The unplayable harp part. We’ve all faced it—a flurry of notes, some of which may not even exist on the instrument. Rarely do we have the luxury of simply refusing the part. We have to make it work. We have to find a way. So we’ve put together a primer to help you gather the tools you need to make the unplayable playable.

So much harp music has been written poorly for the instrument, causing us to spend too much of our time in the search for solutions. A passage may be physically possible, but sound dreadful if played as written. Take everyone’s Christmas favorite, Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers cadenza, for example. When Albert Zabel, the Bolshoi harpist, saw the part, he told Tchaikovsky that it did not work well, and showed him the cascading arpeggios and glissando that have since become common practice. Tchaikovsky agreed whole-heartedly and gave Zabel’s edition his enthusiastic blessing, but unfortunately the part was never re-issued like that.

You will save yourself a lot of gray hairs (though too late for me!) if you learn to solve these issues quickly, recognizing familiar patterns and using our prior experience to cut down on wasted time. This does not mean you should not try to play the notes as written, but have a plan B ready in case the passage remains stubbornly out of reach or the conductor has too much caffeine before the concert. An overly rambunctious tempo can propel a merely awkward passage into the realm of fantasy. Think of this article as the Orchestral Harpist’s Plan B Guide.

Know Your Limits

Much of a piece’s playability depends on a harpist’s physical size, reaction time, and technical level. By all means, keep striving to improve, but do not attempt to perform something that you cannot play at home. Be realistic about your current capabilities. When you are faced with a piece that you must perform and it is not possible for you, do not fret if some genius or giant somewhere can manage it. If your best effort has fallen short, then it is likely that the best efforts of other harpists have, too.

Many things besides speed can make a passage unplayable or so risky that it may need editing. It is impossible to watch the conductor while making repeated large chord leaps with both hands. In Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet, there is a section like this, but it is covered enough that the bottom line can be left out, and the hands can remain in the same register. Sometimes the hands are so far apart in these leaps that you can only see one at a time. This is when you have to make the difficult choice of editing it or playing it as written. Editing a part can feel like cheating, but the alternative likely means  that you cannot watch the conductor or even guarantee that you will hit all the right notes.

Diagnose and Treat

When you’re faced with an unplayable part, quickly identify what is causing the problem and take a course of action that will remedy it.

Example 1: excerpt from Overture to the Flying Dutchman, Richard Wagner.
Example 1: excerpt from Overture to the Flying Dutchman, Richard Wagner. (Click to enlarge)

Fancy footwork: Many passages feature too many quick pedal changes on the same foot. I like to use enharmonics to keep comfortable and avoid noise. For instance, at rehearsal E in Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers, use E-flats instead of the D-sharps that are written. In theOverture to the Flying Dutchman by Wagner, I remove a few notes in order to make the pedals work well. It is very loud in this section, so it does not affect the audience’s perception of the harmonies (see example 1).

Strrrrretch: When you have chords with note spans that are too big for your hands, re-voice the chords or leave out a note if it is covered by another instrument. But check the tempo! If it is slow enough, you can make the jump gracefully. Sometimes, you can reach the notes in a large chord, but a knuckle is pulled into another string and causes a buzz. It will sound better if you leave out a note.  After all, rotten tomatoes leave such a nasty stain on the strings.

Fast octaves: When fast passages are written in octaves, split them into two single lines. Saint-Saëns’ Samson and Delilah and Elgar’s In the South are great examples of this.

Too many notes, too little time: In the case of arpeggios with too many notes to fit into the tempo, eliminate some notes by not playing the ascending notes immediately before the turnaround. In other words, place as though you are playing it as written, but if time does not allow, start the top hand from the thumb downwards, omitting the notes leading up, as in Chabrier’s España and Tchaikovsky’s Francesca de Rimini.

Solid fingerings: This sounds obvious, but it’s hard to underestimate the value of a good fingering in a tricky excerpt. Arpeggio passages should avoid too much moving of the hands. Often one hand can hover in the same area while the other leaps and bounds around it. This makes it easier to keep your eyes on the beautiful shiny baton.

