The Music Piles are back

Those who know me know that I love my piles of music. Well, not necessarily that I love them. I do love it more when my music room is neat and tidy and the floor is visible, but I also love my sheet music. And there is a lot of it.

As I’ve said before I buy music the way some women buy shoes. And yes, I have been known to stand in front of my bulging shelves of the stuff and declare I simply have nothing  to play.

To my credit I have had things under control lately. I had at long last abandoned the notion that I would find an entire hour to sit, sort and file and had been taking the Baby steps approach (thanks Flylady!). So with ten minutes here and ten minutes there I got it done. I was even good enough to cultivate the habit of putting music back on the shelf when I had finished with it. Whenever I got excited while teaching and pulled examples and follow on pieces off the shelf I made myself put it all away. There and then. Radical. Well, for me at least.

But the piles have regrouped and launched a new attack on my floor space. In my defence though I have had good reason for not countering their return. No, really…

It all started with Valentine’s Day. Yes, I know that was a while ago now but please cut me some slack here. I had a three hour gig for a Valentine’s Day dinner. That meant three hours of love songs required. My gig folders already contained a healthy smattering of the soppy stuff, but more was needed to fill in the time.

This I actually didn’t mind as it meant an opportunity to revisit some old faves and refresh the folders with something new. For my own sanity as much as anything. Change is as good as a holiday!

So out came my massive expanding file of love songs and dedications. Everything from ‘Annie’s Song’ to ‘You’re still the one’. (All the music is filed alphabetically by title and so I couldn’t quite make it an A-Z as I don’t own a love song starting with Z. I don’t even know a love song starting with Z. Anyone?)

I ended up with a goodly collection of charts. The gig went fine and then there was a huge pile of music to put back. Alphabetically.

‘So’, I reasoned, staring at the pile. ‘There’s a lot there I really should record soundbites for to put on the website.’ And there was my way out. I didn’t need to put the music away at that moment because I could go through it all piece by piece to see if it’s already on the website. And then determine if it should be on the website. And then either record it and then file it. Or just file it. Great!

Only I haven’t done any of it.

But I will.

Really.

Tomorrow.

Perhaps…

What's on the iPod- L'arome de L'est

In preparation for the upcoming Marie Antoinette concert (read more about that here) I had recently downloaded L'arome de l'est by Masumi Nagasawa, a fantastic Japanese harpist based in Maastricht. She specialises in music for the single action harp and has SO many CDs. I've already mentally spent an enormous sum of money just reading about them. You can check out her website here.

I'd ended up buying this CD because it was readily available on iTunes and I confess I needed it in a hurry. Things in the post can sometimes take a very long time to find their way to Australia. It was the only solo harp CD that came up when I was searching for music by Krumpholz. Lots of recordings of concertos, works with flute etc but not so many solo pieces. It's a great collection all round:

"L'arome de L'est"

Harp Music from Eastern Europe and beyond

Performed on the

Erard Single-action pedal harp (around 1820)

Etcetera KTC1362

Jean Baptist Krumpholtz (1747-1790)

Sonate en scene de stile pathétique op. 16 bis

dedicated to Madame la Comtesse de Rzewuska

Etude du Renforcement (Adagio from the Sonata op. 14)

Jean Baptist Cardon (1760-1803)

Sonata in F moll

Variations on the theme of “Ah, vous dirai-je, Maman”

Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812)

3 sonatinas

from the six Sonatinas dedicated to Madame Krumpholtz

Andrei Sikhra (1766-1851)

Variations on the Russian theme “Au milieu des collines

John Field (1782-1837)

Nocturne Es dur

arranged by Elias Parish Alvars (1808-1849)

Louis Spohr (1784-1859)

Variations on the theme of “Je suis encore dans mon printemps”

from the Opera by Etienne-Nicolas Méhul (1763-1817) Op.36

Alexandre Varlamov (1801-1848)

Melodie

Michail Iwanowitsch Glinka (1804-1857)

Nocturne Es dur

Nocturne “Solitude/ Razluka” F moll

I fell in love with Krumpholz's Etude de renforcement and was able to find the original score through IMSLP. It's looks beautiful, and is readable for today's harpist, but contains a LOT of markings, some of which are unfamiliar for a modern player. I think they relate to the use of the swell doors that open and close at the back of single action pedal harps. There's a picture on Masumi's website.

I just wish iTunes includes the CD booklet notes so I could read all about it. Or does it, and I'm so technologically challenged I don't know it?

The Fluffy Dice

They’ve become an essential part of my teaching arsenal. Yep- the fluffy dice.

Just like you see hanging from the rear vision mirror of cars of a certain, ahem, calibre. Not normally what you would associate with harp playing, but then again it is an instrument of surprises.

So why the fluffy dice? Well, as every musician, beginner or advanced, knows, practice makes perfect. And practice by definition involves repetition. The challenge comes in making that repetition engaging and meaningful. Many a time I have congratulated myself on working on a passage for a substantial period of time only to realise on honest reflection that I spent a sizeable amount of that time mentally planning the weekly shopping list. Or thinking up blog topics.

