My name is Josh Layne, and I’m going to tell you about the concert series I’ll be performing this fall, Harping Through History.

Now, lest I get you too excited, when I say history, I’m only talking about the history of “Classical” music, which of course is but a small part of the history of music and the history of the harp.  Still, that’s all I have for you, so hopefully you’ll enjoy it.

I start the program with music from the Baroque period. Roughly 1600-1750 this is when classical music really starts to hit its stride, building on centuries of early Church chants.  I’ll be playing music by that most well known of Baroque composers – JS Bach.

Now, while classical music was really taking off during the Baroque, the harp, unfortunately, was not.  This type of harp that I’m playing, the pedal harp, has 7 pedals at its base that allow me to change to the pitch of the strings while playing, letting me play the complicated, often chromatic, music that classical composer are so found of.  Unfortunately, this pedal mechanism wasn’t invented until the early 1700s, and didn’t come into widespread use until the late 1700s.  This meant that composers like Bach never wrote anything for the harp.

Fortunately, it’s quite possible to take much of his music written for the keyboard and play it on the harp, like the piece I’ll be starting my program with – Bach’s Partita No. 1

Next comes the Classical period.  If you the think that it’s confusing that Classical music has a classical period, you’re right, it is.  It’s not my fault, though, so please don’t blame me.  I have to admit, the classical period is not one of my favourites, I find much of the music to be kind of dull and predictable.   In fact, the piece I’ve chosen to represent the Classical period isn’t even by a period composer!  It’s by the 20th century harpist and composer, Marcel Grandjany, and it’s his Fantasy on a Theme by Haydn.  (Haydn, of course, is, along with Mozart, one of the most well-known of the classical period composers).  The theme in question is from Haydn’s Symphony No. 53 (53 symphonies, and he was only about half-way finished!) and it’s a lovely little tune that, after a rather florid introduction, gets treated to five variations. 

Next we’d normally come to the romantic period, but I’m actually going to use my romantic piece to close the program, so instead we’ll move a little further ahead, and start to approach the 20th century…

Here is where, some would say, classical music starts to go downhill.  In any event, it has certainly come a long way from the very rule-bound Baroque!  The 20th Century didn’t start off too badly, as we had French, so-called Impressionist, music still going strong, with Debussy and Ravel leading the way.   The harp was starting to really come into it’s own at this point, both in the orchestra and as a solo instrument.

While both Debussy and Ravel wrote for the harp, I’m going to turn to music by the French harpist, Henriette Renie.  Renie was quite an incredible woman, a performer, a very influential teacher, and a composer.  I’m going to play her wonderful and frightening piece, Legende, which is based on the poem Les Elfes.  I don’t have time here to go into the whole story behind the poem, but it’s a wild ride and a fitting end for the first half of the program!

To start the second half we move solidly into the 20th century with two movements from Britten’s Suite for Harp.  Britten is certainly one of the more widely recognized composer from the 20th century, and used the harp in a number of his works.  In particular, his Ceremony of Carols, for harp and choir, keeps a lot of harpists busy each December.  Britten’s Suite is made up of five movements.  To be honest, I feel that the first and last movement are far and away the best of the five, so I’ll only be playing those two!  They are both quite interesting rhythmically, especially the Overture. 

Then we move to the 21st century, with my composition, Rhapsody.   I was inspired while writing this by the idea of a day on the African veldt.  From low murmurs as the day dawns through various events into a final brilliant sunset and the coming of the night.

Finally, after all this modern stuff, we go back to one of my favourite periods, the Romantic!  To recap, the romantic comes after the classical period, and this is where composers really started letting their hair down.  At this point orchestras were getting bigger, with more than just strings and a few woodwinds, and the harp gets included in the orchestral works of Romantics such as Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner.  Still, most of the big names of the romantic period didn’t write solos for the harp.

I’m going to play a transcription of Smetana’s wonderful piece, The Moldau.  This was written for full orchestra, but a Czech Harpist, Hans Trnecek, wrote this wonderful arrangement for solo harp.  One of my favourite pieces, and it manages to make its way onto most of my programs."