Re: Who is Robin Williamson?

[John Pollock <johnpollock@delphi.com>]

Michael P. Hughes, Ph.D. wrote, in part:

> > He has done a great many recordings
> > since then of traditional harp music, using the wire strung harp, the 
>nylon
> > harp and he's also one of the only people I've heard who uses 
>"buzzers" one
> > his strings on some tunes.  (Buzzers are a very old way of getting a 
>sort of
> > sitar-like twang/buzz from your wire strung hard.).
> 
> This sounds intriguing - my wife plays Clarsach (Scots folk harp).  Could
> he be using the keys (which raise the pitch of the string one semitone) 
>be
> used in the "halfway" position, just touching the strings, i wonder.

>From _A Survey of Musical Instruments_ by Sibyl Marcuse (Harper & Row,
1975), referring to a 1547 description/drawing by Glareanus:

"...brays, a series of right-angled wooden or metal nails mortised into
the resonator, and the snarl of the plucked strings when they struck
against them.  Brays are referred to as harp nails (Nagel in German) in
medieval literature, and harps provided with such nails are known as
bray harps."

Marcuse adds that while bray harps were obsolete on the continent by
1700, "Talbot (ca. 1700) could still write of the Welsh harp and its
brays, 'which give it a jarring sound.'  Typically, the Renaissance harp
was a bray harp."

Hey-- guess where Pollock House is? :-)

John
Troubador Tech (http://people.delphi.com/johnpollock/)