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Elizabeth- You bring out a really good point, and that is that it is important to use the full range of nuance available to us on the harp. One of my big BIG beefs about so many harpists is that they don’t use multiple dynamic levels simultaneously.
The opening chords of both the Danses and the Faure Impromptu require bringing out either the lowest note(in the Danses) or the highest(in the Impromptu) slightly in order to focus the listener on the melody. Without that, these passages are flat and boring. In the fiendishly difficult middle section of La Rosignole of Liszt/Renie, the right hand plays both the trill and the melody simultaneously, AND has to play them at two different dynamic levels. In the Impromptu Caprice of Pierne where the opening melody starts(after the introduction) Pierne says”Really bring out the melody”(Le chante BIEN en dehors). Almost every time I hear that piece, the player is blasting his/her way through the gorgeous melody, with both melody and accompaniment at the same(loud) level. And in the second movement of Tournier’s first Sonatine, I think most players don’t even realize that there is a melody in there.
When I teach this technique of playing multiple dynamic levels simultaneously, I tell the student that the first step is to play the passage playing the melody as loud as possible and everything else as soft as possible. Once the student can do that, then the next step is to adjust volumes, shape the melody and the accompanying material, and make music. It is not unusual in music for the melody and the harmony to have dynamic shifts that are not the same. So each hand has to be able to play at least two dynamic levels at the same time, AND be able to shape the melody and harmony in different ways.
Esmeralda- What a wonderful point you make. It’s so important to see what we play in the context of the larger whole.
One of the best harp recitals I ever heard was by Robert Maxwell years ago when he gave the opening recital at an American Harp Society Conference in Fairfax Virginia. He is a composer, and he played each piece on the program with an understanding of the composition that was extraordinary. I felt like he really got under the composer’s skin.
I try to remind myself with each piece that I play that what I am playing is what the composer heard in his head before writing it down. And in the case of works with other instruments(chamber music, concerti, etc.) he heard ALL of the instruments together, and that’s the way they have to be understood.
Concertos are not the place to learn technque. I have a HUGE beef with all of the teachers in the USA who throw the Debussy Danses at a student who can barely play. Aside from simply being able to hit all of the notes, does the student have absolute evenness of tone production in all 8 fingers? Can the student play multiple dynamic levels simultaneously in either hand? Can the student place in sequence, meaning placing only one note at a time ahead of the note being played? Can the student make a quick but even accelerando or ritard, crescendo or dim.? Can the student muffle individual notes with individual fingers in the left hand? Can the student play sixteenth note scales over 4 octaves at 108 to the quarter? That’s a minimum speed. If the student can’t do these things well, then he/she is not ready to learn the Danses, or any other concerto for that matter. I think a good place to start, for the student who is ready(i.e., has the necessary skill level) is the Dittersdorf.
One of the problems with playing the harp “right-handed” is that there is limited hand room at the top.
I would just like to point out that any harp my company puts a new neck on, and any harp built by my company, SWANSON HARP COMPANY, has a lot more room for the right hand in the first octave.
Diane- I also think that we teachers tend to forget that a beginner has no muscle memory for the various patterns that come up over and over again in music: 3 and 4 note chords in all their inversions, 3 and 4 finger arpeggios, octaves, etc. This is the main reason that I like etudes so much for teaching technique. An etude focuses on one pattern, one thin slice of technique, and works it to death. And playing a series of etudes, like the Bochsa Op. 318, 40 easy etudes, teaches the student many of the basic patterns that he or she is going to encounter. So the teacher that starts a student(correctly) on a beginner book and then (incorrectly) skips 3 levels of difficulty with the next step up is giving the student a piece for which he/she has no muscle memory patterns. Most pieces of music don’t repeat any one pattern enough for the student to enter that into their muscle memory arsenal.
