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I think that any harpist who comes to you because of technical problems has to be willing to change something to fix the problem. It’s not necessarily a matter of changing technique or changing methods.
About 10 years ago a professional harpist(and a very good one) came to me and asked me to overhaul her technique. She had had a total of about 5 years harp instruction many years earlier, and irrespective of the fact that she had studied another school of playing, her technique had devolved into an awful mess that bore no resemblance to the method she had initially studied. After consulting with two very fine teachers of French method, I decided that the best solution was to make the major changes necessary. I was afraid that if I only tried to tweek what she was doing, we’d end up with a technique that I didn’t know would work or not. When she came for the first lesson I laid down some rules. I said I would do what she wanted ONLY if she agreed to these rules. I said that she had to promise to come for a weekly lesson no matter what, even if she had not had much or any time to practice, and this would be for a minimum of 6 months. Since she was a busy gig harpist, i told her to go ahead and do her bread-and-butter wedding gigs, but under no circumstances was she to take on difficult orchestra parts, concertos, chamber music, etc. for at least 6 months. And I told her that she had to agree to do exactly what I said.
She was a model student. The core of our work in fixing everything were the 40 easy etudes of Bochsa(on the advice of one of the two teachers I had consulted). She loved working on those etudes and to this day uses them to brush up when she has the time. I gave her a series of easy short pieces to make the transformation, and told her initially to just go through the motions correctly and not worry about anything else(tone, musicianship, etc.) until the new hand and arm position, finger motion etc. felt comfortable.
It took about 3 months for the new way of doing things to settle in, and several more months to apply it to the more advanced repertoire she was used to playing. Her sound became fuller and she had much more control over dynamics. I believe she was in her early 40’s when she did this, so I don’t think there is ever a time when one can’t make changes. But the student has to be willing to make them, and the teacher has to be very careful.
I would suggest to anyone who has to play in front of people, whether for an audition, or solo performance, to go to my company web site,www.swansonharp.com, click on the Articles page, and read my article called The Big Day. It was originally published in The Harp Column several years ago.
In the 18th century period pieces like Persuasion or Dangerous Liasons, I usually find that the harp in the scene is a make and model that didn’t exist at the time of the action. Usually they show a Grecian Erard, occasionally a Gothic. The Grecian didn’t exist before 1810 or so, and the Gothic not before the 1830’s. In the burning of Atlanta sequence from Gone with the Wind, there is a harp sticking out the top of a wagon full of furniture. It’s a Lyon & Healy 15, which did not exist before 1915 or so.
Let me add one thing to what I said above. I don’t mind doing regulations or regulation trips. If someone asks me to do a regulation trip and wants to set it up with other harpists in the area, that’s fine.
Saul, as far as your question goes, I don’t want to say what someone else should or shouldn’t charge. Whenever I do a regulation trip, I try to have the harpists bring their harps to one location so I don’t have to waste time traveling around as well as setting up all my equipment and then repacking it after each harp. I always charged one flat fee per regulation and didn’t charge extra to cover traveling expenses, meals, etc. That way, everyone knew way in advance how much the regulation would cost. My advice to everyone reading this is to make sure the regulator is up front with you about whatever fees he is going to charge. There should be no surprises when the regulation is done. I know of one regulator who was always very evasive about how much the regulation was going to cost, and then after it was done, present a bill that was 4 times what it should have cost! I’m not kidding. At a time when on-the-road regulations were costing $150 to $200, he would present a bill of $800!! And on top of that demand cash!
It’s such a different world now. When I started doing regulations 30 years ago, there were no more than 3 or 4 places to turn to in the United States to get your harp regulated. Dale Barco was working for Salvi and doing road trips for them. I don’t think Lyon & Healy had a road technician then. Sam Pratt was repairing and regulating harps in New Jersey, and there was me. I did a fair number of road trips over the years and every single trip was done at the request of the harpists in one city or other. I never arranged my own road trips. Now there are many technicians who do only regulations(no rebuilding) and who have their own circuit that they plan on their own. I never get requests to do road trips any more and that’s fine. It’s a much better world now for harpists all over the country.
