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The practice of a musical instrument requires fine dexterity, repetitive, fast, and precise movements, as well as important efforts to set the instrument into vibration, while adopting postures often unnatural for the human body. As a result, musicians are often subject to pain and musculoskeletal disorders. In the case of plucked string instruments and especially the concert harp, the plucking force is directly related to the strings' tension. Consequently, the choice of the strings has to be made based on both, the musician feel while playing, and the musculoskeletal consequences. This paper investigates how the string properties and the playing dynamics affect the finger and wrist muscle activity during harp playing. This study first emphasized the noteworthy recruitment of the flexor and extensor muscles (42% and 29% of MVC, respectively). Findings outlined further that the fingering choice, the adopted playing dynamics and the string's material govern the muscular activity level and the playing control. Such results are a first step to better understand how the harp ergonomics may affect the player's integrity and help them decide the most suitable stringing for their practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating new music for the harp, the composer needs to make choices about whether to build on the instrument's cultural baggage, and the strong accompanying imagery, or to attempt to move in the opposite direction. This paper will explore the processes which led to the composition and performance of Spindle for solo harp and assisting performers, discussing elements of theatricality, degrees of audience participation, performer-audience hybrids, verbal instructions in the score, and non-verbal cues during performance. It will also discuss improvisation using loops, and challenging the fourth wall through the physical interaction between performers and audience, and examine similar practices in a selection of pieces composed in the last 70 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of our research is to provide harpists with the tools to control and transform the sounds of their instrument in a natural and musical way. We consider the development of music with live electronics, with particular reference to the harp repertoire, and include interviews with six harpists that use technology in their professional performance practice. We then present HarpCI, a case study that explores how gestures can be used to control and transform sound and light projection in live performance with the electric harp. HarpCI draws on research from the areas Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Music Interaction Design (MiXD) to extend the creative possibilities available to the performer, and demonstrates our approach to bridging the gap between the performer/composer and the harp on one side, and the technology on the other. We discuss the use of guitar pedals with the electric harp, and the limitations they impose, and then introduce the MyoSpat system as a potential solution to this issue. MyoSpat aims to give musicians control over auditory and visual aspects of the performance through easy to learn, intuitive and natural hand gestures. It also aims to enhance the compositional process for instrument and live electronics, through a new way of music notation for gesturally controlled interactive systems. The system uses the Myo® armband gestural controller, a device to control live sound processing that is non-invasive to instrumental technique and performer. The combination of these elements allows the performer to experience a tangible connection between gesture and sound production. Finally, we describe the experience of Eleanor Turner, who composed and performed The Wood and the Water (Turner 2016) using MyoSpat, and we conclude by presenting the outcomes from HarpCI workshops delivered at Cardiff Metropolitan University for Camac Harp Weekend, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire's Integra Lab and Southampton University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Crown of Ariadne, R. Murray Schafer's work for solo harp positioned within a large percussion set up, has become a gem of the solo harpist's contemporary repertoire. However, it is one that still brings up multiple questions with regards to modern performance practice for the twenty-first century harpist, as both a theatrical and a technical work. The aim of this article is to explore the performance practices associated with The Crown of Ariadne, especially the purpose and implications of the choreography. Does the written-out choreography serve a theatrical purpose, or is it used to illustrate the desired instrumental technique? If the choreography is purely technical, what are the implications of a performer not from the Salzedo tradition performing the work, and do the motions therefore become contrived or unnecessary? If it is theatrical, should the harpist approach learning the work as an actor, as well as a musician? The discussion will be divided into two main sections: the technique and performance styles of different harpists, and suggestions on how to prepare this work as an actor. My research has stemmed from comparing the written gestures to those found in dance notation, a series of interviews with harpists that have both performed and taught the work, discussions on the Carlos