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I would not personally begin with those composers unless I was still a student. They are not musically of sufficient interest for any serious listeners. They are okay for casual listeners or salons. I would open with Beethoven’s Variations on a Swiss Air, Spohr’s Fantaisies (when will the second one be published?), anything by Handel, Spanish baroque music, many pieces called Prelude. Grandjany’s Children at Play would be an excellent opener.
Ask your teacher if she has a copy of Salzedo’s article on successful practicing. It will guide you well. It has been republished at least once in the American Harp Journal, I think, so if you check their online index, you should be able to find it in your library.
The main key is drilling, ten correct repetitions of each tiny unit of music, two beats or more. The key to making that successful is paying attention, being thoughtful, mindful of what you are doing. There are many approaches. You can take any aspect of the music and focus on that. You can focus on one finger at a time. You can focus only on movement.
Debussy is the hardest composer to practice well. There are not a lot of notes, but so much is happening. The Variations are a little more obvious.
You can practice for rhythm, dynamics, voicing, counterpoint, tone quality, finger action, position, evenness, removing effort, strength, quietness, legato, sostenuto, etc.
Or are you just talking about your callouses when you say practice tips?
You should be okay with the 30, though you have to be careful about playing low in the bass and big chords. You won’t be able to place larger intervals unless your hands are big, but you can play as if you are placing, in other words, reach toward the string with the intent of playing it and pivot or leap as soon as you’ve played the lower notes and you’ll have it in time. It may be that your chords will be broken a little more slowly, but that is not a flaw. Also, your hand are capable of stretching quite a bit between the thumb and fingers, so if you do exercises for that, you will enlarge your hand and your reach. Mine has increased from a tenth to a twelfth or more.
A simple exercise for that is to play cdef 4x, cdeg 4x, cdea 4x, cdeb 4x, cdec 4x, then reverse it: gfed, gedc, gdcb, gcba, cbag.
So many people strain their bodies by sudden changes in how much they play. If you suddenly added three extra hours to your playing time, it is no wonder your body would react badly to it. Adding playing time must be done in small increments, no more than 15 minutes per week. And when you are performing every day, you must take at least one day a week and not play at all. I would recommend that you concentrate on doing exercises at your home practice, and whatever will facilitate playing the pieces you do at work. I would learn one new piece at a time, working slowly on it. I would have a massage every week, and do stretching
That is a tough question, Emily. Certainly it will seem unfair to contestants and perhaps observers. I think one would have to look at how the contestants are chosen, and that perhaps the flaw is in that part of the process. If the same jury chose the contestants as well as the winners, would they be more likely to always award the first prize? I might think so. People don’t realize that contestants are chosen by the people who run the competition, in this case, mostly harpists, I believe, and in some competitions, they are not even musicians.
I think another part of the problem is with the repertoire, and who is drawn by it and who is repelled. It seems to me that the broader the choices, the better. I don’t think the top prize should be given if no one is truly ready to fulfill its demands, but that should be a very rare circumstance, hopefully. However, the promised engagements should go to somebody and not be wasted, so the previous winner should perhaps receive them. It seems to me that the contestants should be more carefully chosen to seek maturity rather than youth. I think the age limit should either be raised or done away with altogether. So many harpists start later, in their teens, and they are ready for competition at
Please tell me who published the Prelude by Enescu. I would disagree with one thing. I rarely see programs that are arranged chronologically. One positive attribute of such a program is that the ear is not shocked by sudden contrasts, but gradually led through styles. Pianists tend to start with classical sonatas or Bach. That is more of a cliche to me, and we don’t have very many classical sonatas anyway. We do have some nice modern classical pieces, the Maghini Suites being two of those.
They’re really not that hard to find. They are in the exact half-way point of the string. Unless you have trouble with spatial relations, this is not so hard to find. It is probably just above where you normally play. If you glance at the bottom of the string and glance at the top, not where the discs are but the stationary nut, then divide it in half visually, your hand will go to the half-way point. Just practice it. Remember that it’s higher on a flat string and lower on a sharp string. Don’t mark your strings, please. They are horribly expensive now.
Arnica will relieve pain, but in my experience it does not correct anything. I am having good results with Blue Emu, which contains glucosamine, chondroitin, msm, collagen, allantoin, etc. It absorbs quickly and deeply. I recommend seeing a doctor who will use ultrasound to examine your shoulders and read exactly what is happening in there. My doctor is called an ultrasound radiologist, doing investigative ultrasound therapy. He can see pockets of inflammation, scar tissue, whatever, and if you need a cortisone injection or lidocaine, he can see exactly where to put it with the ultrasound image.
I have found that setting my bench in front of an open door, and reaching behind me to hold the doorknobs is the perfect stretch for my shoulders. You have to hold a stretching position for more than 30 seconds for the fibers to loosen.
