Lever harp etudes?

[Gretchen Cover]

You are so right. I guess my point is that Godefroid did think of the left hand as being as important as the right. Big change in harp thinking.  Another thought: I wonder if Mes Excercises inspired Carlos Salzdo’s conditioning exercises.

Addendum:  Just did a key word search “godefroid etudes” and he did write a book of 20 etudes. In going through them, he does work the left hand a lot but there is  more for the right hand, especially trills. He must have excelled at trills because they are very long. This etude book is clearly for advanced harpists and would not have the teaching benefit of your Boscha etudes.

[carl-swanson]

Gretchen- I just took a look at those etudes(20 melodies en form d’etude). They look interesting. I didn’t know about them.

Salzedo is a strange character when it comes to pedagogy. He of course studied with Hasselmans at the Paris Conservatory, and so played lots of etudes in his student days. But he never taught etudes, and really disparaged them, to the great loss of his students and his followers.  Etudes are just so important to technical development.

[Elettaria]

Carl, I wanted to thank you for your work on the Boscha etudes.  The Harp Studio in Wales is selling them, so my copy arrived last week.  I’ve not been well enough for much lever harp lately, I’ve just played through the first pair quickly, but they look excellent, and as someone with visual problems I really appreciate the generous font size.  (I managed to snag a copy of Cynthia Cathcart’s wire harp primer cheaply on eBay, and it looks excellent but the text is just a leetle too small for me, especially the fingering markings.) The introductory material looks fantastic, and the writing style made me smile and reminded me of Tovey’s somewhat snarky edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.  I am really looking forward to having something for practising technique which is interesting enough to keep me going, since I am crap at keeping up with scales and arpeggios.

You’ve got a “pedal” where it should read “lever” on the back you might want to change if it runs to another printing (or is that edition?), by the way.

I’ve got a question about Etude 7: are you meant to roll all the chords?

There’s a bit where you talk about the importance of moving early during jumps, so that you’re at the next note before you play it, rather than trying to start the jump when you’re meant to play the next note.  I had forgotten that people don’t know to do that, which shows that even if I’m newish at the harp, having over thirty years of piano under my belt is definitely helping.  So that made me feel nice and smug.  Also it’s a good explanation of how it works, so I’ll probably show it to my partner, who is at a fairly early level at the piano and struggles with jumps.

Are 36 string lever harps the standard in the US, then?  It seems to be 34 strings in the UK.  I’m hoping I won’t miss out on much with those two top strings.  I have a 34 string harp now, and in about a year I will have a 36 string Norris, but that will run A to A.

[Biagio]

A couple of thoughts, my friend:

Ann Heymann’s Coupled Hands is also very worth acquiring although when one first peeks inside her notation looks a little daunting.  It really isn’t in practice.  Cynthia’s book assumes G tuning, Ann assumes C.

I’d be hard pressed to say that there is any “standard” size for lever harps in the US.  Most would say that “floor size” is preferable to a lap harp – although you can do a lot with a lap sized double strung. A single course floor harp can range anywhere from 29 to 38 strings. Almost all established makers offer both a 36 and a 34 at least.

Quite a few floor harps can be strung with different ranges, the most common ending with either a C or an A in the bass.  Usually you need to buy the entire string set; for example see the Rees Mariposa and Aberdeen. My own 34 is like that too.

It’s a great big wide wonderful world over here:-)

http://reesharps.com/Harps.html

Cheers,

Biagio

 

[Elettaria]

34 strings, C at the bottom, seems to be fairly standardised over here, I think it’s offered by all the luthiers and it’s what they assume for lever harp exams and a lot of music arrangements.   Student harps tend to be 34 strings, as do the flagship models, and I’m not sure I’ve seen a British harpmaker who doesn’t offer a 34 string harp, but there are certainly luthiers who only offer 34 string models in the lever harps they make (Pilgrim, Ardival).  Going down to A in the bass seems to be more usual for Latin American harp music, on the other hand. When you get to the bigger harps, some go one way, some go the other.  Norris and Starfish harps add the extra notes in the bass, Teifi adds them in the treble, for instance.  I get the impression that the vast majority of lever harps made in the UK have 34 strings, and probably near that for harps being owned (especially as primary harps), although there’s more variation with the imported harps.  Do you not have this 34-as-standard thing in the US, then?  It’s why I was a little surprised to see a book of etudes assuming 36 strings.

