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David- You need to start communicating with these people in writing, either emails (that you save) or letters. That way you have a firm trail of communication that you can refer back to.
I think I would tell them(in a letter) that you have a long history of playing, and being available for this church year after year. Because of the confused messages that you have been getting from them, you want a response from them, in writing, that they either need you or they don’t. If they say they need you, then you need to get a non-refundable 50% deposit NOW to hold the dates they want. If they inform you, again, in writing, that they don’t need you at all, then you will plan your December bookings without them. If they come back later on and change their minds, you have this trail of correspondence to show them.
David- They don’t owe you for the work you turned down. They owe you for the work they promised you and demanded you commit to.
They demanded commitment from you, and you gave it to them. Now they owe you what you would have been paid if they had used you. Commitment runs in both directions!
Well, the New York harpist come up on Wednesday and picked up the harp. In all of the confusion on the day I picked up the harp from the renter-from-hell, the New York harpist forgot to tell me there was a bench to pick up too! So when she got here on Wednesday, we had to go back over to the renter-from-hell and retrieve the bench.
It’s trial and error: what any professional finisher would have to go through. You have to figure out what is on the instrument and what will remove it. Start with Dawn dishwashing detergent and see if that cleans it off. If not, try something stronger, like Fantastick. If detergents don’t remove it, then try paint thinner or turpentine. It won’t hurt the finish. Sometimes the only thing I can find to clean a finish is alcohol. But that can also soften the finish. If none of those things work, then you may have to get some fine finishing sandpaper, no courser than 600, and sand off the blemishes, then republish the finish. The finish on your harp is black with several coats of clear finish on top of it. When you sand, clear dust should be created. If it is black, then you are going through the black coat and will soon be down to bare wood.
Thanks Tony. I really appreciate that. Several years ago I was in exactly the same position as the New York harpist, and Dickie Fleischer was the angel who helped me out. The harp was in Jacksonville FL at the time. So I feel like I’m paying Dickie back by helping someone else.
Sarah- It may be that, although you are practicing a lot and working very hard, your practice techniques are not working. A lot of lower level students have this problem. Ask your teacher to talk to you about how to practice. Even better, if it’s possible, see if you can go to her house sometime and practice while she’s someplace in the house and can hear what you are doing. You may think you are practicing one way when in fact you are doing something completely different. You can practice for hours every day. But if the practice techniques you are using are not working, you won’t learn anything and in fact may be teaching you bad habits.
I think that if as many of us as possible send him messages it might help to cheer him up a little. I just sent him one on Skype. That seems to be the best way of contacting him. He doesn’t have internet connection at home now, but can get it at a restaurant. So if you send him a message, it may take several days for him to get it but he will get it. Be very careful about what you say though. Who knows who else is reading his emails, and we don’t want to attract attention to him or get him into trouble.
He sent me a couple of emails on Friday, which I didn’t get until yesterday. He’s terribly depressed and I’m sure worn out from trying to simply survive for the last 2 years. I wish there was some way we could get him out of there.
Brook- Can you tell where the odor is coming from? The harp may have stood on a smelly carpet, in which case the odor would be coming from the bottom of the harp. Put your nose right on the harp in several places and see if you can isolate where the stink is coming from. I would suggest soaking some rags in ammonia and stuffing them into the body of the harp. Ammonia is a good odor remover. I would also wash the bottom of the harp, preferably with some ammonia in the washing water.
Tacye- Your description of the Schoenberg is a classic case of the composer thinking like a keyboard player. Schoenberg may have been an awful piano player, but having studied it somewhat, that’s what he imagined when he wrote the harp part. So why are we so resistant to insisting that a composer who wants to write for the harp should know enough about playing the harp that he can imagine playing, on the harp(and not the piano) the part that he is writing.
Roger- Congratulations on taking a harp lesson. That’s a good first step. And I’m glad to hear that you are a performer as well. That’s generally not the case. That one fact will give you a huge leg up on writing effectively for any instrument. I didn’t mean to suggest that you couldn’t write for the harp unless you were a high level harpist. But if you just take a few lessons on the instrument, you will be able to ask a harpist more articulate questions, and be able to understand the answer so much better.
Gretchen- The larger problem I think is that today’s composers really don’t know anything about any of the instruments they are writing for. Most composers are not performers themselves. They rely on orchestration manuals to tell them the range of the instrument, special effects, etc. But since they don’t work on a regular basis with performers, and often compose far removed from performers, they write things that don’t work for any of the instruments they are writing for. 18th and 19th century composers, and even those of the early 20th century worked very closely with performers and performance organizations and had a clear concept of what each instrument could or could not do. After World War I, when most of the music schools and Conservatories were formed, composing became an academic institution and not one geared to live performance, and more importantly, making money. The result has been an endless supply of all kinds of compositions, written in and for academia, winning all kinds of academic awards, none of which have entered the standard repertoire, and which have not gotten more than a handful of performances.
Gretchen- There are literally thousands of compositions written for the harp, many of them chamber music or concertos, that don’t fit the instrument, either sound wise or technically or both, written by well meaning and sometimes famous composers, who frankly were thinking piano-keyboard-with-harp-sound while they wrote their piece. Nearly all of these pieces got one or two performances and then were never heard again, because they just didn’t sound good on the instrument. There are new compositions commissioned all the time for harp competitions in particular, which end up in the same boat: never heard again after the initial performances.
There has got to be a better way to add repertoire. If composers would take a few months of lessons so that when they finally compose something for the harp, they can hear in their heads the sound of the harp, can hear what the harp can do in different registers, and can ‘feel’ what their notes are going to feel like on the instrument, they would have a better chance of writing something worth listening to and which might actually enter the repertoire. Edna Phillips and her husband commissioned something like 28 well known composers to write for the harp. Only one of those 28, Alberto Ginestera, wrote something that lasted.
