Approaching or Circumventing the Suggestiveness of the Harp in Contemporary Music

Abstract

Since Luciano Berio’s (1925–2003) Sequenza II (1963), many composers have tried to find new ways to approach the harp as a medium for contemporary music. When asked about writing for the harp, modern composers tend to express a reservation about the complexity of the mechanisms of the instrument itself. Do the very heavy aura and subtext that the instrument carries with it influence the composers as well? While the idioms of other classical instruments commonly used in contemporary music have already been analysed many times over, the uses of the harp in the modern repertoire have gone comparatively unexamined. Using analyses of recent compositions for harp by Heinz Holliger, Marc Andre, Ansgar Beste, Jonathan Bell, Georges Aperghis, as well as interviews with these composers, this study aims to examine how composers of the last fifty years deal with the suggestiveness of the harp in their use of the instrument.