SKU: UM.15759

ISBN 9790224415759.

SKU: UM.85743

ISBN 9790224407174.

SKU: UT.LB-4

ISBN 9788881094479. 6.5 x 9.5 inches.

â??During my career spanning half a century, like all my fellow harpists I constantly had to grapple with the commonly held view that the harp has neither music nor history of its own.
Fortunately, over the years I have been able to give the lie to this myth and have tried to bring to light some of the vast repertoire, both early and modern, expressly composed for this instrument which has been treated somewhat as an outsider in the musical world.
The research work for my books on Italian and Swiss harp music was plain sailing because source materials were specific titles and title pages. Were I to write books on French, German, Austrian, British, Bohemian, Spanish, Portuguese or Scandinavian harp music, the work involved would be equally smooth and straightforward.
However, where Dutch music is concerned, the approach is rather different, because here it is the painters, treatise-writers and historians who provide the evidence and guidance necessary to discover the musical customs and traditions where the harp played a significant part.
Performers looking for pieces of music may use this book as follows: chapter II deals with treatises, chapter III with paintings, chapter IV with history and research accounts. Chapters V and VI are concerned with confusions in terminology. Chapter VII describes recent developments and chapters VIII and IX cover composers and pieces of music. Libraries and publishers are listed with their addresses in chapters X and XI, and finally chapter XII consists of the index based on the various groups of performers.
In this last chapter harpists will find the composers most suited to their programme, and can then turn to chapters VIII and IX for details. The actual pieces can be obtained by consulting chapters X and XI. I wish you every success in your search, in your rehearsals and in your concerts !
In order to define what is Dutch or non-Dutch in early music, I have followed the current approach, i.e. all art and history prior to the separation of the â??Seven Provin­ces in the 16th century is the common heritage of the Low Countries, whereas everything pertaining to those courageous lands from then onwards is specifically Dutch..

SKU: UT.HS-284

ISBN 9790215326460. 9 x 12 inches.

Melodia for Solo Harp/ Alleluja Modo II - Wachet auf for Harp and Organ

This publication gathers together in these three pieces the only compositions by Santucci devoted to the harp, both as a solo instrument and in dialogue with the organ, his favourite instrument.
The little Melodia per arpa, a simple piece having an apparently didactic purpose, does not show the date of composition but, judging by the handwriting of the manuscript, it probably dates back to the period between 1980 and 1990. No other information has reached us as to why the piece was composed.
The two pieces Alleluja Modo II and Wachet auf, both dated 20 March 1993, composed for the unusual duo of harp and organ, are dedicated to Anna Maria Restani, first harp in the orchestra of the Teatro Comunale of Bologna from 1965 to 2002, and to her son Wladimir Matesic, organist and now teacher at the Conservatoire in Trieste. Gregorian chant is the protagonist of the first piece, evoking a Gothic and rarefied atmosphere. The second is instead a blatant tribute to Johann Sebastian Bach (right from the first bars the reference to Prelude no. 1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier is clear), through one of his most famous chorales (Wachet auf, ruft uns die stimme), also used by Santucci for numerous other compositions, including Il corteo dei Magi [for trumpet, organ, orchestra and choir, 1986, ms.], still performed in the Christmas concerts in Bologna.
(Giuseppe Monari).

SKU: UT.HS-231

ISBN 9790215324558. 9 x 12 inches.

Tarascone; Tarantella Capuanese; Valzer; Polka di Vittorio; Tarantella Stiglianese

The history of the Viggianesi, strolling musicians, winds over a period of about four centuries and esprimeun ‘unicum’ musically and anthropologically. Heirs of a travelling musical tradition that from the late Middle Ages inhabited more than just the streets of the Kingdom of Sicily and Naples, the harpists of this extraordinary story made their first appearances as early as the end of the 1600s engaged in musical practices at shrines.
Armed with an urgent need to make a living together with a strong musical inclination, adaptability and versatility, the groups of musicians, almost always belonging to the same family circle, became the promoters of the great Italian musical tradition (Southern in particular), and with their harps on their shoulders they became the identification symbol of a well-defined and limited area of Italy: the Agri Valley, in Basilicata.
From the many documents examined, a very wide and varied musical repertoire emerges mixing the pastoral tradition with classical tradition (mainly opera, devotional music with songs from the cities (from the Neapolitan tradition to international production). The pastoral repertoire, the subject of this publication, consists of a strongly characterized native repertoire which the Viggianesi had consolidated in both public and private ritual occasions in their native land, even if performing in distant lands.

This collection is included among the compulsory pieces of The 7th International Harp Contest in Italy Suoni D’Arpa, 2017, Category A – Associazione Italiana dell’Arpa – www.associazioneitalianarpa.it

SKU: UT.MAG-221

ISBN 9790215318625. 9 x 12 inches.

Martin-Pierre Dalvimare, born in 1770, in Dreux (Eure-et-Loir), from a distinguished family, learnt music as an entertainment art, and was obliged to make it a resource for his existence, after the troubles of the Revolution in 1789. He had acquired a remarkable talent for the harp; when he arrived in Paris he made a very good impression. Then, man of the world, knowledgeable in many fields, which is rare for a musician, he was welcome everywhere, and very soon came in friendly terms with some of the most renowned artists and men of letters of his times. The marriage certificate of the poet Legouve (15 pluviose of the year XI, or February 1803, 12th municipality of Paris), shows that Dalvimare was one of his best men and that at the time he was thirty-two years old. He became harpist of the Opera in the year VIII (1800), and was definitively confirmed in the month of fructidor of the year IX. At the time of the institution of the emperor Napoleon's private music, M. Dalvimare was appointed as his harpist. In September 1807 he obtained the title of harp master of the empress Josephine. A lucky change of his fortune allowed this artist to renounce to practise his talent for living, he resigned from all of his positions on March, 12th, 1812, and he retired in Dreux, where he still was living in 1837. For a peculiar weakness, he does not like to speak about his artist career, which had been entirely honourable, and he would like to forget his success too. His first composition was a symphonie concertant for harp and horn, which he composed with Frederic Duvernoy, and published in the year VII (1798); notwithstanding, he counted as his first opus a collection of romances with accompaniment of piano or harp, which he later published with Pleyel.

In 1809 Dalvimare composed, for the theatre Feydeau, a one-act opera-comique called The Marriage for Imprudence. The music was weak; the work did not succeed, and people used to say that the greatest imprudence had been the one of the authors who had it performed. Nevertheless, the score of this opera was published in Paris by erard. (Francois-Joseph Fetis).

SKU: UT.MAG-265

ISBN 9790215326422. 9 x 12 inches.

Posse’s compositions for harp are rich and varied, and range from the easy pieces dedicated to his students to the virtuoso concert pieces; we must also remember his didactic works, in particular the ‘Six Small Studies’ and the universally known ‘Eight Great Concert Studies’.
It is not easy to draw a balance of his legacy in the harp world. On one hand his technical vision of virtuosity combined with a great stability of the hand and rigor of the fingerings certainly contributed to the development of the 20th Century harp technique; on the other hand, his use of the pedals, often driven by two together with the same foot (a very old French technique), has gradually become more and more difficult on modern harps. From the point of view of his contribution to the harp repertoire, the constant run-up to the piano has heavily influenced his compositional production, making him often completely miss the idiomatic effects of 19th Century harp music (except for the use of harmonic sounds), which were so loved by his friend Liszt in the compositions of Parish Alvars.