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One last thing about the Mildred Dilling blogs that I just discovered: At the end of each of the 4 parts is a little tool bar. One of the commands is COMMENTS. If you go directly to that BEFORE reading that part and click on comments, the whole text for that section fills the whole screen AND the comments that people wrote in which are really interesting, come up as well. So to recap:
Click on blogs
click on Carl Swanson
Scroll down to the listing of months and click on March 06
Scroll down(way down) to find part I, and scroll down to the bottom of Part I and click on Comments.
Read part I and the comments
When you’re done, do this whole process again to get to part II, etc.Bonnie-I just went to the blogs and found the 4 posts about Mildred Dilling. Until I get a chance to put these up on my own web site, here’s how you locate them here.
Go to the blogs and click on my name. Then go the the calendar list part way down and click on March 2006. Scroll down to the bottom of that until you come to Part I. After you’ve read that, scroll back up to get to part II(It’s before part I). Remember, these are archived in reverse order, with the earliest post at the end of the list, the second one up above the first, and the third one above that. To read the last part, Part IV, go back to the calendar and click on April 2006. You’ll find it in that text. Enjoy.
Please, if anybody has a desire to discuss the differences between Grandjany and Salzedo technique: take two aspirins and lay down ’til it goes away!
That’s very interesting. I didn’t know about that. it may be that the speeded it up to get it into the alloted time frame. it comes in at something like 9 minutes and 33 seconds. So it sounds like she probably played it at her usual speed, slightly slower, and then they speeded it up. Either way, this is a wonderful documentation of her playing.
I’ve been getting private emails about the Dilling video since putting that up. Here’s one that I got from Emily Mitchell.
The Mildred Dilling film is fabulous. I didn’t know she was so good. When I was growing up and heard her play live it was well after her prime. She was a beautiful representative of the French School. I’m completely impressed.
Most of us around today who knew Mildred Dilling only knew her in her old age, and that is not representative of what she could really do. Emily heard her play one of those Community Concerts programs. But that was long after her prime. So we all(those of us who knew her) are really blown away at how good she really was.
Bonnie- I’ve been thinking of putting the whole Dilling blog up on my company web site, http://www.swansonharp.com. I have an ARTICLES page there and have all of the articles I’ve written over the years which have been published in either the Journal of the American Harp Society or The Harp Column. Let me talk to Kim about this.
Part of the problem with looking for them in the blog archives here is that you have to start with the earliest one and go backwards through the blogs to read the whole article in proper sequence. So give me a few days and it should be up on my web site.
Barbara- I’m glad you pointed out the HC pick. I would have missed that.
It would be interesting to try slowing it down slightly and see what it looks like. I may try that at some point. When my friend uploaded it to youtube, he initially tried to do it at a higher resolution. But that didn’t work. It still looks pretty good though and you can clearly see how her hands work.
I chose to put the whole film up there intact and not edit it down to just the playing. When she gave her recitals(thousands of them!) she always talked to the audience between pieces, and I think it is interesting to see her presence and hear her voice here. It’s a good indication of what she must have been like on stage.
Barbara- I checked the pitch(at Geraldine’s suggestion) to see if the whole thing had been speeded up. But the pitch was correct.
That is in fact a 4 finger trill, using the fingering 43214321 etc. It’s amazing how clean it is. Yes, she rests her right arm on the edge of the soundboard. My good friend Geraldine Ruegg, who went to France with Mildred before and after the War to study with Renie, thought the tempos were a little faster than Mildred would have played them and that led me to the conclusion that she may have speeded them up to fit the 10 minute format of the film. Geraldine also thought Mildred’s left arm was moving around(sort of flapping) more than Mildred would have done in a concert. John Mangrum, who found the film and who studied with Mildred, observed this too. It may be something that she, or the director of the film, thought would “liven up” the image. I don’t know. At any rate, there’s a lot of good technical information one can get from seeing her play. So now we can ALL say we had a lesson with Mildred Dilling!
Bonnie- Thank you so much for these notes on the piece. I’m going to print this out and make the changes to my copy. it is kind of interesting to me that, while French composers produced so much music that is in our standard repertoire, the published editions were not very harp-friendly and all need a lot of editing to make playable. They all require so much preliminary work to get ready: writing in pedals and fingerings, re-writing notes enharmonically, or re-distributing material from left to right hand or visa versa. I’ve mentioned it before here, but Faure’s Une Chatelaine en sa Tour… is the worst one I have found, and that was dedicated to a very gifted harpist! You’d think she could have helped with the preparation of the publication. That’s why I decided to publish a version of that piece, saving everyone else weeks of preparation work.
Easy may not be what was intended. Anything written by a harpist is going to be more comfortable than anything written by a non-harpist. I think this is true on any instrument. Even if a piece is difficult-say a Chopin Etude- the notes on the piano still fall under the fingers. The cadenza is difficult but more comfortable than other parts of the concerto, particularly the first movement. There is always a certain awkwardness to any piece written by a non-harpist.
