>> Not quite the modern one: the Erard design is from 1810. Bigger and >> louder than a typical modern clarsach, but the range used for Scottish >> repertoire is generally no wider and fancy chromaticisms are rare. > Jack, I'm really impressed with your knowledge of harps, especially since > you're not a harp player, or at least you've never mentioned playing the > harp. Do you play the harp as well? I always though you were a man for > wind instruments, right?
I used to duet with a clarsach player who has a whole zoo of harps in her house; everything from an itty-bitty wire harp to a huge pedal monster she can't afford to keep in strings. I find them all next to impossible - I can just about play "The Chanter's Tune" on one, very slowly, and that's it. It's quite easy to find out about harps here - the Edinburgh Harp Festival has been going for years, the NLS has stacks of music and related documents, and I keep coming across references to them in stuff I read. The Edinburgh area must have the biggest concentration of folk harp players in the world. BTW, anyone who hasn't heard it should try to listen to Cynthia's recording. There are some rough edges but it's honest traditional stuff that doesn't try to dilute the music with other genres to make it market-friendly, as too many harpists in Scotland are doing at the moment - mixing up Nashville idiom with Scottish music is like stretching sausage with GM soya. I've been doing string things (mainly the ud) a bit lately, having had some doubts about whether I would ever be able to blow anything again after some surgery last year - seems I can in fact even play the clarinet again, though I made sure my first experiment was at Sandy Bell's, i.e. within two minutes walk of an A&E unit so they could sew up anything that burst. (I wonder if there is any other session pub with that particular advantage? - inhale your sax reed, herniate yourself lifting an accordion or incur some stereotypical sort of bluesman's mayhem and you're in just the right place). ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jack Campin: 11 Third Street, Newtongrange, Midlothian EH22 4PU; 0131 6604760 <http://www.purr.demon.co.uk/jack> * food intolerance data & recipes, Mac logic fonts, Scots traditional music files, and my CD-ROM "Embro, Embro". Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
