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Will- I didn’t know Damase wrote two Sonatas. Back when I played this Sonata(many MANY years ago) this was the only one anybody played. So I’m guessing that this is Sonata no. 1.
By the way, it’s not an easy sonata. The second half of the first movement you are going up and down the whole plane of strings like a lawnmower. I found I just had to memorize most of the first movement in order to play those arpeggios. Also, I spent weeks editing the whole Sonata, changing how notes are barred and layed out on the page, because as it’s printed, it is not written the way a harpist would play it. That’s baffling, since his mother was Micheline Kahn, and they lived together. I would have thought that she would help him notate it the way a harpist would play it.
Hey Jim- Thank you so much. I had a wonderful time doing the research and bringing the articles AND the new Carl Fischer edition to completion, and I’m very happy with both. At the end of January I had the opportunity to give a lecture on my research at the Boston Conservatory, and then three members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra performed the piece. What a great day that was!
Tell this woman that she is not paying you for the right to videotape the lessons, and that if she had asked for permission, you would have refused. You have no idea what this woman is going to do with the tapes. She may be intending to put them together as a series of harp lessons and put them up on youtube, sell them, who knows. She could also edit them to make you look ridiculous, or make it look like you told her daughter something that you did not. If she wants her daughter to have something to refer to at home, then tell her to take notes. The daughter should have no need to watch a tape of the lesson if she paid attention during the lesson, and without the tape, the chances are better that she will pay attention.
Emma- You should be fine. About 20 years ago I had a slip and fall accident and broke both bones near my wrist, what they call a spoon fracture. My hand and wrist were down and under the bones leading up to my elbow. It looked awful.
I was amazed at how quickly the muscles in my arm shriveled. But once the cast came off and I started doing physiotherapy, everything came back fine. I initially had problems with rotating the wrist, but that got back to normal too. Just give it time.
This has been very informative and I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to respond. I hope the discussion continues.
I’m interested in hearing from teachers who teach on lever harp. What are your favorite teaching materials? What do you like to use(in terms of teaching materials) to get your students moving around on the instrument? What sort of materials do you use to advance their technique? Do you use some of the pedal harp books, like LaRiviere? Bochsa? Or something else? I know that Kathy Bundock Moore has written some excellent beginner etudes. But what do you use after that?
Donna- You mentioned Bochsa 40. That’s the 40 easy etudes, op. 318? Did someone adapt them for lever harp? Or do you just work from the pedal harp version and skip the chromaticism that occasionally comes up?
Thank you so much for the time and effort you put into your posts. I really appreciate it. I hope many more people respond as well.
I know that people come to the harp, both lever and pedal harp, with different expectations and interests, and this is a good thing. Many adult beginners, as Angela said, just want to “play” for fun, and are not particularly interested in or have the time for didactic study. Also, there are different styles of playing(celtic, folk, classical, etc.) and the techniques for each of these may vary quite a bit. So do you think a book of etudes, short and lower level, in which different patterns are explored(in typical etude fashion) could serve all of these various ways of playing the instrument. In other words, if you have a book of etudes, teachers could use those etudes to teach whatever type of technique he or she teaches. The etude does not dictate a specific way of playing. It just provides a format for exploring technical problems on the harp and gives the student something to play that sounds like a real piece of music but is really a technical study. Just curious.
My whole life with the harp consisted of serious pedal harp study with classical training. When the lever harp first came into being, it was thought of as a cheaper way of getting started on the harp, with the full assumption that the lever harpist would eventually go on to pedal harp. That is no longer the case, and I’m interested in all of the things that the lever harpists are doing, what kind of things they are playing, and also where there may be gaps in what is available to them. Thanks everybody!
Thanks Tacye- Over here in the U.S. I tend to think of all non-pedal harps as being in one of two categories. One category is the harps that use the same strings (i.e., same gauge) as pedal harp, and therefore have a tension and spacing more or less the same as a pedal harp, or at least very similar. The other category are what I call “folk harps” which use much thinner strings, have much lighter tension(and much thinner soundboards). Is that what you are talking about when you mention variability? I’d like to hear from some American lever harpists on these questions too.
