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My own headline brought up another subject as I was looking at it: students who steal their teacher’s music. I have had them take mine by accident along with their own as they leave, and they bring it back. My teacher loaned out so much music, she couldn’t keep track of who had what, and some never returned what they had, and still have her copies of this or that piece.
I had a “student”, a beginner who only took lessons for a few weeks, steal the harp I found for her to rent from Salvi.
Have you had students steal anything from you?
I have had a student come to a lesson so deprived of food, he had no energy to play. I did my best to make sure he was eating (this was at a music camp), but I couldn’t force him, and he had plenty of excuses, as did his mother. It was sad and kind of pathetic. In the end, he didn’t do very well with his studies or amount to much of a harpist after finishing studies. The moral of this tale is, if you want to be a harpist, you can’t be worrying about fashion and image and get caught up in eating disorders. You have to become immune to peer pressure anyway, because who has peers that are also harpists? You have to be healthy, that you do.
To follow up on the thoughts about repertoire quality, I think I have isolated a distinguishing factor between the music composed by harpists and the music composed for harp by composers: I am working on a sonata, and mostly using the piano to write, keeping in mind what should work on the harp and checking the voicing; where I would work on the harp much more extensively normally, and only use the piano for back-up. The result is quite different. It is more pianistic, could be a piano piece nearly as much as a harp piece, and as a result it sounds so much more like what composers write for the harp. I think their lack of intimacy with the harp gives them more freedom, as using a piano certainly gives great harmonic freedom. Writing from the harp point of view builds in more limitations, partly because of what has come before, and also the awareness of what we tend to want it to do. But the choices made by the composers broaden our horizons and enrich us as often as they dismay, distort and disrespect our instrument.
Miss Lawrence used to say: speculate upon the harmony. Meaning, read the chords and play the notes that are possible, and forget the rest. We had a performance of the Schoenberg when I was in school, and fortunately for me, I didn’t have to play it, but I believe I may still have her edited parts.
One thing is clear, that most harp manufacturers have been improving the quality of their harps over the years. We have more models to choose from, more sizes, and a wider price range. They are to be applauded.
I hope that all harp manufacturers realize that our art is very much dependent upon their practices and their decisions affect deeply what we are able to do. Discontinuing an accessory can have serious ramifications for our music, even if it was not a best-selling item. I hope they realize that they cannot be solely business-people, but participants in our art. Don Henry always realized this, I think, and made music available to us at little or no profit, by publishing it and stocking the rare and unusual.
Historically, the desire to support Lyon & Healy has been strong in order to maintain a standard of sound and appearance, and to always have their best harps available to us. Now, other manufacturers have similar support for their achievements. As we strive to maintain our standards, they must also strive to maintain and better their standards.
I think that the confusion over what harp to buy has increased with the increase in brands and models. It would help if they were clearly labeled as to their projected use: student model, compact professional, much
Another issue is chord spacing. Part of teaching a composer is giving him a list of chord spacings that are playable and those that aren’t. This thread makes me think of that old Magic Fire Music. It’s Salzedo’s solo version that is barely playable, more than the original with its multiple parts. Funny that they use it for Metropolitan Opera auditions when they have the harps to play the original. I nailed it at full speed when I auditioned for them, to their evident surprise, but I played a wrong note in another excerpt for misreading a chord in a badly handwritten part from Andrea Chenier, so I got booted over that tiny gaffe. Jerks.
Okay, there’s a lot to say here. Obviously, I meant e-natural and f-flat, or e-sharp and f-natural. Or should have.
I think Salzedo would have been the same. His influence from Edgard Varese may have been there as he was also in Paris before New York, and the other influence I know of, Dane Rudhyar, was also in Paris. Salzedo’s composing developed from the chromatic academic style similar to Pierne’s early work, as seen in its apotheosis in his Ballade, where he expanded the tonal harmony, the voicings and nature of his chord progressions to introduce hints of polytonality, earlier than Milhaud. His Poetical Studies and works of that time are decidedly impressionistic. His next vein, like Quietude and similar pieces, were possibly influenced by Rudhyar and prefigure new-age music and all kinds of things yet to come. His scales in Flight were created long before Messaien did similar work. He increased the angularity and purity of his sounds, including harsh and percussive colors new to the harp, yet remained tonal, though his line tends to be more and more angular and hyperkinetic, as in his concerti. He invents deconstructive thought in his paraphrases on American folk songs, like Traipsin through Arkansaw, long before Derrida and other philosophers caught up to him. He did like to find the forefront in every path, including his hobby of photography. A man of his times. He followed the fertile path of acoustically based harmony and tonality that I feel is the strongest and most legitimate path through the 20th century and into the future. He, in accordance with the acoustic nature of the harp, emphasizes open intervals, and wider chord spacings. You frequently find fourths, fifths, sixths and sevenths in his pieces, and his chord voicings are usually wide, and the chords regularly incorporate the tones of the 9th, 11th and 13th degrees, as early as Ballade. He was not the first perhaps, looking at Stravinsky, but right apace with the others in the forefront. Stravinsky’s Svezdoliki is the first piece I know of in the 20th c. to be based entirely on 4ths, 4ths and acoustic harmony, but I’m sure the elemets of that go at least as far back as Musorgsky. If only we knew what concerts he attended in his youth. He was active in Monte Carlo, I haven’t matched up the dates yet, but if he overlapped with the Ballets Russes, he would have encountered Stravinskyisms.