Salzedo and Marcel Grandjany traditions, and excerpts from Salzedo's literature. In addition, I will discuss how to approach this work as an actor and performer by analysing different acting techniques, discussing the role of The Crown of Ariadne in Schafer's larger work Partia V: The Crown of Ariadne, and examining the Patria cycle with regards to Schafer's role in the environmental theatre movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Composition involves a continuing process of engagement and dialogue with influences from the past and the present: it is impossible for a composer to work in isolation from a legacy of any received canon. This paper outlines the compositional elements of the recent piece for lever harp, Chromatétude by Anne-Marie O'Farrell, which acknowledges and develops received musical materials from previous sources. Outlining contextualisation and drawing comparisons with similar approaches by Alfred Schnittke, Peter Maxwell Davies, and Judith Weir, the article demonstrates the paraphrase of harper-composer Denis Hempson's ricercar Faigh an Gléas, collected by Edward Bunting at the Belfast Harp Festival in 1792, along with use and transformation of all twelve transpositions of Scriabin's quartal hexachord, and Slonimsky's twelve-tone quartal chord from his Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns of 1947. These compositional resources show the capacity of the lever harp as a vehicle for a twelve-tone pitch set without the use of levers or scordatura. The combination of these elements creates a harmonic language not normally heard on this instrument, since much of the development of Western classical musical language and thought through the centuries has, for a variety of reasons, been reflected in the repertoire of other instruments and of other types of harp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines methods, considerations, and challenges for composing and performing with harp and electronics, investigated over the last five years. My background is in Irish traditional music and in experimental, contemporary, and computer music, as a composer, programmer, performer, and sound engineer. The harp, as a resonant and multiphonic instrument, presents specific challenges for the design of interfaces for computer sound control. I explain in detail my motives, approach, and decision-making in developing new technologies and music for harp and electronics. In particular, I present conclusions drawn from working with Camac's MIDI harp, and I consider questions of rhythm and flexibility in electronics control that are particularly relevant to traditional dance musics. I conclude with my most recent work on the control of electronics via microphones and movement sensors to exploit an existing playing gesture. I highlight the importance of considering performance, composition, and technological questions in parallel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Luciano Berio's (1925–2003) Sequenza II (1963), many composers have tried to find new ways to approach the harp as a medium for contemporary music. When asked about writing for the harp, modern composers tend to express a reservation about the complexity of the mechanisms of the instrument itself. Do the very heavy aura and subtext that the instrument carries with it influence the composers as well? While the idioms of other classical instruments commonly used in contemporary music have already been analysed many times over, the uses of the harp in the modern repertoire have gone comparatively unexamined. Using analyses of recent compositions for harp by Heinz Holliger, Marc Andre, Ansgar Beste, Jonathan Bell, Georges Aperghis, as well as interviews with these composers, this study aims to examine how composers of the last fifty years deal with the suggestiveness of the harp in their use of the instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sounds of shimmering glissandi and resonant arpeggios combine with romantic and angelic imagery to form a stereotype of the modern pedal harp as an instrument capable of a relatively narrow band of expression. Similarly, its fundamentally diatonic design gives rise to issues with chromatic music that its pedal system addresses without fully negating. Taking pitch and timbre as means through which to reconsider the instrument, this paper presents an approach that reflects and celebrates the inherent properties of the harp whilst redefining what idiomatic writing might be. A reappraisal of the instrument's sonic qualities contrasts typical sounds with alternative approaches to timbre. The pitch limitations of the harp inform a new method for localised and structural pitch organisation that is rooted in the pedal mechanism of the instrument. These new modalities and alternative timbres are illustrated with a range of compositional examples throughout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The harp is, first and foremost, an instrument like all others: a source of sound, the value of which is determined by the cultures within which the instrument operates. This double action harp had superior technical possibilities, and its ability to play with a much expanded chromaticism than before meant that the harp could move from the drawing room onto the concert stage, and into the ranks of the modern orchestra. The Harp, a History of the Harp throughout the World, Harp Notation. [Extracted from the article]