Shelley Lynn Jones and Professor David A. Day, Harold B. Lee Library

The Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris has been a center for the world’s best musicians and composers since it was established centuries ago. It is the school’s tradition to hold a competition for each instrument every year. Every year a piece is chosen for the competition and students of that instrument compete. Many of the pieces selected in the past for the harp are now widely played and are part of the harp’s standard repertoire. Gabriel Faure’s Impromptu or Felix Godefroid’s La danse des sylphes are both constantly being played and recycled for other competitions. Other pieces written for the competition cannot be played now because they are not found in the publishing houses or the libraries.

At the suggestion of Catherine Michel, the harpist of the Paris Opera, I decided to research these missing pieces. My goal was to find the pieces and request copies for the Harold B. Lee Library, where the International Harp Archives are housed. Many new pieces are published for the harp every month, but I wanted to resurrect the pieces written in the romantic era. These pieces would capture the ideals and feel of the nineteenth century, unlike their contemporary counterparts written today.

This project required countless hours of research culminating in a trip to Paris to research in the libraries and archives there. From 1824 to 1940 there were sixty-eight different pieces used for the competition, the more popular pieces being repeated up to six times. Between the Harold B. Lee Library and the International Harp Archives I found thirty-three pieces from this list, most of these from the latter years of the competition. My search took me to other library databases but I found no additional pieces. Some composers such as Antione Prumier and his son Ange-Conrad Prumier were not even included in the databases.

Le Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the Bibliotheque de la Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris are the libraries where most of my time in Paris was spent. I was surprised to find the libraries much different than the libraries in the United States. The national library of France is not yet computerized but is still using card catalogs. Due to the lack of organization, I spent time finding the composers I needed, and then spent times scanning each card in that drawer. The cards are not organized alphabetically or by genre. After finding a call number, I submitted it to the librarian, and then waited fifteen to twenty minutes. Eventually she would bring me the pieces I had requested so that I could view them. This required careful planning because the limit of pieces to request in one day was ten and I was only in Paris for ten days.

I was worried that my lack of fluency in French would become a big obstacle for me, but found the Parisians to be very helpful and forgiving of my poor French. Instead I found the obstacle that was most frustrating was the exuberant amount of resources. I had much too little time to search all the different archives, libraries and collections in Paris. Another frustration was finding some pieces but was unable to copy them or request copies for our library because of their policies. These will have to wait for a later trip.

By the end of my trip I had requested seventeen pieces to add to Brigham Young University’s collection. Within this group are pieces by Antoine Prumier, Theodore Labarre, and Charles Bochsa. I count this trip as a success by the amount of pieces found, and also by the amount I learned about research. It is my hope that these newly discovered pieces will become incorporated into the standard repertoire of the harp.

As I reflect on the project it not only taught me, but also encouraged me to start new projects in the harp world. One of these is the compilation of sight-reading pieces written for the entrance exam to the Conservatory. These pieces could prove invaluable for beginning students or to improve technique for musicians of all levels. Although I was able to find many pieces from the competition there are still an additional eighteen pieces undiscovered. I plan on continuing my research, using this project as a springboard. There are many more projects to be completed that will greatly enrich the harp world.