Harps and harp music have enjoyed a renaissance over the past century and today can be heard in a broad array of musical contexts. Guide to the Contemporary Harp is a comprehensive resource that examines the vibrant present-day landscape of the harp. The authors explore the instrument from all angles, beginning with organology; moving through composition, notation, and playing techniques; and concluding with the contemporary repertoire for the harp. The rapid diversification in these areas of harp performance is the result of both technological innovations in harp making, which have produced the electric harp and MIDI harp, and innovative composers and players. These new instruments and techniques have broadened the concept of what is possible and what constitutes harp music for today. Guide to the Contemporary Harp is an essential guide for any harpist looking to push the instrument and its music to new heights.

Do you love the harp? The French harpist Henriette Reni (18751956) asked this question of each student, and it remained her ideal throughout her life. This book explores the circumstances which surrounded the beginning of Henriette Renis career as a masterful harpist and composer. Through her celebrated performances of her Concerto en ut mineur, she gained acclaim simultaneously as a virtuosic performer and composer. In the wake of her success, several new masterpieces by respected composers appeared, including Pierns Concertstck and Ravels Introduction et Allegro. The elements of Renies virtuosity are traced through her famous Lgende, and her less-known Deux promenades matinales. Her compositional style is explored through her Scherzo-Fantaisie for harp and violin and her Concerto en ut mineur. As a teacher, Renis influence echoed throughout the world. Her profound influence has been evident through the vision of her own students, including Susann McDonald, Marcel Grandjany, Mildred Dilling, Odette Le Dentu, Odette de Montesquiou, Bertile Fournier, Emmy Hrlimann, Bertile Robet Auffray, and Marie Astrid DAuffray. The crystallization of Renis teaching practice is described through her Mthode complte de harpe (Complete Method for Harp) and her twelve volumes of harp transcriptions, Les classiques de la harpe. The amount of literature about Renis life and work is disproportionate to the deep imprint she made upon the harps history and repertoire. This book is a start to further recognizing her vast importance to the establishment of the harp.

This is a collection of nine familiar Sephardic folk songs, most dating to the 16th century or earlier, both religious and secular in nature, in attractive arrangements for voice with pedal or lever harp accompaniments of moderate difficulty. Texts are in Ladino, with translations provided. Arranged by a well-known arranger/transcriber, Nine Sephardic Songs is perfect for those preparing voice and harp programs and fills a specific niche in available harp music.

One of the rarest country songbooks, it contains 222 pieces, mostly folktune settings, dating from the time between the Revolution and the Civil War. This facsimile reprinting has appendices useful for the study of its sources and an introduction that throws light on the men who wrote for nineteenth-century American songsters.

This authoritative reference work investigates the roots of the Sacred Harp, the central collection of the deeply influential and long-lived southern tradition of shape-note singing. David Warren Steel and Richard H. Hulan concentrate on the regional culture that produced the Sacred Harp in the nineteenth century and delve deeply into history of its authors and composers. They trace the sources of every tune and text in the Sacred Harp, from the work of B. F. White, E. J. King, and their west Georgia contemporaries who helped compile the original collection in 1844 to the contributions by various composers to the 1936 to 1991 editions. Drawing on census reports, local histories, family Bibles and other records, rich oral interviews with descendants, and Sacred Harp Publishing Company records, this volume reveals new details and insights about the history of this enduring American musical tradition. David Waren Stel is an associate professor of music and southern culture at the University of Mississippi. Richard H. Hulan is an independent scholar of American folk hymnody.

In the politically charged era following the 1801 Act of Union, when Ireland's harp symbol was ubiquitous in political imagery, the playable instrument, the Gaelic harp, had largely disappeared. John Egan, a self-taught inventor, conceived a new national instrument, the "Portable Irish Harp," with innovative mechanisms to expand the harp's chromatic capabilities. The template for the modern Irish harp, Egan's design was imitated a century later by several principal harp makers. Antique Egan harps, prized as rare cultural artefacts and art objects, survive in museums and private collections worldwide, and the book's illustrations and a "Catalogue of Egan Harps" are an invaluable resource. This book on Ireland's renowned harp maker, John Egan, and the Egan family firm, reveals the significance of Egan harps in shaping Irish harp history.