De Falla, Villa Lobos, Turina, Rodrigo, Martin, Hindemith, and many more great European composers followed the acoustic harmony path, as do I, and I think Esme’s dismissal of modern European composers should be far more restricted to the atonalists and postwar trendites. Henze stands out, a little. I respect Dutilleux and Jolivet, and Rodrigo was a great who died only recently. Many, many great Spanish composers we barely know, like Espla, Gerhard, Halffter and others. The Concerto by Moreno-Buendia is one of the best I have heard. I have not heard the works by Montsalvatge, the solo and the concerto. They may be as great as his Cinque Cancions de Negras, if we are fortunate.
Busser and Pierne went on to write some interesting work as they got older, and there is Cras, Zbinden and others. The avant-garde succeeded in suppressing much work by more traditional composers, so we must dig to find it. I am flattered that Esma thinks American composers did so much great work.Now, a list of some pieces we would not have as they are but for Salzedo’s precedents:
Ginastera Concerto
Caplet Divertissements
Persichetti Serenade and Parable
Somers Suite
Wagenaar Four Vignettes
Riegger Divertissement
Koutzen Trio
many more.
If more composers knew his notations, how much clearer their music would be to learn.Actually, Salzedo totally takes into account the overtones in his compositions, and composers who emulated him have also done so. It may be more common in American music. You might enjoy Panufnik’s music for harp in that regard. This is a very valuable and significant thread.
Yes…BUT the strings are different sizes, and moreover, with or without discs touching the strings which changes the tone quality, and I was always taught that an e-sharp should be slightly sharper than an f-flat. An open string has a bigger, rounder tone than one in the natural position, and the sharp position has a very pinched quality, and the tension of the string is tightened considerably, so there is a very real difference between an f-flat and an e-sharp.
As for neatness, Salzedo was by nature very meticulous. For example, he could not abide having extra string length curled up along the top of the harp. Miss Lawrence would say, probably quoting him, ‘your harp needs a haircut.’ So for his notation to be meticulous is a natural extension of that trait. Unfortunately, it didn’t extend so far as to his study of baroque music ornamentation in his early days, though he did work on it later on. I think his peers were just messy about everything, when to pedal, how your harp looks, inconsistent. But aren’t the French supposed to be so very logical, conceptual and rational? Why only him? Who knows. What would have happened if he had not emigrated to the United States? Think about that, shall we?
I, too, have faced this issue in discussing career aspirations with a student from a very religious family with already set plans. Not knowing much about their religion, I crossed some boundaries with my advice, and fortunately, did not lose the student, but faced having to censor myself in my own studio, which I don’t think is right. Exposing students to great art is certainly part of teaching, and to take such a narrow view of harp instruction is limiting to the students and teachers growth. That being said, the position of discretion is in some ways a wise one, practical in the least. I think as much as possible in the way of expectations on everyone’s part should be expressed as early as possible in the teacher/student relationship.
Well, aren’t you doing exactly the same? How does that make it any better? We are entitled to a taste for harp playing, and there is more often than not at least a grain of truth in what is said. Generally speaking, nonSalzedo harpists have not been as audible in orchestra, and a lot of them do not play loud enough with their left hand to balance with the right hand. I say that based on the many recitals I attended, and I won’t name names, but it was mainly the students from a particular school.
Anyway, if you were privileged to listen in on what are intimate conversations within our circle, you should not be repeating them here! Everyone has their own gossip. I heard more than plenty of crap flowing the other way, so how about let’s drop all of it, except for honest, truthful statements and clearly identified meaningful
