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 […]
Cantate Domino Sing to the Lord a New Song (or play it on your harp?)
Here is the second track on the 1936 record Rythmique Grégorienne, uploaded to YouTube by Folklore Québécois and reissued by Sony-Universal on a four-CD set in 2011. The Introit Cantate Domino is sung by the Benedictine monks of the Abbey of Saint-Benoït-du-Lac, Quebec, Canada: Below you can see a page from the 1948 book Rythmique […]
Rythmique Grégorienne
Sometime around 2014/2015 shortly after Vox Celeste was released I was searching YouTube videos for examples of sung Gregorian chant that were decidedely not Vatican-produced (not that there’s anything wrong with the Holy See’s perspective on sacred music… their own Fr. Marco Frisina is one of my favorite contemporary liturgical composers), but I wanted a different […]
Reawakening
After more than six months of inactivity both here on my blog and in my studio, I’m finally in a position to start arranging, recording and posting again. My emotionally and physically exhausting daily job of caregiver to both of my elderly parents after 18 months at home with us is over; dad died last […]
Harp Music for a Wedding! Nuptial High Mass arranged for Harp ~ Deus Israel
George’s granddaughter Christine got married recently. Her wedding was on December 12, 2019 in Boston. Being an at-home caregiver to my elderly mom with Alzheimer’s dementia, I wasn’t free to travel but I could be there in spirit. And on YouTube! With my harp. Or in this case, Jasmine’s harp. For this arrangement, I […]