Harp Column Blogs: Carl SwansonArchive

A question posted recently, asking people how and why they got started on the harp made me think back to my own harp beginings. I thought my response would be too long for that thread, so I decided to put it here.

I started the harp when I was 16. I had been playing piano for about 7 years at that point. As a child growing up in very rural northwest Connecticut, and being drawn to classical music, I took to the piano at about age 9 and liked it. Until starting the harp, I had never studied an instrument other than piano. At 16, I was singing in the senior choir at church and was good friends with the choir director, a young math teacher from one of the local prep schools(my town, Kent, has 3 prep schools). This director told me that he was going to try to put together a girls chorus at the Kent School for Girls in order to do a piece called A ceremony of Carols. He would need a piano accompanist and, if he couldn't find a harpist for the performance, would need a pianist for that too. He asked me if I could be the accompanist. I agreed, and he gave me a copy of the vocal score and a recording of Kings Choir Cambridge performing the piece. Britten himself was the conductor and Osian Ellis the harpist.

When I listened to the recording I was mesmerized by the harp. I listened to that recording over and over again, and finally decided that I would study harp, just for the summer. Why just for the summer i don't know. It took me several weeks to locate a harp teacher, and she lived about a 40 minute drive from me. When I called her she asked me to come to her home so we could talk.

I followed the directions she had given me and when I got close came upon a white house by the road(she told me to look for a white house up on a hill. This wasn't up on a hill, but I thought, well maybe...). When I knocked at the door, and I asked the man if this was the home of Mrs. Senior, he smiled and said, "Oh no son, you want to go to the house up there on the hill." Back in the car I drove another half mile and came suddenly on a large, very impressive modern house. Suddenly I felt very intimidated. But I got out of the car and went to the front door and rang the doorbell. What happened next comes back to me now as fresh as the moment it happened. The most drop-dead gorgeous woman I have ever seen opened the door. She looked like a 1930's movie star, and was dressed like a vogue model. "Hello, I'm Lois Senior," she said smiling," and you must be Carl. Come on in." I could hardly move. I followed her through the entrance way and into the livingroom. There were two Steinways nested together at one end of the room, and what I now know to be a style 11 and a natural 23 at the other. The second I saw the harps I realized I had never seen a harp in my life. I don't know what I expected them to look like, but they didn't look the way I thought they would.

We sat and talked for a while and she not only agreed to teach me, but also to rent me the (new) natural 23 for $20 per month. The lessons by the way were $5 an hour, half her usual fee.

When I got home later that day, I immediately called the choir director to tell him what I had done. A day or so later he called to tell me that he had read in the Hartford Courant that morning that there was going to be a harp concert in Hartford the following night and if I wanted to go, he would go with me. I was thrilled.

We went to Hartford the next day. The harpist playing the concert was someone named Pierre Jamet! He was giving the concert as part of a week long masterclass under the direction of Aristid Von Wurtzler at Hartt college. At the end of the concert, the choir director said I should go talk to Mr. Von Wurtzler and tell him I was studying harp. "I haven't had my first lesson yet!" I said in a panic. "Let's go talk to him," the director said. Bud(the choir director) introduced himself to Aristid and then introduced me, saying that I was about to start harp lessons. Aristid took an immediate interest in me and kept in very close contact for the whole following year, making sure that I ended up in his harp department, which I did. I met Pierre Jamet two more times during my time at Hartt and ultimately went to Paris to study with him.

I studied with Lois Bannerman Senior for a little over a year until I entered Hartt. She was an excellent teacher, very generous with her time. My lessons began in early July of the summer between my junior and senior years of high school. In November of that year I performed Song in the Night and the Grandjany Angelous at a high school variety show, and at Christmas I performed several movements from the Ceremony of Carols as well as the Interlude. In that first year I remember also playing La Desirade of Salzedo, the Durand Chaconne, and I think the Pasacaglia of Handle, among other things. Lois really pushed me.

Lois died around 1995, and when I mentioned this to my mother, her response was," Boy, she really messed up my checkbook." "What do you mean?" I asked, completely puzzled. "She never deposited most of the checks I gave her," my mother said. I was dumbfounded. Lois had taught me for free and given me the use of her harp for free, and I never knew it! The greatest regret of my life is that I didn't find this out while she was still alive so I could thank her.

Why did I change from piano to harp? All I can say is that, at my first harp lesson, it was like getting hit by a truck. I realized instantly that I felt about the harp in a way that I had never felt about the piano. That feeling remains to this day.