Harp: Usage

The harp is used in classical music and ballads only as a special effect (e.g. glissando, arpeggios, and bisbigliando), although it’s frequently utilized by 1970s American pop music hits. Furthermore, it is played for romantic arias and dances-Musetta’s Waltz from La bohème is one example of which. The French composers Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel composed harp concertos and chamber music widely played today. In the 19th century, the French composer and harpist Nicolas-Charles Bochsa composed hundreds of pieces of all kinds of concertos and chamber music (opera transcriptions, chamber music, concertos, operas, harp methods). Modern composers utilize the harp frequently, but while the pedals on a concert harp allow many sorts of non-diatonic scales and strange accidentals to be played-some modern pieces call for impractical pedal manipulations.