Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
The reason that there are never any discs on the lowest strings(2 on concert grands, 1 on semi-grand models) is that those last strings are right over the main action, which takes the up and down movement of the pedal rods and divides it between the natural and sharp chains. There just isn’t any room for the parts needed to put discs on those strings. But I also think that the swing of the vibrating string down there is so large that it would cause a lot of buzzing problems.
Molly- There are two ways of focusing on and building technique. One is with exercises, and the other is with etudes. Exercises are simply patterns that you play over and over again. LaRiviere is a good example of that. It may be a 4 finger pattern, and you just repeat it and repeat it, paying attention to using your fingers correctly. Scales are another type of exercise. I use exercises, particularly scales for teaching technique. But I find their use is limited. They are so static and removed from actual music that often the student really can’t connect what he or she has learned in the exercise to a piece of music.
The other way of building technique is through etudes. The word etude means study, and teaching etudes are like short pieces of music where a technical pattern is the musical motif. So one etude might focus on playing 3 note chords for example, and the entire etude will be three note chords in all their various positions and inversions, sometimes in different places on the instrument, sometimes with jumps, so the player learns to easily feel and find the shape of a three note chord. By the time you have learned that etude, three note chords, wherever you find them, will be a piece of cake. Etudes are usually written in sets or series, with each etude focusing on a different pattern. One might be octaves, another simple arpeggios, etc. To me, the etudes written by Bochsa, and there are about 5 sets of them, offer the most variation in patterns, which is what you want.
Years ago, I gave a lecture at an American Harp Society national conference on using etudes to build technique. Many people came up to me in the days that followed to talk about what I had said. The most interesting one to me was a young woman who told me that her teacher had her play etudes as part of each lesson. But when this young woman graduated from college as a harp major and started teaching, she “got lazy”(her description) and taught without bothering to use etudes. After a while, she felt guilty at not using etudes and decided that each new student she started would use etudes to learn technique. There came a point where half her students were playing etudes regularly, and half were not. “The students that were learning using etudes” she said “learned their pieces faster and more solidly than the students that were not using etudes.” That to me is the best endorsement of using etudes to build technique.
William-I have two of the “Wagner bust models” but I never thought of them as style 22’s. I didn’t know what model they were.
Balfour,
There is another reason for the demise of semi-grand harps. From the manufacturing standpoint, there is little if any difference between the production costs of making a semi-grand or a concert grand. But the buying public expects the semi-grand to cost less, virtually eliminating the profit margin for the sale of semi-grands. Because of this, I’m amazed that any harp manufacturer makes a semi-grand harp.
I just read through all of the posts in this thread. All the suggestions are good, but my approach as a teacher would be to work on the underlying technical issues so that Molly would not be trying to work them out as she learns repertoire. Good technique on the harp is a matter of learning different patterns and working on them until the muscle memory for that pattern is formed. That way, any time the player encounters that pattern, they will automatically play it correctly without having to work on it technically. Developing muscle memory for one pattern or another is a matter of repeating the pattern (correctly) many times. The best way to do this is with etudes. A good series of etudes, such as one of the Bochsa series, is made up of many different patterns-one pattern per etude-which is then worked on in many different ways over the course of the etude. By the time the student has learned that etude, they have learned and developed the muscle memory for that pattern. If the student learns a whole series of etudes within one set, they will have developed a solid technique for that level of difficulty. I’m not saying that the student should play only etudes, but rather that etudes should be a part of each lesson, and the choice of pieces the student is playing should be chosen according to what the student is learning in the etude.
The 19th century was the age of great teaching etudes on all instruments. On the harp, they tend to be very right hand oriented, with very few focused on left hand technique. That is why I published my Bochsa Revisited edition, where I wrote a companion etude for each one of the original Bochsa Etudes. The companion etude throws all of the technical material of the original etude into the left hand, so that both hands develop equally. Learning technique primarily through etudes and scales frees the player to focus on everything else when learning a piece of music: musical phrasing, dynamics and tempo changes, velocity, etc. We should not be laboring over technique when we are learning repertoire!
I just looked it up on Youtube, and it’s in the key of E major (4 sharps). So my guess is that your pedals, in order to play the harmony that he has written out, would be: E sharp, F natural, G sharp, A flat, B natural, C flat, D natural.
