Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Thank you Catherine. I know the name, but had never seen a picture of her. Was she an orchestra harpist? What did she do?
No, that’s not Heidi. I’m sure that that person (white dress) to the right of Carol is Phyllis. I’m still stumped on the two mystery women that I mentioned in the first post above.
Gretchen- Thank you very much. I had been poking around too and got as far as the name of the piece and the date. I just went to the site you suggested and went through the entire list of Bernard Herman scores that they have, and it’s not there. It’s so frustrating. I can’t find the printed music nor a recording of it anywhere.
The action block can sometimes be wedged in very tight. I often have to take a large screwdriver and pry the block out. I then take a wood plane and shave off a thin layer of wood from one or both sides. Shave a little off and try it. If it’s still too tight, shave a little more off and try it again.
For the click: is it happening on an up and down motion of the pedal, or a side to side motion when it goes into or out of the natural position? If it is side to side, the pedal bar inside the pedestal is hitting on the spring stud. If that’s the case, remove the spring stud from the harp, clamp it in a vise, and hit one side of it with a hammer to bend the stud in the direction away from the pedal bar. You don’t have to bend it very much to get it out of the way. Be careful when you return the stud to the harp that, when you are screwing it back in, you catch the same threads in the wood. Screw it in as far as you can with your fingers only. Then if you have to, put a visegrip pliers on it and finish screwing it in.
I just did a little digging and it seems the piece is called Aria, and is scored for Flute and Harp. It dates from 1932. Does anyone know where I can find this, or does anyone have a copy? I suspect it may be out of print. Thanks.
If the string is wound all the way to the neck and is pressing against it, then you probably can’t hammer the end of the tuning pin(on the string side) to back it out. You might try grabbing the short end of string with a pair of pliers and see if you can push it back through the hole in the tuning pin, thereby loosening the string from the other end. You might be able to get that short end to back out of the hole completely to completely unwind and remove the string.
I have seen tuning pins break like this when the humidity is high year round, and the harp has not been tuned for a very long time. I think you should try to back out all of the tuning pins completely (one at a time), clean the middle section off with a wire brush, and then re-install each one so it isn’t in the hole so tight. The one way to lubricate the tuning pin, if you have to, is with wax. You could wipe a thin layer of car paste wax on the tuning pin and let it dry. Then re-install the pin. The wax will make it easier for the pin to turn, and will protect it from rusting or corroding, but won’t cause the pin to slip.
Alison,
Thank you for your post. I tried over a year ago to contact Elizabeth Fontan-Binoche. But I’ve been told by several people that she is not well. So I’m afraid that’s not an option. I have several harpists in France looking for me. So hopefully something will show up.
I should add here that Tournier set several songs over his long career, and I think all of them are currently out of print, which is a realy tragedy. If anyone has any of the songs that Tournier set, I’d love to hear from you. Thank you.
I would suggest you have Liza Jensen look at it. She may be able to repair it herself. At the very least, she can make a diagnosis as to what the damage is and what it needs to be repaired. She’s in Brooklyn.
If you’re talking about just plain difficult parts to play, hands down, no competition, Ravel’s Tzigane cadena.
I had the same thing happen to me years ago. I had a harp listed for sale on my own web site, and someone stole not only the photo, but also the description that I had put up with the photo and listed both, I think on ebay. I only found out about it because someone here notified me.
Something else that I have found is that very often different teachers are good at different things. There are teachers who are excellent at starting beginners, but once the student is beyond the beginner stage, the same teacher really has no idea how to advance them. Another teacher might be good at polishing a very advanced student, but isn’t really good at getting a lower level student up to that level, or working out technical problems. Sam Milligan once told me, about a very well known teacher in the U.S.: “She has no idea how to teach technique. If you go to her school with an excellent technique and study with her for 4 years, you’ll graduate with lots of repertoire and an excellent technique. If you go to her with a bad technique and study with her for 4 years, you’ll graduate with lots of repertoire and a bad technique.”
Meghan- Some more ammunition for your conversation with your old teacher. Tell her that virtually all of the professional harpists you know have studied with several teachers over the course of their studies. They didn’t change teachers because any were bad. They just needed to see several different approaches to the harp. I had 4 teachers over the course of my studies. They all had something important to teach me. They all had strong points and not so strong points. I don’t regret studying with any of them. Remind your old teacher too that you have strong and not so strong points too, and that having a different teacher might open up your perspective on the harp.
I remember having a conversation with Marie-Claire Jamet, who taught at the Paris Conservatory years ago. She told me, while smiling, that each year she invited an important harpist to come teach her students for a week. One year it was Suzanne McDonald. Suzanne taught while Marie-Claire sat and watched. “She told the students the same things I had been telling them” Marie-Claire said. “When I told them, most of the time they didn’t listen. But when she told them, they paid attention and did it!”
Since there is a lot of information missing here, it’s hard to advise on the best course of action. Do you have a new teacher in mind? Have you ever taken lessons from anyone other than your current teacher? You might start by taking some lessons with a new teacher before cutting the cord with the old one, just to see if it is a good fit, and if that is the problem. If it is, and you are really happy with the new teacher, then you are going to need to have an honest conversation with the old teacher. Don’t say that you are unhappy with her. Tell her she has been a great teacher for you, but after so many years you need to change the whole environment to get a different perspective on the harp and your own playing. If your current teacher is really a friend as well as a decent teacher, she should understand your position and give you her blessing.
OK, here’s the latest update. I’ve been working with Finale now for maybe 6 weeks and, with a lot of help from one of the readers here, have managed to set the entire Sonatine, Op. 30 of Tournier, with the string parts that Tournier added years later. The full score that I made, which has the violin, cello, and harp parts on it, is 46 pages long!! The violin and cello parts, which those players will play from, are each 6 pages long. So I’ve set 58 pages of music!
OMG what a lot of work this has been, and not simply because of the sheer length. I retrospect, I should have started with something simpler. The Sonatine presents every complicated and difficult issue you could imagine, and without the help of Bill, who knows everything there is to know about Finale, I would have given up after the first few days.
Here are the first two pages of the complete score.
