Re: GDP: 2.3.2.1 Harp

[Trevor Daniels]

Graham Percival wrote Sunday, May 11, 2008 10:44 PM
> On Sun, 11 May 2008 22:32:37 +0100
> "Neil Puttock" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> > I've been looking through section 2, and noticed that the section on
> > harps mentions Sacred Harp music. Now I can't claim much knowledge of
> > old American choral traditions, but I'm pretty sure that it has
> > nothing to do with playing the harp.
>
> I'm pretty certain that you're right.

You're absolutely right!  Sacred harp is a tradition of
singing sacred choral music with its own style of pitch
notation, as described in the section, but it has nothing
at all to do with proper harps.  I should have taken the
trouble to check as I reorganised these sections :(

> I've commented it out;
> if/when somebody takes this section, they can decide whether to
> definitely delete it or not.

The actual content needs to be retained (and perhaps expanded
and linked to a glossary item to explain what it is); but
the location that needs to be redetermined.  As it is
used solely in a capella singing it should go in 2.1 Vocal.
But before we decide, it is closely related to solfege
notation, which doesn't appear to be supported at present
in LilyPond.  In case it is added at some point we should
anticipate a section for it in the docs.  This is also solely
to do with choral singing, so should we have a section in
2.1 entitled Choral notation?  That would be a home for
the sacred harp stuff now and be a logical place for solfege
if and when.

> > Since there's no specific support for harps in LilyPond, do we need a
> > section dedicated to it?
>
> IMO, yes.  (although in this specific case, it might be better to
> direct people to the keyboard section)

Harps certainly have specialist notation but it is not
currently supported by LilyPond.  And there are elements of
notation commonly used for harps that could be brought out,
so there is a case for keeping it, as Graham says:
 
> We don't have any *specific* support for bowed strings -- slurs,
> \upbow, \harmonic are all covered in NR 1.  But there was
> overwhelming desire for a central collection of links to docs that
> related to specific instrument groups.  That's the whole idea of
> the "REferences for XXX" -- there's no new material in there; it's
> just links to the appropriate places in NR 1.
>
> Cheers,
> - Graham

Trevor