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Elizabeth- That’s basically what I do too. I only take students who have been playing for a while, and when a new student comes to me I ask that they plan on playing something for me that they are very comfortable with. I’m interested in seeing how they use their hands and fingers, not in the hardest piece they can play. I also ask them to bring a list of everything they have worked on in the past two years or so, starting with the most recent.
There’s a long history of moving two pedals at the same time with one foot. In the next issue of the Harp Journal I have an article coming out about that killer pedal passage in Debussy’s Danses. In the printed version, Renie has E and G moving on the same beat from flat to natural. What I found out recently, and the inspiration for the article, is that she found that she could move both pedals in one movement wearing a shoe that was in fashion at the time. It had a thick high heal and a blunt toe and this allowed her to move those pedals without touching the F. I’m not giving too much away here because there is a lot more in the article. Much more recently, I understand that Park Stickney sometimes folds one pedal up and then moves the two on either side with one motion. The bottome line is: WHATEVER WORKS!
Vince- The advice given here has been very good and I agree with the bulk of it. I would like to add that complicated pedaling has to be practiced just like complicated musical passages. For very difficult pedaling we have to develope muscle memory too, and I often suggest to students that they practice those pedal passages without playing the music. Just count the beats and move the pedals. Make sure you are not moving your feet inefficiently. In other words, you may for example be used to resting your right foot on the A pedal when there are no pedals to move. But you may have a passage where you have to move G and then a measure later the E pedal. Don’t go to A in between. Practice going to the next pedal in the piece, even if it’s a few measures away. By practicing the pedals without playing you become more aware of how your feet have to move and you can concentrate on breaking inefficient habits. Another good habit to have is to study the music away from the harp. This gives you a chance to look at the whole page and see where the pedal changes are. It’s awful to be performing a piece from memory and not know where the next pedal change is and which pedal gets moved. You’re totally dependent on muscle memory. But if you study the music away from the harp, you can suddenly see for example that there are no pedal changes at all until the 4th line and then it’s only a B flat. Or you can see, and memorize that all of the pedal changes on page 2 are just the A and the B going back and forth between flat and natural. You normally don’t see these things when you memorize at the instrument.
Uh, guys…everybody??? Not one of you brought the parents into this discussion. Where do they fit into all of this? I have never had to deal with this issue with my own students, but if I did-and we’re talking here about teenagers, who are legal minors-I would make sure that whatever I said to the kid got said to the parent as well, preferably at the same time. I think that it’s the job of the parents to make sure the kid is appropriately dressed, and it’s the parent who should be told when the kid is not.
There are two articles that I wrote which I think can help you with performing. Both were published in the HARP COLUMN several years ago, and the publishers were kind enough to allow me to put them up on my web site, http://www.swansonharp.com. Go to the Articles page to find them. One is called THE BIG DAY, and is about how to get a piece to performance level. The other is called A PERSCRIPTION FOR SUCCESS, and is about the use of beta and alpha blockers to counteract the effects of adreneline in performance.
Sherj- I tried to post a picture of the Erard, but no luck. Maybe someone can explain the process for putting pictures up here. Hugh?
That’s interesting Tacye. I’ve never seen a Gothic with doors on the back. Perhaps it was the London Erard company that did it and not the Paris Erard. A friend in Boston will be getting a restored Grecian Erard in a month or two. It has the doors on the back, and that will be my first chance to play a harp that has them.
This doesn’t have swell doors. It’s a Gothique and they didn’t have swell doors. Only the Grecians had those.
Krysty- I’m the one who bought that harp. It turns out that it was built in 1885 and everything is original and in excellent condition. I’ve performed several times on it already. The sound is unbelievable.
I’m sure Sam Milligan will have a lot more to say about this, but the short answer is that Lyon & Healy wanted to offer a harp that could be sold in music stores, or possibly through catalogues like Sears or Montgomery ward(not sure about that) but they wanted to reserve the Lyon & Healy name for themselves. So they came up with the name Washburn and in small print it says ‘made by Lyon & Healy.’
I’ve only seen them in the straight soundboard version. They might have been style 16’s or 19’s. Sam will clear that up.
1887 sounds too early to me for the Impromptu Caprice. I had always heard that it was the competition piece at the Paris Conservatory the year Salzedo got his first prize, which is the reason that he taught it to all of his pupils. That would put its composition somewhere around 1900.
Jerusha,
For the most part, Wurlitzer parts are compatible with Lyo & Healy, and with my Swanson harps. Discs and screws are interchangeable. Since Wurlitzer harps never break rods, that is a non-issue. I’ve never measured the rod diameter of a Wurlitzer, but I’d assume that they match Lyon & Healy and mine as well. I’ve never had any problems finding parts to fit a Wurlitzer action.
