Harp Column Blogs: Carl SwansonArchive

I started this piece on a thread titled 'Important Repertoire" and then decided to put it here instead.  The question to be pondered is:  What constitutes 'important repertoire,' and what should we be playing. I would ask: How do we expand the audience for harp? And how do we expand the harp's repertoire?  The questions are interrelated.  I have been to too many harp recitals in recent years, often by very very good harpists, which all included the Dussek c minor sonata, the Hindemith Sonata, the Faure Impromptu, the Prokofief Prelude, etc.  Don't get me wrong.  These are great pieces.  But you can't play them all the time, on every single harp recital, and expect to be taken seriously.

Many of the composers listed in the thread are ones that I don't know and probably won't ever play.  But they all should be played by good players. And they should all be recorded too.  That is the only way we can expand the repertoire.  Time, and repeated performances will eventually decide which ones stay in the repertoire.

Some people involved in the discussion seem to assume that great music was written for piano, but not for the harp.  If you pick up a copy of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, you quickly realize that there is a vast list of composers in all areas of music(solo instrumental of all kinds, opera, church, chamber music, etc.) who are completely forgotten and no longer played.  The 'short' version of Bakers, which is the one I have, is 1155 pages of fine print.  The composers whose names you would immediately recognize represent perhaps 1% of all of the composers in this book.  When I have discussed this issue with other musicians, we always come to the conclusion that not more than 1% of all of the 'serious music' written has made it into the standard repertoire.  And that is probably being generous. So the list of pieces that make up the standard repertoire for piano, as long as it is, represents 1% or less of all of the compositions written for the instrument.

Does that mean the forgotten music is bad?  Not at all.  I'm sure there are a lot of dogs in there.  But I'm equally sure that there are some forgotten treasures.  Remember, Schubert's music  would have been completely lost if not for his brother Ferdinand, who spent the remainder of his life publishing and promoting  Franz's music.  Mahler too would have been completely forgotten if not for 40 years of persistence on the part of his widow Alma, who fought tirelessly to get performances of his music.  J.S. Bach was completely forgotten, and almost completely unpublished, until Mendelssohn discovered his music, and performed the St. Matthew Passion in 1829.  I mention these examples to show that some of the really great composers would have been forgotten as well if not for the effort of others.

New compositions are one way to expand the repertoire.  Unfortunately, the 1% rule holds here as well.  Edna Phillips and her husband commissioned something like 25 pieces for harp.  Only one, the Ginastera Concerto, has made it into the standard repertoire.  I think that contemporary composers should be encouraged to write more for the harp, but I also think any composer considering, or commissioned to write for the harp, should take at least 6 months of harp lessons first.

Another way to expand the repertoire is to dig into libraries and archives and find forgotten pieces.  That's how the Dussek c minor entered the modern repertoire.  It was rediscovered by Zabeleta.  My own teacher Pierre Jamet found, quite accidentally, a charming theme and variations by Petrini that otherwise would have been lost.

The burdon of expanding the repertoire for harp is on the shoulders of performing harpists.  We need to play what we like, but also find unfamiliar pieces(either new or old) to put on our programs.  We then need to present these pieces to the public in a way that they can understand them, mainly by talking about each piece before performing it.  And we have to encourage more harpists to play these pieces, perhaps by including them on competition and college repeertoire lists.