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I was never told how many complaints they had gotten or where they came from. In other words, I don’t know if it was one individual or several individuals, or if it was some kind of organization that made the complaint. It is interesting that no one has voice a complaint about the piece here. All the posts have been in favor of keeping the suite complete and intact.
Thanks all for the posts. Please keep them coming. I’m sending them on to the powers-that-be at Carl Fischer.
For some reason my first post hasn’t shown up. Let’s see if this one does.
I received a reply from the president of Carl Fischer. They are reconsidering, which is a very good thing. They will be discussing the whole issue in house and will give me a reply sometime in the future, probably a month or more away. Sonya thanked me in particular for the feedback that I received here. So if more people reading this have an opinion, please post it. It will help my case!
Well there is an update. I just got an email from the president of Carl Fischer Music. She and my editor are willing to reconsider the whole issue, and they are both distressed about the controversy on this issue. On the one hand, it just kills them to leave out the piece and publish an incomplete version of the suite. On the other, they don’t want to offend people.
My response to her was: 1) Include the piece in the edition 2) explain the whole issue in the Preface, making everyone know that they are aware of the controversy, and 3) Diplomatically tell the player that if he or she is offended by the piece, then just don’t play it. Put the decision to include it or not in a performance on the player, not the editor.
Now I have to wait for an answer!
String ends are the standard way of anchoring the string and have been used forever in the knot. I’m not sure why Camac uses dowels, and I don’t know if you can simply use a string end on a Camac if you loose the dowel. I would ask one of the Camac dealers if there is any compelling reason to stay with the dowel or if you can change to a string end. The founder of Camac was Joel Garnier, and I suspect that he was the one who came up with the idea of using the dowel.
A harpist friend of mine asked a bunch of her black musician friends what their problem was with this piece. They said that the Cakewalk was a dance that the slaves were “forced” to do by their plantation owners, for the owner’s amusement. I have looked all over the internet and read many articles about the Cakewalk, and I can’t find a single word to back up that statement. Nothing. What the articles I found said was that when the slaves got together socially, they would dance in a rather high stepping, showy way, often mocking the formal, stilted dances of the “white folks.” The white plantation owners really enjoyed watching these dances, and were sometimes asked, by the slaves, to judge the dancing and an ornate cake would be given to the winner. Sometimes the Cakewalk consisted of dancing, other times it was a kind of promenade around the dance floor. After the Civil war, it made its way into minstrel shows (shows with whites in blackface, but also blacks in blackface) and became a key part of the show. Minstrel shows, both white and black shows, were enormously popular at the end of the 19th century, and it is very possible that Debussy was introduced to the Cakewalk at one of those.
Looking back from our perspective today, a lot of this probably looks degrading to some people. But it didn’t look degrading at the time to them, and Debussy would not have written a piece that demeaned anybody. The piece was written out of a love for his daughter, and a love for an American Black entertainment.
Charles- I doubt that most people, seeing that movement on a recital program, would have any idea what “Golliwog” or “Cakewalk” even mean!
I spent a good deal of time writing a response to my editor about this. I’m planning to send it in the next day or so. Since I was already planning on writing a preface, with explanations of each of the movements, in light of this unforeseen development, here is what I suggest using to describe Golliwog. Let me know what you think of this:
GOLLYWOG’S CAKEWALK
This movement, which ranks among the most famous of Debussy’s works, references two different images, both having to do with Black culture. The name Gollywog refers to a doll that was the Black version of a rag doll. Like a rag doll, it had very simple stitched or drawn on facial features, a simple shock of yarn for hair, and it was enormously popular with French children of the early 20th century. It is certain that Debussy’s daughter Chouchou, to whom the suite is dedicated, had one of these dolls, and was the inspiration for this movement.
The Cakewalk as Debussy would have known it was a dance that was very popular with both white and black cultures. Its origins trace back to American Black pre-civil war culture, i.e., the era of slavery. But so did other Black artistic forms, including ragtime, jazz, blues, and spirituals, and they were all enormously popular in white culture as well as Black. France in the early to mid-20th century adored American Black entertainers and their musical forms, and many American Black artists made careers in France for this reason. Debussy loved the music that these entertainers introduced to France, and this piece is his tribute to that rich culture.
In recent years, there has been an unfair and inaccurate revisionist evaluation of this piece and its title by some who feel it is racist and demeaning. If the reader of these words feels, in spite of what has been said, that this is the case for this piece, then there is a very simple solution. Don’t play it!
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I then added the following paragraph to finish the email:I hope you will reconsider. I know you feel you are in a damned-if-you-do/ damned-if-you-don’t position on this. But my explanation above tells prospective buyers that 1) you are aware of the controversy, and 2) there are two sides to the story. Publishing the entire suite is musically correct, and, with my explanation of the piece, puts the decision to play or not play the last movement on the player, not the publisher.
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Let me know what you think about this. Thanks.Hi Bill, and thanks for the input. The issue to me is more complicated. There are many arrangements of Golliowog’s Cakewalk for all kinds of instruments, and in the last few years Carl Fischer has published collections of pieces which included this one movement from Children’s Corner. I can (sort of) understand their deciding not to include this one piece in future collections because of the flak they have gotten. But I’m not trying to publish a collection of pieces chosen by me, in which one of those pieces is Gollywog’s Cakewalk. I’m trying to publish the original Suite, complete and intact. Children’s Corner, today, is thought of as one piece of music, divided into six movements. To leave out one of those movements is what bother’s me. I could put an explanation about the controversy in the preface, and basically say, if you are offended by this piece, then don’t play it.
