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I knew you loved my posts, too. The Damase piece is called Vitrail, and is lovely and interesting. I also played solos from Milligan’s Medieval to Modern collections.
I think it is a problem that you want to create a classification based on one set of criteria. What is so challenging here is that progress differs so much based on previous musical experience. A student with several years of piano and a couple of years of poor harp instruction who is 17 has been able to go from Pathfinder Studies to Salzedo’s Preludes for Beginners, Srebotnjak Prelude no. 1 and Durand Chaconne, to Ibert’s Fantaisie and we are about to start concerti. An adult student with piano background is working slowly through Tiny Tales and advancing more quickly with Bochsa etudes, and is very quick with the Conditioning Exercises.
Nevertheless, I think music can be graded, more-or-less, and let the students move about as they need. Lyon & Healy’s old troubadour repertoire guide by Grace Follet and a partner is helpful. There are a lot of newer publications by harpists that are, to me, lacking in sufficient musical interest to be included. I find many piano collections are viable sources of material. If you can find the collections edited by Bernice Frost, for instance, I think they contain a lot of good material.
Repertoire suggestions: Marie Miller/Bach Solfegietto
Miller/Haydn, Miller/Schumann
Salzedo: Solos from the Art of Modulating
Grandjany: Pastorale
that’s all I can think of for now. Compiling a comprehensive list will take several hours indeed.
Weird how all the dates got changed on this thread.
As you say Carl, it is necessary as soon as you deal with dynamics, to teach them how to listen to the harp, how to make it respond, and how to create crescendi and decrescendi with ringing or muffled strings.The problem is, there are so many. Tiny Tales are actually quite difficult, because of the fingerings. I hope to soon provide suitable collections. In Solos for the Harp Player, you can start with (my own progression) Pavane, Correlli Adagio, then Sarabande (?), Durand Chaconne, then the Correlli Giga or the Cabezon Fuga. Ellis Schuman’s Handel transcriptions are good. I think it is important at this stage to use as much baroque music as possible, and classical. Then there are the good old Marie Miller transcriptions. Grandjany Automne is a good transition piece, then the two folk songs Le Bon, Patapon. Some of Salzedo’s Sketches are easier to handle than the Tiny Tales. Depending on the student, one can go right into his Preludes for Beginners. Dussek Sonatinas, too.
I didn’t read your post in depth, but I do not believe it at all. I am very much right-handed, and my left hand is much more secure, has 96% percent of the facility of my right at least, is stronger etc. Having more facility is not an advantage. If my left hand played all the melodies, like your right hand might feel, it would be so eloquent and expressive. Perhaps you should watch the movie “My Left Foot.” It’s just not a big deal. I don’t think it affects anyone’s chances in competition. Most harpists neglect to develop their left hands enough anyway.
In that case, I would want a double-strung harp or something like it so I have lots of notes at my disposal.
Good training makes one ambidextrous. If I think about what I am doing, I am perfectly able to write with my left hand. So, I think it would be taking an easy way out to switch shoulders, and not favor equal development. The easy hand is the one that ends up not being as sure, in my experience. Once I have learned a piece well, it is the right hand that has to be watched the most.
The only thing is that to me, it is much harder to have to leave the strings to change levers than to use the pedals. The only pitch advantage with levers is having an f natural and f sharp at the same time in different octaves. While I am not big on the idea of progress, the improvements in harp-making that led to the pedal harp we have now are significant, and abandoning them to return to lever harps altogether would be regressive. Not that everyone is doing that. But when Peak Oil happens lever harps may be all that are left, so we should use our pedal harps to the hilt as long as we can.
Certainly they are more convenient to move. Compositionally, diatonic music is fascinating, but limiting. Live is very hard for pedal harpists so we should as a community be careful about drawing work away from that instrument or soon no-one will be able to afford them at all. We need to increase work for everyone and income, contradictory as that might sound.If they are not overripe, they are a source of quick energy that is very digestible. I prefer cream cheese sandwiches, myself. On date-nut bread is even better.
I was advised to strap my harp to the wall when on a cruise ship, so I think that would work for an earthquake if the wall is solidly built. Check your insurance for riders.
Yes, I see what you mean, and having all your time free for study makes a big difference. You are right in that we are all different, and it is as much my personality as any study that affects how I perceive music. I process it subconsciously all the time. To analyze something, I do have to look at the score by itself sometimes. The thing is, for me, and how I am trained, the craft of music-making on the harp requires so much adjusting of fingering, of tone quality on different notes to bring out this or that element of the music, where to accent, how to manipulate the tempo, and fingering more than anything else is what takes so much time, and I work it all out slowly, according to my nature. It depends on the piece, too. A classical concerto would be far different to learn in a week than Villa-Lobos.
I was able to learn Scintillation in eight weeks, but only because I was in Maine, with few distractions, if any. And it was still several months more to make it secure. I started harp late, but also intensive study of any kind, but that is my life pattern. I was very bright, and if I had had the right teacher, I might have become a wonderful violinist, but it didn’t happen that way. It is important that we find ways to make harp study available to the young with the best quality of instruction, but it is not easy in this country. No person of great wealth has ever stepped up to improve our conditions.
It has also taken me many years for all my many interests to recede into the background and let the harp dominate completely. The fact that I compose probably has always affected my ability to concentrate because it is a different force within with its own desires, needs and direction. Now, I am only planning a festival, practicing, composing, copying music, teaching, drawing in my spare time, and trying to keep the rest of my life together. I used to take dance classes every day, sometimes voice lessons, I wanted to try acting classes so much, it is all enriching. There’s just so little time or money. We are all forced to be multi-tasking, it seems, unless in an orchestra.
If I could buy a new harp now, any model, it would be a toss-up between a style 3 or a Salzedo, and I think I would get the 3 first. I would rather get an original Salzedo with the original design.
Somehow, I don’t think he meant “to tinkle away”! I think that “ruhig” has a root meaning in “peace” which adds something extra to “quiet”. Who would have ever thunk we’d need so much Deutsch just for this one piece.
Next question: How much of Harald Genzmer’s music do you think is derived from Hindemith, and is it as good?
ein wenig means a little or a bit, which is a much smaller amount, I would say, than rather
To get back to fingering, I think that a smooth fingering would make it possible through articulation to create the desired effect, but I haven’t been able to get it comfortable enough to find out for sure. If we want to do it more as written, then I think I would reverse hands, to end with the right hand on top, giving the left hand plenty of time to get to the bass muffle on the next beat. My fingers aren’t slender enough to assuredly avoid hitting the a string, and at the indicated tempo, I don’t think I could flatten them either, though I know the trick. With a little reflection, I don’t think the fact that the arpeggio is in parallel fifths necessarily indicates choppiness. The following phrase certainly has a somewhat smoother though angular outline, and the movement as a whole is very melodic, so smoothness might be quite valid. I found using a Bea Rose formula was the most convenient, smoothest, and the least jumpy: 14 3 2 1 left and 4 3 2 14 right after the first pair of fifths in each hand. But I’m not sure. It’s very hard to hear or imagine at the tempo the effect, and if it amounts to two audibly different qualities in the same phrase, which is perhaps not desirable. Well, anyway, this summer I will write my article about all the possible fingerings. Thanks for the input.
