Hi

I just posted this on the Teachers forum discussion about whether examiners should have a copy of the music, but I thought that the harpists on here would probably have some interesting opinions on generalist examiners examining the minority subject that is the harp.

So here goes, here is the post:

"I have followed this thread with interest, and it is certainly something I shall discuss with my harp teacher casually sometime. I am hoping to take lever harp exams soon, starting with Grade 4 in 2012. Now the pedal harp has been an abrsm subject for some time but it is my understanding that the lever harp syllabus taking it all the way up to grade 8, instead of just up to, say Grade 3 or 4, at which point most exam/classical students usually swap to a pedal harp, is new with the current syllabus.

Now given that the current harp syllabus for lever harp did, I think, begin in 2005, and that lever harp entries are only a fraction of harp entries, which are themselves a very small proportion of the overall total entries, what is the chances of any one examiner knowing much about lever harp repertoire? The technique is similar but not identical to the pedal harp, and the repertoire has overlap but, especially as the grades progress, both technique and repertoire I believe start to diverge more and more.

I would love to think that examiners would have had the chance to spend a few hours each at a lever harp workshop introducing them to the instrument and its repertoire, technique, etc, but I fear this is very unlikely.

I listened to the podcast the other day about examiner selection and training and whereas some examiners do many weeks a year and are therefore examining many and varied candidates (if they went to Wales, they would no doubt see more lever harpists than in other parts of the country!) there are others who might only do a very few weeks a year - these are highly unlikely to see one!

In this case the examiner would surely be merely judging the overall musical interpretation of the pieces etc and would quite definitely not have seen any of the repertoire before!!!!

Any input please? I'm not sure if this is a positive or a negative as a player of a distinctly minority instrument. At least they shouldn't be bored at hearing a piece for the nth time (as long as its ok!)"

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, as I have never taken a harp exam...

Thanks

Collyermum

Examiners are experienced musicians, and it is not necessary to play an instrument to detect aurally whether a player is struggling

Examiners receive training from the board, and always are professional. I am not an examiner, however I do know a number, and they do tend to insure they know their stuff.

Oh, I quite agree. It is things like dynamic range that can be quite different between a pedal harp and a lever harp, and if an examiner has only ever examined pedal harps and expects the same range of tone colour and dynamics from a (smaller) lever harp then obviously that is not going to be possible. One would hope they would realise, but one also hears horror stories, for example on the recorder re its dymanic possibilities being misunderstood by some examiners...

We just have to hope that the syllabus for lever harp has been around long enough that one is lucky enough to get an examiner with some experience and interest!

I was just wondering if anyone on the harp board had had experiences doing a lever harp exam and would be prepared to share?

I have not found examiners knowing, or not knowing, the harp to be an issue. The student is being judged on the musical results, just as we are by audiences. Of the few examiners comments I have seen which I felt would not have been written by a harpist just as many blamed the instrument for something which was the player's fault as the other way round, and all were minor.

Please don't fall into the trap of underestimating the lever harp. True there are some which won't give much choice of volume or tone colour, and few pedal harps exist at this bottom end of responsivity (though I have met a few, mostly the result of diabolical 'repairs'). On the other hand there are plenty of lever harps which have great tonal capabilities. As one example a Teifi Eos could hold its own against many pedal harps on exact parity, and many lever harps, the larger Dusty Strings for example, can put out more volume than smaller pedal harps do- especially when the pedal harps are not being played to their full capability, as too often they aren't. Far too often harpists are the ones accepting limitations which aren't actually there.

As a point of interest if you wish to mix and match between the lever and pedal pieces in the syllabus it may be possible. A friend asked to play the Grade 8 Ortiz on a Paraguayan harp in an exam which was otherwise on the pedal harp and was allowed to.

There is at least one harpist AB examiner - I think Tanya Houghton is one according to the UKHA website.

Thank you for your reply, Erard, that was *all* very interesting.

I do have a large lever harp ( a Triplett Signature 36) so hopefully it will indeed have the capabilities you speak of once I am up to the job!

Thanks again, your reply is much appreciated!

Collyermum

I know nothing about the harp, so cannot comment specifically, but entered a lot of music festivals as a teenager on classical guitar. We rarely had a specialist adjudicator and were forever getting comments about the noise that the fingers make moving up and down the silver wound strings. There is little that can be done about this as the ridges of the finger tips make a noise as they move along the strings. I don't remember the same comments in AB exams from examiners, and they were not guitar specialists. I think in exams you are marked on the general musicality of the performance and not technical instrument specific details.

I have only ever taken one harp exam and it was on the pedal harp. I was in a group of 4/5 harpists at my school who were taking exams that day however I was the only one playing the pedal harp, the others were using the school's hired level harp. The examiner was an organist and I do feel that it did interfere with the exams, I'm not bitter, I can't even remember what I got but I know I did pass! My harp teacher was furious about the examiner, he had a serious lack of understanding. The room for the exam and the waiting room were freezing and the examiner could not appreciate why this would make a difference to our playing! One of the strings broke that morning, luckily my teacher had brought spares but he keep tutting and scowling over the time it took to change the string and obviously it needed to be retuned after every exam, even during some of them. He couldn't appreciate that strings take days, often weeks to stretch properly or that this could put us off whilst playing. He was also incredibly patronising! I was the last and also the smallest, he asked if I knew how the pedals worked! Was I sure that I wanted to play that harp?! Argh! I'm sure I'll get responses saying that it was a problem with the examiner not examiners as a whole but in certain cases I do think the examiner requires some knowledge of the instrument which he/she is examining.
V
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I know from personally speaking to an examiner recently that they love to assess harp - after listening to 30 pupils playing the same early grades piano pieces, hearing a harpist is exciting for them!

I don't worry about them not playing a harp themselves - they are trained in the basic requirements of a range of instruments but most importantly, they are highly trained to recognise a musical performance and that is essentially what they are looking for I believe.

E

I turned up for my grade 2 lever harp exam a while back to find that there was an examiner and a moderator. The examiner (in a benevolent "let's have an easy scale to start off with" kind of voice) said "OK, let's have C major". My harp is tuned in E-flat, so I dutifully twiddled levers to irradicate all the flats - I could feel the poor man cringing!