Harp Column Blogs: Carl SwansonArchive

A question posted recently, asking people how and why they got started on the harp made me think back to my own harp beginings. I thought my response would be too long for that thread, so I decided to put it here.

I started the harp when I was 16. I had been playing piano for about 7 years at that point. As a child growing up in very rural northwest Connecticut, and being drawn to classical music, I took to the piano at about age 9 and liked it. Until starting the harp, I had never studied an instrument other than piano. At 16, I was singing in the senior choir at church and was good friends with the choir director, a young math teacher from one of the local prep schools(my town, Kent, has 3 prep schools). This director told me that he was going to try to put together a girls chorus at the Kent School for Girls in order to do a piece called A ceremony of Carols. He would need a piano accompanist and, if he couldn't find a harpist for the performance, would need a pianist for that too. He asked me if I could be the accompanist. I agreed, and he gave me a copy of the vocal score and a recording of Kings Choir Cambridge performing the piece. Britten himself was the conductor and Osian Ellis the harpist.

When I listened to the recording I was mesmerized by the harp. I listened to that recording over and over again, and finally decided that I would study harp, just for the summer. Why just for the summer i don't know. It took me several weeks to locate a harp teacher, and she lived about a 40 minute drive from me. When I called her she asked me to come to her home so we could talk.

I followed the directions she had given me and when I got close came upon a white house by the road(she told me to look for a white house up on a hill. This wasn't up on a hill, but I thought, well maybe...). When I knocked at the door, and I asked the man if this was the home of Mrs. Senior, he smiled and said, "Oh no son, you want to go to the house up there on the hill." Back in the car I drove another half mile and came suddenly on a large, very impressive modern house. Suddenly I felt very intimidated. But I got out of the car and went to the front door and rang the doorbell. What happened next comes back to me now as fresh as the moment it happened. The most drop-dead gorgeous woman I have ever seen opened the door. She looked like a 1930's movie star, and was dressed like a vogue model. "Hello, I'm Lois Senior," she said smiling," and you must be Carl. Come on in." I could hardly move. I followed her through the entrance way and into the livingroom. There were two Steinways nested together at one end of the room, and what I now know to be a style 11 and a natural 23 at the other. The second I saw the harps I realized I had never seen a harp in my life. I don't know what I expected them to look like, but they didn't look the way I thought they would.

We sat and talked for a while and she not only agreed to teach me, but also to rent me the (new) natural 23 for $20 per month. The lessons by the way were $5 an hour, half her usual fee.

When I got home later that day, I immediately called the choir director to tell him what I had done. A day or so later he called to tell me that he had read in the Hartford Courant that morning that there was going to be a harp concert in Hartford the following night and if I wanted to go, he would go with me. I was thrilled.

We went to Hartford the next day. The harpist playing the concert was someone named Pierre Jamet! He was giving the concert as part of a week long masterclass under the direction of Aristid Von Wurtzler at Hartt college. At the end of the concert, the choir director said I should go talk to Mr. Von Wurtzler and tell him I was studying harp. "I haven't had my first lesson yet!" I said in a panic. "Let's go talk to him," the director said. Bud(the choir director) introduced himself to Aristid and then introduced me, saying that I was about to start harp lessons. Aristid took an immediate interest in me and kept in very close contact for the whole following year, making sure that I ended up in his harp department, which I did. I met Pierre Jamet two more times during my time at Hartt and ultimately went to Paris to study with him.

I studied with Lois Bannerman Senior for a little over a year until I entered Hartt. She was an excellent teacher, very generous with her time. My lessons began in early July of the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. In November of that year I performed Song in the Night and the Grandjany Angelous at a high school variety show, and at Christmas I performed several movements from the Ceremony of Carols as well as the Interlude. In that first year I remember also playing La Desirade of Salzedo, the Durand Chaconne, and I think the Pasacaglia of Handle, among other things. Lois really pushed me.

Lois died around 1995, and when I mentioned this to my mother, her response was," Boy, she really messed up my checkbook." "What do you mean?" I asked, completely puzzled. "She never deposited most of the checks I gave her," my mother said. I was dumbfounded. Lois had taught me for free and given me the use of her harp for free, and I never knew it! The greatest regret of my life is that I didn't find this out while she was still alive so I could thank her.

Why did I change from piano to harp? All I can say is that, at my first harp lesson, it was like getting hit by a truck. I realized instantly that I felt about the harp in a way that I had never felt about the piano. That feeling remains to this day.

PEDAL SPRING SAFETY

It happened again the other day.  I was regulating a harp and had to wrestle the pedal springs off their  posts so that I could change the felts.  The springs came out with such difficulty that I lost control of one and almost broke a finger.  Years ago a similar thing happened to Peter Eagle and he nearly lost an eye.  So I feel it is time to warn all of you and tell you  what the problem is and how to fix it.