The note next to the ff says “Glissando on both measures, crossing. I never played La Mer, but my guess is that you need to set the pedals for the notes he indicates, and then play continuous glissandos with both hands going in opposite directions for those two measures. But see if you can contact one or more full time orchestra harpists to see how they play that. What’s the key signature there? I tried to figure out the pedals, but I don’t know the key signature, so I don’t know if G and A are flat, natural, or sharp
Whatever piece I am playing, I let the piece find it’s own tempo. Tempo is very dependent on your approach to the music, how you perceive it. So what sounds fine for one harpist may sound off for another. I never really pay much attention to metronome markings or how other harpists play a piece. I also usually take tempos that are at the slower end of what will work, simply because I can do more with the music at a slower tempo. I play for example Posse’s Concert Etude no. 7, and I’ve heard several recordings of it that are faster than what I play. But my view of that piece is that it is a lovely, melodic, and lyrical piece, and it looses something by playing it too fast. So you need to just learn the piece, think about how you want to interpret it, and then let that approach find the tempo.
I think the reason you are hearing so many different tempos from different harpists is because he didn’t specify what that tempo should be. You need to decide what sounds best to you for those measures, and then figure out how you are going to get to that tempo.
Intriguing question! In fact, Debussy doesn’t tell you clearly where the tempo stabilizes. 8 measures before rehearsal 1, he says “sans lenteur” which basically says “speed up a little.” Then at rehearsal 1 (en animant peu à peu) he says little by little, get faster. I think the tempo stabilizes 4 measures after rehearsal 1, where the octave melody starts. So you need to decide what your tempo will be starting at 4 after rehearsal 1 and use the 4 measures before it to get to that tempo. The tempo you start at 4 after rehearsal 1 should be more or less consistent until the Retenu, 2 measures before rehearsal 2.
All of us who play musical instruments know that usually, one hand is the dominant hand and the other is much less coordinated, less comfortable at technical things, etc. And so most of us have worked very hard to get the non-dominant hand to work as well as the dominant one. I am very right handed. But I worked very very hard to learn to use my left hand on the instrument, and the result is that I have an excellent left hand. For certain activities I’m really ambidextrous. I’m very comfortable using my left hand on the harp and also in my shop handling woodworking tools. I can’t write anything with my left hand, but I don’t need to. The point of this is that you need to work very hard to make your right hand as comfortable and dextrous as your left, and it can be done. You need to play lots of scales and etudes with both hands separately. On the piano, there was a whole industry in the 19th century of writing etudes and pieces for left hand alone for exactly this reason. Schumann even joked that writing a piano piece for one hand was as ridiculous as creating a ballet for one foot.
If you work systematically on strengthening your right hand, it will get better. Much better. The harp is a very right handed instrument, with most of the difficult technical work in the right hand. Emily Mitchell is left handed, and she won the Israel Competition in 1979. My good friend Catherine Michel is also left handed, and had a brilliant career with the harp. It can be done!
I remember years ago, Ray Pool told me that he went out west each year to teach his theory classes to the students of a “certain teacher” who shall remain nameless. She was a Suzuki teacher, and had an enormous number of students. But she would start legions of students around 8, 9, or 10 years old, and then, once they got into high school, they would drop the harp because they couldn’t play in any high school ensembles (orchestra, concert band, etc.) because they couldn’t read music! They couldn’t do anything with the instrument with other players. Ray told me that most of them didn’t even know the names of the strings. The teacher was trying, with Ray’s teaching, to fill in the enormous gap that was the logical outcome of the Suzuki method.
Hi Molly,
When students first start the harp, the melodies they are playing are very simple and easy to memorize. But unless you are a very good reader and understand music theory very well, my advice is to force yourself to read the music you are playing and not to play from memory at this stage. I don’t allow lower level students to play from memory for this reason. Once your reading ability has improved (a lot) then you can memorize. What you might do in addition to playing from the music when you practice is to take the music to the kitchen table, away from the harp, and study it and analyze how it is constructed. Look at the chords and figure out what they are and in what inversion. You could also do this with your teacher, away from the harp. If you could take a music theory course, that would help to. Good luck
Jon- You need to take 4 to 6 months of harp lessons! That is the only way to understand how the harp works, and how notes sound on the harp. I didn’t try your harp part on the harp, but I can tell you that it is very awkward. Repeated notes never sound good on the harp. Also, your chords are piano chords, not harp chords. They are too thick for the harp. The harp sounds better with fewer notes than you would use on a piano, and more spaced out voicings than you would use on piano.
