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This piece is an etude, and the technical point it is teaching is the bisbigliando effect. It forces you to touch the strings at the moment you play them and not a nanosecond earlier. This means that, at a very high rate of speed, you have to place just one note at a time ahead of the one you are playing so that the string can ring as long as possible and so you don’t hear any muffle. Watch Mildred Dilling on youtube. She does it expertly.
I would try a couple of things to try to get the technique down. You don’t have to practice the whole piece while you are working out the technique. Just work on one or two lines. When you have those working properly the rest of the piece will be there. First, play the three note arpeggios in each hand as chords, and practice placing and playing the chord in one movement, not two. Your fingers should touch the string ONLY at the moment you play the strings. Practice that slowly, maybe even hands separately, then together slowly until you can play the chords very fast with both hands and you are not muffling anything.
Secondly, play the arpeggios as written, with both hands, very slowly and focusing entirely on placing one finger at a time ahead of the one being played. When done correctly, you should not hear any muffling or accents or unevenness. Slowly speed it up keeping that one-finger-at-a-time placing.
Hasselmans indicates the melody notes with double stems. But the success of the piece depends mostly on an effortless, accentless hum of harmony from the fast even arpeggios, and also the changes in dynamics he has indicated.
Michael- Interesting post. Since the pinky is so short you must have to alter your hand position considerably to do this. You might try another approach.
In Belgium there are still some people who play chromatic harp. I visited with one of them years ago and a student of her’s, a woman at that time in her early 20’s, played two difficult pieces for me. The technique she used baffled me and was very very different from pedal harp technique. Because she was playing on two sets of crossed strings, she had to play above and below the point where the strings crossed. This meant that when she played certain chords, she often used the fingering(from bottom to top) 3 4 2 1. She rolled the chord that way. Have you tried fingering a 5 note chord 4 5 3 2 1? It might work. if it does, it would take you a short time and some made-up exercises to get used to it.
You’re right Sylvia. In the end who cares what technique is used. I only pointed that out so that anyone not familiar with French technique could see clearly how he uses his hands. Even young students learning French technique can see here how an advanced harpist plays. The Dilling film on youtube is another very good example of French technique, as well as being wonderfully musical.
If you’re going to tune by ear, here’s the jist of what the piano tuner told me. Throughout this process, what you are mostly, almost entirely listening to the the “beat” produced when you play two notes simultaneously. With the 4th and 5th intervals you are trying to slow the beat down. With thirds and 6ths you are listening to a nice roll to the beat. It takes time to learn to hear this beat accurately. Even piano tuners who stop tuning for a while have to get that skill back when they start up again. You can only tune by ear if you have DEAD SILENCE as you tune.
Start with A 440, matched to a tuning fork. The whole tuning should be done in C flat(all pedals in flat position). But for the sake of explaining this clearly here, without a flat symbol, I’ll explain it as if you were tuning with all the pedals in natural. Also, if your harp is not very well regulated, you’re probably better of tuning in natural.
Tune both D’s and both E’s from the A. There is less aural leeway with a 4th than a 5th, so chances are your 4ths will be more in tune. Use your tuned 4th to check the octave, i.e., the E below A is a 4th and so will probably be more accurate. Tune the E 5 above the A to A but check it against the lower E.
Next tune both G’s from the D, and both B’s from the E. At this point you have the major third and major 6th of G to B that you can check.
Now tune both C’s from the G. Since B to F is an augmented 4th without moving F into sharp or B into flat, you should complete the circle from the other side. With both C’s in tune you can check more major and minor thirds and 6ths.
Lastly, tune the F’s to C. In each of these steps, tune the new note from the previous one using both the 4th interval and the 5th. If you tune only using the interval of a 5th you could wind up wildly off when you complete the circle.
At this point you should have about 2 octaves that have been tuned intervallicaly. Make sure at this point that everything sounds the way you want and make any changes necessary. You may have to go over the whole thing again to get it right.
Now start tuning down the instrument using compound 4ths and 5ths(an octave and a 4th, an octave and a 5th). These are much more accurate than tuning octaves. As you get further down the instrument, tune by 2 octave intervals, i.e. 5th octave C to 3rd octave C for example. Also use the compound intervals to check. But it’s hard to hear 5th and 6th octave notes in 4th and 5th intervals, even compound.
Tune up the instrument the same way, using compound intervals and 2 octave intervals.
-The harp is not the same as other instruments.-
Baloney! The main problem with American harp pedagogy is that the vast majority of teachers at all levels don’t think that technique has to be taught as its own issue. They think that you can learn advanced technique just by playing pieces. All other instruments use etudes, but for some reason many harp teachers think they are not needed. And look at the results. How many Americans have won top prizes at international harp competitions in the last 30 years? Who has been consistently winning prizes at those competitions? The French and the Russians, who both make heavy use of etudes.
