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Or, shudders, they have gone to school and gotten a degree in Arts Administration, meaning they are full of “theory” about how arts organizations “should work.” Then they go out and ruin them. They are taught to make a profit.
I also recommend reading the book Teaching Genius, a very aweful portrait of Dorothy DeLay, who had a lot to do with how the system worked or continued to work. The main influences in the history of arts management were Sol Hurok, and Columbia Artists Management. Columbia is responsible for much of the damage.
As many people know already from my article on the subject, I favor having the harp placed behind the first violin section so the harp can be angled toward the right wall of the auditorium and have no obstructions in front of it to block the sound. I am finding the sound of my harp changes tremendously in different parts of my studio depending on what is near it. With the piano on one side and the wall on the other, the sound was quite contained, and on the other side of the piano, farther away with bookcases behind it, the sound is still contained, though I can hear it open out into the room. Having objects behind us absorbs sound as much as in front or alongside. I don’t think it helps much to put the harp on a podium, like the Minnesota Orchestra did for years, with the harp between the first and second violins. I think it also makes sense for the harp to be right up near the conductor between violas and cellos, on par with the other principals, only he will always think you are too loud. But the harp is pointing right out, which is good. I have seen the BSO do this for the Bruch Scottish Rhapsody.
I think we would all benefit from republished parts that are written out from our point of view. I hope to publish some as my facilities to do so are developed.
One thing I always did was position my stand with the desk high up so I could see the music and the conductor at the same time, and see the strings from the corner of my eye. Why have it over to the left somewhere so they have to move your head? I also try to finger parts so that instead of leaping I place secure intervals like octaves which I can do without looking. I don’t trust memory, and having to find your place in the music again. Muscle memory seems best, along with the ear. But it depends on the piece. If there’s nothing after the cadenza, solo away. Copland parts can be very tricky. I remember that part of the Golden Willow Tree. I think I placed ahead.
Maybe no-one else on stage does, but I like to think of the harp as one of the most important instrument on stage, on par with the principal players, and more like the oboe and concertmaster in the number of solo passages we get.
I think that Bernstein and Copland are examples more of having an obnoxious personality and egotism (or egoism?), than any expression of genius. What is interesting is that I think Hovhaness’s music will live far longer than either of them. And I suppose that even a genius with everything going for him can still be short-sighted or blinded/distracted by success and rewards and not grow. So, too much success can be a trap. Working with a record company that dominates what you do and how you sound is certainly capable of being a trap. It’s a stew with so many ingredients. If you watch the movie Matchpoint, it raises some interesting questions about the role of luck. I think my having a certain direction has required to ignore what might otherwise be a sense of opportunity. One who remains free of care to be able to pursue what is available may indeed find success, but lose identity, perhaps?
Again, I think we come back to personality. The stages are full of people whose goal has been to succeed, and I think oftentimes, to make as much money as possible at it. Those people are, I think, of little interest to the audiences, because their experience of music is ultimately self-referential. Compare, for example, Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman, two men of similar background, friends, same generation, same degree of success up to a point. Zukerman bores me to tears as do other egocentric performers. So many just try to do a good job with no errors noticable. That isn’t art. It struck me that McDonald chose to relate that the student’s playing so cleanly was what pleased her, unless you omitted something. I would much rather they were sloppy and showed me some new facet of the music I had never thought of before, or moved me with their expressiveness. Excellence of the actual act of performance is not the goal, to my thinking. You want it, yes, but the goal is to create a moving experience. That comes with gift, combined with talent and hard work, but also the personality to seek for such things. I knew a student who had “natural facility”, beautiful tone, charming and captivating beauty on stage, yet basically walked away from a classical career, not seeing the challenges in it. My teacher often said, if it comes to easy, it isn’t appreciated. I often think of my aunt who was a lawyer and had a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. She was not upset that she didn’t appear before the justices. She knew that required a specialist. The achievement to her was having climbed all that way up the mountain, over many years, and having prepared the case sufficiently for the court. And by the way, she won the case. So, I am content to be the mountain climber, like her, and have to relish the journey, rather than take an express ride to the top.