My edition of Ravel’s Mother Goose, which came out last September, almost was published without the Beauty and the Beast movement, because I couldn’t find a way around the extensive chromaticism. My editor really really wanted to publish the whole suite, complete, and asked me if I could “simplify” the movement to get it to work. In the end, I worked out a solution, without having to simplify it at all. So they felt very strongly that publishing the whole suite was really important. If it was important then, then it’s important now.
Thank you for the post Charles. This took me completely by surprise. I did most of the work on this last year, so all of the movements are ready to go. I just have to write the preface. Honestly, I never saw this coming. My very first reaction was that I would do exactly what you suggested. So I probably will put that one movement up on the Harp Column Music site. I just think it’s a shame that the piece has to be published minus its most famous movement.
The first thing you need to do is to try to establish what kind of finish is on the instrument now. Is it a lacquer or some sort of varnish/urethane? If it is a lacquer, then touching it up with lacquer will “melt” into the finish that is already there and will make the ding as invisible as possible. If it is a varnish/ urethane, that won’t happen. Another question: is the “ding” just to the finish? or is it a dent in the wood itself? If there is a dent in the wood itself, you or someone else may have to steam it out to get as much of the dented wood as possible to swell before putting a finish over it.
There are people around who are specialists in fixing things like this. I would look for one of them. Talk to antique dealers or wood finishers and see who they recommend. If you have an art museum near you and they have a conservation department, ask them for recommendations. There is no way to estimate the cost of any of this. The person who is going to do the work is the only one who can tell you how much it is likely to cost.
The easiest, for a larger hand, would be to play the first 4 notes with the left hand, then all the notes in the upper staff with the right, doing a thumb slide on the top 2 notes.
Alternatively, you could play the very first note with the right hand 4th finger, the next 3 or 4 notes with the left hand, and the remainder with the right. It all depends on the speed and what is comfortable for your hand.
Over the years, all the harp companies have used a variety of finishes: varnish, lacquer, Poly, Epoxy, etc. For years, one of the major companies used a finish that absorbed the color of fabric that touched it. So there would be dark spots where the knees touched and where the shoulder touched the instrument. It couldn’t be washed off with either soap and water, or any solvent. It had gone right through the finish into the wood. It’s possible that what you are seeing on your harp has absorbed into the finish. If soap cleaners of different types have no affect, then try a solvent, like alcohol or lacquer thinner on a small spot and see if that has any effect. If it doesn’t, then you might try abrading a spot with very fine sandpaper to see if it is just on the surface. If it is, then you should be able to polish it off. If it isn’t, then you might just have to live with it. You might try a cleaner called something like krud-kutter. You can get it at Home Depot. Good luck!
Your post reminded me, as a teacher, what I have gone through almost every time a harp student has transferred over to me from someone else. I was recently asked to write a recommendation for a current student who is applying to colleges right now. Below is an excerpt from the letter I wrote. I’ve removed the student’s name and instead inserted something in parentheses to replace her name to protect her privacy. But the contents of this letter are typical of what I have found over the years with students who came to me from someone else.
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To Whom it may concern,(This student) began lessons with me when she was 15 years old, after having studied with numerous teachers around the United States. Because of her father’s military career, the family had to move fairly frequently. To be completely honest, I was appalled at the poor instruction she had received. The problem was that (she) was enormously talented, and she had, and still has of course, a phenomenal ability to sight-read and learn music quickly. So each of these teachers simply gave her harder and harder music, without every creating a solid technical foundation, or correcting technical issues that had been there from the beginning. This may all sound very harsh, and I do not waste my time bashing other teachers. To this day, I don’t know the name of any of her former teachers, with the exception of the one just before me.
(This student) heard me give a lecture on building technique using etudes, and her mother contacted me immediately and said that (her daughter) wanted to study with me. (The student) herself knew that something was wrong, but didn’t know, until she heard my talk, what needed to be done.
When (she) started studying with me, I asked her to plan on playing something for me at her first lesson that she was very comfortable with. I just wanted to sit and watch and take inventory of what she was doing. Her hands were rolling all over the place, eight fingers each articulating in a different way, and each finger articulating in different ways, depending on the passage she was playing. No dynamic or rhythmic control. It was not someone else’s method. It was no method. She had already played the Grandjany Fantasy on a theme of Haydn, a movement from the Boieldieu concerto, and the whole Hindemith Sonata, in competition no less, and yet she had never played a scale, never played an etude, never played a baroque transcription, and had never used a metronome!
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You need to find a teacher who knows how to teach technique, and you need to play scales and etudes to form a solid technical foundation. Repertoire is not the place to learn technique. Repertoire is what you play AFTER you have learned the technique required for that piece. I would recommend my etude book, Bochsa Revisited, published by Carl Fischer Music, as a good place to start. If you find someone you might be interested in studying with, ask them right up front if they would work with you on scales and etudes. If they are not in the habit of teaching those things, then they are not going to be of any help. Good luck!!!The Pierre Monteux Festival is a summer training course for conductors. I’ve rented a harp to them for years now. Hancock Maine is a five and a half hour drive north-east of Boston. It is very close to Mt. Desert Island (Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park, etc.). Yolanda’s course seems to be happening the week following the end of the conductor’s training course. So I don’t think it is technically a part of the Pierre Monteux summer course, which ends July 31.
“They wouldn’t have offered any discount if I hadn’t mentioned that. All this makes me wonder if they are even truthful about what they are selling and if I should trust them for years to come.”
I’ve held off responding to your post until now, mainly because I found your second post quite offensive. The above quote, taken from that post, makes you sound pushy and disrespectful, and totally concerned with haggling over price. If you can’t afford a particular instrument, then buy a cheaper one. Or look for a used instrument that you can afford. But don’t blame and denigrate a dealer for a problem that is entirely yours.