The Blue Emu has helped prevent my tennis elbow from recurring after flare-ups. Exercise, unfortunately, can exacerbate all these problems. I have had very little help from most physical therapists. Some are okay. A good massage can do wonders. Also a sensitive and skilled trainer. “Body Workers” can seem to get too much into their personal theories and interpretations of what you are experiencing, and color it with emotions, so I don’t automatically recommend that approach. There are movement coaches like Feldenkrais or Alexander that may help.
Changing your bench, lowering it for a while may provide some relief. Make sure your shoulders aren’t raised or hunched at all. Even when they are down, it’s amazing how tense they can be. A muscle relaxer like baclofen can also be helpful, along with any kind of anti-inflammatory medicine you can tolerate. It may not be serious if you are young, but if you don’t get to the bottom of this, it can become chronic and a real problem in the future. I don’t think diet is the issue. You can also be terribly stiff from a build-up of lactic acid in your muscles from heavy use without massage. Massage will clear that up.
Yes, they will. Six hours is too much when three of them are performing. You need to stretch. Do you take breaks every hour while on the job? Sometimes you need to adjust your position or posture to give your body a break. I found that I need to sit on my bench in front of a door, and reach behind me to hold the doorknobs in order to stretch my shoulders. Rules, schmules, it’s how it feels. You need to feel completely effortless and relaxed while playing.
I have spoken with one of the jury members. It was all handled extremely professionally and fairly as can be. A consensus apparently emerged through voting that there were certain qualities absent in the finalists that were desired, and each contestant was different. I’m not sure there was any discussion at all, certainly no fighting. It is handled extremely carefully to avoid that, not like in the old days. I think the youth of the contestants was a factor in that they may have needed more maturity. It seems to me that the lessons from this are, to not push very young players into the ultimate competition, and to make sure they have musical understanding, not just technical and performance security. It is also important to arrive early, in case of any sickness or jet lag.
It is easy to look at the careers of competition winners and say that their careers validate their winning. That is like looking at an eclair and saying that must be a pastry. Winning the competition ensures a number of engagements and exposure that leads to at least some success, moreso in the “old days”, which, as Emily points out, are gone. There are many winnners who are not in the spotlight constantly. It is truly no measure of anything but what happened that day with those people. It is also not very possible for a talented harpist who doesn’t have money or sponsors to prepare for and go to a competition like Israel. Or there are those who are too busy to take the time. It’s an enormous investment for a very slim chance. And winning is no guarantee of very much. That is one of the reasons I started the Harp Festival of Philadelphia: To provide a forum in which harpists can present their art without competition and required repertoire (other than what I request).
As important as it is to develop a natural ability to memorize, it can’t be a substitute for reading. As you found, it leads to errors, and the intellectual aspects of the music aren’t learned. Miss Lawrence ran into this frequently, and her approach to handling it was what she wrote in her ABC of Harp Playing. Have the student point to the note and say it as they play it. You have to work at their reading skills, and sight reading too. It sounds like you have tried a similar approach. Perhaps giving her a piece and not letting her take it home, only showing it in the lesson might work. You can also try covering up all but the part about to be played with another piece of paper. I think you will conquer this in time. Having mistakes pointed out tends to cure, as no one wants to be embarassed.
As important as it is to develop a natural ability to memorize, it can’t be a substitute for reading. As you found, it leads to errors, and the intellectual aspects of the music aren’t learned. Miss Lawrence ran into this frequently, and her approach to handling it was what she wrote in her ABC of Harp Playing. Have the student point to the note and say it as they play it. You have to work at their reading skills, and sight reading too. It sounds like you have tried a similar approach. Perhaps giving her a piece and not letting her take it home, only showing it in the lesson might work. You can also try covering up all but the part about to be played with another piece of paper. I think you will conquer this in time. Having mistakes pointed out tends to cure, as no one wants to be embarassed.
As important as it is to develop a natural ability to memorize, it can’t be a substitute for reading. As you found, it leads to errors, and the intellectual aspects of the music aren’t learned. Miss Lawrence ran into this frequently, and her approach to handling it was what she wrote in her ABC of Harp Playing. Have the student point to the note and say it as they play it. You have to work at their reading skills, and sight reading too. It sounds like you have tried a similar approach. Perhaps giving her a piece and not letting her take it home, only showing it in the lesson might work. You can also try covering up all but the part about to be played with another piece of paper. I think you will conquer this in time. Having mistakes pointed out tends to cure, as no one wants to be embarassed.
Unfortunately, I think you really can’t do anything except to say something simple like get whatever help you need. It is beyond our scope. It may be a resolved problem, the student may already be in treatment, it can mean anything. People are strangely touchy about boundaries and what they expect from us. If there is already a counseling aspect to the lessons, then it is perhaps approachable. We can’t do interventions, much as we might like to.
