A few weeks ago I had a great phone conversation with my friend and former student Anne Roos.  She called to ask permission to use some of my music in her wedding workshops at the upcoming Somerset Folk Harp Festival in July. 

We started chatting about the various pieces of music that people request for their weddings.  I mentioned that the strangest request that I ever got for the bride's processional was Ghost Riders in the Sky.  (For those of you who are too young to remember this song from the 1950's, it is about having to spend eternity chasing the devil's cattle herd across the sky.)  One of Anne's strangest wedding requests was, luckily, not requested by the bride, but by a guest at the reception:  Chuck Berry's 1972 hit My Ding-a-Ling.

Our conversation quickly deteriorated into the idea for a bogus new harp book entitled "Inappropriate Songs for Weddings." 


There will be two sets of prizes:
1. for the best suggestions that were actually requested for you to play at a wedding (or that you heard at a wedding)
2. for your fun ideas for songs that would be wildly inappropriate for the big day

Your suggestions can be for inappropriate titles, or inappropriate lyrics. Add a sentence or two telling why you think your suggestion should never be played at a wedding, and whether it was actually requested, or just a great idea of your own. You can send as many suggestions as you'd like, just let me know which category they fit into.

You have about 10 days, so put on your thinking cap and submit your suggestions right away to contest@harpcenter.com by July 5th.  Have fun!

Are you a fan of Jane Austen?  Are Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Mansfield Park some of your favorite books and movies? If so (and even if "not"), you're sure to enjoy this new PDF entitled Music for the Netherfield Ball, which includes 18 "Songs and Dances of Jane Austen's Era" arranged for Celtic harp by Suzanne Guldimann. 

Suzanne is well-known for her arrangements of music playable on small harps, and these pieces can be played on harps with 3 octaves or more. She did extensive research when compiling these musical selections. 

"In assembling the music for this collection, I imagined it as a sampling of occasional music that might be played at a country gathering like the Netherfield Ball in Austen's Pride and Prejudice: a mix of popular music, folk songs, and composed works, intended to entertain and give joy.

Music was also an integral aspect of the writer's life. Like many of her characters, Jane Austen played the pianoforte and her letters contain enthusiastic accounts of attending performances.

All but one of the pieces presented in this collection appear in some form in the Austen family music collection. . . . It is unclear how much of the Austen family music Jane herself might have played, but a number of pieces copied into two of the Austen family books are in her handwriting, and this collection includes two pieces reported by Austen's niece Caroline to have been among Jane's favorites."

#p7566 - Music for the Netherfield Ball PDF - $15.95