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I checked with Dorothy Remsen about the harmonics, and she reported that the AHS Competition Chair, JoAnn Turovsky, said that they will accept any of the above solutions to the harmonics question. So, chacun a son gout (French for “to each his own”)!
I decided that the best course of action was to write the AHS and find out what they expect to hear at the competition. Dorothy Remsen reported that the competition chair, JoAnn Turovsky, says that bars 52-54 are indeed to be played “simile”, that is, non arpeggiato (straight). Thank you for the responses!
I googled the Brahms-Wagner controversy and this was from the Milwaukee Symphony’s web site: (there were many other sites!)
During his lifetime (1833- ’97), Brahms stood at one pole of a bitter ideological split in German music.
Opposed, among others, were critics Richard Pohl and George Bernard
Shaw and composers Franz Liszt, Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner.
They stood ready to blow up the classical traditions and in favor of
the most radical personal expression. For these and other Wagnerians,
repetitive, symmetrical, Classical forms were obsolete, and open-ended
tone poems and epic, multi-media operas were the paths to the future.
Myth and the novel, more than Mozart and Beethoven, provided their
models.One can’t judge Wagner’s opera ‘Lohengrin’ after a first hearing, and I certainly don’t intend hearing it a second time.
– Johannes Brahms
I think we had a similar discussion on another thread, some time ago. I have heard great harpists from every school of technique. In my view, there is no “one-size-fits-all” technique that works for everyone. I cherry-pick from all of them and I believe I’m not alone. Why not? Learning technique is like a game of “telephone” where the message gets further and further from the original, the longer it is passed on. As long as your technique is allowing you to play comfortably, achieve all the musical ideas you have, produce gorgeous sound, etc., does it have to have a label? This is like the Brahms-Wagner controversy.
The latest Harp Column magazine has got pages dedicated to harp camps! You can check it out and see which one is closest to you and fits your budget, and of course, has the kind of course you want. Check out the Harp Mall as well on the Internet. There are lots of harp-related links on there.
It depends on what the course is geared towards. I think most, if not all, music majors at university hope to win an orchestra audition. Therefore, it is helpful to get the input from someone who plays this repertoire every day. At the least, the students should be able to get master classes from someone in the field so that they can learn how to function in an orchestra and an audition. The audition weeds out anyone who does not know how the excerpts go, so if your teacher does not know, then you are at a disadvantage.
I understand what you’re saying, Saul, but when you only have five days to learn an orchestra part, there is no time to spare for being theoretically aware. You just have to read what’s on the page, so I put it on Sibelius or copy it and white things out so that I don’t go cross-eyed trying to decipher what I’m playing. I also get dyslexic when I see those harmonics written where they sound. I prefer knowing where my hand is going, because I am often learning music on a tight deadline.
I totally agree with your idea of practicing harmonics in different scales! It’s not a bad idea to practice playing chords of harmonics as well. A little trick I devised is to use enharmonic flats if you get a three-note chord of harmonics with a sharp in the middle or bottom. Your palm slants upwards, so the flats come out nicely. You would have to break your arm to slant the hand down to produce those harmonics well. I also only play the regular harmonics that split the string in half. The others don’t sound good and I have never seen them used in a piece.
It depends on whether they play lever harp or pedal harp, what training they have already had on other instruments, what their strengths and weaknesses are, etc. I start everybody with four fingers on the strings from the first lesson, and we get scales underway immediately. I make sure they start each lesson with technical exercises, then we get to the pieces, (unless they are already really technically competent). Whichever music you use, the pieces should be engaging musically and mentally, and should challenge the student enough to make them progress, but not be so difficult as to cause frustration. Sometimes you will overestimate a student’s ability or amount of practice time, and then it’s okay to back up and choose something simpler for the recital. For beginners, it’s good to get them a book of progressive exercises and pieces, with lots of commentary and pointers that they can use as a reference. There are good lists of pieces to choose from in the various Syllabuses (Syllabi?) from the Royal Conservatory of Music, or the Associated Board of the Royal College of Music, etc.
What a wonderful discovery! Doesn’t her harp sound magnificent? Her tips for composers are very well illustrated, too.
Yes, I have used this system, from University of British Columbia’s Telestudios. I taught one student at McGill University a while ago, as part of an experiment. It was amazing; as though we were in the same room. I am doing one this week for a group of six students in Calgary. The technology at UBC and McGill is state-of-the-art, with three high-definition plasma-screen televisions and high-definition cameras. The images are life-sized, and there is no delay in the sound.
If you do have to resort to bandages, try “Finger-Wrap” bandages by BandAid. They are a tapered shape, really thin, flexible and waterproof, and you can play amazingly well in them.
I have found that you can really alter the sound of a flat chord by playing either with curved fingers or flat fingers. It also sounds different if you close your hand or you don’t. That’s what I love about the harp. There are so many choices open to us for variations of colour and expression. And, yes, rolling the chords at different speeds, or only rolling one hand, all give us different effects. Since we don’t have the dynamic range of a piano, this is how we can make up for it.
