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I think the first piece that most harpists encounter with tricky cross rhythms is of course Debussy’s first arabesque. The piece that I had the hardest time with was Parish-Alvars Serenade, where there are several melismatic passages in which the right hand plays 23 or 27 or 29 notes against 6 in the left hand. To learn those passages, I had to first sit down at the kitchen table with the music and draw lines from the left hand note heads up to where the right hand should be at that point. Then I went to the harp and played both hands from the first left hand note(the downbeat of the measure) to the second left hand note. When that was comfortable, I’d play both hands from the second left hand note to the third, and so on, one beat at a time until I had gotten the whole sequence. I would also play the entire sequence with both hands, stopping every time I played a left hand note, just to make sure the right hand ended up in the right place as I played the left hand note. Once I had it learned, and when I go back to relearn it now, I can just play it with no counting and no effort at keeping the two hands in sync. But it took a lot of work to get there!
You can find that article on my company web site, http://www.swansonharp.com. Just click on the articles page. You’ll find it there. More recently the Journal published my article on solutions to the pedal nightmare in the second dance. I haven’t taken the time yet to put that up on the web site. But if you email me privately I can email you the article and the solutions.
To me, excellent technique and knowledge of repertoire are prerequisites to becoming a great musician. They are absolutely necessary but do not make one musical. That is something else that is either there in the player or it isn’t.
I go to a lot of live theater, and a number of times I’ve seen the same play in different productions with different actors and director. In the hands of the right actors and director, a play will flow naturally and with incredible feeling. In other productions, the same play will feel bland and tedious, and the words seem artificial and stilted. I think the same can be said of musical interpretation. To be really musical, the performance has to ‘convince’ me that it is a valid approach. I can hear a piece played four different ways by four different players IF their approach to the music is convincing. If it is not, then I become aware of the things the player is doing to interpret the piece. It does not feel natural or feel like it is a part of the music.
Jenny-If you go to my company web site, http://www.swansonharp.com, and click on the “ARTICLES” page, there’s an article that I wrote several years ago for the Harp Column called The Big Day, and it’s about how to prepare for a performance, any performance(audition, recital, final exam, etc.). That will give you several suggestions about how to prepare for your examination. The whole point of the article is that performing is not at all like practicing. It’s totally different. Read the article. It will all be explained in there.
All good advice Catherine. I would only add that the cost will be the cost of the levers plus the labor of installing them. Whatever lever you decide to use as a replacement, it will have to be positioned exactly where it needs to be and then a screw hole needs to be drilled to hold it in place. If the neck and/or column are warped beyond a certain point, then any make of replacement lever might not be an option, because the string has to pass through the lever at a very precise distance and that may not be possible with a warped neck.
Jenny- Without sitting next to you and watching you sight read, it’s difficult to know exactly what is holding you back. However, there are some basics that I think can help us all. The most important thing on the list is to get the rhythm correct. So when you look at a piece of music you have to know where the beats fall in the measure. You can practice this away from the harp, and in some ways away from the harp is more effective for learning rhythm. Sit at the kitchen table with a piece of music that you don’t know and mark each beat in the measure with a light pencil mark. If the piece is in 4 beats to the measure, then mark each beat. Try to figure out the beats as quickly as possible, and try to speed up your ability to see where the beats are. As for the notes themselves, try to see patterns in groups of notes so that you are not reading one note at a time. If there are 4 eighth notes in a row for example, try to see them as a group the way you would read a chord. Make sure too that you are reading chords from the bottom up, not the top down. Try to use your memory to help you sight read. Look at a measure and then look at the harp and try to play the measure, or maybe just 2 beats, from memory. Sight reading involves analysis and memory. Try also to look ahead of what you are playing to see what’s coming up. Make sure you keep moving forward no matter what happens. Put a metronome on at a tempo that is comfortable and play with it and don’t stop for anything. Force yourself to keep moving forward. The best way to improve sight reading is to play duets with someone else. Either with another type of instrument, or another harp playing the same thing as you. That way, you are forced to keep moving forward.
I was watching a program last night about the Titanic and heard something appalling. Apparently when the White Star line go a telegraph that the boat was about to sink, they quickly fired all of the staff on the boat so that they would not have to pay benefits to surviving relatives! Unbelievable. When the whole debacle eventually went to court, the courts overruled White Star and ordered that benefits be paid to surviving family anyway. This is apparently a true story.
Sylvia- If you can get the harp up to Dallas David Williams could take care of it. A temporary fix is to take the pedestal off, disconnect the pedal spring so the pedal and steel pedal bar will stay away from the body of the harp. Take two heavy hammers, hold one against the bronze rivet on one side of the pedal, and then give the other end of the rivet three or four hard whacks with the other hammer. That should tighten up the rivet. But it’s usually just a temporary fix.
The best solution is to have a technician drill out the bronze rivet and replace it with a nut and bolt made specifically for that. It takes time, the pedals have to be removed from the harp to do the work(the brass pedal AND the steel pedal bar inside the base), but it’s not difficult to do. I’m not sure a technician on the road can do it though. You really need a drill press and an anvil to work on it. Where are you located?
Seriously, any musician on any instrument who plays at the very top level has several skills that the rest of us mortals don’t. They have an almost built-in technique. Their hands seem to fall on the instrument in a perfect way. They have unusual dexterity. They have phenomenal memory, and can memorize a long difficult piece in a fraction of the time it takes the rest of us to memorize. They impose impossibly high standards on themselves and will work looooooong hours to reach perfection, and they will accomplish more in one hour of practice than the rest of us can accomplish in 10.
But a musician who has all of these skills is not necessarily a great musician. The skills have to be there, but the musical understanding is another matter, and some of the people with all of these skills will become great musicians and others won’t.
Older Lyon & Healy models that are smaller pedal harps are the style 12, which was the smallest pedal harp ever made, the style 14-larger than a 12 but smaller than a 15- and the style 18(same size as the 14 but with different decoration. Wurlitzer also had a smaller instrument too, but I don’t know the model name.
The 12 had string spacing that was closer than it’s full size models. The 14 and 18 had spacing much closer to the spacing of full size instruments. The Wurlitzer model had spacing the same as full size instruments. I happen to have a 12, a 14, and an 18 for sale at the moment. I’ll have pictures up on my web site in a week or two.
Yes, I heard her in New York. She’s an excellent harpist. But the piece just doesn’t work on the harp. The sound and texture of the harp is just too different from the organ.
Why on earth would anyone want to play this piece on the harp??? I heard a very fine russian harpist do it in New York a few years ago and thought then that it didn’t work at all for the harp. The harp is not a sustaining instrument. The organ is, and Bach makes heavy use of that fact in this piece, particularly at the beginning.
I consider myself extremely fortunate. In more than 30 years of professional woodworking for my harp repair business and restoring an 1860’s house, both of which included using a lot of machinery, I’ve never had a hand injury more serious than a cut. But I am VERY careful, and I don’t have certain machinery in my shop, like a planer or joiner, because they are so risky to use.
When I do get a cut or a scrape I stop what I’m doing right away to clean it out and bandage it. Scrapes which don’t bleed are much more prone to infection than cuts that bleed. If I have a cut, I let it bleed for a minute or so before bandaging it. For a scrape, I scrub it out well with soap and water, then pour hydrogen peroxide over it several times before putting a bandage on it. In this age of anti-bacteria resistant germs, infection should be your major concern. A year or two ago, a friend of mine who is a very fine harpist whose name you would recognize visited her mother in the hospital. She apparently had a scratch on her arm. It became infected and she nearly lost her arm because of it. Fortunately they found a drug that would treat the infection.
