Ad te Domine Harp Offertory
Here is this Sunday’s (November 29) harp offertory for Communion at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Middlebury, VT. (Feature image courtesy of: Photo 105086702 © Oksana Krasiuk | Dreamstime.com )
New Harp Video for the First Sunday in Advent
Let My Prayers Rise as the Incense… Here is an improvised arrangement of the Gregorian Introit Ad te Levavi for the first Sunday in Advent. The theme throughout the video is petition through prayer, rising through the mist of incense to God the Father, who hears all our unspoken thoughts. His promise to us is […]
Harp Music for Advent Gregorian Introits
The holidays are almost here, which gives me some time to prepare Advent and Christmas material. When I’m not doing Sunday morning Zoom service videos for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church (or taking care of cats!), I’m planning the next batch of Gregorian chant harp videos. At present I’m working on arranging and recording four Gregorian […]
Adoro Te Devote Irish wire harp video for St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, Middlebury, VT
Here is my first full wire harp music video offering for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church where George is organist. I’ve been producing weekly videos for them all summer during the Covid-19 lockdown on George’s YouTube channel, in addition to recording him on piano and pipe organ for the incredibly popular (and successful!) online hymn contest run by […]
New Wire Harp on the Way! Argent Fox builds Double-Strung Harp
My latest (and happiest news): wire harp #3 will soon be added to my harp family. Harp builder Dan Speer of Argent Fox is at work building my latest wire-strung harp, a double-strung lap harp in cherry! Two courses of strings, 29 each. We are planning to have attractive little wood veneers of fox paw […]
New Harp Videos! Keeping busy...
I haven’t been posting to my blog much lately… because I’ve been busy recording! And making videos. Tons of them. Below are several to get you started. Here’s Jasmine Kitty and me on our respective harps, me on my Stoney End Esabelle wire cross-strung and Jazzie on her cardboard kit Fireside harp from Backyard Music. […]
This is My Father’s World Husband George Matthew Jr. plays hymn improvisations!
Here is something different from harps and cats: George plays hymn improvisations on his Kimball parlor grand piano for his church congregation, St. Stephen’s Episcopal, Middlebury, Vermont, where he is organist on their historic 1875 tracker Johnson pipe organ. Due to the Covid-19 lockdown, church services cannot be held so I’ve been helping George make […]
Introducing my Irish wire-strung harps Meet Esabelle and Luna
Here are my two Irish wire strung harps. I have a page on my main site with a little bit more detail about them but I’ll post a few mentions here about them as well. Here’s an up-close shot of Esabelle, my newest harp, built in 2015 by Stoney End Harps of Red Wing, MN: This […]
Gregorian Modes on the Irish Harp More discoveries about Medieval modes and our modern keys
I was a bit curious what other modern keys are appropriate to stand in for the other modes. I came across a PDF of the 1949 textbook Gregorian Chant Accompaniment by Eugene Lapierre, Université de Montréal, published by the Gregorian Institute of America, on the Corpus Christi Watershed website. This text is rather dense, compact […]
Gregorian Mode -> What Key? Transposing a vocal chant to fit your lever harp
So my Triplett Luna has been tuned to the key of F Major for some time now. It has sharping blades on all the strings (which probably need to be adjusted in the shop at some point; they’re a little stiff). Anyway, having all the B strings tuned to Bb is convenient, because this way […]