Question for harpers - preferred tuning

[mwyalchen]

Dear all

I'm beginning to work out a seminar on the harp and it's music in old Wales, and the harp music from the ap Huw manuscript.

Now, most of this music seems to require a Bflat, at least at the pitch it's written at, so I'm wondering:

How many harpers here (who'd be interested in old Welsh harp music!) tune their harp to the key of F, (or Bflat or Eflat if you have levers)?

How many are happy to retune or transpose?

How many would find it useful to have a transposed version? in which case, please post to say what tuning would be most useful for you.

If I don't have to do the extra work that'll be fine by me! - but I know some people prefer to keep their harp in naturals or sharps, and I don't want to exclude people, at least from the easier and more adaptable bits.

[skh]

I have a metal strung harp tuned in F major with levers for Bb/B and F/F#, and a small travel harp without levers, which I retune if necessary, it is usually in Eb major. I plan to have levers fitted to that one as well, but they are damn expensive and money is a bit tight at the moment. I'm fluent in transposing, too

[dream soul]

i've worked on some of robert ap huw's manuscript before, it was very interesting to learn!!! i have a small 19-string gut harp, and i just tuned to bflat. my harp teacher, William (Bill) Taylor has worked on this a lot, and it was at the edinburgh harp festival i first started learning this. the manuscript is fun to work out!!! Good luck working with the manuscript!!!

[Brigantia]

I play a repertoire of almost 1200 years. So, for anything past the mid 1500's I find tuning in E-flat to be best option....it lets me play many styles of music without having to retune.

Bennachta

[mwyalchen]

Goodness, is this thread not dead yet?

I asked this question so I could prepare a seminar a year ago; and ended up using bflat since no-one objected.

You'll find the seminar here: viewtopic.php?f=186&t=34707 (it may take a while to load as there are lots of images.)

So from that point of view, this thread has done its job!

But if there's a wish to carry on discussing tunings...