I gave a lecture at the National Conference in St. Paul about 8 years ago on the use of etudes to build technique. I got an enormous amount of positive feedback from that lecture. One adult came to me after the lecture and said that she had been studying the harp for 4 years and had been struggling the whole time. “I couldn’t understand why I was struggling,” she told me. “Now I know why.” I think that teachers could spend more time building technique in a very systematic and focused way(using exercises and etudes) and that in turn would help the student with the transition from beginner into the intermediate level.
Wendy- Do you know the origin of your name? It comes specifically from the play PETER PAN, and was invented by the author. He heard some little boys playing and they called one of their little friends Fwendy. Barry heard that and turned it into Wendy. The name didn’t exist before the play. Just thought you’d be interested.
One of my reasons for starting this thread in the first place is to try to help teachers teach better. And the teachers I’m talking about are not necessarily the good players/good teachers with lots of harp education and experience, as well as a conscience. We all know that there are many, many, MANY teachers out there who can barely play the harp themselves. We can’t prevent them from hanging out their shingle and teaching, so we may as well help them to teach better. I’m hoping that this thread ultimately turns into an article in which the early stages of harp development are clearly identified and there are lists of suggested repertoire to go along with each stage. I’m much less concerned with the student who is playing competently at the intermediate level than I am with the beginner trying to get to that level. If skills are correctly and adequately learned at the earliest levels, then I think the student is better off later on.
Just curious. Playing different dynamic levels, and variying tempo(ritard and accelerando) are as much a part of technique as using the fingers correctly. At what point do you introduce those things, and how do you teach them?
It may be that the original problems Deborah had have been perminently worked out. I suspect that when the various companies came out with the electric harp initially there were numerous problems they had not anticipated.
Saul- don’t even THINK of putting levers on those two lowest strings. In the first place, you would have to screw the levers into the brass plate. But the swing of the vibrating strings down there would not work on any current lever. At the very least it would rattle terribly. But how would you reach those levers anyway? Stand up during the piece to move them? And anyway, those last two strings have barely any pitch to them. I have the last 5 strings( G6,F6,E7, D7, and C7) specially made to a thicker gauge. They have a much clearer pitch than regular gauge strings and they are much less prone to bang against each other. I use these on my new pedal harps as well as all of the instruments I repair. My clients love them.
The Paris Conservatory is NOT a place where a student works on one piece the whole year. I don’t know if such a place exists.
I don’t know how the Paris Conservatory works now, but at least up until the 1960’s, the students met twice a week in a class with the teacher, and the whole class worked on the same piece or pieces at the same time. The teacher would give them a specified amount of time to learn the piece, say, one month, and then the whole class moved on to the next piece. I spent a day observing Marie-Claire Jamet teach her students there about 15 years ago. She gave a private lesson to each one and they each were working on something different. But she insisted that all of the students attend another student’s lesson, and she got real angry at one guy who never attended anyone else’s lesson. If I had a bunch of students, I would insist that they attend each othere’s lessons too.
Diane- Another great reply. Thank you. One of the things I have noticed about students at the lower level is that, just because then can play ONE piece correctly at a certain level, they can’t necessarily play several other pieces at the same level without having technical problems. In other words, They may place correctly, close their fingers correctly, etc. on one piece(with of course a lot of help from the teacher), but change the piece, change the patterns, and you’re right back to square one. So it seems that the technique learned on one piece is for them relevant to that piece only. And this may be what leads many teachers to assume, after working hard with a student on one piece and getting it right, that they are now ready for something more difficult, when in fact the technique they just learned is not yet automatic, and therefore transferrable(automatically) to other pieces at the same level. This I think is the best arguement for giving the student 4,5, or more pieces at the same level before moving them up to the next technical level.
I’ve noticed that you can give students exercises like LaRiviere, or etudes like Bochsa or Grossi or whatever, and then give them a piece that uses the same technical points, and much of what they learned in the exercise, etude, etc. doesn’t automatically transfer over.