I do have Coupled Hands, it came along with the harp when my friend loaned it to me, and Karen Marshalsay’s primer book as well.  They’ve been an excellent combination, and I’m in the middle of organising lessons and planning to go to a local meetup soon.  I’ve also got a book of Highland music I mess around with occasionally, much of which seems to have been written for bagpipes, which suits wire harp well.

[Biagio]

For what ever reason, American makers seem to me to be more adventurous in their designs than in Europe – for example, I have the impression that gut and higher tension is more common there than here.  Personally, I like the resonant bass and sustain of a high headed harp like the Salvi Egan but also prefer a smaller and less expensive instrument and have no need to gliss all the way to high C as our friend Balfour enjoys.

I guess if pressed I would have to say that at our Society retreat, and most other gatherings there are more C-C  36s than any one other.  Say in a gathering of 24 people, about half will be FH36s around here.  There will also be just about everything else including usually two or three wire strungs and at least two doubles.

Can’t say if the prevalence of the 36 constitutes a standard though.  Probably more a matter of pricing since a good 36 costs just a little more than a 34 so why not go for the full 5 octaves?

Under the influence of several artists in the US in fact, smaller harps are being increasingly explored.  But they are not playing classical harp scores, unless those have been adapted.

Indeed, a good deal of Scottish pipe music has been used by clarsairs, and a good deal of Irish fiddle music too. Both need the long sustain that is not possible with gut or nylon; as a consequence an arrangement for one of those will usually have arpeggios to fill up the space that would otherwise be silent.

[carl-swanson]

Elettaria- Thank you so much for your very kind post. I’m really glad you are enjoying the Bochsa Revisited edition. And I’m glad to hear that it is being sold in Wales.  I don’t think you should have to do too much adjusting of the material if you play a 34 string instrument(instead of 36). I don’t think I used those last two strings very often.  And thank you for telling me about the misprint on the back cover. I’ve already sent a note to my editor at Carl Fischer to make sure it gets corrected.

 

In Etude 7, all the chords are meant to be rolled. I just didn’t see the point of putting squiggly lines next to every chord in the piece.  My rule when I put together these editions is to de-clutter the page as much as possible.  For the Bochsa, I reduced the number of systems per page from 7 to 4 or 5. I have the pedals or lever changes printed as large as they would be written in by hand. I put fingering in where there is a clear question as to how something should be fingered, but if that same passage appears several times, I only write the fingering in once, assuming the player has the brains to figure out that it is played the same way each time.

The bit about making a jump BEFORE you need to play something is a big deal for students at this level, both on harp and piano.  After all, they are learning to use their hands independently of each other, and I found when I taught students at this level that the only time they displace one hand or the other is when it needs to play something, and the result is that they are always late getting it.

Concerning  36 string instruments: That’s usually as big as they get in the U.S., and it usually runs from C to C, not A to A.  There seems to be little to nothing written that includes low B and A.  You could ask your builder to string the instrument C to C if you’re not likely to play pieces that require low A and B.

[Tacye]

On the topic of printing, I was looking at the sample pages and doubt the fingering in bar 3 of the 1st etude – it is different from the left hand version.  You have probably picked this up already.

[carl-swanson]

Tacye- I didn’t stick rigidly to the same fingerings for the original etudes and their variations.  In all cases, the fingerings are “suggested” and it’s up to the teacher and student to make the final decision. I did want to show that the same passage could be fingered in different ways.  I would hope that by the end of that book, the student would have in his or her technique multiple ways of fingering the same type of passage.  For the same reason, I didn’t always put pedal markings below the bass staff. I sometimes stuck them between the staves so the student could get used to reading pedal markings wherever they are.  But I’m really glad you’ve taken a look at the book!

[balfour-knight]

It was great to read all these posts!  Carl, you have indeed done a wonderful job on these Etudes.  Biagio, thanks for all your nice comments, too, and for the Happy Birthday wishes on another post!  You should have heard all my glissandos on my pedal harp for these holiday concerts!  And, I can go all the way up to High E, ha, ha!  Folks were streaming the concerts on Facebook and other places I don’t quite understand, so you harp friends may find me on something that I don’t even know about–I am like Carl, a caveman to all this new technology.