Very well said. Ten years is only enough for a first stage of confidence, in my experience, and it takes about thirty years to really blossom. I disagree, in that I don’t want to listen to someone who has only worked hard, there must be special talent there, too, but if it isn’t nurtured through time and application, it will never grow. “Success” has a lot to do with skill, luck, placement, connection, politics. But how many successful people are truly successes? How many orchestral harpists continue to give solo recitals? How many soloists continue to deepen? When I studied with Miss Lawrence, she wasn’t necessarily considered the “success” teacher, like Miss Chalifoux and Miss Allen, to name but two, however, I think what she gave us were life-long tools that have enabled me, certainly, to grow and develop all this time, and to feel like I have truly (hopefully) begun to master the instrument and its literature. Not that some of her students weren’t immediately successful, like Carolyn Mills, Ellen Ritscher, Elizabeth Richter and Susan Robinson.
“Learn how to work, and how to listen, how to hear the difference between what you are doing and what is possible-the potential in the harp” Miss Lawrence often said, and it is ever true.
There is an interesting book by Neil Steinberg, a Chicago Writer “Complete and Utter Failure”, on failure/success
In other words, you are experiencing a conflict between expectation and new patterns. That is a good point, and cleared up by improved reading, and not taking anything for granted. Perhaps that is a danger in the use of too much pattern exercises. I find pieces that seem to set up a pattern and then change it, like the Roussel Impromptu
None, whatsoever, sorry to say. Sounds like another composer who doesn’t know how to write for the harp. Maybe Guy Bacos will recognize the set of symbols and know what was intended.
Daily Dozen is definitely not the same. Miss Lawrence described it as for touring harpists to stretch their muscles, raising up and forward, stretching intervals. I never liked them.
I am sad to inform you that Dewey Owens died last week of leukemia. He was 81.
I didn’t mean to omit those. I use the Conditioning Exercises daily for myself, and teach them as soon as possible, and learned them very early on. The Short Stories are more advanced, of course, than the Sketches and Tiny Tales. But did you use other books or pieces? The Marie Miller transcriptions come to mind, but any other? So many Salzedo pupils come late from other instruments or as college students or adults, so the sophisticated and all-at-once approach works pretty well. Suppose you have a talented child to teach, and have many years to fill? My original teachers who were not exactly Salzedo-trained, gave me Mildred Dilling books, Betty Paret, Universal Method, and Sam Milligan. What would a Salzedo teacher have used, if anything different from what was mentioned? Miss Lawrence grew up on traditional French literature, I believe, and detested it later and loathed to teach any Bochsa or such. She would have loved to teach only modern music, were it possible. I’m not aware of any collection that is based on Salzedo method except for recent books. I am slowly gathering my own collection together.
Start doing it. Create your own approach. Don’t assume people are somehow expert because they have done that and market their approach. When you look at the healing “community,” you see now a plethora of different methods of Reiki, for one example. What kind of therapy do you want to offer through the harp? Healing through listening, through playing, or occupational therapy? Joel Andrews has been doing harp healing for years. You might get Reiki training, which you can do for free, pretty much, through the Yahoo groups, which will give you training and insight as a more-or-less legitimate healer. That strikes me as an essential foundation. You might also look at community college programs in physical therapy or music therapy. You can do hospice-type stuff as a volunteer and get training from the hospitals. Depends on where you live, I suppose. You might be able to tell that I don’t particularly endorse the idea of creating certifications for harpists that require payment for things they may be able to do naturally or with other approaches. It mostly strikes me as a way to exclude people who don’t pay for the certification, and to create a new “profession”. I have some experience with playing for elderly audiences, and in cancer and NICU wards. I think the most important training is how to emotionally handle the situations you will be in, and how to deal with the stress and intensity.
I am Saul Davis Zlatkovsky, and I am still in Philadelphia, near Rittenhouse Square, where I am arranging a festival of harp music concerts in Church of the Holy Trinity, to happen Memorial Day Weekend, 2007. The theme is honoring the centenary of Lucile Lawrence. We hope for
Maybe I’ll start offering pastries with lessons, only the last time I offered some, no-one would eat any except the father.
Rather than altering or distorting the music, I prefer to compose exercises to work out the technical challenge. I think it is important to listen to mistakes, assuming they were intentional, so one can hear and figure out what went “wrong” and how to recover from it. I like to think we are making mistakes so we know what might happen in every possible circumstance.
