> The sad thing is that to be a master harper according to the Scottish > Harp Society one must be able to play a March/Strathspey/Reel set and > not much else. The repertoire requirement is 40 tunes, 75% of which is > MSR's. (one also has to have 10 "airs" which are broadly defined. For > example, Piobaireachd is classified as an air). >
No jigs? That's really strange.. Jigs are so important though. No waltzes either? Do they even go as far as listing what tunes are required? If so, that organization sounds kind of facist :-) Also surprising is that the requirements for, I guess you call it the master harper certification level, include so few airs.. Airs generally sound really good on the harp, especially on the really bright-sounding wire harps. They're also quite nice on steel-string guitars, for the same reason, that bright edgy tone is sounds good to me. Much better then on the fiddle, mostly because there's too much temptation to make airs on the violin sound so "syrupy". Even though airs are not at a fast tempo, I've always found them challenging to do well because you have to really tastefully say something with them, there's no hiding behind a barrage of notes. The temptation to use alot of vibrato is always there. I've fallen into the trap myself plenty of times, at one point a couple of years ago, I followed a suggestion made by Kate Dunlay, and made it exercise to see how many slow airs I could play without using any left-hand vibrato at all. Forcing myself to do all the "talking" with the bow arm. That helped alot. Still this is interesting and surprising info. on the requirements of your organization. Can you elaborate on how these requirements were developed? Posted to Scots-L - The Traditional Scottish Music & Culture List - To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
