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I think you should find out exactly what she is saying and offering. Have a friend call her, with you listening on an extension phone and taking notes or recording it. Coach the friend on what to say. See if this woman is slandering or bad mouthing you. That might give you ammunition to come up with a proposal to potential clients that will help you get the job. At the very least I would confront this woman directly and forcefully about what she is doing and how unethical it is.
All excellent posts here. I would only add the following comment. The problem with muscle memory is that it turns the piece you are playing into a series of physical movements that have to happen in a specific sequence. If you have a problem-missed pedal, wrong notes, then the sequence is broken and you have to start over. That’s why playing from muscle memory alone is so dangerous.
You need to take the music to the kitchen table and study it away from the harp. That will help you to analyze patterns, see exactly where pedal changes occur, etc. And you have to have several points during the piece where you can start cold. These “repair points” end up being like sign posts as you progress through the piece. As you get to each one, you know what the pedals and notes are at that point.
Kreig- Thanks for a good response. I’m not suggesting that an ensemble(band, orchestra) consciously goes for a different system of tuning. But equal temperament means that every note of the scale is slightly flat. Every other system of tuning(just intonation, mean tone, well tempered, etc.) all use perfect 4ths and 5ths, which would be sharper than equal temperament 4ths and 5ths. Over the centuries equal temperament was tried and rejected many times because to listeners in previous centuries it was too out of tune. So I wonder if, in the absence of a fixed pitch instrument, there is a natural unconscious tendency to want to hear perfect 4ths and 5ths, which then drives everything sharp.
I was backstage at Symphony Hall in Boston,( where the Boston Symphony plays), many years ago and walked by a small room where a french horn player was sitting in front of a huge strobe that had a separate window for each pitch of the scale. He was playing scales and checking his intonation against the machine. I’m guessing that many of the players regularly checked themselves against this machine.
I’m wondering how all of this changes when the harp in question is used in an orchestra and may occasionally play unisons with other instruments.
I’ve always had a question about orchestra tuning and I don’t know if anyone has researched this. We all know that orchestras, left to their own devices, meaning that when they are playing without a fix pitched instrument, go sharp. Often way sharp. And I’m told it is the violins and the strings in general that drive everything sharp. That would tell me that players of instruments where the pitch can be altered on the spot are tuning in mean tone? Just intonation? But when they are accompanying a piano concerto for example, the piano holds them to equal temperament. So the question is: Does an orchestra tune differently when there is no fixed pitch instrument involved, and if so, what is the system they are tuning to?
You need to get the whole house professionally fumigated and as fast as possible. Where do you live?
Krieg- The piano tuner I mentioned in my post told me that when all is said and done, at the end of a tuning(of a piano) a good tuner will ‘fudge’ where necessary for the particular piano. Not all pianos sound good with exactly the same tuning.
Tune well ahead of time and then consult with the oboist to make sure the A that he/she gives is the same as your A. Many years ago I played with a local civic orchestra. I tuned well ahead of time, to A 440. When the rehearsal started the oboist gave an A that was almost a quarter step sharp! I stopped him and told the conductor, who was standing right there, that that A was too high. So the oboist took his A from me and then the rest of the orchestra tuned to him.
Michael- What an interesting question. I’ve never tried it on the harp. I use a Peterson tuner and am satisfied with the results. But I wonder if it would have the same effect on the harp as on the piano.
Years ago, a friend of mine who is a piano technician and who at the time owned a huge collection of antique pianos of all sorts lent me a stunning 1905 Steinway B with a Louis XV case in Carpathian burl veneer. It had a gorgeous deep voluptuous sound. After I had had it a year or so I had a piano tuner come to tune it. My friend wasn’t available. When I played it after the tuner had left, it was perfectly in tune but sounded shallow and had lost a lot of that gorgeous depth. When my friend came to visit me again I told him about this. He went to the piano and played a few things on it. After no more than 10 seconds he stopped and said,”He didn’t stretch the octaves.” He then retuned the instrument, and the gorgeous sound came back!. I’ll never forget that. But I don’t know if it works the same way on a harp.
I don’t remember that from the film. But it’s been a while since I’ve seen it. If you’ve never heard a French musician solfege a piece of music, I think you’d be equally impressed by that. Until I went to study in France I had never heard anyone solfege the way they do. Pierre Jamet could solfege the opening arpeggio of the Ravel up to speed! I was stunned when I heard him do that the first time.
Sidney- You could have taken the pedal bars off the instrument and mailed them to Venus. They don’t need the whole harp to do this repair. That would probably have cost $10 one way.
Sam- Very interesting statistics. Thank you. In the first 20 years of the Israel competition there were a lot of Americans who took grand prizes, especially first prize. In all likelihood the Japanese winners in your statistics studied in France, and perhaps the Chinese too.
Saul- I think I would go farther than you and say that there are very few Americans who take prizes at international competitions. It’s not just the Salzedo players. If you look at the grand prize winners(1st, 2nd, and 3rd prizes) at most competitions, the winners come from a school of pedagogy that places high emphasis on the rigorous use of advanced etudes and exercises to build technique). Most American harpists don’t get that training, and it shows in competitions.
You mention several times how Salzedo players study for a very long time. Everybody studies for a very long time. The big question is: What is the result at the end of it?
Competitions are one way of jump starting a career. This is true on all instruments and for singers as well. But winning a competition is no guarantee of a career. It’s just another stepping stone in the process. Not everybody is cut out to play and win competitions. But not everybody is up to the needs of a top professional career. I go to a lot of concerts every winter and hear lots of international artists. I’m always dumbfounded by the extraordinarily high level of their performances, and can only imagine what it takes for them to constantly perform at that level. They must all be chained to their careers, and must make enormous personal sacrifices to have such careers. So while competitions may be a brutal way of proving oneself, it may be the best indicator of who, personality-wise and musically, is most fit for a major career.
de la harpe chromatique qui n’a jamais le poids sonore de la harpe à pédale, mais qui trouve le moyen d’être lourde. Pourtant Mademoiselle en joue aussi bien que possible.”
Translation: “You wrote charming things to me about the Sonate for Flute, Viola, and Harp. Unfortunately the experience is not complete, due to the chromatique harp which never has the acoustic weight of the pedal harp, which finds the means to have more weight. Although Mademoiselle(Dallies) played it as well as possible.”
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“J’ai pu constater une fois de plus la supériorité de la harpe à pédales sur la harpe chromatique qui, si j’ose m’exprimer ainsi, n’enveloppe rien, et rend les délicieux son harmoniques, pareils à un tambour voilé”Translation: “I can tell you one more time of the superiority of the pedal harp over the Chromatique harp which, if I dare say, surrounds nothing, and reduces the delicious harmonic sounds to that of a covered drum.”
I just got an email from Sylvain and he sent me the link to a new video he has put up on Youtube. Very talented guy!
I would say that the most important thing in an orchestra audition is cleanness of the playing and accuracy of the rhythm. After that, it’s playing the required excerpts as if you’ve played them with orchestra a million times. They have to sound like you know what’s going on in the piece. After all, they’re called “parts.” If you don’t have a lot of orchestra experience, study the score and listen to a recording so that you understand how the harp part fits into the texture of the orchestra. The audition committee knows these pieces, and you have to convince them that you know them too. If you play the part correctly, they will hear in their heads the rest of the orchestra as you play. That will win you the audition.