The physically impossible: Many composers don’t realize that we only use eight fingers, so you will sometimes see 10-note chords. If they write that way, then the gloves are off, I say.  Take out the notes that do not contribute to the harmonic structure.  Similarly, composers sometimes write as though we have sharping discs on the bottom two strings. Take those notes up an octave if necessary, unless enharmonic solutions are available. I have even seen notes that do not exist on the harp, such as low B or high A. They may want you to tune those notes, but there may be other times in the concert or even the same piece, when you need that string to be tuned normally. If the composer is still alive, send him or her a kind note full of praise for the lovely piece and finish by recommending Beatrice Schroeder Rose’s book The Harp in the Orchestra.

Props: Once in a while, there will be special effects that require time to pick up or put down implements or insert things into the strings. Often, there will not be enough time to accomplish this. I have pondered the use of an assistant, but it might look funny! When this happens, it is best to confer with the composer to see what can be rewritten to make the piece work within the laws of physics.

Repeated notes: When you get repeated notes with no enharmonics, often they can be done by alternating hands or using octaves instead. Again, this issue is tempo-sensitive. Repeated notes can work perfectly well if the tempo is slow enough.

Double trouble: Doubled one-handed arpeggios are fine at a certain speed, but become clunky as they get faster. In his book on orchestration, Berlioz repudiated his writing of these in Symphonie Fantastique. Since there is a second harpist for this, the arpeggios can be split between the two harps. If the rapid passages are written in thirds, sometimes it is possible to move one line up or down an octave to allow placement of all the fingers.

Example 2: excerpt from Scherzo a la Russe, Igor Stravinsky.
Example 2: excerpt from Scherzo a la Russe, Igor Stravinsky. (Click to enlarge.)

A little off: One of the hardest things to manage well is playing off-beats at a very fast tempo, such as in Stravinsky’s Scherzo à  la Russe (see example 2).If it is possible to add a note on the beat, your troubles are over. If not, practice like mad with a metronome. In the fifth movement of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra, there are offbeats for the second harp, while the first harp plays on the beat. Beatrice Schroeder Rose came up with a brilliant redistribution of the parts in her book The Harp in the Orchestra.

Example 3: excerpt from fifth movement of Concerto for Orchestra, Bela Bartok.
Example 3: excerpt from fifth movement of Concerto for Orchestra, Bela Bartok. (Click to enlarge.)

Two harps: Speaking of redistribution, splitting impossible parts between two players already needed for that piece can be a lifesaver.  The fifth movement of Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra (see example 3) and “Saturn” from Holst’s The Planets are perfect examples of difficult parts that, when redistributed between two players, become much more playable.

Fast harmonics: Impossibly fast passages of harmonics, such as in Respighi’s Pines of Rome, can be played as normal notes and fingered, up an octave.

Example 4: excerpt from rehearsal 1, Danse Sacrée, Claude Debussy.
Example 4: excerpt from rehearsal 1, Danse Sacrée, Claude Debussy. (Click to enlarge.)

Crossing collisions: If you have short fourth fingers, as I do, some crossings will cause collisions of your third finger knuckle into a vibrating string when you place the fourth finger. The excerpt at rehearsal 1 of Debussy’s Danse Sacrée (see example 4) illustrates the use of an enharmonic to bring the offending finger one note higher, avoiding the collision. Before I found this solution, I had to bend my third finger into a very awkward position. It worked, but this is much better.

Out of reach: When you get passages in the bass in which both hands are almost at the bottom of the harp, sometimes the right hand cannot reach far enough. Perhaps the composer has written for pianists who can just scoot down the bench. Since we can scoot only so close to our instruments, find a way for the left hand to play all the notes, with the right hand only helping where it can, or bring the entire right hand part up an octave. You will need to use your discretion here.

Long jumper: If you’re faced with large jumps and very little time, move one note an octave, omit a note, leave out the bass line and split between two hands, or redistribute the part if there are two harpists.

The Usual Suspects

Killer parts don’t have to be the death of you. Here are several notoriously difficult excerpts that can be tamed with some creative editing.

Choose Wisely

Sometimes being an orchestra harpist feels like performing triage in an emergency room. Often, we have several files of music at once, with only limited time to learn each program. It is imperative to come up with playable parts, and then hang onto them for future reference. Life is too short to spend hours trying to attempt death-defying stunts like The Flying Wallendas, when the audience can only hear the sparkly effect. Choose your battles wisely, and you will live to fight another day. •