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Thanks. I’ll look forward to what you can find out. I wonder if he thought of Bruyeres as a harp piece.
Just imagine if Salzedo had never left France! What would that have been like? I’ve often wondered if there is some resentment or chauvinism directed at him just because he emigrated.I don’t know what it’s like these days, but I spent eight weeks, not six, at Tanglewood in the Harp Seminar in 1980. It was the high point of my life. To be in a world of nothing but classical music for such a long time was awesome. I learned to practice as much as five hours a day, and I never learned music better. There were no distractions. It can be hot and very humid, and the mosquitoes are numerous. Take lots of Skin-So-Soft, everything is very expensive on campus.
I believe that Paula Page does the lesson teaching. If you don’t play in orchestra, so what? Learn a concerto, or chamber music, or work on a recital program. There will probably be the chance to play with the other students. The cost was under $2,000 when I went. So that’s about right with inflation, I suppose. I hope you can go, but there are other festivals too. Professor Ellen Ritscher teaches at one in the Rocky Mountains. There’s also Chautauqua in New York and Luzerne.I had to print out your response so I can address each point.
Raising does not make the arms limp of course, as dropping them does. It stretches the muscles, and it does relieve tension. They can relax a considerable amount because they are supported by the upper back muscles which take the weight otherwise supported by the strings. Yes, there is a little support in having the fingers on the strings. You might watch the video made by Miss Lawrence, Elizabeth Morse and Dewey Owens. It is fascinating to watch Miss Lawrence demonstrate various effects devised by Salzedo, and she demonstrates clearly the difference in projection between playing a note (I think it was a harmonic) and not moving the hand away, and carrying the note outward with the hand. I mentioned physics, because it is comparable to many examples found there. Think of the follow-through of a baseball pitcher, a tennis player, a bowler, a golfer. It influences the flight of the ball. If they stop short as soon as they’ve made contact with the ball, well, I’ve never seen an athlete do it. I saw Markus Klinko’s New York debut recital. He had so much nervous energy that, after he played a chord, he sort-of twitched his body like he was startled by the sound, and you know what? The soundwaves coming out of the harp twitched as well. He was so connected to those notes that he influenced them after the playing! I have used this experience to play the harp with a vibrato-like effect in particular circumstances, and it has been observed by others, though it is a little faint. There is some experiment in physics where one object is split and each half sent into an orbit, and when one half is affected in some way, so is the other. There is more to a note than just touching the string.
In repertoire where it is impossible to raise, there should be a build-up of resonance in the harp, if you are playing notes all the time, that enhances its own projection. For instance, if you play one isolated note you can make so much sound, but if you repeat it several times you can more sound, or keep refreshing it so it appears to continue to crescendo. If your muscles are supple while playing, raising is not necessary to relax. It isn’t required because there is tenseness. Movement of the arms, oscillation, instantaneous relaxation of the finger after playing, full range of finger movement all prevent tension. That is one of the secrets to facility.
“Crisped” was a word Miss Lawrence liked to use. As I said, the wrist is barely flexed, just a little bit, or even straight until closing the whole hand when there is that little bit of flexion. As I said, Miss Chalifoux likes to teach a much greater degree of flexion. That is her choice.
I heard a lot from Miss Lawrence over the years about the politics and bias involved in competitions and judging. Was it true? It seems like it may be. She witnessed enough personally. According to her, the only reason Lois Colin did not win in Israel was because she tuned the whole harp before she played, and one of the judges had previously announced that they would disqualify any harpist who stopped to tune. She was there, and heard it with her own ears. Could she keep Lois from tuning? No. And she didn’t win.
Miss Lawrence wanted competitions to have music by composers period, and not by harpists, not to add or substitute Salzedo. The competition in Indiana seems to lean heavily on Renie and Tournier for repertoire. It helps if one wants those pieces in your repertoire.
