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The job market in the NE US is very positive. Montclair State U. places all of their graduates who wish to work as music therapists.
The instruments that are required for certification training are piano and/or guitar, but it seems as though many of the music therapists who play the harp use harps in therapy.
It is a fascinating field, and I doubt it would ever be boring, either during training or in practice.
That’s interesting Kathleen- I’ve had a series of several emails from myself in Japanese or Chinese symbols. They were over and around New Years.
Spanikopita works beautifully! “Hark, How the Bells” is actually “quarter-two eights-quarter”.
Using real words is a Kodaly device. I’m sure music teachers used the idea before he did, but he refined it.
Using real words or phrases is more helpful to learners, because meaningful verbalizations stick with you more easily than sequences of unrelated syllables.
Spanikopita works beautifully! “Hark, How the Bells” is actually “quarter-two eights-quarter”.
Using real words is a Kodaly device. I’m sure music teachers used the idea before he did, but he refined it.
Using real words or phrases is more helpful to learners, because meaningful verbalizations stick with you more easily than sequences of unrelated syllables.
Spanikopita works beautifully! “Hark, How the Bells” is actually “quarter-two eights-quarter”.
Using real words is a Kodaly device. I’m sure music teachers used the idea before he did, but he refined it.
Using real words or phrases is more helpful to learners, because meaningful verbalizations stick with you more easily than sequences of unrelated syllables.
To the comment about orchestral playing- do orchestral harpists really use amplification?
If so, I’ll have to admit to being aghast. How about the notion that instead of coming up to the volume of the orchestra, the orchestra should come down to the volume of the harpist.
I have to add to my distaste for the trend of playing everything as fast as the fingers can fly, the equally annoying tendency to play everything as though it’s better at an amplified volume.
The best teachers I ever had NEVER even said the word “loud”. Good instrumentalists learned to produce a large, round tone, then learned how to make it large and round in smaller increments or large and round at the fullest potential of the instrument or ensemble. This isn’t just semantics- it’s perceiving the size of a tone at different volumes without altering the tone itself.
I distrust amplification more and more. In a concert setting, the acoustics and size of venue should eliminate the need for it, in a social setting where background music is desired, amplification subverts the purpose of the music, and in an ensemble setting, mutual agreement about the output of the ensemble should also be based on auditory common sense.
All of us should bear in mind that auditory acuity is decreasing with each generation. Guess why that is….
As usual, I’ve spent some time thinking about what my goal in taking lessons as a beginning harpist really is.
As a young musician, I had the chance to make a career of performance. I turned my back on that choice, closed the door, and became something else, very scientific and left brain, and stopped being a musician.
In all the years of working in my other field, I lived with a total internal commitment that at some point in my life, I would return to music and be a full time musician again.
The fallacy, of course, was that the person I was at 23 was far different from the person I was…..well, a lot later, at retirement. I could no longer do the things i had once done, and the scholars who had been my teachers were all dead and gone- no references, no reminiscence of what had once been, a sense of being without a way to get back.
I think the harp must have been as far from anything I would have considered as it could have been. Still, some absurd configuration of Karmic influences brought me an outstandingly gifted teacher, and then, totally unexpectedly, another large lump of Fate brought me the opportunity to fund the purchase of an instrument or two.
So I’ve been at this now for almost three years. It is SO new to me- this was an instrument that we never learned about in school. Orchestral parts I’d never heard before have suddenly emerged from the sounds I hear in concerts and recordings, and became meaningful and recognizable as harp notes. I hear harpish melodies that I want to write down and replay and make into compositions to play for others.
The goal is actually to see if I can use the harp to make the kinds of sounds that satisfy my passion for music. There have been a few pieces in the three years that although simple have done so. Those have been very heady times, listening to myself and feeling my fingers reach some little almost forgotten segment of my memory and reawaken those thoughts of years ago when I was a real musician.
There are times when I think it can never happen again (December was musically bereft this year) but then there are times when I think it might. The bright spots keep me from giving up. Very slowly, even as old as I am, I’m finding some respect among musicians whom I myself respect. I will be playing in a chamber ensemble class in the spring semester, always a good way to develop finger technique, my Achilles’ heel.
Part of my goal is replacing my despair at never having enough technique with the sense that yes, I am getting better with busy finger music, and enjoying it more and being less afraid of it. Even with the finger curse, it’s still a grand ride.
As usual, I’ve spent some time thinking about what my goal in taking lessons as a beginning harpist really is.
As a young musician, I had the chance to make a career of performance. I turned my back on that choice, closed the door, and became something else, very scientific and left brain, and stopped being a musician.
In all the years of working in my other field, I lived with a total internal commitment that at some point in my life, I would return to music and be a full time musician again.
The fallacy, of course, was that the person I was at 23 was far different from the person I was…..well, a lot later, at retirement. I could no longer do the things i had once done, and the scholars who had been my teachers were all dead and gone- no references, no reminiscence of what had once been, a sense of being without a way to get back.
I think the harp must have been as far from anything I would have considered as it could have been. Still, some absurd configuration of Karmic influences brought me an outstandingly gifted teacher, and then, totally unexpectedly, another large lump of Fate brought me the opportunity to fund the purchase of an instrument or two.
