Scottish and Irish Harp Music

[Blackbird]

Found this website: Hidden Glen which has free (though donations are appreciated) downloads of the Bunting and Petrie collections, plus a few books on harp history.

(For the uninitiated, Bunting visited some of the last meetings of the old Irish harpers from 1796 onwards and thankfully noted down hundreds of the tunes they played - just in time, as the tradition was then dying out. Petrie was more into collecting general Irish folk songs, and published his fantastic book, which must have over a thousand tunes)

Good resources for any bardically inclined person

[Tegernacus]

brilliant.

so then BB. Say I had never played a harp, and couldn't read sheet music. (not a great leap). How would you go about playing those pieces? Is the top line (treble) played with one hand, and the bottom line (bass?) played with the other?

[Tegernacus]

i found this, and just about managed "twinkle twinkle little star". no slip-jigs for me yet then lol

www.playharp.com/greatwork.html

[Adam]

Cool thread... my Dad just sent me this

www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQV-y8pz1kw

It's a lullaby that apparently my half sisters knew very well, and now sing to their children and was the first tune he learned to play on his home made plywood harp :-)

And there's more at about my level of harping competence too :-)

[Blackbird]

Excellent resource that! (And for anyone looking to buy, the harps are excellent too)

Yes, harp music is written the same as piano music, so generally, the treble is played with the right, bass with the left. However, until the advent and popularity of keyboard instruments, harps were played the other way round, with the left hand doing the treble and the harp on the left shoulder, rather than the right.

The only problem for harpists trying to play the Bunting tunes straight off is that Bunting really arranged the tunes for piano rather than harp, so they don't always sound very good. It's better to take the melody line and work out your own arrangement - which could obviously be as simple or complicated as you wish. Luckily, simple arrangements often sound more effective on the harp - even just adding the odd single note in the bass can set off the melody really well