Why I'll play harp music from period if I damned well want to.

When last we met, I lamented the extreme paucity of harp music that survives in written form from period.  There's the Mudarra piece I mentioned for double-harp and, for the wire-strung harpists in the audience (ie - not me), there's the Robert ap Huw MS (recorded after 1600, though not by too terribly much, and certainly including much older songs).

BUT THAT WON'T STOP ME!!!  I have found, in my couple of years as a harping bard, that what I love the most is the sort of musical anthropology that goes along with early music.  Troubadour or early German music is more fun for me than later period stuff because we don't entirely know what it sounded like.  We have to use what little we do know in creative ways, like using the tuning of a lyre to tell us what a German harp c. 800 might have played or lists of who paid what to whom in X's court to figure out what instrumental accompaniment troubadours used.

And in the same vein, I get a kick out of recreating what we lack when it comes to period harp music.  Finding parallels between early harp and lute music and then creating new harp pieces based on that is even more fun than learning a pre-existing piece.  Just because we don't have the music doesn't mean we can't play something awfully close to what period harpers would have played.

And I find that to be terribly exciting.  ^_^

Why I can't play harp music from period.

Single-row harp c.1520

We all know what a harp looks like here.  It involves a single row of strings.  Modern concert harps have pedals that change the length of the strings, producing sharps and flats.  Modern folk harps have levers that do the same thing but require a hand to leave the strings to engage.  Harps in period had none of these - you played how your harp was tuned, or if you were really good you could fret a string to produce a sharp (this is impossible on modern folk harps given the string tension).

Lookit!  Two rows of strings!

Toward the end of period you also find harps with 2 or 3 rows of strings.  These harps had the same range as their single-row counterparts, but double or triple the strings meant strings for sharps and flats!  I have absolutely no interest in playing a double or triple harp.  The technique is wonky, the repretoire is overwhelmingly baroque (post-period and not really what I'm most into anyway) and my harp-making husband isn't a fan of their tone (I haven't really played around on one enough to hear for myself, but I tend to trust his judgment in these matters).

Now.  I've told you before that I'm arranging some lute music (Dowland right now) for harp to fill the gaping void that is period harp music.  There is exactly ONE piece designated for harp that survives from before 1600.  One.  And I have it on my computer.

This is the piece.  I promise this is music.

AND IT'S FOR EFFING DOUBLE HARP!!!!!  EFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!  I SO want to learn this piece.  It's our ONLY genuine piece of period harp music, and there are no transcriptions or recordings of it out there.  But I am NOT going to acquire and learn to play a double harp just so I can play ONE freaking piece!  I'm not!

Eff.  Effity eff-eff-eff!  I will transcribe it, though.  I'll transcribe it and see if it'll work on a pedal harp.  And if it will, I'll try to get a decent recording using one of my parents' pedal harps.  It won't be period, but at least it'll be OUT there!

And I'll keep going on Dowland and other lute music.  That's going really well, actually.  I'll post some of those pieces soon.

Raggin-fraggin double harp...

Sestina fail!

Just when I was all ready (with my excel spreadsheet) to start writing my sestina for the afore-mentioned competition, I find out that the website for the 2011 event is still advertising last year's competition, and that no sestina will be necessary at all.  Well...eff!  I suppose it's for the best.  This was gearing up to be a dangerous sestina.

The problem is, the details for the real competition haven't been made public yet.  The only other competition I might have anything to do with in the coming weeks is on the theme of, "Perform something!  Anything you want!"  I kinda have that covered.

This is a problem because here's what I've discovered about myself as a writer - I have lots of ideas and inspiration, but I won't get anything done unless I have a deadline.  Melodies, music - that'll all happen as a matter of course, but poetry will not (reliably) be written unless I'm on a deadline.  And it's no good giving me arbitrary deadlines (as my don will tell you).  I have to have some kind of competition riding on completion by the deadline in order to get things done.

Bleh.  Does anyone want to have a friendly poetry-writing race or something?  Loser bakes cookies for the winner?  I mean I could, in theory, just buckle down and write one of the songs I've had bouncing around in my head.  But that keeps not working.  :-\

Things are proceeding all happy-like!

Already talked about last week's very enjoyable bardic night.  I have, since then, gone to an event and met up with yet another great group of musicians.  We jammed, we talked, we had a great time and I hope to see more of them.

I've also identified some competitions and displays coming up that I'd like to be a part of, if I can wangle rides to the events.  This would involve writing a sestina.  This is ambitious.  I am jazzed!

I've finished 2 out of 61 arrangements of the Folger Dowland MS, which I'll post here pretty soon.  I'd like to get some rough recordings of at least part of one first, so you can hear what they're supposed to sound like as well.  And I've pretty much decided not to arrange the fragments in the MS, so my current ratio is a little better than 2:61.  Jazzed about all this too.

And if I ever work myself up to braving the cold after dark, I'll head out to Storvik's dance practice (to play, not to dance).  One of the guys from bardic night heads that up, and it sounds like a fun group!

So.  Meeting people in a new place, playing music - all is right with the world.  :-)

As promised - bardic night...

...was a whole lot of fun!  There were a lot more instruments than I thought there would be - 2 guitars, a bouzouki, a flute and a recorder in addition to Gertrude.  It was different from other bardic gatherings I'd been to in that there wasn't a lot of going around the circle performing for each other.  It was more of a jam session - someone would start playing something, be it a song or just a lick over some chords, and we'd all just start playing right along until it came to a close.  I think this had more to do with the people there than Atlantian bardic culture, but dude - I am not complaining!  I haven't done a whole lot of jamming on the harp, and it was crazy fun!