One word of warning though. Regulation is not hard to do and all of the technicians that I am aware of are competent regulators. However, there are one or two regulators who tell people that they can do major repairs and their work is incompetent and appalling. They’ve cheated many people out of money for repairs that were incorrectly done. So be very careful when any technician tells you there is something wrong with your harp and that they can fix it. Get a second opinion. Research that technicians work before handing your harp over to him for major repairs. And make sure that he tells you, in terms that you can easily understand, what is wrong with the instrument and what he is going to do to fix it.
Faulty practice techniques are the downfall of most students at one time or another. The practice techniques that they develope, on their own, as beginners, simply don’t work for more advanced repertoire. For this reason I now make it a part of my work with a student to have them occasionally come to my house and practice. Wherever I am in the house I can hear what they are doing and I’ll occasionally go into the livingroom and give them a short lesson on practicing a particular passage. That usually helps a lot.
I just want to mention here that I had been near sighted all my life. Ten years ago I had the lasar surgery to correct that problem. In my case the results were spectacular. I still need glasses for distances under 5 feet or so, but I have normal distance vision. I would recommend to anyone who is a good candidate for the lasar surgery to get it.
I’m aware of the problem of wolf tones on stringed instruments(violins, etc.) but I’ve never been aware of that happening on harps.
Saul- I suspect that you are right. And all the manuel work that I do makes it very difficult to get my fingers in shape when i want to do a recital. Most of the preparation is trying to get my fingers moving again with ease. I basically don’t play for years at a time. Having a good student gets me practicing some, but working up difficult repertoire is just too frustrating because I don’t play all the time. Maybe I need to do hand and finger stretches.
Fingering has to be organized and well planned out. But what is comfortable for one person won’t necessarily work for someone else. Also, depending on the hand size, finger length and thickness, some fingerings will cause buzzes for one person but not for another. So as a teacher I think you have to guide the student to a fingering that works for them and not insist that there is one fingering only for a given passage. When I published my edition of Une Chatelaine en sa tour…, I put fingerings in places that were not clear, but knew full well that some people would change them, either a little or substantially. I think it saves time to start with an edition that has fingering, even if you are going to change some of it.
You should take a look at that video of Betsy Morse playing the preludes from the Method for the Harp. The one where Lucile Lawrence explains each one first. I haven’t seen it in years, but my memory of it is that she throws both hands straight up over her head every time she raises. Sometimes she flings them straight out towards the column, but in both directions her arms end up absolutely straight(up or out).
David- I have this theory about speed. Years ago I saw a program on Public Television about Olympic runners. Some were sprinters and others were marathon runners, and a researcher wanted to know why the sprinters could run with these bursts of incredible speed while the marathon runners couldn’t. But the marathon runners had endurance that the sprinters didn’t.
There are two types of muscle fiber, which are refered to as ‘slow twitch’ and ‘fast twitch.’ The slow twitch fiber gives you endurance and the fast twitch gives you speed. We all have both types of fiber, but the proportion will differ from one person to the next. The researcher found that the spinters had a high proportion of fast twitch fiber, while the marathon runners had a preponderance of slow twitch fiber. As I watched the program I thought that if those fibers existed in leg muscles, then they must be in other muscles of the body as well.
There are harpists who are capable of blinding speed. I think it has little or nothing to do with technique, but rather has to do with the type of muscle fiber in their bodies. I usually find that these harpists have a very light sound and are not capable of much volume. Zabelata was this way, and there are half a dozen well known harpists today that I can think of who play the same way. I used to envy the ease with which these people could play so fast, but my thinking changed. A lot of times these people play pieces way too fast and it is almost impossible for them to hold a correct tempo.
I have found for myself that there is an upper limit of speed that I can play, and beyond that, no matter how much I practice a fast piece, it will just start to break down after that. There are one or two pieces that I wish I could play, but which are just not in my muscle structure. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. A typical example of fast twitch technique is the one handed trill. Some people can do one and some people can’t. I know several really fine harpists who have won major competitions who can’t do a one handed trill. So what! All of us who work hard on the harp are capable of being really fine harpists. We’ll just all be different, and that’s not a bad thing.
