That’s what Sherri and I strive to do. Sherri draws her improvised arrangements from her studies of hymns and chants evocative of each Sunday and based on the liturgical season, and on the evolving capabilities of the harp… its expression of faith and inspiration reaches back to the time of King David and is finding a new voice.

When Sherri is the officiant, I play organ preludes. Example: on May 11, I played some works of Brazilian composer Silvio Baccarelli (1931 – 2019). First trained as a priest, he directed a world class concert choir whose international performances included celebration of the centenary of the composer Heitor Villa-Lobos in Madrid in 1987.

Profoundly moved by word of a disastrous fire in Heliopolis (a depressed area of São Paulo) that left hundreds homeless, he devoted the rest of his life to establishing an extensive music program for the youth of Heliopolis.

“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.”

– George Matthew Jr.

Organist, St. Thomas & Grace Episcopal Church
Middlebury College Carillonneur since 1985
GCNA Certified Carillonneur (Guild of Carillonneurs in North of America)

My preceding posts on reading Gregorian chant didn’t go into how to play it on the wire-strung harp.

Gregorian chant is a vocal music, not an instrumental one. So there’s a little bit of re-interpretation here. Wire harps, unlike nylon-strung Celtic harps, ring for quite a while after you pluck a string with your nails, unless you damp them immediately with your finger pads. This trait allows you to simulate some of the aspects of singing.

If you pluck a note on your wire harp and let it ring, consider it as a sung note. When you play the next one, it will blend in with the previously played note (unless damped), creating a vocal line that rises or falls, depending on the written melody.

Repeated notes in chant merit their own discussion.

Depending on the context, you can either choose to play these as one long sustained note and not pluck them rapidly three times…

Or.

You can play them with an alternating improvised counterpoint, as long as the notes you choose are appropriate to that mode (i.e. don’t play a Bb if the mode doesn’t call for one). Using the above example to illustrate this idea, the effect will have a rather Baroque feel, reminiscent of Vivaldi violin concertos: Ex. C, B, C, A, C, G then F, E, F, D, F, C, F.

When I play this latter style on my wire harp I tend to play the repeating note with one hand and the descending (or ascending) notes with the other. It’s especially easy on my little cross-strung wire harp Esabelle, because if I need the Bb it’s right there in the middle of the string course and at the top on the left side of the harp.

On the subject of wire harp damping:

I don’t tend to damp much either with the Baroque style of alternating notes… I just let them ring. Then I might lightly damp the last note and move on to the next set of neums. But I find that excessively heavy damping does not sound very good; it tends to cause an inappropriate abruptness which is not conducive to a meditative quality in church harp music. The only time I do some damping is if there are a fair amount of consecutive seconds which may clash, but even there it’s quite light and subtle. I’ve found a way of playing ornaments and graces quickly with some rapid fingerpad damping which does not draw overt attention to itself. The idea is to make the wire harp sound like it is singing and fading gracefully away in the church’s acoustic resonance space like an echoing cathedral pipe organ, not like it is abruptly starting and stopping. This latter style is more suitable for secular music.

Also I tend to touch the wires lightly on initial contact with my fingernails and not “dig” into them, so there is no harshness of tone, even at louder volumes. The idea is to play the room, much as the pipe organ does, and let that space resonate, even more so than my harp’s soundbox does. To accomplish this, I try to point my soundboard up at the church’s ceiling and back corner so that the sound waves coming off of my harp are reflected back into the sanctuary space. After some experimenting I can usually find the sweet spot and make the entire worship area easily resonate, along with the pipe organ.

My wire harps ideally, should sound sweet and angelic in church… singing as a heavenly chorus of angels. At no time should any of my harps sound strident, brash or hint at the worldly, pop culture of our times. The tonal ideal is to be transcendent, helping the congregation to pray and to seek unity with our Lord and Savior in His House.

My 15 year old Triplett Luna wire harp made the 3,000+ miles trip from Vermont to San Luis Obispo, California in July, back to the workshops of Triplett Harps for a much-needed rebuild.

After I accidentally knocked over my harp while recovering from Covid this past winter, the instrument was severely damaged and needed major repairs. It fell forward and hit a Victorian rolltop desk, splitting the length of the pillar shield on both wings (which has a Celtic knot abalone inlay in the middle) and the stave back soundbox separated at several points. Also the soundbox as a whole twisted to the right, leaving a large air gap at the base. This is a lefty harp, so there’s been quite a bit of pull over the years; the continuous force of the strings under tension gradually draw the neck and pillar to the right.

The harp was shipped off to California in mid-July and has been expertly repaired by Steve Triplett. I’m looking forward to welcoming her home in a few weeks! My church is rejoicing also; we’re planning on moving our beautiful but sadly out of tune antique upright piano to the other wall near the currently unoccupied choir pews so that Luna harp can be placed right in front of and below the pipe organ console and nearby for Communion.