Harpist to Publish Jane's Sheet Music

Harpist to Publish Jane's Sheet Music

Fascinated by the music from the late 1700s and early 1800s, Malibu harpist Suzanne Guldimann has been busy compiling her ninth book of music for the Celtic harp, Music for the Netherfield Ball: Songs and Dances of Jane Austen’s Era, which will soon be available at Amazon. Guldimann’s new book focuses on selections from the Jane Austen Family Collection which Guldimann has transposed and arranged for the Celtic harp. Her source? In the mid-2000s, researchers compiling a bibliography on Jane Austen stumbled across the Austen family’s personal music collection, of which 18 volumes have survived and been put online.

“Some of the music was copied by hand, some of it was printed and gathered up and bound, but there are three volumes that Jane copied down in her own handwriting, so we know she played that music,” Guldimann said.

In Jane Austen’s era playing the harp provided young women with a way to charm potential suitors into marriage. Now, while we may no longer take up instruments in the hope of finding life partners (on the whole), at the Jane Austen News we do very much want to take up the harp so that we can try playing the music that Jane played. We can imagine that we're not the only ones thinking this...

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