Maybe it’s not intended to keep anyone away. It kind of does, at least to me. If I were planning a competition and required a lot of Salzedo’s music or all Salzedo, I would expect that to send a message about the kind of harpist I would want to enter, or how I would want them to prepare. I once watched a ballet competition from start to finish, through several stages. The winners were the most “competent” dancers, with great technical facility, international in style, and no artistry at all. The great ballerinas on the jury fought to keep their choices in, and the best they got was a third prize. I think there is something about scoring and averaging out differences that goes against artistry in many cases. The olympics, ballroom dance, ice skating all show this from time to time. I think everyone has a kind of esthetic, if not an agenda, that arises innately out of their life experience.I therefore, do not assume competitions to open and unbiased, if only because they may be judged by people of similar tastes. Miss Lawrence’s students who have not advanced in competitions (I was not there to hear for myself) have gone on to great careers and rave reviews of the most serious appreciation. That means a lot more, in my book. I heard quite a few competition winners in their New York debut recitals, and I was far from impressed. They tended to have facility, confidence, not very good taste in repertoire, and not much depth in interpretation or feeling. They were not especially musical either. But they were able to play the harp very well, and perhaps displayed some personality. I don’t think that’s enough. The only one that comes to mind that I felt was musical and interesting was Emily Mitchell. I remember coming out of Carnegie Hall after a recital by Elena Zaniboni, and hearing people literally say, well that’s the last harp recital I’ll ever go to.
I do know that orchestra auditions are sometimes not fair. Sometimes they are even fixed. I don’t think they’re a good example. So I don’t think competitions are a good barometer of anything except the competition itself and how it is organized and run. A sensitive artist is going to thrive in that atmosphere? I wouldn’t think so.
For one example, take the CPE Bach Sonata, . . . please. Competitions are not allowing harpists to use Miss Lawrence’s edition, and are even eliminating players solely for using it. That’s not fair. An artist has a right to choose their editions, and as far as the issue of the order of movements goes, both Zabaleta and Grandjany made the same choice of Allegro, Adagio, Allegro. Her edition was also the first to be faithful to the original in its ornamentation and inner feeling. Her work deserves more than being cast aside for a music trend that, to me, is primarily commercial, as “authentic” performances were a way to sell more records. Do you prefer recent performances of classical or baroque music to groups like I Musici or the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields? I don’t. Perhaps they were just too good to be bettered. Serving authenticity for its own sake, over and above musicality and artistic freedom is not art or music. The manuscript on which all these judgements are based is not one written by the composer himself. It was copied later with a steel pen. So would you have a student relearn the piece in another edition just to please a competition?
I don’t find Salzedo player’s technique, if they are fully developed, to ever be insufficient. In fact, they have been said to generally play faster, stronger, with better tone quality, less pulling in fortissimos (with certain exceptions) in all repertoire. If you don’t hear that, then that’s what you hear or don’t hear. You were at the conference. Judy Loman is an excellent example of Salzedo technique, and I didn’t see any modification of it, nor with Alice Giles or Yolanda Kondonassis, except for the Chalifoux touches, like their wrist use. They all raised, especially Yolanda. Perhaps you missed her Ginastera performance. The “elbows up” emphasis is something used with beginners to develop their muscle/memory. Some people stay with it. Most don’t to any extreme. I thought all the harpists at the conference with Salzedo training were remarkably consistent. The most artistic playing by far, I felt, was Elizabeth Richter’s. Beautiful rounded tone, sensitivity, flowing movement, everything I prize.
I agree that there may be patterns in the examples you cite, but I don’t say what they represent. By the way, Elizabeth Hainen of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was originally trained by Alice Chalifoux, and the way she plays in the orchestra reflects that, however much she learned from Miss McDonald.
I have never heard, live, any harpist who could play better than Heidi Lehwalder, as a harpist. Some I prefer interpretively, some have equal facility. None match her tone quality and command. I hope you get a chance to see her at her best. I love Judy Loman’s playing, and Erica Goodman’s recordings (I haven’t seen her live yet). Alice Giles is always amazing. Grace Wong is superb. Carolyn Mills is excellent. Emily Halpern is remarkable.
Can we put this to rest?
What I would like to know, is what specifically, are all the titles of the pieces which Debussy told Pierre Jamet he approved of as harp music?
I think I’ve read enough biased misinformation about the Salzedo technique. It is a comprehensive approach to the harp that encompasses all kinds of music, and has a definite esthetic as well. It is an extension of traditional French approach created to encompass the artistic potential of the modern full-size pedal harp. Indeed, Salzedo was a pupil of Hasselmans, and of DeBeriot, a Chopin pupil. He embraced the possibilities of modern music and a forward-looking approach to the harp. This was taken a step further by his collaborator Lucile Lawrence by further emphasizing choice of repertoire.
