Etudes with beginning students

[unknown-user]

I currently have students aged 7-13

[carl-swanson]

The easiest set of Bochsa etudes is the Op. 318, which is called 40 EASY ETUDES.

[barbara-brundage]

I also like the Damase ’10 etudes faciles et progressives’ and the Naderman ‘Douze etudes et un theme varie’, both of which can be used with lever harps as well a pedal harps.

In my experience, my younger students are more open to Pozzoli than Bochsa when they are starting etudes, just because the typesetting/page layout is more attractive and not so forbidding. Once they understand why they are doing etudes, if they are serious, they will do Bochsa without more than the usual grumbling.

[karen-conoan]

I may be stating the obvious, but:

“Harp Olympics” Vols 1,2,3,4

[unknown-user]

Which Bochsa etudes are in the Universal Method? The same set or another? How many different sets did he compose? I find it confusing, with the different editions.

[unknown-user]

I would not want to spend the student’s time on etudes unless they are performable pieces. I remember feeling insulted by having to study pieces that were useless except as technique builders. I think it would be better to give them varied exercises to play musically, and to give them technique-building repertoire. I appreciate many of Bochsa’s etudes, but they usually fail to develop the left hand sufficiently, and most of the others I have seen are musical wallpaper. Then there’s the problem of ones that harp on one figure for too long. So which ones are really worthwhile? I have a book of Dizi, with one etude Zabaleta recorded which is sort of catchy, but none of the others look appealling. Plus, like a lot of Bochsa, the writing style is so pianistic, not harpistic. Is Godefroid any better? Concone? Grossi or Pozzoli? Posse? Schuecker? I have not enjoyed them on recordings. I will not bother mentioning the five I love.

[carl-swanson]

Saul- You’re missing the whole point about using etudes.

[unknown-user]

We obviously disagree on the extent of etude use. The Mozart is, in some places, quite pianistic. Not as much, the Handel. Exercises do not have to be boring, it depends a lot on how they are constructed. We also have clearly different experience, as I learned a great deal of technique from repertoire, and even more from exercises, and much less from etudes.

I don’t miss the point of repetition in etudes, one page of it is good, but four or five pages if the same figure is not. Of course, what you say about all the great harpists of the twentieth century being raised on etudes is just not true. You would have to exclude, as far as I know, pretty much most of the pupils of Carlos Salzedo, Lucile Lawrence, perhaps Alice Chalifoux, Lynne Palmer and others.

[unknown-user]

So, if you do use etudes, be they Pozzoli or Bochsa or Naderman or Salzedo or whomever, how do you use them? How do you practice them? What is your goal and where do you perform them if you do?

[Anonymous]

Apart from my first and last teachers, my other three teachers had been exponents of the Salzedo system to some degree or other.

[Bonnie Shaljean]

Re Victor Coeur’s School of Mechanism – I had not heard of this book.

[Amiable Aardvark]

So would I! Do you have any thoughts on this, Mr. Milligan?

[Anonymous]

First of all, thank you for the kind words about Medieval to Modern.

[carl-swanson]

I have an idea where I can find it.

[alexander-rider]

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