Keep harping, my friends, and enjoy the holidays!

Harp Hugs,

Balfour

[Tacye]

Thank Carl, I am glad it wasn’t an evil misprint crept in.

[Elettaria]

Carl – I don’t have the music with me, but didn’t it have fairly inconsistent markings for rolling the chords for Etude 7?  I think it had the first couple of lines, then occasional ones afterwards.  If you had the first bar or two, and then a note saying to roll all the chords (can’t remember what the Italian for that musical marking is), it would have made more sense, but I thought you were deliberately showing that some chords were not meant to be rolled.  Also if you’d mentioned it in the note for the first version.  You mention it for the variation, but that made me wonder if the first version was meant to be played differently.

[carl-swanson]

Elettaria-I have the music in front of me. The original etude was printed exactly as it was in earlier editions. The first three lines all have squiggly lines next to each chord and then it stops.  They come back occasionally throughout the rest of the etude. So in retrospect, I think I should have just put a footnote saying that all the chords should be rolled. That’s what I did for the etude variation. I didn’t use squiggly lines anywhere and just put  on the very first chord saying that all chords should be rolled.  Maybe I’ll add a footnote to the original etude when it goes into reprint. Thanks for telling me about this.

[Elettaria]

Ah, so it’s Boscha who put in the squiggly lines so arbitrarily?  (Damnit, there must be a technical term for those.  If I had my laptop here I’d open up MuseScore to see what they were being called there, although it might be one of those terms you never hear in real life.  Arpeggiation marks?)

I reckon it would be a lot easier to read, and less confusing, if you edited them in the original etude to look nice and neat like the variation, including the footnote.  You’re not changing how it’s meant to be played, after all, you’re just clarifying an ambiguity.  Plus I seem to be more advanced than some of the players you’re aiming at, and if I was finding it confusing, chances are beginners will too.

I find I’m far more likely to learn mistakes such as wrong notes if there are confusing formatting features such as this, or something like spelling a note differently in a repeat (in a piano or vocal piece; obviously that has a different impact with harp).  Someone else has spotted a change in fingering  between etude and variation, which you said was justified.  The more consistent everything else is between etude and variation, the easier it is to pick out the significant differences, such as that deliberate fingering change.

Speaking of fingering, with this sort of piece I’m all in favour of repeating the fingering in repeated sections.  If you’re concentrating on various techniques plus you’re still fairly early on in learning the harp, it helps to have it confirmed, otherwise you might start sneaking in the wrong fingering for the repeated bits.  Some people memorise fingering faster than others, we all have different learning styles.  If you ever did decide that was a good way to go, and people with teaching experience will know far more about this than I do, you could probably bump the fingering font size down a notch to keep an uncluttered look on the page, while still keeping it very easy to read.

<span style=”font-size: 16px;”>I’ve not been able to play recently due to illness, but I am very much looking forward to getting stuck into these, especially Etude 7!</span>

[carl-swanson]

Elettaria- I’ll consider changing the original etude 7 so that there are no squiggly lines and just a footnote, like the etude variation. That makes more sense to me too. As for fingering, I have to assume that most if not all students playing these will be working with a teacher, and the teacher will make sure the student is using consistent fingering. Some students only need to see the fingering for a particular pattern once and they automatically figure out that they should use that each time. Others may need to see it more than once, in which case the teacher can write it in where it is needed.  One of the important things that can be learned in etudes is thinking, and figuring out how to play a passage.  So with minimal fingering its up to the student to remember how that passage is played.  In places where I changed the fingering for a passage that had already been played differently, the idea is to show the student that there is more than one way to play something, and that the choice of fingering depends a lot on the individual person and hand.

I currently have a student who is a phenomenal sight reader. I’ve never seen anyone sight read on the harp like she does. But she had several teachers before me, and no one taught her the importance of good fingering. Frankly, when she sight reads, she doesn’t even bother looking at written fingering, nor pedals for that matter. So the result is that she tends to play pieces with the most harebrained fingering you can imagine: 2,2,2,1,1,1,3,3,  things like that. I’ve really had to hold her feet to the fire to plan and use good fingering, and she’s much better at it now.  Etudes in general, and these Bochsa Revisited etudes in particular, are a perfect place to learn many fundamental skills, including fingering.

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