Interview, Joel von Lerber on Légende and harp rivalries

Swiss harpist Joel von Lerber's new album Légende explores a wealth of repertoire written for the harp, the majority of it by harpists. It also captures a snapshot of a fascinating rivalry between two competing manufacturers, both of whom had devised their own original solution to the instrument's limitations and both of whom wanted their new design to be universally adopted.

I spoke to Joel about the music on this album - and ended up diving deep into the history of this most beautiful and charismatic of instruments, and the lengths that the rival instrument-builders went to in pursuit of market dominance!

Those with an interest in instruments’ history may know the name of Sébastien Érard, who made great strides in the design of both pianos and harps. What was so different about the mechanisms he devised?

At the very beginning, perhaps five thousand years ago, there was simply a string that you could pluck and that was it. With some alterations we got lever harps, where you have a lever for each string which raises the pitch - but you have to do this individually for every string.

The next step was the single-action harp, which gave you the option to alter the strings while you were playing, by using a pedal. And you could do this across the whole instrument rather than individually - so for example all Cs might become C sharps. And the thing that was so new about Érard's work was that it became a double-action harp. This meant that you could both lower and raise each string.

Diagram of Érard’s mechanism for raising and lowering the pitch of the strings

It suddenly became possible to play every tonality on the harp. Before, there had been some that simply weren't possible; harps were generally tuned in E flat, and you could only really change between that and E. So some keys, for example C sharp major, were not previously possible.

There was actually something of a fight between Érard and Pleyel, the rival manufacturers. They both invented improved harps. Pleyel came up with the cross-strung harp that has two separate sets of strings, and his company commissioned Debussy's Danse sacrée et danse profane with the specific goal of proving that their instrument was the best. Meanwhile, Érard's firm commissioned Ravel's Introduction et allegro for the same reason – to show their instrument's superiority.

So the composers were specifically asked to write in ways that were tailored to the capabilities and limitations of these two rival designs?

Yes - Ravel used a lot of glissandi in different tonalities, which was only possible on Érard's pedal harp. Debussy, on the other hand, used a lot of chromatic changes that were very difficult on the Érard. In the end, though, it turned out that both pieces were playable on Érard's harp but the Introduction et allegro isn't playable on the Pleyel. The chromatic writing in the Debussy certainly requires a lot of quick work with the pedals, but it's playable.

Detail of Pleyel’s cross-strung design – no pedals, unlike Érard’s design, but two separate sets of strings that intersect without touching

Presumably, then, it's not a coincidence that around this time – the early 19th century – we start to see the harp rise to prominence in the orchestra and as a soloist. Is this mostly thanks to Érard’s new designs entering use?

Indeed. There was definitely this issue of composers not taking it seriously but there is one sound that cannot be imitated by another instrument, and that is the unique kind of glissando that the harp offers – a glissando in any one of a huge number of different tonalities. You can't create this sound on anything else. And once the double-action pedal harp was developed this made the harp's special glissando sound possible.

This is definitely also the point at which composers acknowledged the instrument was worth composing for. Many instruments had a similar process - even the violin took centuries before it was truly accepted and people understood what was possible with it. The harp, due to the technical challenges, simply took longer.

That glissando sound is so recognisable and popular nowadays - when did that first start to be a hallmark of harp writing? Was it always a feature?

There's a long history of harps, in places like Egypt and in the folksongs of Ireland, where it's completely different and the glissando doesn't play such a role. In the eighteenth century it was very popular in France, and Marie Antoinette herself played it. So they started to build harps that were very golden and beautiful objects, and all the ladies in high society were playing them. Often it was used in the salon as background music for high society, but it was never seen as a soloistic instrument, because they already had the violin and the cello and other instruments that could occupy that role.

I guess the tendency not to take the harp seriously comes partly from that - everyone acknowledged the nice sound, but not the possibility of playing rhythmically and powerfully on the harp.

And is that royal French history part of the reason why even today, harps are very visual instruments, often with gold and cherubs as decoration?

That's definitely a factor. It's also partly because of the heavenly connotations of the instrument, with the association with angels and being mentioned in the Bible as a sacred instrument. But I think this high period in France and the sense of royalty were definitely an influence.

Detail of an Érard harp with a decorative figure of the Virgin Mary in an ornately-decorated alcove

Why do you think the harp didn’t become as widespread a domestic instrument (with correspondingly more repertoire and interest from composers) as the piano?

Érard certainly removed a lot of the limitations on what could be done with the harp, but there were still some hurdles. A harpist still can't play a Rachmaninov piano concerto, for instance. We can play chromatically, but generally not as quickly as the piano can. I think, also, there were simply more people that knew the piano.

