- #HOW TO DETERMINE AGE OF LYON AND HEALY HARP FULL#
- #HOW TO DETERMINE AGE OF LYON AND HEALY HARP PORTABLE#
It looks not unlike someone trying to soothe a nervous Great Dane during a thunderstorm. When harpists play a concert grand - like, really jam on one - they hug and cradle the fat end of the body while rocking the 80-pound frame back and forth. As dignified as a cello or piano may be, each appeared and sounded plain next to Meijer’s Seussian device. Her Lyon & Healy was more than six feet tall, with fleurs-de-lis carved into its intricate crown-topped column. At a Philip Glass concert last summer, I saw him perform on piano alongside cellist Matt Haimovitz and harpist Lavinia Meijer. Placing a harp in a chamber trio is like asking Shaquille O’Neal to officiate at your wedding: The effect is stunning, but it can be terribly unfair to the couple with whom it shares the stage. Much of a concert grand’s unmistakable tone owes to its massive size. The harp is a lonely instrument - there are no harp sections in orchestras - but it doesn’t shy away from its stature. For comparison’s sake, the Statue of Liberty was assembled from 350, and she can’t even play music. A concert grand harp consists of approximately 2,000 parts. Almost everything is done by hand, and some harps take more than a year to manufacture. In fact, most of what goes on inside the West Town factory involves little machinery. Each harp will be handled by 35 people - out of 120 woodworkers, gilders, and artists on staff - in the course of its construction. Once you come to learn of the craftsmanship involved, it’s no wonder these instruments are considered works of art. That the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has three in its permanent collection.Įach harp will be handled by 35 people – woodworkers, gilders, artists – in the course of its construction. That John Coltrane was so enamored he bought one.
Or consider that members of some of the world’s greatest orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic, to name just two, play them. That alone is probably not scintillating enough to compel you to pull the emergency brake to get a better view, but keep in mind that someone will eventually pay many thousands of dollars - in some cases, more than $100,000 - for just one of the instruments being crafted inside. You can peer through the second-floor window of a brick building and see workers shaping columns of wood on a lathe. On the other hand, I’m up for a harp/flute duet any day.If you take the Green Line from downtown, look west just before you reach the Ashland stop. The flute would indeed have been easier to transport, and there are days when I wish someone would invent a shrink ray for my harp, but no, I don’t really wish I played the flute. And I don’t need an accompanist, though sometimes I am one. I enjoy the frequent distinction of being the first harpist most people have ever met. I get to play music that I love: my favorites are ‘strathspeys’ (a strathspey is an elegant form of Scottish dance), and sonatas for the harp by French composers like Debussy and Tailleferre. I love stumbling across exhortations to practice, in the Psalms of all places. It takes hours of practicing to coordinate all four limbs. Harp is a solo instrument like piano, except it has seven pedals in addition to two staves of music. I appreciate the challenge of playing one of the hardest instruments in existence. Sometimes I like to play really loudly and press my ear to the sound board just to hear it ring, though it is bad for my posture.
#HOW TO DETERMINE AGE OF LYON AND HEALY HARP FULL#
The whole harp trembles when you play a full chord and you can feel it resonating. Now, it was really my parents who chose harp and forced me to practice, but I love playing harp like I could never love another instrument. Last summer I even rented a lap harp in Paris and wore it quite contentedly through the Metro system in its backpack case. I can throw my folk harp over my shoulder easily. (Thank goodness for Volvo! I would not want to be doomed at age 25 to drive a van for the rest of my life.) In reality, not all harps are eighty-one pounds. “A station wagon actually,” I reply happily.
“You must drive a van?” comes the next query.
#HOW TO DETERMINE AGE OF LYON AND HEALY HARP PORTABLE#
There is nothing inconspicuous, or portable for that matter, about it. The thing so irreverently referred to is, of course, my 6-foot-tall, 47-string, 81-pound Lyon and Healy pedal harp. “How much does that thing weigh?” I get asked frequently.