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Briggsie- Moretti is such a wonderful harpist. I first heard her at the Baton Rouge Conference years ago and was a little annoyed that she played almost all standard repertoire for that recital. Stuff that you can hear on any senior recital. She played as an encore a wonderful piece by Tournier called The Eternal Dreamer, which she did not announce and which everyone asked me at the reception what it was(I didn’t know). This program that you heard sounds much more interesting and I’m sorry I missed it. Marie-Claire Jamet played the Farkas Hungarian pieces at the Boston Conference in 1994. They’re beautiful. I suspect that Moretti, like Marie-Claire, played selections from that collection rather than the whole thing, because it consists of maybe 15 short pieces. Most of the other pieces on this program I don’t know, and for me that makes the program much more interesting. I wonder if the Faure piece was Une Chatelaine en sa Tour… which she played in Baton Rouge. If it is, she’s a very brave woman. that piece is very tricky to perform, particularly from memory. Le Rossignol is one of my favorite pieces in the whole repertoire, and also one of the most difficult. I would have loved to hear her play that.
Paul- Send them a list of music you would like to hear them play. Especially do that next time you send them a check!
Nicholas- All of the advice here is very good, and the fact that your new harp is doing weird things just means that it is settling in. It’s no indication that the harp is a bad one or that the company did anything wrong. It’s adjusting to a new climate and also to the tension on the frame. It will need a touch up regulation sometime in the first year so that the adjustments can be made for the current environment.
A word about buzzes. They always sound as if they are coming from the action area, but much of the time are not. So look everywhere for the source. Start with the string itself. Is it a gut string with little hairs on it? They can make ‘sizzles. Is the string buzzing where it presses on the nut, or is the adjustable nut vibrating? Is the string eyelet in the soundboard making the noise.
Try to be systematic in your search, and don’t eliminate anything or any area of the instrument as a possibility. Loose pedal cap screws and loose wing bolts can vibrate and they will sound like the noise is coming from inside the action.If you can provide more detailed information I may be able to give you some ideas on where to look. Which string or strings are causing the noise? Which position(flat, natural, or sharp)? Does anything alter the noise, i.e., make it either better or worse? Things like that.
Paul- I understand your complaint completely. Even in Boston the public radio classical programing has been seriously degraded over the years. We used to have 2 public radio stations and one commercial one, and they all played classical music all day long. Now only 1 of the two public radio stations is classical. The other one is now all news and talk radio(interesting but not music) and the commercial one stopped classical programing a few years ago. There is a Harvard student station that plays a lot of classical, and in many ways they are the best. Several times a year they have their “orgy period’ where they pick one composer, or one performer and play everything they can get their hands on by that composer or performer. Years ago they did a Haydn orgy, and played, opus number by opus number, everything that Haydn wrote. It was a revelation and is still talked about today.
My main complaint about many classical stations, public and commercial, is that they play “background music”. Stuff that can be played in an office or work space without intruding on the activities in the office. So they play mostly instrumental music. Never choral, opera, etc. And they tend to play only the most famous or most popular music by composers. If they play Mozart, it’s Eine Kleine Nacht Musik, if Beethoven, the 5th symphony, Rachmaninov- Variations on a theme by Paganini. I hope I never hear any of those pieces ever again.
But back to your post. I understand your frustration, but not supporting the station is not going to get the desired result. You don’t want the station to disappear. You want it to change. Not supporting the station financially runs the risk of a)the station closing down, or b) eliminating classical music altogether because it’s not getting enough financial support. So my advice is: support the station financially but keep complaining. You have more clout when they know you give them money. You could even start collecting money from friends and colleagues so the amount you are giving them is much larger. The more money you can give them, the more they are going to listen. Also, make your complaints known to the arts section of your local newspaper. Get them to write an article about the issue.
Years ago National Public Radio came up with an absolutely hairbrained classical music news program that they then sold to the local stations. The program played parts of symphonies and then faded them out to start a news story about some classical event. In other words, the music was blatantly used as background music. But there were other things too.
After listening to the first two or three programs, I wrote a letter to the Boston Globe about it. My letter got printed with a frame around it and drawings of musical instruments! A week or two later that awful program was off the radio.
So continue to give money and even, if you can, raise money for them. But make a big stink as well.
Thanks Alice. I should clarify here that when I use the term ‘adult beginner’ I’m not referring to their playing level(beginner) but rather to the fact that they began harp as an adult. By that definition, they may play at quite a high level and nevertheless be an adult beginner.
I think you’re right, there can be a big difference between someone who takes a one-off lesson and someone who takes regular lessons with a single teacher. In the cases that I dealt with, I don’t know if the people who came to me were studying regularly with someone else, if they ‘got permission’ from their regular teacher to take a lesson with me, or if their regular teacher had worked with them on the piece they brought to me. I make a point of dealing only with the student and the material at hand during a one-off lesson.