THE PROBLEM

There are 7 pedal bars(the steel bars inside the pedestal to which the brass pedals are bolted).  Next to each pedal bar is a pedal spring post which is screwed into the wooden bottom of the body.  There is a pedal spring for each pedal bar.  Each pedal spring consists of a coiled center with two long arms on it which each have a right angle bend in the end.  One of those pedal spring arms goes into a hole in the pedal bar, and the other end(the one with a little notch in it) goes into a hole at the end of the pedal spring post.  Are you following me?  Reread this as much as you need, maybe with your harp laying on its side on the floor so you can look into the bottom and see what I am talking about as you read this.  In order to change felts, change a pedal rod, or adjust a pedal rod, you need to be able to remove the pedal spring arm that is attached to the post, and then put it back when you are done.

But this is easier said than done.  Removing the spring arm from the post is very easy on Wurlitzer, Swanson, and older Lyon & Healy harps because on those instruments the hole in the post is sufficiently  larger than the spring arm diameter, and the spring arm comes out and goes in very easily.  Salvi, Venus, and Aoyama harps are much MUCH more difficult to remove and replace the pedal spring arm because the hole in the post is barely larger than the diameter of the pedal spring arm.  To remove the spring arm on those instruments you often have to use pliers to wrestle it out and you run the risk of loosing control of the spring.  Getting the spring arm back in is even worse.  Now that Lyon & Healy is using Salvi parts on its pedal assembly(Salvi pedal bars, Salvi pedal couplers, Salvi pedal springs, and Salvi pedal spring posts), the same problem exists on all newer Lyon & Healy pedal harps.  This can make emergency repairs not only difficult but also dangerous, and risk a hand injury minutes before a performance.

THE SOLUTION

The answer to this problem is very easy.  You need to drill out the hole in the pedal spring post to a slightly larger size.  Set aside an hour when you are not pressed for time.  Maybe get someone who is handy with tools to do it for you.  Here's a step by step description of what you need to do.  Read the following several times BEFORE doing the porcedure.  Make sure you understand clearly what has to be done and how to do it.

TOOLS YOU WILL NEED

An electric drill,  One of the following drill sizes:  9/64(.1406 inches), #27(.1440), #26(.1470). The hole size is not critical.  Any of these drills will give you a size that will work.  A countersink that is 1/4 inch dia. or larger.  A pair of pliers.

THE PROCEDURE

1) Start by laying the harp down on the floor or on a table and removing the base by unscrewing the 4 pedal bolts.  Set the pedestal aside.

2) Remove all of the pedal springs from their posts.  You may need to use the pliers for this.

3) Drill out the hole in the top of each of the posts with one of the drill bits mentioned above.  You will probably have to rotate most of the posts (using the pliers) so that you can get the drill in straight.  Just rotate the post to a convenient position and then rotate it back when you are done.  Another way of doing this is to unscrew each post completely, put it in a vise to drill it, then screw it back into the wood.  If you do this, make very sure that you catch the same threads in the wood when you screw it back in.  Also, if you do it this way, take one post out at a time, drill it, then put it back in BEFORE removing the next post.  That way you will get all of the posts back to their original position.

4) You will notice that each hole has a taper on one side.  That's to make the edge of the hole thin enough to fit into the notch on the spring arm.  After drilling out each hole, you may have to use the countersink to thin the edge of the hole a little so it fits into the notch in the spring arm.  After you have drilled out the hole, test to see if the edge of the hole fits in the notch.  If it doesn't, use the countersink to thin it a little.  The edge of the hole shouldn't be a sharp edge, but it does have to be thin enough that the notch in the spring arm can lock into place.  If you removed each post to drill out the hole, then use the countersink on that hole before screwing the post back into place.

5) Make sure that the flattened top of each post runs parallel to the pedal bar it goes with.  Use your pliers to rotate the post until it lines up properly.

6) Hook up all of the springs and make sure the notch in each spring locks into the hole in the post.

7) Put the pedestal back on and tighten the bolts(not too tight!).  Move each of the pedals through all of its movement to make sure that nothing is hitting anything.  It would be helpful if you had a copy of my book A GUIDE FOR HARPISTS to make any adjustments at this point.

8) Stand the harp up.  You're done!

9) A couple of DON'TS:  Don't drill out the hole in the pedal bar!  That hole is just fine.  Some of the posts may be bent.  DON'T straighten them out!  The bends were put in to make the spring function properly.  DON'T do any of this unless you understand clearly what you are supposed to do.  You may want to get everything ready(get all of the tools needed to do this) and then ask the next regulator who works on your harp to do it for you.  Pay him something extra for this job.

I can assure you, if you have a harp that has this problem, your life will be much easier if you correct it BEFORE you have an emergency.  It will also be much safer.  The size of the hole is not critical.  It just has to be large enough to get the spring arm out and in easily.  The hole could be large enough to pass a tuning key through and it would still work just fine because of the spring tension.  I have never been able to understand why this problem persists.  It would be so much easier if this were done correctly at the factory.