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Harp Hell: A never-ending production of Die Walkure, that is nothing but the Magic Fire Music repeated ad infinitum.
Tuning harps endlessly in 100% humidity with air conditioning going off and on every half-hour.
Playing an endlessly repeating “The Fantasticks” with a beefed-up percussion part for the harpist, an 80-year-old actress playing the Girl, two children playing the Fathers, a Mute who keeps talking, an El Gallo who ****s everyone in the production, a Boy who goes off-pitch on all his high notes, all for Off-Broadway union scale, only you never get a paycheck; and you have to play on a 150-year-old harp.
Teaching a beginner who has no memory, so every lesson you have to start over again from scratch.
Constantly being required to show up for rehearsal in Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic, only you are in pajamas or nothing at all, have no music, and they expect you to play on a square harp with no pedals, or a double-size harp with twice as many strings, and you are subbing.
Walter Pfeil had titanium tuning pegs cast for his harp, I think they would not corrode. But what exactly is it that salt air is supposed to do to a harp? I have never seen any example of this damage. Not at Camden, nor anywhere else. I lived for ten years overlooking the salty Hudson River and it did nothing to my harp. The car fumes might have, but not the salt air I miss so much.
As for the off-topic discussions, that should have remained in another thread, I know much more than I have ever let on, let it rest at that.
As for the word plastic, it is commonly used to describe all synthetics as opposed to natural products. So I will use it in a general way to describe kevlar. Now, perhaps they can make a harp out of the plastics made from corn.
We must then protect a forest to be used only for harp-making, not give in to synthetics, which usually cost more environmentally in the long run.
I do not think one can compose seriously “in the new manner.” You have to have sounds in your ear, not in the computer’s synthesizer playback. It will mislead you. You can use a piano for consulation, but you must think about the acoustics of the harp, how the strings ring and what happens to the overtones. You should study fine harp music to see how it is written. Look at the Glinka Nocturne, the Debussy orchestra parts, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky. What is in your library? Do they have any harp music you can study? I also recommend studying some piano music that is transcribed for harp to see how it needs to be adjusted, preferably Salzedo’s transcriptions as he was the master of piano as well as harp. The recent collection published by Carl Fischer with Yolanda Kondonassis would be of great guidance. You can also look at Clair de Lune and how Salzedo made harpistic adjustments.
If you try to learn the harp and don’t learn it well, it will ruin your efforts. You do not need harp lessons, you need lessons in harp music. You might also look at the music of
I think the high affection some people have for Wurlitzers may be a bit misleading. I don’t think they are as good as the best Lyon & Healy’s for sound, and their looks were always a bit less attractive to me. As they are hard to find, I would not fret about it. The biggest sounding harps I have encountered have been Salzedo models, by far and away.
Do they recycle bullet-proof vests into harps? Do they wash all the blood out? I hope they use 100% virgin kevlar/plastic.
Well, this has obviously been a hard road for everyone involved. If it eases your mind any, it was never obvious that Mrs. O’Carroll was doing business with Venus until very recently. Perhaps she was upset by not knowing all that you were doing and having to do on your end, and sometimes thinking that nothing was happening. There is nothing better than progress reports to ease one’s stress. You haven’t addressed the condition of the harp, though, and why she needed to return it, that I recall. Having such a distance to be covered would certainly add to anyone’s distress if in great need of a harp. I, for one, don’t think her obviously high standards have to be lowered because she lives in Tasmania, which is quite beatiful in a very weird way, and the fact that there is a flaw in her new harp only shows that she does not discriminate between harp manufacturers in her expectations. In fact, she seems to have owned or played on more types of harps than anyone I know! Yes, these forums can be dangerous as they seem to encourage emotional responses and are published immediately for all who care to see. I think business owners can rest assured that they are taken with a grain of salt by any reader who has been around the internet for very long. I have aired a few peeves, myself, some of long standing, some of little or no importance. It is up to the reader to consider the intended weight of the statement. We are all adjusting to the peskiness of the internet, and its new requirements of us. It’s terrible you had to have surgery, and I hope you are recovering well.
I am tempted to turn away adult students who are irregular, forget to pay and don’t progress, but I am too poor. If I ever get enough good students, they can hit the road to someone else. In the meantime, I take everybody!
I thought Diane said two weeks per piece. I wish I could learn that fast. I saw a Curtis student attempt to play the Britten Suite and proudly announce that she had learned it in a few weeks, and proceeded to play many notes in the wrong octave, many things that were reading errors. It was embarassing. That was several years ago, by the way, no one who was there within recent memory.
