As I vaguely think I’ve mentioned at some point, I want to do occasional posts where I spotlight some albums from my collection that all fit a given theme. No idea how abstract these themes may get, but we’re starting simple, with an instrument.
I used to play the harp—it was not my first instrument, but it was the first I fell in love with. I played it pretty seriously for three years as a teenager, before moving away from Winnipeg and having to return the instrument I was renting; I revisited it a couple of times later in life.
One of those times was late 2018, when a friend lent me a harp she could no longer play. I even started taking lessons again. But less than six months later, my apartment building was destroyed in the fire, and along with it both the harp and the collection of sheet music I’d built up over the course of more than a decade. It was a punctuation mark of sorts, an extremely heavy-handed period ending that part of my life for good, or at least for the foreseeable future.
While I may no longer play the harp, though, I still love it dearly. Here are five albums, for the Celtic harp specifically (if you want to know the difference between it and an orchestral one, check yon footnote1), that I think show off some of what the instrument is capable of and some of why I am such a fan.
Dominique Dodge - Dominique Dodge (2006)
Dominique was one of the two women who first taught me harp, and we’re still occasionally in touch, so there’s definitely a lot of sentimentality to this recommendation. I think that’s part of how one relates to music, though, and I am valid.
Apart from the personal connection, this is also just a good exploration of different ways to use a harp, though all within a fairly traditional framework. There’s a mix of trad pieces and original compositions, vocal and instrumental, and solo tracks vs those with other instruments included.
Stand-out tracks: Michelle’s, The Oracle
Sileas - Beating Harps (1987)
If Dominique is my harp parent, then Sileas are my harp grandmothers — she trained under both Patsy Seddon and Mary MacMaster, who make up the duo. These two performed together for decades, but this album is from very early in their collaboration. The most notable thing about them, apart from being a double act, is that many tracks feature both a gut or nylon harp and a wire-strung one; the latter is smaller, resonates much longer, and is a lot trickier to play, so you hear it far less often. They do very cool things with the contrast & interplay between the two, and their arrangements are always a lot of fun.
Stand-out tracks: The Solos, Miss Gordon of Gight
Catriona McKay - Harponium (2013)
Harponium, as an album, is interested in the pairing of harp with harmonium (the title is a portmanteau of the two). The latter almost strictly plays support throughout, but its presence undergirds every track, providing a huge amount of depth and texture under McKay’s busy, soaring harp lines. It’s a really appealing combo, and an original one. Even aside from that element, though, the tunes here are great — McKay is a brilliant player, and knows how to coax a tremendous range of different sounds from her instrument.
Stand-out tracks: Roof of the World, Harp Royalty Meets Banjo Czar
Úna Monaghan - For (2018)
For is really interestingly split between fairly traditional and straightforward folk sets and much odder, experimental pieces — things that make use of drones, ambient sound, and sprawling, unruly compositional structures. Where the album’s at its strongest is on the tracks that combine the two, slipping dreamlike between familiar forms and far stranger material.
Stand-out tracks: The Choice, Naomhóg
Alys Howe - Phosphorescence (2005)
And so we come full circle, to my other first teacher. Alys and Dominique taught me at the same time, but their styles are quite different. Alys’s album plays extensively with the contrasts between the harp’s high and low registers, with dramatic shifts in dynamic and on some tracks a marked jazz influence. It’s a lot of fun, and her original compositions in particular (there are three) show a real departure from the traditional Celtic style.
Stand-out tracks: Planxty Shar, Miss Shepherd/Sleep Soond i’ da Mornin’
Honourable Mention: Sayaka Ikuyama - Spirited Harp (2006)
Ikuyama’s debut album isn’t as technically polished as some of these others (in particular her dynamic control is a bit off), and it’s not available digitally at all as far as I can tell. But her arrangements of both O’Carolan and Hisaishi tunes are quite lovely. Plus, Celtic harp (as opposed to jazz or classical) is an overwhelmingly white field, and it’s nice to see artists working to change that.
The most obvious difference is the size (an orchestral harp has 47 strings to a Celtic harp’s 30-36), but more impactful is how they change tuning. On a Celtic harp, each string has a lever at the top that will adjust its pitch by a semitone — C to C#, for example. On an orchestral harp, there are seven pedals, each of which will adjust a note in every octave simultaneously. This means orchestral harpists can change key much more quickly than Celtic ones, and without the need to take their hands off the strings.
Also orchestral harps cost 2-5 times as much, which is why I’ve never played one.