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Well, that would depend on your choice of tempo and how you overall interpret Debussy’s tempo markings, which are unrealistic. To do it any differently would mean changing or omitting notes, I am certain. I will find out how workable it is as I work up the tempo. I suggest you include with your article Salzedo’s solution as well, which was independently arrived at by another composer.
If only there were fewer nitwits working at the publishers, one wouldn’t have to nitpick nearly as much.
Who said anything on the harp is easy? Yes, block placing is more difficult at first, but it is necessary for clean playing and good phrasing. One-at-a-time placing is only for when you can’t do it, or need a special effect.
If you have had strong teachers who “imposed” their view of the music on you, the purpose should have been to show you, by example, how to interpret music well. Having finished study, it is then your choice how you interpret pieces and your sense of how to do so should be stronger. I don’t know why you would feel so lost. Perhaps it has something to do with your concept of interpretation? Our purpose, if serious performers, is to serve the composers vision to the best extent possible, which does mean disregarding immediate impulses of doing this or that with a particular note, and trying to get at the core of the phrase. Popular music is well suited for doing whatever you feel like with it, so just let yourself go. If you apply yourself to that, I would think you would find what you are missing. I don’t know who your teachers are, but I woudn’t necessarily blame them, or see them as negative. It’s a process, and it doesn’t end when lessons end, and lessons are themselves a process.
One can also place 432, and as you play 4, pivot to place 1. That way, if your hands are smaller, you are block placing with a modification. I also sometime place 431, but not the 2, though it may play one or two notes, in certain phrases, in other words, block placing 41, but omitting 2 or 3 until needed. Placing with exceptions. And then there is pretend placing, where your hand moves as though it is connecting from 4-1, say, but is just there waiting, not on the strings. You would use this if 1 has to play the same string as 4, or if you need to cross over 1234, 2 in a downward scale, or if the jump is too far to place, so you have to travel toward it, but thinking of it as placed.
A p.s., things haven’t changed enough, because in planning the Philadelphia harp conference, letters were received from certain people saying they would not attend if it were going to be an all-Salzedo conference, which it wasn’t, but I think they didn’t come anyway. That’s how I was told it, regardless of what actually happened, so to what extent it is factual, I can’t tell you.
Perhaps we should have a thread just for stupid harpist stereotypes. One that I resist about the Salzedo school is that the tone is harsh and percussive and only suitable for
I suggest you get a recording and a book of Scarlatti Sonatas and/or Bach two-part inventions, or even flute solos, so you can concentrate on listening and following with the score just one or two lines, until that is comfortable, and then more chordal music, perhaps the Chopin Preludes. Learning to be comfortable reading music as though you were
How about legato placing? Placing in sequence really sounds like something else, such as hand-over-hand placing, or in a predetermined pattern. But does it really need a special name?
