I’m wondering about your remark regarding how long one should study a piece. I’ve had many different teachers (community music school) but none of them liked to spend too much time on one piece.

A while ago, I started learning Nataliana. Now I can ‘play the notes’ but I feel I’m far from mastering it. It’s the most advanced piece I know and I wouldn’t mind spending more time on it, but my teacher was more than happy to let me move on.

So perhaps there’s also a task for the harp teachers? Not everyone wants to aim for the highest goal possible but some people are… and perhaps teachers could be more supportive of that. Not all ‘ambitious’ students are 10 year old prodigies… I’m 20 and it’s my dream to be able to play the Impromptu by Faure during my lifetime (I don’t mind if it takes 20 more years).

I am with Misty, except I woudn’t even bother to ask permission. My teacher is the same way — I work on something until I basically have it, and then we go on to something that has new concepts for me to learn. Her philosophy is that I pay her to learn things, and that polishing is not learning – I can polish on my own. So in my practice time, I have a

Her philosophy is that I pay her to learn things, and that polishing is not learning – I can polish on my own.

That’s an interesting philosophy. I’m happy my physician’s teacher didn’t have that same philosophy!

Her philosophy is that I pay her to learn things, and that polishing is not learning – I can polish on my own.

I have two thoughts about that, particularly from how I learn, but I have observed these in students too.

OK – I can’t spell

I’m with Tacye on this one.

Once you are past the beginner stage, and you have a good technique down, and you pretty much can figure out things like fingerings and where to put pedal or lever changes and things like that, you don’t really need a teacher to learn the notes. They are on the page, you can learn them yourself.

At that point the teacher is helping you understand and interpret the music.

I would suggest watching the PBS documentary Harp Dreams, about the preparation and pressure of a major harp competition. There are several instances showing the students working with their teachers, and none of them have their teachers showing them how to play. They are helping them develop their interpretation and “polishing” their pieces. These folks don’t need someone teach them the notes. Most of them can sight read stuff that would give the rest of us a headache just looking at. It’s understanding the music, it’s history, and figuring out what they want to say with it that they get from their teachers at that point.

My take is that a good teacher begins by teaching you how to play the instrument, but they also help you learn to play the music, which is a very different thing in my opinion.

I also want to hit on what someone else said. That the reason and motivation people learn to play now may be very different then in the past, and probably has changed many times over the centuries.

From the ancient Irish harpers to modern harpists, the role and reasons have changed. Once harp was something that women learned, not to be professional musicians but to simply entertain in the family parlor and because music was simply a part of a well bred young ladies “education”.

Then as society changed pretty much the only people who learned were those seeking a career with the harp.

Now there are all sorts of reasons a person may learn the harp, and today we probably have the highest number of people who learn to play just for fun and their own enjoyment, much like how many people who learn the guitar have no intentions of being a professional but just want to be able to sit around with friends and play some music, so now I think many who take up the harp do it with that same mind set.

Once you start there is no telling where you will go with it, but I do think that a teacher needs to take a students goals into mind when they are teaching them. The approach with someone who fully intends to make the