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I’m not knocking them completely. For performing and preparation experience, competitions can be invaluable, particularly those at lower levels. My peeve is when they are solely age-based and don’t take into account that people start playing the harp at different ages.
Some people place so much importance on appearances, they never look beneath the surface. Unfortunately, that is also the kind of playing one often finds in competitions. I think one of the problems is having to play imposed repertoire. It will be most interesting to see how competitions that don’t impose compare to those who do over time.
And as for losing the competition, the other finalist and myself have bonded and had a productive relationship ever since!Flakey refers to students who constantly cancel or have trouble committing to a lesson, who don’t prepare or practice, who have uncalled-for reactions or strange behavior. One example: a student who quit because she thought she heard a mouse, and just could not be in the same space with a mouse! Another category would be those who want free lessons as beginners.
Is it unfair when prizes aren’t awarded? There was a competition where that happened and a judge told me the primary reasons were insufficient musicality and far too many memory slips, ie., people were well under-prepared. One should not leap to conclusions, such as assuming it was political. Some competitions go to great lengths to make sure that plotting by judges is not possible. And I am not talking about the competition you might assume I am talking about. The only assumption one should make is that the winner was the winner, not necessarily the best, and the losers are not losers, and may be the best, or the best never entered in the first place.
One of the reasons I started the Harp Festival of Philadelphia was to provide a venue for performers who were not necessarily winners of competitions, but merely great artists of the harp. I’m not sure any of them won any competitions.While one needs to make a living, I don’t think anyone should teach harp without a music degree and several years of subsequent experience in playing and living, unless one is a born teacher and finished player. There is an assumption that beginners don’t need an expert teacher, and that is so totally not true. While it may only take me three-to-six months to renovate a student’s playing into something consistently good, it is very hard work on us both. Students who get to college without having had good teaching are very far behind, and having to catch up rather than simply progress is a disadvantage no one should have.
That said, there are good teacher, and there are good students. Learning how to learn is a big part of studying, and the teacher needs to instill those lessons. It’s not just how to play. A teacher who plays well, and is very passive in teaching, can produce a student with lousy playing technique.
And then there is an assumption that a teacher should not change a student’s technique once established. Well, you are there to help the student progress, and if you withhold knowledge that would help, you are harming the student. I was fortunate to have a teacher who made an art of correcting and changing one’s technique, and I am much the better for it, difficult as the process is. And it is a process. She did not believe in changing everything all at once, but one finger at a time.
Teaching also requires a very thorough knowledge of repertoire and other literature. If you want to teach but don’t have the background, perhaps you can start by assisting another teacher. (As if any teacher is going to share.) But I’m sure a lot of teachers would like to teach players and teachers more than beginners.
So, in all, before you begin teaching, assess yourself with humility. Do you have enough knowledge? Do you have a curriculum, a pedagogy, a method? Do you have the patience? Will you make a contribution to the community by teaching, or are you just in it to make money? How will you conduct your studio and relate to other teachers and their studios? Yes, it is simple, but it gets complicated, too.
To answer the question, I first taught after I finished college, and gave a few lessons. I began teaching in earnest after I got my master’s degree and joined the faculties of a few music schools. I became a really good teacher many years later, when I had a much better understanding of not only my playing, but of other harpists’ playing, and what works best; and after I had given several recital programs of different repertoire. I learned all the more from studying dance and learning about movement and the body, and making physical corrections.
It is also very different to work with young people and adults of different ages. It helps to know something of child development and adult de-development. And the psychology of so many different personality types! My sister has commented on the frequency of having flakey students seeming to be greater with the harp.Sony has one that is a video camera with a good microphone combined. It is marketed for jam session recording, and it is listed at $299.
Wow. Sorry that happened, but what a great story to stop students from practicing in bare feet. At worst, I wear flip-flops. At best, sandals or shoes.
I think it survived, perhaps not as well as the smaller cover. I had to do some hand-rubbing and rinsing after anyway. It dried surprising quickly. The outside seems to be nylon, there is foam padding, and the inside is synthetic, I am sure. If it was glued to the foam, they have separated, but it shouldn’t harm the effectiveness of it. Now I have a closed container to store it in.
I don’t know who is teaching, but I highly recommend six-week summer study programs as the best learning experience (other than eight-week programs).
I find the Pirastro nylon strings to be more durable, to have a pleasing surface texture and they react pretty well to weather. They also come up to pitch faster when you put them on. D’Addario strings are fine, but these are a bit better. Most of them come in double or triple length or more, so it makes up for the cost. I used to get them in heavy gauge, which meant a string could last for two years. They are not too bright in tone, have very pure, liquid harmonics that linger nicely. They sustain very well and are extremely responsive to touch, far more than gut strings. I really hate to hear gut strings above the third octave now, it mutes the harp, the harmonics are poor in quality, and the notes don’t sustain, which means the entire balance of the instrument is shifted to the bass.
If I want a gut-string tone on these nylons, I only have to play lower on the string with a sharp attack. I have tried gut strings, and it mutes my harp. The least-noticable place to switch from gut to nylon has turned out to be between 4th octave d and e. Going up, it is not noticeable at all. If prices continue to rise, I will probably go lower with the nylon, out of necessity. Note that I only use silver and copper wire strings, so I have full brilliance in the bass. The colored strings are just not acceptable.
So, the last thing about the Pirastro strings is that they are just a tiny bit thicker, and so they last longer and have more body to their tone and response.I have only done a couple. One, when I got copies of the judge’s comments, one used the fact that there was one audible page turn (because the engineer wouldn’t let me do it over) to say I wasn’t ready for a concert career. I knew her handwriting, too. When a competition only uses past winners as judges, any political bias set up in the beginning becomes institutionalized.
The other, I played the most advanced program, not with perfect energy, as my driver showed up late and I couldn’t warm up fully. But the attitude of the director made it clear he was not interested in me, and they went with a young Curtis graduate who was pretty and played easy pieces with a certain degree of flair. The president had chosen me as one of three finalists over some extremely tough competitors. I was shocked I was chosen over one of my former classmates.
So, that is why I put little stock in winning competitions and would never choose a performer based on that kind of credential. On all instruments, I tend to find them to be boring interpreters. Competent performers, but music is not athletics.
Another example of musical politics: after I finished my master’s, I considered entering the DMA program, and the chairman of both the harp and Doctoral programs (now deceased) told me I wasn’t suitable. She had a graduate student who was unqualified and who was nearly not awarded a degree after a very unsubstantial recital. This chair ended up losing her job. So using a position for political purposes can cut both ways, though perhaps not often enough.
