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What does Davy see himself doing in 10 years time? Harp as a great hobby or harp as part of his work? If he really, really wants to study performance harp after school then he should find a good new teacher, buckle down and do exactly what they want him to (even though that could involve going right back to some basic technique and etudes) and commit to a good amount daily of solid regular practice. He can then apply to a number of different conservatories as he comes to the end of high school. That would be the usual path in most countries anyway so he is too young to consider himself written off. What was his attitude like btw to criticism? Sometimes they cut those they don’t feel were receptive enough to that!
You were pretty lucky it was Fur Elise! Or unlucky if you wanted her as a pupil for life I suppose. My mother learnt the piano purely to play the slow movt of the Pathetique and gave up immediately that was achieved. I assume you have read Alan Rusbridger’s Play It Again – a great account of his mission to conquer Chopin’s Ballade No. 1!
I played the piano from the age of 6 before I started the harp a few years later and by the time I started harp I was pretty proficient. I was therefore a rather rogue Suzuki light student who always read the music and had it on a stand but had a full on Suzuki teacher (really a piano specialist who had learnt the harp herself as an adult and added it to her studio). But I performed everything by heart and did the concerts, graduations etc. Sounds like yours is one of the more evangelical ones though. I really think they need flexibility with teens and adults to adapt to their aims. It’s not like teaching a 6 year old whose mother has to supervise every practice session. I don’t teach via the Suzuki method although I incorporate ideas from it and quite a bit of their repertoire. I always have pupils do formal theory if they cant read music from the start and they want eventually to read music. The thing about the harp is that you basically give the same lesson content over and over again for a long time as it takes a very long time to establish the absolute basics that are essential for progress. Different tunes but an awfully similar lesson. Posture, approach to the harp, the hand and arm position, finger placement and motion, wrist motion…Once both hands can do that well they start going together. I add in things like chords, scales, arpeggios and harmonics for a bit of variation as well to keep things interesting. Suzuki of course would not add in scales and arps as they are embedded in their rep.
I have never actually heard of a Suzuki teacher who asks people who can already read music not to before. After all the ethos of Suzuki was that music is like learning your native language – you do that aurally then go on to written but if you have already reached written why would you go backwards? That is really very strange.
Ray Chen is another great violinist who came out of a Suzuki background. There are as many versions of Suzuki harp teaching as there are teachers I suspect. Suzuki put hands together very early in harp book 1 so I cant imagine what that teacher
was doing. I started the harp with a Suzuki teacher but I already read bass and treble clefs from the piano so was never learning “by ear”. However, what has not been mentioned is that they offer a lot of ensemble/group work very early on and a huge number of performance opportunities including major showcase events in lovely venues. I agree that book 1 harp is nothing like book 1 piano or violin – far harder – so it can be hard to establish mastery of each work without pupils getting rather sick of a piece. I use some rep from the books but supplemented so they get more variety. When you remember that Suzuki violinists who finish hold every single book in their memory up to and including the Mendelssohn concerto (their final grad work) and often perform with muchyounger students there is a lot of inspiration around and young people hear rep they aspire to play all the time as well. They can always slot into an impromptu Bach double for the rest of their lives! No school subjects ever demand that amount of memorisation which is a plus if you end up performing by heart a lot professionally and it well may cross over into academic success as well.Madame de Genlis (1746-1830) wrote in her method book about a “travel” practice harp type object
that fitted in a muff…to exercise the fingers on whilst travelling in ones horse-drawn carriage around Paris…Does anyone have a surviving model? I haven’t ever seen one.That rather depends what you know I am afraid. Tune carefully first or its not a decent comparison. You do have to listen blind to other people playing them preferably in a reasonably size room but remember that different harpists can make very different sounds on the same harps. For me that would be top to bottom arpeggios and scales looking for any unevenness, something crisp and baroque like the opening of the Handel, something twiddly like the Mozart, something Romantic with a long melodic line, something lush and chordy like Faure opening, something modern. A few big orchestral excerpts if you know any. Just snippets. Borrow a Zoom H4 or equivalent if possible rather than your phone to record.
