Harps and Harpists.(MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS)(Book review)

Harps and Harpists. By Roslyn Rensch. Revised edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. [363 p. ISBN-13 978-0-253-34893-7. $ 49.95.] Illustrations, music examples, appendix, bibliography, index, compact disc.

On the rare occasion when the question of who has written effectively in English about the harp is broached, two writers inevitably spring to mind: Ann Griffiths and Roslyn Rensch. The 2007 revision of Harps and Harpists by Roslyn Rensch is the fourth in its line by the author. Even cursory glances at the precursors of the present work show her lifetime odyssey and love affair with her instrument, and make interesting comparisons with one another.

The slender The Harp: From Tarn's Halls to the American Schools {New York: Philosophical Library, 1950) is a three-section work, a basic division that Rensch maintains in some manner (whether as a division of the text or in appendices) in all but the newest of lur titles. The first section reflects the types of material found in the more recent volumes. Section II deals with fundamental playing and technical/mechanical considerations of the instrument. Section III addresses pedagogical matters: harp methods, graded solos, and ensemble music. In the mid-twentieth century, these two sections addressed a need that by 1969. when the author wrote her second book, The. Harp: Its History; Technique and Repertoire (New York: 1'raeger. 1969). was being addressed elsewhere, primarily in the flowering periodical literature and other instructional books and manuals that appeared for the instrument. While the 1969 volume retained a modicum of material from the old second section of the 1950 publication as the final pages of the main text, two appendices assumed the function of the original section 111 by devoting themselves to identifying composers and their compositions, listing recordings of harp works, citing pedagogical concerns, and including graded lists of pieces

By the time of her third hook in 1989 (Harps and Harpists | Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980]), the author acknowledged the redundancy in attempting to duplicate information now available elsewhere by creating instead an appendix that provided a register of notable harp-related events and activities from 1979 to 1985. To include this as appendix material was a wise decision for, in the largest sense, it was truly supplemental in nature.

This brings us to the newest volume, a 2007 revised edition of the 1989 (reprinted in 2002) work. Straightway, Rensch has rightly reversed the sequence of her coverage of Mesopotarnian and Egyptian harps in her opening chapter. Both chapters 1 and 2 are enhanced with more illustrations and, as do the chapters that follow, provide some updated footnote references. Part II--chapter 3 ("Non-pedal Harp in Western Europe and North America"! is similarly enhanced and, in some instances, the text is rewritten to offer a little more explanatory detail. Repealed illustrations are clearer images in many cases than in the 1989 version.

Rensch reveals the rich supplemental art history and humanities portion of her academic training in chapters 4 ("The Harp in Art") and 5 ("The Harp in Literature and Music"), fashioning these large topics into coherent chapter essays. Well written is chapter 6, "Concerning Non-pedal Harps and Harpists," where succinct, yet appropriate, attention is given to extant physical examples of primarily European insular and continental harps, along with some experimental models, like the chromatic harps of Guslave Lyon (in France) and Greenway (in the United Stales), that attempted to free contemporary harpists from the tyranny of the pedals.

Part III embraces chapters 7-10. In their essential aspects, chapters 7 and 8 are like their predecessors in the 1989 original. They treat the subjects of the single and double action instruments, notable harpists, and composers for the harp (along with their works] in a concise, survey-style manner, taking a page from Donald jay Grout's approach to Western music ...