Nowadays the harp has become very much more popular; there are many people who want to learn it, but the piano has always been far more affordable than the harp. A lot of it is simply that question of cost. There are very few harpists from the Global South, for instance, because the instrument prices are universal whether you are from a richer country or a poorer one. It's enormously easier to find a piano that's at an acceptable level. I assume it was the same back in Érard's time; there were more piano manufacturers than harp manufacturers.

So there isn't an equivalent 'cheap but OK' sector of the instrumental market for the harp?

I don't think there is, no.

Almost all of the pieces recorded here were composed by harpists – were non-harpist composers slower to understand and exploit the instrument’s capabilities?

Yes, there are only two non-harpists on the album, Liszt and Fauré - and indeed the Liszt is a transcription by a harpist! I chose these pieces because I really enjoy playing them and because they show a nice variety. But yes, mostly harpists do have a better understanding of the instrument. It’s not universal - there are composers like Debussy and Ravel who understood it well (though let's not forget that they were being paid to do that!). They both loved the harp, and they also sat down with harpists to see what could be done with the instrument and what its possibilities were.

Do you ever find that a composer has written something that's actually unplayable on the instrument?

I have definitely come across unplayable scores, but it’s rare. You can definitely tell if a composer has had a good friend who was a harpist, or dedicated a piece to a harpist; usually they have a good understanding - Fauré, for example, knew the instrument well.

With other composers it's different; there's a short prelude by Prokofiev which he wrote for solo harp, and when he heard it he said that no harpist could play it the way he wanted so he wouldn't write for the instrument as a soloist any more!

Were the harpists really that terrible? It's worth remarking that the harp is extremely difficult to play. Nowadays we are actually seeing huge development in technique and how people play. A hundred years ago, harpists were not able to play as well as they are now. Today there is a main stream of really good harpists, while back then there were only a handful of players who truly played well. So the composers writing for the harp might have heard a performance of their work and concluded that it would have sounded better on the piano...!

There are certainly some senses in which the harp is less forgiving than the piano. It has the additional complexity of the seven pedals, so you don't just have to worry about your hands. And if you mess up with one of those pedals in a fast run, everything will sound wrong; whereas on the piano you can recover immediately.

How much variation do you see in the way these composers - and composers more generally - make use of the harp?

In terms of the pieces on the album, you can tell that Bochsa was an earlier composer than the others - he uses very few glissandi and no flageolet [harmonic] tones. Everything is still very Classical, compared to Grandjany, whose Colorado Trail is full of glissandi and those sound-colours, flageolets and playing down near the sound-board.

In more general terms, Debussy and Ravel are both very good examples of composers who understood the harp and its possibilities, including in the way they combined it with other instruments. There are some composers where you can tell that they are thinking about the harp in very pianistic terms. For example Stravinsky - when you play his orchestral music, yes it's all playable and he understood the instrument, but it still has kind of a pianistic feel to it. It's not conceived from a harpist's perspective.

Are people continuing to push the technical boundaries in contemporary music?

Very much so - it's actually doing a lot for the harp. New composers are really interested in it, and young composers in particular - they want to see what this instrument can do and how far they can take it. So you get lots of new music being composed - which is often very tiring to learn because of how many pedal-changes it has. And in fact for harpists, learning a new piece or a new passage is actually a lot more work than for a clarinettist or a violinist; they can generally play things at sight, or near enough, and that's much more difficult on the harp.

Is that because of the pedals - the need to plan in advance when you're going to change them?

Yes, quite often. If it's an easy piece then of course I can solve it on the spot. But sometimes when it's more complicated, you have to sit down and work out where the pedal changes are going to be, and then you have to bring that into your hands and get physically familiar with it. And then you have to think about playing it together with the other musicians.

The difficulty about the harp is this: if you're playing the piano, violin or clarinet then I can say to you "give me a B flat" and you can produce it straight away. All the notes are always in front of you. But with the harp, if I don't have a B flat pedal engaged then I have to first think about putting the right pedal down and then about producing the note. It's extra steps, and I don't think any other instrument has that.

So yes, a lot of good work is being done by contemporary composers now to push the boundaries, but back when these pieces were written many composers still weren't taking the instrument so seriously. That's partly why I play a lot of transcriptions.

Do these transcriptions - like the Liszt - have that same feature you mentioned before, of feeling too pianistic?

It depends; the Liszt is certainly particularly pianistic. One composer who did write very harpistically was Schubert, as it happens - lots of arpeggios and material like that. Whereas Schumann, on the other hand, is very, very pianistic. I can play his music, of course - sometimes I play Widmung with a singer - but you can immediately feel that it's meant for the piano and not for the harp. Britten wrote particularly nicely for the harp, too.