There is usually a good second hand market for all quality pedal harps especially in countries that don’t make them so you could in fact always change your mind later on. I have played examples of all those and have found that any one of each model can be very different from another so always try a harp in person if at all possible or at least listen to someone else playing it if really no choice although different players can make rather different sounds on the same harp!
Thanks Balfour,
Got to the final round (3 people) – no appointment made though. It was nervewracking that’s for sure…no wonder people knock back the Rescue Remedy (not very homeopathic if you read the fact the flowery bits are in 70% alcohol) or beta blockers. I wished I had had some! I could sign on for a PhD at this point but I am not feeling very keen on that currently – might try for a big scholarship to travel and study or finish my french degree that i did half of alongside music.
Compared with piano or violin Suzuki very few people finish the harp repertoire. They probably need to supplement those books by letting people do non suzuki easier rep alongside so they feel more sense of accomplishment and have more things up their sleeve that they can perform. I was already a reasonable pianist when I started the harp – non-Suzuki taught and I carried on the piano alongside the harp. For a long time I performed on both. So I could read treble and bass clef and had done a fair bit of theory – that certainly helped me progress. Suzuki teachers vary hugely in when they introduce reading but I was never a little toddler harpist – I was 9 when I started and around 5 ft tall. I did my final graduation at about 15 or 16. There was no choice but to learn from a Suzuki teacher – that is all there happened to be in my city. However, after about a year of lessons (playing Minuet 2 in fact…) I went to a residential harp camp run by an incredible harpist and teacher who is known all over the world as one of the great “Salzedo” players.
From then on I had input from both and as my Suzuki teacher had learnt the harp as an adult and recognised the superior skills of teacher number 2 she was very keen to take on board all the suggestions I got. So I am a hybrid who has since adopted a few things from the Russian and French schools as well.
I think the regular performance opportunities with Suzuki are a huge plus unrivalled by most non-Suzuki teachers. I think the way they teach very young children is great. I think regularly hearing excellent (and not so excellent) violinists, cellists and pianists is very useful at the mixed concerts. It might have helped my memorisation skills although I also performed a lot of big piano rep by heart which makes that hard to tell. If you don’t play by heart young you are very unlikely to ever develop that skill later which is something a professional with solo aspirations has to do. I was told early on that my scales sounded musical and even despite the fact I didn’t practice “a scale” or “an argeggio” other than those found within pieces.
Normally with Suzuki (piano, violin etc) you know what rep is coming up as you hear it all the time from more advanced students who give you something to aspire to. That was not the case for me as I became the most advanced harp student of my Suzuki teacher quite quickly (she was mainly a Suzuki piano teacher). We did some harp ensemble work but not as much as some Suzuki harp students would get – 100s of them on stage in salt lake city etc! I think it probably doesn’t matter how you learn frankly as long as you have good posture, your teacher ensures that it looks and feels “easy” and all movements are kept physiological with close attention paid to tone and tone colours. What you need is the passion to keep going and to find your own inspiration. For me that was hearing a truly great player live for the first time at that harp camp.
That is all easier said than done and means adapting whatever style you teach to each person’s body, arms, hands, finger size and shape. Finally you need to find orchestras to play with once you reach a reasonable standard if you want to play that sort of music which I certainly did and I was lucky to have both youth orchestras and good community orchestras around that I played for from quite a young age. And parents willing to drag the harp around a lot of course.
It has yet to be divulged what career this will be…intermittently I am playing professionally casually, I get some solo recitals, I teach a bit, I do events (could do more if I advertised I am sure but I just finished my degree last semester and went to my first professional orchestral audition so was working non-stop for that for a while). I prepared to compete internationally but COVID stopped me getting there, I write program notes professionally… I expect to have a hybrid career and might have to take up accompaniment on the piano at some point too I suspect!
