Featured Harp Music
Welcome to our featured harp music section! Every quarter (March, June, September, and December) we will feature a work by one of our talented Pacific Northwest harp composers and arrangers. You are welcome to download and print a copy of this music for your personal private use. (If you wish to perform the music publicly for profit, print or publish any arrangement, or record or broadcast it, you must first contact the copyright holder for the appropriate permissions.)
Please Note: Beginning September 2023, Reigning Harps is using MP3 files to enable audio playback of Featured Harp Music scores. To hear playback of the tune, simply click the MP3 Audio link. To see or print out the score, use the PDF link.
Winter’s Featured Harp Music:
For this season’s featured harp music we have an interesting twist on a traditional Christmas carol, written by Tara O’Brien Pride of Bellevue WA. Tara is a classically trained choral musician and retired physicist who had no idea she would love playing the harp until she first touched one at age 45. She lives happily in the Pacific northwest corner of the United States, where she composes and arranges music for harp, voice, and chorus. About this piece, Tara says “the melody will be familiar to many people, but the harmony is rather modern, employing several pitches from outside the key. Although this might seem daunting, the lever presets allow for playing with zero lever changes during the piece. The subtitle, “Cradle on the Edge,” makes a double allusion: a manger barely counts as a cradle; and the adventurous harmony seems on the edge of lever harp capability. Sometimes restrictions can be broken with happy results.”
Some of you may have seen this piece in the Winter Issue of the Folk Harp Journal; this version is essentially the same, but with some notational changes. And so, on to the music – follow the links below to see, hear, or print out the piece!
Away in a Manger – Cradle on the Edge: PDF
Away in a Manger – Cradle on the Edge: MP3 Audio
Music Archive: click here to see previous Featured Harp Music scores
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