Mermaids by Carol Wood PDF Download

For lever or pedal harp.

Carol Wood has composed a super collection of music about mermaids. There are 6 solo harp pieces, and 3 songs for harp and voice. The music is for intermediate harp players, and some of the pieces include a few fingerings.

Mermaids' and Sailors' Hornpipe, Sarabande des Sirenes, Nixies' Galliard, and Iona's Mermaid are all in the key of C for solo harp.
Deep Water Calypso is in the key of G for solo harp.
Little Blue Barcarolle has two arrangements for solo harp: one for harps tuned to C (which requires A# levers), and another for harps tuned to flats (which requires C# levers).

There are also 3 pieces for harp and voice.
From the Rocks, for harp and two female voices, has lots of lever or pedal changes within the music.
Sunk Lyonesse, for harp and voice, is in the key of C, but also has G#s. There are some lever changes within the music.
The Forsaken Merman has two arrangements. The first is in the key of G, and the second (for lower voices) is in the key of C. Neither arrangement requires lever changes.

This PDF is 54 pages, including 49 pages of music.

Here's what Carol has to say about this music:
Mermaids and their kindred water spirits such as naiads, lorelei, and sirens are often musical creatures. They sing and even play harps or lyres in our myths, art, and poetry, like the nereids in Walter de la Mare's "Sunk Lyonesse." A collection of harp music about mermaids, therefore, seemed like an attractive idea to me.

I've used several "watery" musical devices, including parallel fourths, whole-tone glisses, and arpeggios built on diminished and half-diminished sevenths, to suggest the element in which mermaids live and play and sing.

The "Little Blue Barcarolle" is somewhat different from the typical barcarolle, the rhythm of which is usually meant to suggest the gentle roll of a small boat. Here, the rhythm and the blues mode suggest, I hope, that mermaids are playfully rocking the boat.

"Iona's Mermaid" is based on the medieval story of a mermaid who wanted to be baptized by the monks living on the holy island of Iona. Though the poor mermaid swam round and round the island, the pious monks refused to baptize her, presumably because they believed a mermaid had no soul.

"From the Rocks" is the kind of song that mermaids might sing to lure sailors onto the rocks that will destroy their ships.

"The Forsaken Merman," by the Victorian poet Matthew Arnold, is a touching poem about a despondent merman and his children, left alone by the human woman who returns to her life on land.

The Victorians were particularly fascinated by mermaids. Many painters of the period depicted them, including the late Pre-Raphaelite, J. W. Waterhouse. His painting "A Mermaid," is reproduced on the cover of this collection, by kind permission of the Royal Academy of Art (London).

You can listen to Carol Wood performing YouTube: The Forsaken Merman on YouTube

Click on the blue titles below to see a sample of the first few lines of music.