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Alison- There are about 8 or 10 measures missing from the David Watkins edition of the Serenade. They occur just before the final page. They lead up to, and include, a tuning key slide cadenza, in which the player holds a metal tuning key against the string fairly close to the soundboard and plucks the string(between the tuning key and the soundboard), then slides the tuning key up a little bit and plucks the string again, doing this over and over again to produce a descending cascade of pitches until the player is playing the full length of string without the tuning key, playing that very low right handed trill. I think if it is done right, it must be quite effective. Did you not know about this?
Alison- I have played and performed the David Watkins version for years. I don’t have my copy in front of me. But I believe I just play the low B flat first(before the beat) and then play the upper notes. It sounds nice like that. David didn’t include the key-slide measures at the end. I have those measures. Geraldine Ruegg who studied with Renie before and after the war and who translated Renie’s Methode into English, gave them to me and said that she really liked them in there. If I ever play the Serenade again I’m going to try the key slide measures.
Dearest Califa- A couple of comments came to mind as I read your post. Please understand, I am writing as a harpist, but also a harp builder and restorer who has dealt with many harpists over the years.
1) There are no “good” harps, and no “bad” harps. There are harps that you may like or not like. But what you like someone else is not going to like, and visa-versa. I have heard harps that I thought sounded like banjos, and the owners thought they were the greatest harps in the world.
2)I don’t pay particular attention to the “sound” of the instrument itself, because so much of the sound is tied to the way I play it. At least 50% of the sound equation is due to the technique and touch of the harpist playing it.
3) For reason number 2, I never get involved with the discussion of sound for any instrument I have for sale. People will sometimes contact me and ask if a particular instrument has a “big” sound for example. Well, that depends on whose playing it, and also on an individual’s concept of what a “big” sound is. So when I have instruments for sale, I can vouch for the structural integrity of the instrument, but not the sound. I always encourage people to make the trip to Boston to try the instrument they are interested in, so that they know exactly what it sounds like to them, and whether or not it is a sound they like.
4)It’s clear that you have very strong opinions about what pleases you and what doesn’t. I would ask you to not make demeaning comments about any harps or their makers. The fact that you do not like one model of harp or one harp maker does not mean that everybody is going to share your opinion. Just say that this or that instrument is not exactly what you are looking for and leave it at that.
I personally would find a harp room with a wood floor too loud. I would at least plan on putting a small(4 X 6 or so) oriental rug down to absorb some sound. If you have other things in the room, like lots of books, that can help absorb sound as well. I don’t want a dead room. But I don’t want a loud room with a sharp echo either. It’s not a concert hall. It’s a work room.
Well, I do speak French, and my pronunciation would be something like Toournyay, with the slightest possible pronunciation of the r. And Balfour, I apologize that I haven’t sent you that music yet. I’ve been so busy. I’ll try to do it next week.
Eliza- How are you using the one hour lesson time now? I would think that for a child that young you could divide the hour into sections. One section would be working on technique(easy etudes, scales, etc.). Another section would be playing pieces. And the last section could music theory and reading music, which would be done completely away from the harp, at a dining room table for example. In any event, the most important job for you is to watch and listen carefully and as soon as she is showing signs of loosing interest or saturation point, stop and go on to something else. Ideally you want to stop and go on to something else BEFORE she starts reaches a saturation point.
When I lived in France many years ago, I taught English as a foreign language to French adults, mostly businessmen. I quickly found out that if I did a lesson with them on, for example, making an affirmative sentence negative, they would work well for a certain amount of time, grasping the concept as I went around the class from one to another testing them. But if I did it for too long, suddenly it would start to unravel and they would start making mistakes on something that 5 minutes earlier they were doing well. So I’d just stop and go on to something else. Some of the other teachers at the school never grasped what was happening and they would just drive harder when the students reached this point, causing enormous frustration all around.
