In 2019 I was very excited to be asked to contribute to the development of the new AMEB harp syllabus as the lever harp specialist. Alice Giles was the Principal Consultant on the project that revised and updated the entire harp syllabus from Preliminary to Licentiate Level, created Grade Books of music for Preliminary to Grade Four and Technical Workbooks for Preliminary to Grade Eight. The harpist and wonderful composer Mary Doumany also produced a separate sight-reading book. The AMEB have now published all of this work, which took two years to produce, and harp players in Australia have an opportunity to work towards higher grade levels and certificates regardless of whether they play pedal or lever harp; a significant result considering that for all the previous years of the AMEB’s existence lever harp was only ever offered up to Grade Five.
From my point of view the really ground breaking aspect of the project was not just creating a lever harp syllabus that now extends from Preliminary to Certificate of Music Performance level, but also the recognition of lever harp as a separate instrument with its own idiomatic technique and repertoire. When I started learning harp as a child the lever harp was seen as the instrument students started on before advancing to pedal harp, mainly because they were smaller and less expensive. Most harp teachers were pedal harpists who taught only the foundational skills of harp playing on lever harp believing that advanced technique could be taught once a student moved onto the pedal harp. The AMEB syllabus for lever harp only went to Grade Five as a result. There was very little recognition of the direct link of the lever harp to an ancient history and culture that superseded the development of the pedal harp by hundreds of years.
The reason for this was entirely practical at the time. With the establishment of professional orchestras in Australia in the 1930s and the gradual demise of performance opportunities for freelance musicians, the main employment for harp players was in orchestral playing. Advanced harpists needed to play the pedal harp if they wanted to work as a professional musician. This seemed to shift a little in the 1970s with the growing interest in folk music but still the lever harp was strongly associated with amateur/self-taught players in Australia. In Britain, however, there was a strong revival of interest in traditional folk music and the emergence of professional musicians playing instruments like the harp to connect to their cultural roots. Gradually things changed in Australia as well. In the 1980s there was a resurgence of interest in folk music that led to the emergence of professional lever (and Paraguayan!) harp players and a thriving folk harp community. It has just taken a while for the value of traditional music forms and advanced lever harp techniques to be acknowledged and incorporated into the syllabus providing opportunities for students to explore alternative forms of harp playing and performance.
What a privilege to has been for me to be involved in this project, to collaborate with some of the best harpists in Australia and to provide technical support and repertoire inspiration for lever harp players now and well into the future.
If you are interested in exploring technical work and music for lever harp within the new syllabus you can access further information at the AMEB (Vic) website – https://ameb.vic.edu.au/new-harp-syllabus/
FRANCES M THIELE - MUSIC FOR LEVER HARP 