Joel Garnier, the founder of Camac harps, started his company in the 1980’s with the idea of building a computerized harp. The actual mechanism was a hydraulic affair that activated little pinchers that extended out and pinched the string when activated. While he was still in the experimental stage of working out these details he invited me to his factory in Brittany to look at what he was doing and to comment about it. I made some suggestions, but in my heart felt ultimately that this was not going to work. It would be too heavy, too unpredictable, and probably not sound very good. He ultimately presented 1 demo instrument at either a World Harp Congress or at the Israel Competition-I don’t remember which-and then abandoned the whole thing, turning instead to a harp construction based more on the modern pedal harp.
The organ has done very well with a modernization of its mechanics. But an organ stays in one place all the time. I simply don’t see a harp benefitting from a mechanism that requires a motor, tubing, electronic circuitry, or any other type of devise that has a high probability of breaking down. Even Deborah Hansen-Conant has had to learn to solder on stage, because, with a pickup on each string, if one pickup breaks down, it renders the instrument unusable. Just look at what happens when a rod or pedal spring breaks, or a pin breaks off a disc on a pedal harp.
But back to my original question! What pieces do you use immediately after the rank-beginner level to get the student to the advanced beginner level? What pieces come after that? Ones that advance the student to the low-intermediate level. And what exercises or etudes are appropriate for each of these levels?
I agree that progress differs from student to student based on individual ability, past musical experience, etc. But I think it is possible and important to identify the skills needed to progress from one stage to the next. Each student will progress through these different levels at different speeds. And the wise teacher will use somewhat different pieces within a particular skill level on different students, depending on their needs. One student may need 5 or more pieces at one skill level to achieve a certain level of technical mastery, while another needs just one and then they are ready for the next level. But what bothers me is that so many teachers skip several levels of difficulty to advance the student.
I think in most instances the teacher isn’t even aware that they have done this, probably because they have not taken inventory of what the student can do before moving on to the next level. So identifying in general terms the skills that are needed at one level before moving on might help teachers to advance the student in a more orderly manner.
I wonder if it is possible to define the various early stages of harp playing, and then to come up with repertoire that fits each stage. I’m thinking that the early stages can be labeled: beginner, advanced beginner, low intermediate, intermediate, advanced intermediate. Tell me what you think.
BEGINNER- Learning lines and spaces and related theory(note values, time signatures, etc.). Technically, playing one or two fingers at a time in either hand, but hands not playing together. No, or almost no connecting. Both hands play almost entirely in the 3rd and 4th octaves. Pieces less than a page long.
ADVANCED BEGINNER- More lines and spaces(also ledger lines) and theory(more time signatures, more complicated rhythms, but still very basic). Range of pieces at this level extended to include 2nd through 5th octaves. Technically, using both hands together in arpeggios(The Little Fountain) or chords in one hand only while the other hand plays single notes or at most octaves(Bochsa 40 easy etudes, first 4 or 5 etudes). Using all four fingers of each hand, but little or no reconnecting. Pieces are no more than 2 pages long, maximum.
LOW INTERMEDIATE-Both hands play together and, more importantly, reconnect to the strings. Both hands work independently and equally, but in very simple repertoire. Pieces would include Renie’s Invention in the old style as an example, or that Salzedo piece in 5/8, the name escapes me now. Range of pieces at this level includes 2nd through 6th octaves. Pieces are 2 to 3 pages long, maximum.
INTERMEDIATE-The whole harp is used, and hands work independently in a more complicated way. Simpler Baroque transcriptions, first Arabersque, etc. Pieces are 5 to 6 pages long maximum.
Now, my question to you is: Do these definitions accurately describe the student at each of these stages? Rewrite these definitions as you see fit. Let’s see if we can all come up with criteria for each of these early stages, AND THEN come up with appropriate repertoire, etudes, exercises, etc. for each of these stages. I find that more often than not, teachers take beginner students directly to the intermediate stage without going through the advanced beginner and low intermediate stage, and the result is a student who is constantly playing catch-up, has an unstable hand position, doesn’t use all of the fingers in the same way, has no dynamic control, etc.
