Salzedo vs Grandjany

[unknown-user]

I do not undestand what the big deal is.

I was having a harp lesson with a new teacher the other day and she asked me to play for her and I had only played about 4 notes of an arpeggio and she made me stop. She told me my technique was horrible and she didn’t even know where to being correcting it.

I explained to her that I learned Salzedo and she refused to even teach me if I didn’t ‘convert’ to Grandjany. I wasn’t aware that some people were so empassioned about it.

Does anyone else think that that was completely rude and unprofessional? Or do people do that all the time?

[alexander-rider]

Oh dear. I hear a bomb ticking… Kelsea. Of course that was unprofessional. Find another teacher. One who can achieve what she wants to achieve gently and with professionalism and care. Without using words like ‘horrible’. It’s not right. Seriously. You don’t need to bother with this hyper-dogmatic

[Briggsie B. Peawiggle]

Using words like “horrible” to describe someone’s technique when you are a teacher is just completely WRONG. Teachers are supposed to help build confidence not rip it apart. Find a real teacher. This is just totally unacceptable. Either this person is completely burned out, has the wrong personality type for teaching or just doesn’t know any better.

June

[carl-swanson]

I agree with the above responses.

[unknown-user]

Thank you for all the responses!

I am not planning on having a second lesson with her. I would rather have a teacher that is willing to let me experiment and use mabye a little of both methods. She also didn’t seem very willing to help me with experimental sorts of music (for example I wanted to work on Song in the Night by Salzedo [bad move, haha] for college auditions and she nearly fell over.)

I shall look around. Happy harping!

Cheers

[barbara-brundage]

Even the use of the word “Grandjany” is a red flag. People who studied with Mr. Grandjany or his students know that he did not have his own method. He played and taught the French method and a real Grandjany student would never ever call it “Grandjany.”

I agree with everyone else. Go elsewhere.

[virginia-schweninger]

Ignore everything she said. I can’t tell you how many students come to me with injuries inflicted by past teachers! At my 1st meeting with a college sophomore last year she said she really wanted to play Song in the Night. I could see she had a ways to go, but we got to right work. She just played it and many other pieces at her recital and did a GREAT job of it. Now she tells me her previous teacher said she’d NEVER play it.

Other students have come to me because they want to sell their harps after giving up years ago when a teacher said they had no talent, or made any number of other demoralizing comments. We just dust ourselves off, start over and relax with a joyful approach utilizing tools that have worked for many . . . French school, Salzedo, Alexander Technique, whatever seems to suit their hands, their goals and their previous training. We have fun, work hard and make music.

[unknown-user]

Well that’s exactly the way it should be!

Thank you everybody-

(I love this webstie)

Cheers

[Harp One]

(Please understand that English is not my first language.)

You should be careful with what you`ve learned and who you`ve studied with. (if you want to be something in the harp world.)

I am now 30 and everday I am thinking about this. What if I start to study with her(him)? What if she(he) is my teacher?

Of course it is important that you practice hard and right, but it is also Really important who you study with. Study with a teacher who is in the main stream. There is the reason

[kimberly-houser]

Exactly Carl,

[unknown-user]

I sought out the best possible teachers, regardless of where they taught, not the top best-known school whoever the teacher was, or the most popular teacher. What do you learn from that? It might make some things easier, but I feel I learned the most by taking my path as I did.

If you have been trained in one particular school, it will take time to make changes in your technique, and if you can continue along the same line, your progress may be more continuous. I don’t find a mish-mosh approach to study very productive. I would rather hear a pure Grandjany player, if you can call someone that, in their repertoire, than someone who has learned a litle of this, a little of that. The players I have heard who were well trained in my schooling and then either did their own thing, or went to a different kind of playing, lost their best qualities by abandoning the work they had built up. Learning from multiple schools might work for some, but to me, you would need your entire lifetime to do it, because it has taken 20 years or more to master the Salzedo schooling, and I’m too tire to now take on the Grandjany or another schooling. Two or three years of each would only scratch the surface, it seems to me. But, everything depends on who the individual in question is, in the end.

[kimberly-houser]

Remember, and this has been stated time and again on this site, that Salzedo and Grandjany came from the same background, the French School of Hasselman’s.

[unknown-user]

Yes, they should definitely be used in a positive way. Full agreement on that.

[unknown-user]

I had a most wonderful piano teacher in my youth who told me something very wise: “Whatever music you choose to play, make sure the ONE thing you do above everything else, is LISTEN to the sound you are producing. Can you be proud of that? Then there you are.” You should know that this teacher was trained in pre-revolution Russia and he was a stickler for technique.

I am coming to the harp as an adult after 45 years of playing the piano and organ, Classical literature primarily. What a different way to use one’s hands. I find it a struggle at times, but very rewarding. I have always loved the sound of the harp.

[Author]

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