To speak of competitions is to raise the subject of musical/national politics as I’ve always heard. Some prize-winners in Israel from Salzedo studios include Heidi Lehwalder, special prize at the age of 12, Alice Giles, 1st prize; Grace Wong, second prize, and others.
Salzedo and Grandjany were good friends. Salzedo was I think fifteen years his senior, and already very famous, when Grandjany arrived in the U.S. Seeing them as rivals or exact peers is something that perhaps their students began to think later on. If people are allowed to make their own artistic choices, as is their right, then there should be space for each choice. One of the problems is that competitions can be so rigid in their repertoire choices and judging, causing them to reflect one esthetic. It is certainly not due to a lack of ability. French students, as I’ve heard, have more opportunities to play, play for each other more, and have excellent sight-reading and other skills that may help them to learn music faster. That would be reflected in performance under competitive pressure. Are they greater artists? Not that I’ve ever heard.
The proof is in the music.
The differences between Grandjany and Salzedo students have to do with whether or not the arms are touching the sounding board below the first octave, whether the knuckles are rounding or “collapsed”, and tone quality. The esthetic gestures that Salzedo created with the help of Vaslav Nijinsky and other artists help to complete, project the string’s tone, and help supplify and relax the arms and hands which, in turn, increases the tone quality. It is never waving around, it is purposeful and directional. It is based in physics.
The extreme positioning described can be attributed to teachers like Alice Chalifoux, who for her own reasons, developed in another direction, and whose students are seen to play differently. They are also extremely adept.
Lucile Lawrence was always a purist, and remained true to her roots in study with Salzedo in the 1920s and earlier. Some harpists become less so with independence and the passage of time, and make their own choices in how they play, for ease or other reasons, and some want to be less specifically Salzedo-identified. That accounts for seeing less difference. But then, it also really depends which Grandjany student you might be comparing them to.
The thumbs do have some upwardness in their position; it should be naturally in between up all the way possible and so low that they have no pressure. The wrists are supposed to be just ever-so-slightly crisped, “like a piece of toast” Miss Lawrence liked to say. She really did not have them curved in except in the moment of playing to create counterbalance, and she favored turning it over or oscillating to any sharp outward movement of the hand over the wrist. That you will see taught by Alice Chalifoux.
I hope this will clear things up. We are each ultimately responsible for our own artistic choices. I found my way through Salzedo, and think that unless you are all-knowing, you should find the best teacher you can, and follow that path as far as possible. Too many cooks spoil the broth. I don’t believe in amalgamating schools, at least not when it comes to Salzedo because of the specific esthetic. A more open approach may work with other schools that are less specific, but what do you represent then? And how do you constantly choose what approach to use? One or two is a lot.There are regional and national competitions that include all instruments. Some are sponsored by professional orchestras. They are a great supplement or alternative to the usual harp competitions. Of which there are more than ever, by the way.
You should also consider Ball State University of Indiana, Prof. Elizabeth Richter, University of Rhode Island, Joan Ceo; Vassar College, Dewey Owens; Faye Seeman in Chicago, many teachers in Michigan, Karen Gottlieb in San Francisco, University of Washington, Pamela Vokolek; University of Texas, Delaine Fedson; and so many more.
I AM IVAN, I AM IN TENESSE TO, HEY BUT I AM LOOCKING FOR A HARP STORE, THE YOU KNOW A MUSIC STORE THAT HAVE PEDAL HARPS, IN TENESSE?????
I AM FROM MEXICO BUT I AM AN EXCHANGE STUDENT AND I AM LIVING AT WHITE HOUSE IN TN, AND Y CONTACT THE BLAIR SCHOOL OF MUSIC AND FINF MARIAM SHIFER, SHE IS THE HARP TEACHER OF VANDERBILTI forgot to add that the site has links to lots of music theory sites, how to buy and maintain a harp, harp organizations, publications, sheet music sources and midi sites.
After much searching, I tracked down the sheet music for Storybook Love at the Chicago Public Library Music Dept., arranged for piano and vocal. I found an arranger to write the score for string quartet. with his permission I am posting his website if you wish to contact him.
