“I can play it on the piano, why can’t a harpist play it?”
As a harpist, I can be pretty stubborn. When I was in school, I wanted to prove everyone wrong. If someone said that a certain piano piece was impossible to play on the harp, my mission was to prove them wrong.
One of my favorite moments was when I found a harp YouTube performance of the second movement of Beethoven’s Op. 111 Sonata. A pianist friend said there’s “no way” that the first movement could be played on the harp. Imagine my absolute delight to find Sylvain Blassel’s performance of the first movement ON THE HARP! (Go watch the video, it’s incredible.)
However, as I started working with composers, I realized that my blind stubbornness was a hindrance. I needed to focus on “why” the harp is more difficult than the piano, not on pretending it wasn’t true.
The answer lies the actual mechanics of playing the harp.
On the piano, a note is generally played with a single motion: dropping the finger (or the hand) onto the key.
On the harp, it takes four actions to play a note on the harp:
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Place
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Play
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Close
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Open
The amount of time and movement to play a single note on the harp is much greater than on the piano. Now, you don’t have to write “easy” music, but you do need to be strategic in the notes and patterns you use. (Watch my stories or the 4Composer highlight for a demonstration)
Keep an eye out for Part 2. In the next post, I’ll explain how to use “blocks” or groups of notes to speed up this process.
P.S. If you want to learn more about the strategies for writing the harp, you’ll love my upcoming course, Harp Writing for Composers! Join the waitlist to get more details.