Are you transporting the harp to and from the gig as part of the rental? If I were you, I would insist, for the sake of safety of the instrument, that the rental fee include your transporting the harp to and from the gig. Then you charge what you would charge if you were playing the gig, but this other person will be playing it instead.
Alexandra- I just got an email from Marie-Claire Jamet. She doesn’t know when her mother composed that piece because she doesn’t have the manuscript. She thinks it most likely was composed during the war and published right after, hence the date 1946.
Balfour- The Eternal Dreamer is one of the movements from a collection called Au Hazard des Ondes, and is subtitled A New Collection of Images, or A Collection of New Images, I can’t remember which. Each movement is named after a different country and there are two movements for France, the first of which is The Eternal Dreamer.
Let me look at my copy tomorrow and see if it is in fact in the public domain. Tournier died around 1951 I believe. So I would think it is.
Jerusha- I had forgotten about that. But I’m glad I did it and glad you have enjoyed playing it.
Jerusha- Where did you get a copy of my version of the Offrande? Did I send you a copy? Just curious. Gosh, maybe I can get that piece into the standard repertoire. And also the Eternal Dreamer. If you haven’t heard it, you’re going to melt when you do.
A few years ago I was visiting Marie-Claire Jamet at her home in southern France. I asked her what it was like to study with Tournier(she was in his last class). She said that he could be “peau de vache” literally “cow hide” meaning he was difficult. She said that if he assigned an etude to the class and, when you were called to play it, you couldn’t play it perfectly from memory, then for the following class you had to play the entire etude, from memory, transposed a 5th away!!! “I only had to do it once!” she told me.
Balfour- I’m surprised you reach for a B string when you see a C flat. I too play piano(I think many harpists do) and for some reason that never throws me. I agree with Gretchen about double sharps or flats. My feeble brain completely freezes up when I see that. I’m just not used to dealing with them. Tournier, in addition to being a first rate composer, also had the incredible training in solfege that was standard in his day. He could read 15 clefs: the G clef, F clef, and C clef on any line, and could mentally re-think flats, naturals, and sharps to mean something else so that he could look at a piece of music and instantly transpose it to any key. My last teacher, Bernard Zighera, who was French and had that same training, could do the same thing. During his first 25 years in the Boston Symphony, his most important job was teaching Kousevetsky the scores that he had to conduct, many of which were brand new pieces. Zighera could sit at the piano and play an orchestra piece in open score! So for these people, seeing double sharps or flats was no big deal. For us mortals though it is another story.
I have to add here that Salzedo’s habit of writing harmonics where they sound instead of where they are played is an absolutely idiotic idea. Written music, whether it is the staves we are used to playing from or tablature, tells you where to put your fingers, not what sound comes out.
Tacye- Are you referring to things like writing C flat instead of B natural, when the B natural would need to be played by C flat? I’m not sure there was ever a “change.” The problem is-and Tournier was a first rate composer who had won the prix de Rome- if you write music according to the laws of correct harmony, then you get harp pieces with difficult or impossible harmonies.The harpist then has to go through and figure out exactly how the piece is going to be played, and make the necessary spelling changes. Tournier, even though he was a harpist, wrote his music so that it made sense harmonically, and therefore there is a lot of working out to do if you play one of his more difficult pieces, like the first Sonatine.
Faure did the same thing in his Une Chatelaine en sa tour… and the result is a nightmare of tricky pedals. I published an edition of that piece a few years ago in which I had changed the most difficult spellings. The most extensive changes occur in the l’istesso tempo in the middle of the piece. There I almost completely respelled all the notes in the passage. In my version there are somewhat fewer pedal changes. But more importantly, there are fewer issues with pedal slides. But the spellings make no sense to anyone wanting to see the actual harmony. So I think it is a battle that is still going on and will continue.
Balfour- Have you had a chance to try Tournier’s Eternal Dreamer? It’s such a gorgeous piece. I also love his Berceuse Russe, which I’ve used many times in recital.
