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Surgery is not the only treatment for trigger finger. However, it sounds like you have no loops to hold your tendons in place, which is what surgery would do. Somebody else posted here with the same description. Occupational therapy might be helpful.
To answer more directly, there are realistic musicians, and there are dreamers. Dreamers may be more of the soloist type, or a composer-creator. Dreamers may become producers of new things. Realists go wherever they get the gigs, I guess, follow the money.
Sounds like someone I know of, but won’t mention names. I am learning from my Rabbi about the need to be in reality. Dreaming helps us understand reality. What is fantasy and what is reality? You have to know in yourself the difference between what you can do, might do, must do and will do. If you are going to marry and have children, then your primary responsibility is ultimately to them. Then flute manufacture makes sense if it pays well and has benefits, and presumably, you can still play on the side.
How much energy do you have? Most people who are very successful as independent artists or entrepreneurs are very driven and have a lot of energy to expend on their goal. How much focus do you have? Settling is not such a bad thing, but it is a state of mind. What kind of person do you want to be? These are major questions that require major life advice.
Jerks sometimes point out to us what is obvious. Sometimes they are oblivious. If we are off-target, they should help us see how to hit the target our way, not their way, or just say, “you missed!”
What is stable? Life is very risky these days. Having a package of skills is a good thing. Music is very tough, and you face the same tough choices we all have faced. And how does the harp fit into this? You’re not going to have much free time. If you marry, then some of these are joint decisions, or all of them. Connections are very helpful if you have the skills. I bet many studio musicians don’t do it full time. You’re at the whim of producers. If you can find a way to balance them all, that would be nice, but I was never able to do all the things I wanted or needed to do at the same time, only consecutively, for the most part. Everyone’s life is a different pattern.
One of the interesting things I found was looking in old publishers catalogues and finding pieces that had gone out of print, and there is a reprint of an 18th-century Breitkopf & Haertel catalog that has several harp works listed in it. If one were to do a complete bibliography of harp music, one would have to search all those old sources. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone in Germany would unearth all those old pieces.
The Morceau de Concours is a recital piece, that’s right. But the one for flute doesn’t compare to the harp pieces, so it may have been retitled for sale. I would have to get it out and look at the explanation. My recollection is that it is a sight-reading piece. Maybe not.
Oxford University Press did publish the two that Miss Costello found, there should be dealers who still have copies, they are wonderful pieces.
I don’t think of it as demanding in the way that his Concierto Serenata is, but to perform it as well as a fine guitarist would certainly be quite demanding. The harp transcription by Rodrigo is available from harp music dealers, any music dealer can order it, I think it is a Schott publication.
I think the Owens transcription of the Sicilienne is the most playable and meant to be accessible. The tasty things he omits are very hard to do. I like my transcription from the score, but it is very challenging.
This leads to another question: were all of the harpists in the Casadesus quartet members of that famous musical family? Perhaps that is why the father composed 24 Preludes for viola d’amore and harp.
I think I saw the Honegger in the rental catalog. The Greek listing suggested that there might be library copies around.
A tip to harpists: there are many more pieces for harp to be found in rental catalogs of publishers. For instance, the Schirmer rental catalog includes the harp with orchestra arrangements of MacDowell’s To a Wild Rose and the Liadow
And another:
Prelude and Blues for harp quartet by Artur Honegger.
Actually, that is more like a tremolo or enharmonic trill. Bisbigliando generally means a triad played with both hands on either the same notes or different inversions that overlap. A famous example of it is in Chabrier’s Espana. There are also bisbigliando passages that travel up and down the harp, a famous example of which is in the Pierne Impromptu-Caprice which starts at the top and works its way down to set at the bottom. Hasselman’s Follets is all bisbigliando. The special quality of a bisbigliando comes from replacing over and over on the same strings, barely touching them.
Playing two adjacent notes is a trill, and a third apart or more is a tremolo. Playing a chord as an arpeggio over and over is also a tremolo.
Suppose a harp was built with such a strong body and neck that it had no column? Hmmm. You could sure call that a bow brand.
I think some brands are plated rather than solid. The outer wire on Bow brand strings should be, well not sterling silver, but mostly silver? Somebody posted about this before, either Carl, or Howard, or Bernhard.
