Harp Music at St Marys

 I really enjoyed the harp concert at St Mary's Church last night.

Ruth Wall was playing three different harps over the evening.  Her main instrument was the Scottish lever harp, a modern black instrument with a mellow sound that she and the composer Graham Fitkin could do incredible electronic stuff to, like layering the sound so that it seemed as if several harps were playing.  He composed some of the music played during the evening, or arranged traditional tunes.  

Ruth Wall also played the Scottish clarsach, a round bodied small harp which is wire-strung, so is played with the fingernails plucking the strings, rather than the pads of the fingers.

And then there was the Renaissance bray harp, which was strung with horsehair and had a little piece of holly at the bottom of each string to make a buzzing noise when the string was plucked.  This sort of harp was common all over Europe, and would probably have been the type of harp played at Hay Castle in the Middle Ages.

So the three harps sounded quite distinct from each other.

Most of the music was from the Scottish Highlands, but one tune played on the bray harp was from Iran, in honour of Yalda Night, when the days start getting longer in the depths of winter, and it was interesting to hear such a different style of music from the medieval tune that had been played earlier, on the same instrument.

Some of the traditional harp music had been shared with bagpipers - one of the tunes that Ruth Wall had composed was based on pibrochs, which are normally played on the bagpipes.

The theme of the evening was migration - of homo sapiens through our entire history, starting with early humans migrating out of Africa.  The theme also covered animal and bird migration, like the skuas passing over the isle of Uist in one of the modern pieces (based on an old Gaelic air).

And straight from a complex electronic piece, Ruth and Graham went into one of the most basic types of music possible - rhythmic clapping, and hitting other parts of the body.  In the second half, this body percussion was combined with whistling and words in I Swear, I Swear, I Swear, which was based on a conversation Graham had overheard on a train, between a group of young women.

The church was beautifully lit for the performance, but unfortunately the central heating wasn't working, so only Ruth on stage had a small electric heater!  In pride of place just behind the performance area was the wooden statue of Our Lady which was floated down the Wye earlier this year, complete with a light up halo!

Up coming concerts from Hay Music are:

13th November - Lore Lixenberg, a mezzo-soprano, with Bartosz Glowacki on accordion

2nd December - HEXAD, an eight voice a cappella choir giving a Christmas concert entitled Music for Queens of Heaven and Earth.  This concert will be at Hay Castle, and the narrator for the evening is Peter Florence.

Next year, Jayson Gillham will be playing piano at St Marys on 22nd January, and Toby Carr will be playing theorbo and lute with an early music ensemble and two sopranos at St Marys on 26th February.