Question for teachers who teach lever harp(as well as pedal harp). When you start a new student on lever harp, either a child or an adult beginner, what do you use for technical material to get them moving on the instrument. Is there something(in terms of teaching materials) that you wish was available but isn’t?
Well here’s a nice way to end the year! I agree with almost everything you said Saul!! I would have titled the post TRANSCRIBING KEYBOARD MUSIC rather than PIANO MUSIC, because sometimes the source is harpsichord(as you mentioned), sometimes organ, and sometimes piano. I want to add something here that you didn’t mention, which is that if a piece was originally written for harpsichord and is played on piano, then that too is a transcription, since the sound, characteristics, and capabilities of the two instruments are so different. So pianists who complain about harpists transcribing keyboard music, if they don’t believe in transcriptions at all, shouldn’t be playing Bach,Scarlatti, Handel, and a host of other 18th century composers. Busoni recognized this problem and made his own gorgeous transcriptions of Bach.
The fact that a keyboard piece CAN be played on the harp doesn’t mean that it SHOULD be played on the harp, as you mentioned. There are times, when the gods are smiling and the wind is in the west, that a piece sounds better on the harp than on the keyboard instrument for which it was originally written. Two pieces that come to mind are Debussy’s first Arabesque and Liszt/Renie’s La Rosignole. But there are others too. There are some wonderful virtuoso harpists today who include transcriptions in their repertoire, and some of these pieces are piano warhorses. I think that with time, even the piano players can get used to hearing these pieces on some instrument other than piano, provided the transcription works well for the harp.
The first time I regulated the harps at the Metropolitan Opera, Deborah Hoffman(rest her wonderful soul) told me she wanted every single note exactly zeroed in on the strobe tuner so that there was no drift up or down. None at all, which is really difficult to do. I told her that normally when I regulate a harp for orchestra work I leave the upper octaves very slightly sharp. No, she didn’t want that, so I worked really hard and got every single note to sit exactly in tune on my machine(and hers). The following year when I came back to do the harps again, she told me to regulate the harps the way I normally do. She said that she had had problems being exactly in tune with the rest of the orchestra in that range, which frankly I knew would happen. Orchestra players, and in particular the violins, push the pitch sharp as they play, which leads me to a question I have always had about orchestra playing:
If an orchestra, or even a smaller instrumental ensemble, is playing without a fixed pitch instrument(piano, organ, harpsichord, harp, etc.) are they playing in equal temperament, or just intonation? And are we as listeners used to hearing two different tuning systems(equal temperament and just intonation) without even realizing it?
Years ago I was over at Symphony Hall regulating the harps for the Boston Symphony. When I took a break, I walked past a small room where a French horn player was sitting in front of a very elaborate and big strobe tuner, which had a separate strobe screen for each pitch in the octave. He was playing scales and arpeggios very slowly, watching the screen for each pitch he played to check intonation. I think he was checking to be sure he was tuning to equal temperament, which is what the machine would have shown him.
Interesting Saul. Here’s an experience I had with stretch tuning, but on piano.
Years ago a piano tuner friend of mine lent me a 1904 Steinway B(I think that’s what the model was). It had a gorgeous resonant sound. About a year later I needed to have it tuned and called my piano tuner friend, who lived in New York. He gave me the name of a Boston tuner, and the man came over and tuned it. The piano sounded perfectly in tune when he was done. But it had lost that gorgeous resonance. When my friend, the owner of the piano came to visit I told him what had happened. He went to the piano and played a couple of chords. “He didn’t stretch the octaves” he said. “I’ll work on it after dinner.” He worked on it for maybe 20 minutes and when he was done the beautiful resonance was back. I’ve never tried stretching a harp, but I may give it a try now.
I don’t know why this drives me nuts, but it does. A SONG is a piece of music that has words to it that someone sings!!!!! A PIECE is a piece of music that has no words and is NOT sung!!!!!!!!!
It won’t hurt the instrument at all, but the harp initially will probably not stay in tune very well. Strings tend to want to return to where they were. So if you tune down to 432 on the morning of the session, the harp will probably go sharp while you work. I would advise changing the tuning maybe two days in advance, and tuning it several times a day so it stays there.