Years ago Americans regularly won top honors in competitions. Susan McDonald, Nancy Allen, Barbara Allen, Lynn Turner, etc. And they were all taught the French way. Salzedo, himself trained by Hasselmans and years of etudes, was the one who decided that etudes were not necessary.
The Chopin etudes you mentioned are in fact not etudes. They are virtuoso concert pieces written in the style of an etude and are not used to teach technique but rather to show it off.
-The harp is not the same as other instruments.-
Baloney! The main problem with American harp pedagogy is that the vast majority of teachers at all levels don’t think that technique has to be taught as its own issue. They think that you can learn advanced technique just by playing pieces. All other instruments use etudes, but for some reason many harp teachers think they are not needed. And look at the results. How many Americans have won top prizes at international harp competitions in the last 30 years? Who has been consistently winning prizes at those competitions? The French and the Russians, who both make heavy use of etudes.
Years ago Americans regularly won top honors in competitions. Susan McDonald, Nancy Allen, Barbara Allen, Lynn Turner, etc. And they were all taught the French way. Salzedo, himself trained by Hasselmans and years of etudes, was the one who decided that etudes were not necessary.
The Chopin etudes you mentioned are in fact not etudes. They are virtuoso concert pieces written in the style of an etude and are not used to teach technique but rather to show it off.
-The harp is not the same as other instruments.-
Baloney! The main problem with American harp pedagogy is that the vast majority of teachers at all levels don’t think that technique has to be taught as its own issue. They think that you can learn advanced technique just by playing pieces. All other instruments use etudes, but for some reason many harp teachers think they are not needed. And look at the results. How many Americans have won top prizes at international harp competitions in the last 30 years? Who has been consistently winning prizes at those competitions? The French and the Russians, who both make heavy use of etudes.
Years ago Americans regularly won top honors in competitions. Susan McDonald, Nancy Allen, Barbara Allen, Lynn Turner, etc. And they were all taught the French way. Salzedo, himself trained by Hasselmans and years of etudes, was the one who decided that etudes were not necessary.
The Chopin etudes you mentioned are in fact not etudes. They are virtuoso concert pieces written in the style of an etude and are not used to teach technique but rather to show it off.
I’m old enough to remember well a time when all harpists tuned by ear. It was awful! The old saw about harpists spending half of their life tuning and the other half playing out of tune was exactly right. Much of the problem was that we often had to tune when there was background noise of one sort or another. To tune by ear you need dead silence. Also, if the harp is very out of tune when you start tuning by ear, then by the time you are done you are tuning to out of tune strings.
At one point I had a piano tuner give me some tips on tuning. Just checking 5ths and 4ths will not do it. There is too much leeway. You have to check major thirds and 10ths, you have to check the intervals of an octave and a 4th and an octave and a 5th, and two octave intervals. I got much better at tuning by ear, but it took at least 20 minutes. If tuning machines had not come along I think I would have given up the harp. With a machine of course we can do a quick and accurate tuning in maybe 2 minutes or less. For me personally I say good riddance to tuning by ear.
I’ve been trying to get his email address so I could write him and see if the whole Goldberg recording is on DVD the way this youtube excerpt is. If any of the French readers know his email address maybe you could contact me.
-I disagree on the value of these etudes. They only prepare you for 19th century music, neglect the left hand terribly, and I think lead to stiff playing from over repetition.-
Saul- Nothing could be further from the truth. Good etudes, such as the Bochsa series, teach you how to get around the instrument with ease, facility, and suppleness. They are also the best way to make the fingers truly independent. The only way to learn that is by playing a whole series of etudes that focus on endless patterns. The length of Bochsa’s later etudes(50 etudes in two volumes) teaches you how to play long difficult music in a relaxed efficient manner. Students who have never studied etudes judiciously and try to play difficult repertoire will sound like they are struggling and do not have complete control.
The use of etudes on all instruments really came into prominence in the 19th century and has a long proven track record. Hasselmans terrorized his students at the Paris Conservatory with his demand that the learn etudes fast and accurately(and memorized), and he produced all, ALL, of the virtuoso harpists of the 20th century.
-I disagree on the value of these etudes. They only prepare you for 19th century music, neglect the left hand terribly, and I think lead to stiff playing from over repetition.-
Saul- Nothing could be further from the truth. Good etudes, such as the Bochsa series, teach you how to get around the instrument with ease, facility, and suppleness. They are also the best way to make the fingers truly independent. The only way to learn that is by playing a whole series of etudes that focus on endless patterns. The length of Bochsa’s later etudes(50 etudes in two volumes) teaches you how to play long difficult music in a relaxed efficient manner. Students who have never studied etudes judiciously and try to play difficult repertoire will sound like they are struggling and do not have complete control.
The use of etudes on all instruments really came into prominence in the 19th century and has a long proven track record. Hasselmans terrorized his students at the Paris Conservatory with his demand that the learn etudes fast and accurately(and memorized), and he produced all, ALL, of the virtuoso harpists of the 20th century.
