Featured Harp Music
Welcome to our featured harp music section! Every quarter (Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter) 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 listed 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.
Summer’s Featured Harp Music:
For this season’s featured harp music we present a piece appropriate to the season: Summer Is Icumen In, a nearly 800 year old song written in the Wessex dialect of Middle English. This song is the first known notation of six part vocal polyphony, and also one of the earliest examples of the vernacular and secular in English music as opposed to the standard religious themes in Latin. The song describes a perfect summer day when the woods are in full leaf, the animals are in high spirits, and the cuckoo bird can be heard singing loudly and merrily over all. It is written in the form of a simple canon, a round (or rota) that can be sung solo or in 2, 3, or 4 parts. And it works just as well for a group of harps to play as a instrumental round!
Arranger’s Note – We have played this round at harp circle, and it is best to play it through in unison until the group is familiar with the melody. When we rushed right into playing parts, we found ourselves in a hopeless tangle. However, once everyone has the tune in mind, it is great fun to add the parts one by one. If you do not have a group to play with, you can play along with the MP3 versions below. If you really want a challenge, you can use this tune as an etude on hand independence: try playing the tune with one hand, then come in on part 2 with the other hand, and see how far you can go! (My record so far is 4 measures.)
And so, on to the music – follow the links below to see, hear, or print out the tune:
Sumer Is Icumen In: PDF
Sumer Is Icumen In: MP3 Audio, 1 Part, Once Through
Sumer Is Icumen In: MP3 Audio, 2 Parts, 3 Times Through
Music Archive: click here to see previous Featured Harp Music scores
Print out a current Table of Contents for your PSFHS Harpers’ Songbook, and use it to check that you have all the tunes.
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