The American Harp Journal - Extras - Summer 2017 (revised)

The Harp
In France in 1581, the harp was the instrument of
choice for royalty and the aristocracy. Harps became
easels for artists who lavishly carved and decorated
the instruments. Playing the harp in their private
musical salons allowed performers to show off their
lavish clothing and fashionable coiffeurs as well as
their elegant arm movements. Included among these
amateur harpists were Queen Marie Antoinette and
Empress Josephine Bonaparte. The popularity of the
harp created a demand for harp makers and teachers
as well as professional performers who were increasingly
needed for ballet performances.
Harps available at the time were diatonic and capable
of producing the basic harmonies of the period,
but needed to be retuned for each key. Many harpists
played both harp and chromatic keyboard instruments
and even wrote pieces playable on either instrument.
But as harmonies grew more complex and
audiences more sophisticated, all instrument makers
were challenged by the demands of composers’ use of
chromaticism as well as the need for increased volume
and standardization of intonation.
To enable chromaticism, different harp makers
added rows of strings, hooks, levers, and, ultimately,
pedals connected to a disc-and-fork mechanism
that led to the double-action pedal harp made by
Sébastien Érard in England in 1810. That harp is still
the prototype for today's classical harp makers. The
harps were also increased in size and given greater
string tension to increase their volume. Unfortunately,
the resulting harps were more difficult to play,
which caused the elite ladies and gentlemen of the
salons to turn to the easier-to-play pianoforte as their
instrument of choice. But many professional harpists
embraced these new attributes of the harp and wrote
pieces that created an instrumental language that is
unlike that of any other musical instrument and is, in
fact, still being explored and expanded today.
Creating a Ballet
The process of creating a ballet began when the
choreographer chose a story. A dramatist or scenarist
wrote a stage version of the story. Then the
choreographer envisioned detailed scenes for active
storytelling and separate pieces for pure dancing.
Composers such as Riccardo Drigo (Le Talisman),
Ludwig Minkus (Don Quixote, La Bayadère), Adolphe
Adam (Le Corsaire, Giselle) and Leo Delibes (Coppélia,
Sylvia) were connected to individual ballet companies
and wrote within the formats required by each
ballet’s creators, earning them the title of “Specialist
Composers.”
The music composed for ballets was considered
flexible and was often revised or rewritten to serve
the creative desires of the choreographers and directors
of the productions. This customization of the
music could include the addition of supplemental
dances requested by individual dancers, which then
became the legal property of that dancer.
Harp Cadenzas
As the art form of ballet evolved, the harp became
a featured instrument for several artistic reasons.
The harp’s timbre and presence already had ethereal
associations and therefore was the perfect partner
for those fairy tale plots in which sylphs, willis, and
fairies danced. In these ballets, the entrances of the
stars, both male and female, were designed to stop
the show and to suspend all action in order to focus
attention on the star.
In general, these celebrity entrances were lightly
choreographed or mimed announcements to the
audience that the dancer they had come to see was
now on the stage before them. He or she was then
greeted with spontaneous and enthusiastic applause
from the audience. The natural choice to accompany
these fanfares was graceful and elegant harp music in
the form of a cadenza.
The harpists who performed these cadenzas, like
the composers, had to be flexible and ready to customize
their parts. By choice or by assignment, they
created their cadenzas in collaboration with the solo
dancers and choreographers. There was a general
structure for these and later cadenzas, as shown in
the cadenza from Le Corsair by Adolphe Adam.
See Example 1: Cadenza from Le Corsair by Adolphe
Adam.
4 THE AMERICAN HARP JOURNAL – EXTRAS