saying that this is relevant to the immediate case here, but I think the generalisation needs care.
I think the worst harp part I have ever faced, a least by a major composer, was Shoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande.
And even technically their frequencies are actually different…
Not if you are in equal temperament- it depends how you regulate and tune your harp.Unrealistic dynamics; especially, but not confined to harmonics.
Awkward internal spacing to chords.
Hands too widely spaced.
It would be interesting to also address the problem of music which is theoretically playable, but the random scattering of notes without regard for finger patterns combined with a harpist’s need to place ahead increases the difficulty dramatically.
Conventions change- I believe when Tournier was writing it was the convention amongst French composers that music be notated theoretically (Vers la Source dans le Bois it wasn’t until page three I found a bar without enharmnic changes!).
Not exactly horror stories- but there was the Salvi Orchestra I bought promising my parents it was the harp that would last me forever…
Come to think of it, I think I have heard that octave played with both notes loco-(sounded rather like a heffalump to me- as does the base note alone- hey I haven’t tried base note harmonic and top natural.) I play, and think I have always heard, the B upbeat in the 1st time bar as harmonic, I certainly play it that way. I read Rosemary’s first post too rapidly and thought she said it turned to natural notes in bar 4 which would have been very odd! Played at sounding pitch I have seen the 7th E harmonic played natural up an octave, but with practice it is possible to get a clear harmonic there. It does have the two hands very seperated in pitch, but seems to be much easier to get the phrasing of the harmonics. There are enough different ideas about this piece that I doubt a definitive interpretation exists.
I have the Salvi reprint with ridiculous page turns which just asks for harmonics at the start of the movement.
I have never heard this piece with more than the bottom note of the octave as a non-harmonic. Edward Witsenburg at a masterclass at the Edinburgh festival last year was very definite that the harmonics were written at sounding pitch- this does not seem to be a universally accepted truth among UK harpists and I learnt them played at written pitch. I toy with the idea of playing both notes of the octaves as harmonics, either by damping the lower note with my little finger or by taking the top note in the RH. It is possible and just over half the time I think it a good idea.