So I’ve been at this now for almost three years. It is SO new to me- this was an instrument that we never learned about in school. Orchestral parts I’d never heard before have suddenly emerged from the sounds I hear in concerts and recordings, and became meaningful and recognizable as harp notes. I hear harpish melodies that I want to write down and replay and make into compositions to play for others.
The goal is actually to see if I can use the harp to make the kinds of sounds that satisfy my passion for music. There have been a few pieces in the three years that although simple have done so. Those have been very heady times, listening to myself and feeling my fingers reach some little almost forgotten segment of my memory and reawaken those thoughts of years ago when I was a real musician.
There are times when I think it can never happen again (December was musically bereft this year) but then there are times when I think it might. The bright spots keep me from giving up. Very slowly, even as old as I am, I’m finding some respect among musicians whom I myself respect. I will be playing in a chamber ensemble class in the spring semester, always a good way to develop finger technique, my Achilles’ heel.
Part of my goal is replacing my despair at never having enough technique with the sense that yes, I am getting better with busy finger music, and enjoying it more and being less afraid of it. Even with the finger curse, it’s still a grand ride.
As usual, I’ve spent some time thinking about what my goal in taking lessons as a beginning harpist really is.
As a young musician, I had the chance to make a career of performance. I turned my back on that choice, closed the door, and became something else, very scientific and left brain, and stopped being a musician.
In all the years of working in my other field, I lived with a total internal commitment that at some point in my life, I would return to music and be a full time musician again.
The fallacy, of course, was that the person I was at 23 was far different from the person I was…..well, a lot later, at retirement. I could no longer do the things i had once done, and the scholars who had been my teachers were all dead and gone- no references, no reminiscence of what had once been, a sense of being without a way to get back.
I think the harp must have been as far from anything I would have considered as it could have been. Still, some absurd configuration of Karmic influences brought me an outstandingly gifted teacher, and then, totally unexpectedly, another large lump of Fate brought me the opportunity to fund the purchase of an instrument or two.
So I’ve been at this now for almost three years. It is SO new to me- this was an instrument that we never learned about in school. Orchestral parts I’d never heard before have suddenly emerged from the sounds I hear in concerts and recordings, and became meaningful and recognizable as harp notes. I hear harpish melodies that I want to write down and replay and make into compositions to play for others.
The goal is actually to see if I can use the harp to make the kinds of sounds that satisfy my passion for music. There have been a few pieces in the three years that although simple have done so. Those have been very heady times, listening to myself and feeling my fingers reach some little almost forgotten segment of my memory and reawaken those thoughts of years ago when I was a real musician.
There are times when I think it can never happen again (December was musically bereft this year) but then there are times when I think it might. The bright spots keep me from giving up. Very slowly, even as old as I am, I’m finding some respect among musicians whom I myself respect. I will be playing in a chamber ensemble class in the spring semester, always a good way to develop finger technique, my Achilles’ heel.
Part of my goal is replacing my despair at never having enough technique with the sense that yes, I am getting better with busy finger music, and enjoying it more and being less afraid of it. Even with the finger curse, it’s still a grand ride.
Although they’re still a little bit in my future, I can’t wait to learn some of Laura Zaerr’s pieces for lever harp.
They have folkish feel combined with beautifully polished music.
When my teacher told me I’d one day be able to work on them I didn’t believe her, so it’s really a rush to be getting closer and closer to playing them.
I believe you and I are in the same boat, Helen.
Just now I’m looking forward to taking a small ensemble class at our local two year college. Many of the students in my Theory IV class are also enrolled in the ensemble group so we have an idea of what to expect of one another.
I’m not sure how your schools are structured for young adults but it might be something for you to find out about.
The Clio and the 44 string Arion were on my very short list, and I’d spoken to a very active and well thought of professional who had played an Arion extensively and LOVED it.
My own personal opinion is that the Arion is the most beautiful contemporary harp produced (JUST MY OPINION), and I was disappointed when the 44 was discontinued.
Although I’m waiting to complete the purchase of a harp that isn’t a Clio or an Arion, I still think they’re both great harps. I’m 5’4″ with an average sized woman’s hand, and the Clio is comfortable for my hand.
As it happens I am very rigid in my favored string position, and the Clio, I think, varies slightly from traditional string position. Someone correct that statement if I’m wrong please.
The huge advantage is that the Clio is only a few pounds heavier than the L&H Prelude, therefore a really manageable weight.
The Arion is heavier, at about 72 pounds I think. Schlepping weight is very important to me because my husband and I, both quaking elders, will be the harp movers, and to enjoy the sort of playing I like best, the harp will have to move with me.
Holst is rolling in his grave.
My musical upbringing was shaped by a band director who bent over backwards to instill in his students a sense of musical integrity. I am grateful to this day for his painstaking attempts to get us wiggling adolescents to understand that a composer wrote something to be played with persistent respect to what he/she meant.
Is it that so many orchestral standards are out of copyright that they are so unhesitatingly programmed with whatever combinations of musicians can be arranged? “Two harps” doesn’t mean one harp and “something else that can play the same notes”, least of all something electronic or amplified.
I have never, ever seen acknowledgement in a program that addresses the fact that the instruments the composer meant are not being used in performance of a piece.
I am imagining the New World Symphony with an alto sax playing the English Horn part, or or a bassoon playing the flute part in “Meditation from Thais”. Hey why not, they[re all woodwinds, right? Who cares if there’s a couple octaves dropped among friends.
Makes my head ache.
