Or should I say: revisiting tunes from many years ago… At the moment I’m working on 2 pieces by J.S. Bach which are not completely “new” to me.

The Prelude in Cm: I remember in the late 90ies, when I still lived Rue Hors-Chateau in Liege, trying this prelude on my lever harp. My harp at the time was the Ash harp from the Sievert harp making workshop, still sporting her first set of levers (Peter Brough). These levers were very particular: They work “upside down”. Extremely light-going, one could easily flip 2 or even 3 levers at the same time (even in contrary motion; I had developed a switch-technique with thumb and index). Disadvantage of these levers: As they were light-going, they tended to buzz and not give a very clear sound when engaged. On top of that the brass was very soft, so the strings wore grooves into the material, which was more cause for buzz (which I used to fix with plaster strips). That’s why I moved on to Loveland-levers eventually.

My sight reading and musical memory skills were not very much developed at the time, and I struggled a good bit with all those sharps and flats – especially getting my head around having to use enharmonics! But I just always loved Bach, since my childhood, when we listened to a vinyl with classical guitar pieces.

When the chromatic harp came along shortly afterwards, the first piece I arranged and played was the Bourrée from the Suite for Lute in Em. I performed it in front of Christoph Pampuch at the following “Harfentreffen” and was very proud of myself! This must have been in 1999 or 2000. I’m playing it in Em, not Ebm like the pedal harp arrangement. My source for sheet music in this case is a piano arrangement rather than looking at guitar or harp arrangements. It’s in the low register, like on lute, whereas the harp arrangement is written an octave higher (easier to play than the low strings, but sounds very different).

The fingerings I use today are very different to what I did back in the day (I’m playing on a completely different instrument when it comes to string spacing & string tension – see my various blog posts about this topic). Moreover, I have become quite rigourous about damping single notes in the left hand. I’m muffling strings with fingertips, knuckles, the side of a finger, through the strings into the second row, whatever is handy and doesn’t disturb the flow of movement.

Trying out BioCarbon (sugar) strings with the prelude in C minor (Bach):