Barb- With any student I teach, I usually ask them what they want to work on, what music they like, and when the student is ready to work on a new piece, I give them a choice of 2 to 4 different pieces that will accomplish what I want to accomplish and let them choose. I’ve learned the hard way that if the student doesn’t like the piece, you will accomplish nothing.
It’s really nice to hear that there are dedicated adult beginners who are willing to do the work that will achieve results. I didn’t mean to make a broad sweeping statement that “all adult beginners are awful to teach.” I was just relating my own experience with a few people and was trying to figure out the mindset that would make them completely ignore the valuable work that they had to do. Its nice to hear there are those willing to do it.
Barb- With any student I teach, I usually ask them what they want to work on, what music they like, and when the student is ready to work on a new piece, I give them a choice of 2 to 4 different pieces that will accomplish what I want to accomplish and let them choose. I’ve learned the hard way that if the student doesn’t like the piece, you will accomplish nothing.
It’s really nice to hear that there are dedicated adult beginners who are willing to do the work that will achieve results. I didn’t mean to make a broad sweeping statement that “all adult beginners are awful to teach.” I was just relating my own experience with a few people and was trying to figure out the mindset that would make them completely ignore the valuable work that they had to do. Its nice to hear there are those willing to do it.
-They will work hardest at something that applies directly to those goals. If their goal is to be able to play scores from musicals, it will not help to assign them all classics.-
Denise. I understand most of what you are saying, but those last two sentences, quoted above, are very telling. This is where adult beginners get into real trouble. Playing classics is very definitely a help in playing musicals, jazz, whatever. At Berkelee School of Music in Boston, one of the best music schools in the world for jazz, pop music, arranging, etc. the students study classical repertoire on their own instrument. Why? Because that’s how you learn to play the instrument. Your statement above is exactly what I have found in teaching adult beginners. For some reason they don’t see the connection between the technical work and playing the piece of their dreams. But there is a connection. A HUGE connection.
-They will work hardest at something that applies directly to those goals. If their goal is to be able to play scores from musicals, it will not help to assign them all classics.-
Denise. I understand most of what you are saying, but those last two sentences, quoted above, are very telling. This is where adult beginners get into real trouble. Playing classics is very definitely a help in playing musicals, jazz, whatever. At Berkelee School of Music in Boston, one of the best music schools in the world for jazz, pop music, arranging, etc. the students study classical repertoire on their own instrument. Why? Because that’s how you learn to play the instrument. Your statement above is exactly what I have found in teaching adult beginners. For some reason they don’t see the connection between the technical work and playing the piece of their dreams. But there is a connection. A HUGE connection.
Gorman- Again, you are at a huge advantage, having been a trained musician on another instrument before coming to the harp. From the limited experiences I have had with adult beginners who have never studied an instrument before, they seem to think that you can just sit and play the piece as written over and over again and you will eventually learn it. So they struggle endlessly. it’s the total lack of interest in learning the basics, or seeing that by doing exercises, etudes, or what have you they will learn to play the repertoire that they really want to do that baffles me.
Gorman- Again, you are at a huge advantage, having been a trained musician on another instrument before coming to the harp. From the limited experiences I have had with adult beginners who have never studied an instrument before, they seem to think that you can just sit and play the piece as written over and over again and you will eventually learn it. So they struggle endlessly. it’s the total lack of interest in learning the basics, or seeing that by doing exercises, etudes, or what have you they will learn to play the repertoire that they really want to do that baffles me.
I know everyone is not the same. And certainly with your extensive musical background you’re at an enormous advantage. There’s a lot that you learned as a professional musician on other instruments(music theory, practice habits, etc.) that is transferrable to your harp studies. I guess I’m talking about adults picking up the harp who have never studied music before mostly.
When I lived in France I taught English to French businessmen at a language school in Paris. There were very clear differences in how easily each man learned to speak English. Some picked it up quite easily and others were impossible. The worst student I had was a man in his 60’s, a self-made millionaire, who had just sold his company to Kimberly-Clarke. The best student was a young moroccan probably in his late 20’s. I suspect that teaching language to children, particularly very young children, is a very different experience. So maybe there are big differences too between adults who are learning a musical instrument for the first time. But I still wonder if the basic approach of adult beginners, and their mindset, is their biggest impediment to learning an instrument.
I know everyone is not the same. And certainly with your extensive musical background you’re at an enormous advantage. There’s a lot that you learned as a professional musician on other instruments(music theory, practice habits, etc.) that is transferrable to your harp studies. I guess I’m talking about adults picking up the harp who have never studied music before mostly.
When I lived in France I taught English to French businessmen at a language school in Paris. There were very clear differences in how easily each man learned to speak English. Some picked it up quite easily and others were impossible. The worst student I had was a man in his 60’s, a self-made millionaire, who had just sold his company to Kimberly-Clarke. The best student was a young moroccan probably in his late 20’s. I suspect that teaching language to children, particularly very young children, is a very different experience. So maybe there are big differences too between adults who are learning a musical instrument for the first time. But I still wonder if the basic approach of adult beginners, and their mindset, is their biggest impediment to learning an instrument.
