[MUSIC PLAYING]
I'm Nancy Allen, the principal harpist of the New York
Philharmonic.
I love animals, yes, I do.
I have had a lot of animals, but I particularly love horses.
And I've always loved horses.
Horseback riding rivaled playing music.
But I had a harp at home, so the harp
overtook the horseback riding.
I just find them both to be beasts in a way--
the harp and horses.
I found it to be so connected with harp playing,
because there's so much going on that's similar.
A lot is going on with your hands, and your feet,
and your brain.
We have to control the sound of the string
with our fingertips and only our fingertips.
So we not only play, but we stop the sound physically
with our hands at our fingertips.
And our feet are controlling all the chromatic half steps
of the instrument.
So there's a system of 21 slots at the bottom
of the instrument.
I'm trying to remember all the time where those pedals are,
what key I'm in.
Something that you have to learn to control,
but you also have to respect them.
Because at any moment, if you have one wrong pedal,
you are a fool on the harp.
And if you do one thing wrong on a horse,
you could cause an accident.
But they're both a challenge and I enjoy both.
Thanks very much.
To this day, when I cover my harp,
I always pretend I'm covering my horse.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Every instrument has a sweet perfect range.
And that's probably for the harp right
in the middle of the strings.
But that's not to say that we only play there.
One of the techniques we used to be a little bit more precise
in sound and articulate is French près de la table,
which is close to the board.
Playing close to the board makes it easier to hear.
It cuts more through the orchestra.
And we play very close to the sounding board which eliminates
a lot of the resonance.
We also play harmonics where we cut the string in half
with our hands.
It's a very pretty sound and that's
used in a lot of orchestration.
So all the people who were making colors with their music
rather than just statements.
The harp has a lot of strings.
47 in all and there are different materials.
The bottom of the harp is wire wound around wire.
They're very strong.
The middle of the harp or the basic playing
area of the harp, your fundamental sound
is drawn from the gut strings.
And this is the same gut as tennis racket gut,
but it's much more refined.
And then the top of the instrument
sometimes has some nylon strings.
And they all blend together, but the sonority of each color
is very different.
There are some times when Fauré or Debussy used the harp
as an accomplishment and you hear it all the way through
the music.
And you hear sweeping glissandi, which
are when you just run your fingers over the strings
and you set the pedals in different harmonies.
So that's the one unique thing that only the harp can do.
We can make chords and that's really unique.
We are the only person that can do that in the orchestra.
In Berlioz "Symphonie fantastique,"
he opens the The Ball second movement with two harps.
And everyone's waiting.
The orchestra's tremolo-ing and the two harps come in.
It's beautiful music.
Only the harps can make that kind of a sound.
[MUSIC PLAYING]