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I just found out today that the new version of the Sonate, with all of the corrections from the manuscript, is going to be available sometime around the middle of June!!! I can’t believe we are nearing the end of this project. It’s going to be so satisfying to see the whole thing in print.
In addition to the music, there will be a preface: a shortened version of the first Journal article, an early history of the Sonate, talking about the first performances and the comments Debussy made to Pierre Jamet about the Sonate, a glossary of musical terms, and footnotes that explain differences between the manuscript and the Durand edition in certain places.
It will be for sale on my web site and I’m sure at other major harp music dealers. The designer at Carl Fischer sent me a copy of the cover the other day. It’s gorgeous and uses a painting by Turner on the cover. This is soooooooo satisfying!!!
Christine- Yes of course I am still repairing harps. I limit my work to pedal harps though. I just don’t have time to work on non-pedal harps.
I would encourage anyone who owns a musical instrument to NOT insure it on their homeowner’s policy. I have had a couple of clients who had big problems with this over the years. The problem with a homeowner’s policy and musical instruments is that “complete coverage” on a homeowner’s policy is fire and theft. “Complete coverage” on a musical instrument policy is fire, theft, AND ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE. And that last one is the most important for a musical instrument.
But there is also another issue as well. The agent who handles homeowner’s policies doesn’t know or realize that, if the musical instrument gets damaged, the owner will want to take it to a repair facility or person that they trust, or who in their opinion does the best work. The agent handling a musical claim will likely ask for three estimates for the cost of repairs and allow only the cheapest one. I had that happen to one client. So you are much better off buying a separate policy for your musical instrument or instruments from an agency that specializes in musical instrument coverage. In addition to the above reasons, the agency that specializes in musical instrument insurance will make sure that the instrument is covered no matter where it is: in the car, in a restaurant or church, etc. And the musical instrument policy will likely pay for transportation to and from the repair facility, and may also pay for a replacement rental while the instrument is being repaired. A homeowner’s policy is unlikely to do any of that.
Marco- Harpists keep track of pedals in basically two different ways. One is to simply memorize pedal positions at critical places throughout a piece, since on many pieces the pedals are not in any key. The best example of that is Faure’s Une Chatelaine en sa Tour… The pedals are never in a key and the result is that every harpist in the world has, at one time or another, had a serious problem with the pedals in that piece. The great Zabeletta made a mess of it at one concert and afterwards told someone “Well, the Chatelaine fell out of her tower tonight!” The other way of keeping track of pedals, and which most pop and jazz harpists do, is to keep the pedals in the key of the piece all the time. Say the piece they are playing is in E flat. The pedals are kept in E flat throughout the piece and any accidentals that are needed, the harpist moves the needed pedal, say a G sharp, to it’s sharp position and then immediately moves it back to natural, even if it could have stayed there for another 3 G sharps coming up. That’s why pop and jazz harpists are so incredible at moving pedals. By staying in the home key for say a Gershwin piece, they probably have a couple hundred pedal changes in one piece. But it’s the only way for them to KNOW where the pedals are. The point is, the standard way of keeping track of pedals is a combination of brain activity-knowing intellectually where the pedals should be, or what key the piece is in at that point- and muscle memory, where the feet, just like the fingers, memorize the sequence of pedal moves. i simply can’t see adding a third element-a visual readout- as replacing or helping to reinforce those other two elements, and frankly I see it as more of a distraction that could get in the way.
You need to back off a little until you start to develop callouses. If you continue to play when your fingertips are hurting, you’ll get blisters, which are worse than sore fingers. For the moment, play in very short sessions several times a day. Don’t play for at least a half hour after your hands have been wet(washing them, washing dishes, showering, etc.) You should start seeing some improvement in a week or so.
Marco- Running your feet over the pedals to check their positions, which all advanced harpists do, takes at most 1.5 seconds. And in that time, if a pedal is wrong, you just automatically fix it. Our knowledge of pedal positions is to a large extent a muscle memory issue. In other words, we depend very much on what the pedals and their positions feel like to keep them under control. I can’t see that a visual display would help here, or would make the process of checking and/or correcting pedals faster.
Basel- I know how much that must have hurt. All of us who play the harp have so much of ourselves in our instruments. But you did the right thing. First, because that may have been the only way to save the instrument itself. In your situation, it would have been impossible to keep two instruments safe and with you. Secondly, you have to make yourself the first priority now. When things improve, then you can think about getting another harp again. Stay safe, and don’t worry about anything other than that.
Loon- You can use the same type of exercises to work on scales too. It sounds like you are at a point where you are noticing an unevenness in the way your fingers work. The exercises I suggested will do the trick if you do them correctly. Do you have a teacher?
Yes Gretchen, I realize I repeated what was said in a couple of other posts. But to get evenness in the arpeggio, you have to practice in uneven rhythms and uneven accents. That oddly enough is how you get all of the fingers to play evenly. I would add one more thing to practicing chord patterns. When you practice with both hands, spend some time playing chord positions with the left hand ABOVE the right, so that, in a grand arpeggio, that position feels comfortable.
The suggestions here are good. But I’m not sure they answer your basic question, which is how to pay hand over hand arpeggios evenly. Here is the basic technique and practice routine to master arpeggios.
Let’s say you are going to work on a 4 octave, hand over hand, arpeggio, using all 4 fingers of both hands.
1) start by learning to play the hand positions as chords. Practice one hand at a time, going up the instrument, playing root position, first inversion, second inversion, root position, etc. Then learn to do that with both hands. Then play the chords hand over hand up and down 4 octaves. Start first with the left hand in root position, then do it again with the left hand starting in first inversion, etc. The goal through all of this is to place all 4 fingers simultaneously, and have the 4 finger tips touch the strings exactly where they are going to play. No adjusting after you’ve placed. The last step of this first stage is to do all of these things, touching the strings at the moment you play and not a nanosecond earlier.
2) Now start playing a hand over hand arpeggio. Play it in many variations: uneven rhythm(short, long, short, etc),groups of two, groups of 3, etc. Also try playing them evenly, but accenting every other note, or every third note. The accent should be FF, and the other notes pp. This is the way to get the arpeggio absolutely even.
David-Tempus pecunia est. Time is money! Don’t do anything for free. The client wants a special arrangement of something? Have a fee schedule for that. So much to buy the piece, so much to learn it, so much to make an arrangement, so much to make changes. If there is a price to pay for each of these things, the client will treat you with more respect and will be less demanding.
Samantha- The fact is that both adrenaline and beta blockers cause the vessels in the extremities to constrict, causing cold hands. So, many people who take beta blockers for medical conditions also take alpha blockers, which counteract that one unwanted side effect of beta blockers. I take both a beta blocker and an alpha blocker when I perform, and my hands are toasty warm and nimble when I play.
Go to my web site, http://www.swansonharp.com, and click on the ‘Articles” page. Then read A PRESCRIPTION FOR SUCCESS, which I wrote for the Harp Column a number of years ago. Your cold hands are a byproduct of the Adreneline rush you get when you get nervous.
Sid- When I first talked to Carl Fischer, I said that I really wanted to have the whole Sonate published with all of the corrections in red. But I have since changed my mind. Several important harpists I showed a few pages to said that in 10 or 20 years no one is going to care about that, and at least one harpist said that, while the red is great for the examples in the Journal, she would not like to read a score with red markings on it.
