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Here’s my collection of harp haikus that I wrote a few years ago:
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mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;color:black”>I tune. I warm up.<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt;
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mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;color:black”>What shall I work on
today?<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt;
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mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;color:black”>Ring! Who’ll get the
phone?<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;tab-stops:28.0pt 56.0pt 84.0pt 112.0pt 140.0pt 168.0pt 196.0pt 224.0pt 3.5in 280.0pt 308.0pt 336.0pt;
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mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;color:black”>I have written some harp humour in the introduction to my book of Solos for Lever or Pedal Harp (which also contains technical tips). Here are some excerpts:
I was thinking the same thing. I wonder whether the mail is even being delivered in Syria, or whether it endangers people to be in touch with Westerners. I have no idea how the family is surviving. Basel has a Facebook group in which he posts all kinds of interesting tidbits about harpists and composers. He is also on “chat” from time to time.
There is a very listenable piece for clarinet and harp by Paul Reade called The Victorian Kitchen Garden Suite (from a BBC television show). There are some Youtube videos, and I have a live recording I did as well, if you need to listen to it.
Have you tried googling these composers and titles to get some ideas? If
you have old vinyl recordings or CD’s, the liner notes sometimes have
great information. Archived AHS Journals or other harp-related
publications may have nuggets as well. If you go to the Petrucci Music
Library online, you can find information such as the date of composition
(1899 for the Hasselmans), the period, etc.Do you think there might be some peer pressure? If this student is not interested in doing competitions, then there is no reason to re-hash the same pieces unless they are masterpieces and the student loves them. I think you already introduce your students to the great standard repertoire, so I assume you are alarmed by the student’s desire to learn something just because it’s on a list. Has your student gone to any harp conferences or festivals to hear a wide variety of music? If not, this student might benefit from browsing Youtube or Itunes to get a sense of how much wonderful obscure harp music is out there.
Winter in Vancouver is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObHLhD2Ia_8
Fall in VancouverI have Intermediate lever harp pieces available at http://www.theavondalepress.com. The big “hit” is The Downstairs Spider in the Solos for Lever or Pedal harp book, and Seasons in Vancouver has just been published.
Hello, Jennifer!
1. I started learning cross-rhythms when I studied piano.
2. I believe it was a Beethoven piano piece that introduced me to 4 against 3 and many French pieces use 3 against 2.
3. A lot of contemporary composers write really challenging cross-rhythms in orchestra harp parts, sometimes doubling what other single-line instruments are doing, just to increase the fun.
4. I learned to think of cross-rhythms as fractions. For example, quarter note “two against three” is just six eighth notes divided differently.
5. The metronome is every musician’s best friend and should be used every day. I play through sections of pieces with the metronome to check that my rhythms and tempi are on track. Then I turn it off, so that I can work on phrasing and breathing. I think of it as a “reality check”.
Carl Swanson wrote about his lessons on this with Pierre Jamet. http://swansonharp.com/articles/DEBUSSY.html It was originally published in the Journal of the American Harp
Society Winter 2000 Issue, Vol. 127, No. 4.
Another resource:
http://www.answers.com/topic/danses-sacr-e-et-profane-for-chromatic-harp-string-orchestra-l-103Sorry; I haven’t seen this part. Can you get a look at the score? Maybe there are notes that are covered or doubled and you can leave them out. Sometimes the problem is the copying. If there are lots of weird rests floating around and confusing your eye, try cross-beaming between staves or beaming across all the notes belonging to a single beat. Are the left and right hand parts aligned well? Are the spaces between the notes not uniform?
Oh, you’re lucky! We didn’t get our music until a few days before the show. When I got to rehearsal, one of the pieces had been re-written so I had to sight-read it.
Anna Dunwoodie and Lisa WIlliamson have published several volumes of Sight-Reading for Harpists books. here is juts one place where you can buy these books:
http://www.folkharp.com/taxonomy/term/837
For rhythm practice, there is a great book called A Logical Approach to Rhythmic Notation by Phil Perkins.