**Embarrassed silence**

Well. Yes. But anyway keeping your mind on the job is a challenge for all of us. Keeping kid’s minds on the job can be doubly challenging. Sometimes it seems that from a child’s perspective everything should be fun. And entertaining. Not exactly words commonly associated with repetition.

And that’s where the fluffy dice come in. I have to admit at this point that the idea of using dice in lessons was not my own. I did knick it from was inspired by a violin teacher of my acquaintance who was terribly good at making lessons interesting for kids. How could I not learn from her?

The violin teacher in question used normal dice which the students could freely roll around the room. But she could pick up her instrument and move it out of the way. Obviously not so easy for me, hence the need for soft fluffy dice. Because even though I always direct the rolling to be done away from any instruments ‘accidents’ do happen.

It was actually surprisingly difficult to find said fluffy dice, but I eventually ended up with a lovely rose scented pair.

So how are they used? I’ve now come up with a few different ways to incorporate them into lessons, the first and most obvious being to get kids to repeat a passage and still find it interesting.

I always let the student roll the dice which makes for a good mental break as well as a chance to get up from their chair and move to the empty space in the middle of the room. ‘Do try to avoid the harps’, I always say to more or less effect.

Generally the rules of the game mean only 1 dice (die) is needed with the important proviso that rolling a ‘1’ means an automatic re-roll. This means that the tricky challenging bit in question will have to be played perfectly anywhere between 2-6 times. And that’s perfectly, otherwise it doesn’t count and, yep, has to be done again.

And contrary to rumour, no I haven’t loaded the dice so it always rolls a 6.

Pure coincidence…

So by the end of it all we’ve broken up the lesson a bit, refreshed the concentration, had a bit of a laugh and achieved some (hopefully) useful repetition. All with some fluffy dice.

I encourage my students to find some dice they have at home and try the same thing. Useful practice at home? What more can these fluffy dice achieve?!

Still more I can assure you. But that’s the topic of another blog. One that I thought of while mindlessly repeating that tricky bit in….

Just joking. Kind of…

Desperately Seeking Marie Antoinette

source

A few years ago I was playing through Betty Paret’s ‘Second Harp Book’ and came across the gorgeous ‘Queen’s Music’ by none other than Marie Antoinette, last Queen of France. It’s actually a song with the title ‘C’est mon ami’ written for voice and accompaniment, which could quite possibly have been the harp given Marie Antoinette’s love of the instrument. And as a further actually, it’s one of two songs written by the Queen, the other being ‘Portrait Charmant’.

I’m in the middle of putting together a concert programme at the moment with my good friend Sarah the Singer.

As an aside I have to refer to her as Sarah the Singer as I have 3 Sarahs in my life: Sarah the Singer, Sarah the Flute and Sarah with the Twins. What was really freaky was when they were all pregnant at the same time, especially when I received an invite in the mail to Sarah’s Baby Shower. But which one??!! Turned out to be Sarah with the Twins.

ANYWAY. Sarah the Singer and I will be doing some performances in September/October of music from France c.1780-1830 and we would love to do the Marie Antoinette songs. But to do so we have had to temporarily take of our musician hats and put on our internet sleuthing hats, for these songs are not easy things to track down.

So Dr. Watson, let’s work our way through the trail….

There is a beautiful YouTube vid of ‘C’est mon ami’ with Sandrine Chatron playing harp

I would love to get in touch with Sandrine but haven’t found an email address or anything like that for her.

www.marieantoinette.org is a fairly scholarly site to whom I have addressed an enquiring email. I’m yet to hear back but fingers crossed someone there can help.

There’s a site dedicated to all things Marie Antoinette which features a page of music connected with the Queen http://www.ladyreading.net/marieantoinette/index-en.html . From here we were able to get a copy of the vocal line and lyrics for ‘C’est mon ami’. When combined with the Betty Paret solo harp version we have enough info to put together our own arrangement. Yah!

Sarah and I have both tried to purchase Mayuko Karasawa’s recording of the two Marie Antoinette songs mentioned on the ladyreading.net page, but due to vagaries of the internet which I don’t get at all we can’t buy it as a digital download in Australia. How this can be I do not know. Mayuko has very kindly answered an email we sent her but unfortunately could only refer us to the same iTunes or Amazon downloads that won’t work for us. So at the moment we are scratching our heads to see if we know someone in another country who could buy it for us and forward it on. And this technology stuff is supposed to make our lives easier…

To be honest though what we really need is the sheet music of the second song ‘Portrait Charmant’ but it seems to be one very elusive little song.

Well, I really don’t know where to go next with this one, but I am loath to give up on performing the two songs. Anyone out there in blogland have any suggestions?

P.S. Since I posted this I had response from Clare at www.marieantoinette.org who is based in Melbourne- wow what a small world! She was very helpful but unfortunately we're still no closer to the elusive 'Portrait Charmant'