Moments From The Movies Fiona Clifton-Welker Harp
ZZCD 9810 You can order this CD in our E-Shop under World/Roots/Entertainment **Sound Clips**

The songs from the movies presented here may be popular in origin, but have become classics in their own right. They range from Henry Mancini's haunting Moon River and Nino Rota's theme from The Godfather to Disney favourites such as Everybody wants to be a cat. They are arranged and played by Fiona Clifton-Welker, a harpist equally at home playing in a symphony orchestra or in a jazz club. The harp's warmth of expression and romantic ambience serves to enhance the charm of these songs, and will no doubt enchant lovers of popular and light classical music in equal measure.

DDD Total Time = 62:39 - Recorded at conway Hall, London, 1998

I took my brief for this CD - to play my own arrangements of music from the movies - as an opportunity for complete personal indulgence. The resulting track list is all music that I love by composers I admire. Some of the songs have become such classics and have been performed in so many different versions that any association with a film seems quite incidental. Others, particularly the tracks originally written as instrumental music, are irretrievably wrapped up with the movies they were composed for.

For some of the pieces, such as Speak Softly Love, I sharpened my pencil in the morning and by the evening I had completed my final and only arrangement. Others, usually the tunes I had been playing in some form or other for years like Summertime, I approached from all sorts of different angles, styles and moods and then went through a lengthy process of elimination. There are tracks in which I tried to catch something of the mood of the original film score, for example Lara’s Theme is arranged for two harps to give an impression of the turbulence of Jarre’s original music. In others, such as Blue Moon, I just did my own thing. A few, such as All The Things That You Are, Mood River and My Funny Valentine, were left for the muse to strike my improvisations on the day of the recording.

The harp is an instrument of great antiquity and has a place at the musical heart of cultures all around the globe. While Sumeria and other Middle Eastern civilisations have left evidence of harp-like instruments from as early as c.2500 BC, its origins may have been much earlier, perhaps somewhere in Africa where many traditional forms of harp exist to this day. Together with its relative. the lyre, it has been the instrument of gads and kings. Apollo and Orpheus charmed with its music; and the young David, later to Israel’s greatest king, provided solace to his troubled predecessor King Saul by playing to him on the kinnor, usually (if incorrectly) translated as harp, David, said to be the writer of the psalms, is often depicted tuning a harp to emphasise his role as keeper of order in the realms of sounds.

While the harp retains its religious connections it has been played by more down-to-earth musicians in many countries. Apart from African and Asian survivals, most forms of harp today derive from the triangular frame instruments first built a thousand years ago in Scotland and Ireland. There were no stringed musical instruments in the Americas before the arrival of the conquistadors, and today’s Paraguayan, Peruvian and other folk instruments are descended indirectly from those British originals, as are folk harps in central Europe and elsewhere.

Simple music may be played on harps with only a few strings, but as the art developed, more notes were required. As developments of many instruments took place in the 18th and 19th centuries, so attempts were made to extend the harp’s scope by mechanical means. If a string could be instantly and effectively retuned to provide extra notes, and the device be operated by the feet, leaving the hands free to play, perhaps the harp could challenge the versatility of keyboard instruments. By 1810 Sebastien Erard had patented a mechanism so ingenious that from that day to this it has remained little changed on the European concert harp, which is the standard in orchestras and for most other uses world-wide.

By operating its seven pedals the harp’s strings (usually 47 in number) can be persuaded to provide a choice of three notes per string. What used to be the equivalent of a keyboard with only the white notes became capable of offering flattened or sharpened versions of each. With this access to the complete chromatic scale of twelve notes in each octave, the harp was able to move into almost all musical realms.

For many purposes the easy facility of the piano enabled it to win as the favourite domestic instrument, but the harp continues to be valued for its sound and expressiveness, deriving from its technique involving the fingers directly in contact with the strings. Its magical quality rarely fails to captivate the listener.                                                                                                                                                        Fiona Clifton-Welker

Fiona used a harp made by Salvi for this recording.