Finding The Music in the Silence - PHH 268

What if playing the harp felt easier the way you thought it would be? Not because you practiced more, but because you finally understood what was getting in your way. I'm Anne Sullivan, and welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness. Here we tackle the real challenges harpists struggle with: the sticky passages, the tricky fingerings, prepping for performance, and all the ingredients that go into making music sound the way you want it to. I've studied with world-class harpists, taught at a top conservatory for 20 years, and I love playing the harp. But what I love just as much is breaking down the real challenges harpists face and turning them into clear step-by-step solutions, the same ones I teach my students and use myself. So if you're ready to play the music you love with more confidence, clarity, and joy, you're in the right place. So let's get started. Welcome to the show. Way back in 1782, Mozart was corresponding with a fellow composer about the art of composition, and Mozart made the point that the true essence of music lies not only in the notes themselves, but also in the spaces between them. That thought was echoed a century later by Claude Debussy, who famously said, "Music is the silence between the notes." Silence is powerful. One part of the power of silence is its ability to define the notes around it. The spaces between the notes create the rhythm. Lengthening spaces create a ritardando. Shortening spaces create an accelerando. Actual silence created by a rest in the music causes tension that is only relieved or possibly heightened by the next note. For us harpists, creating silence as we play is challenging. Our music naturally rings and resonates as each string is played. In those moments when we need to stop the sound, it becomes a physical and intentional act. We create silence on purpose. But what of those moments between the notes when we want a note to sustain and to hold the tension into the next one? Do those moments need special attention? I believe they do. So today I'd like to explore the two different kinds of silence we harpists have to consider, what each of those means, and what we need to do to observe those silences with artistry and musicianship. And as we get started, here's another quote to let roll around in your mind. It's from Kate Kennedy's book "Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound," and she writes this: Silence is the opposite of music, but it is also its lifeblood. The breaths between the phrases, the drama, the anticipation, and the quality of the breathless hush between final note and applause. Okay, I left some silence there. Did you think I went away? Silence is so interesting. It's that Nothingness that can be a relief can have tension, all of that. And that's what we're considering today. Now, a couple of things before we get started. As you might have heard, last week we opened registration for our Compose for Christmas Challenge. This is a 3-day workshop that we are doing right around the middle of July, just in time for Christmas in July. I'm going to be helping you arrange A Christmas Carol. A Christmas Carol that you will get to vote on. We'll have, um, have a little poll that goes out and we'll take the 3 top Christmas Carol choices from everybody who registers, and those are the 3 carols that we will use for this challenge. You'll get to choose which one you work on, and I'll show you, walk you exactly through the process of how to arrange so that this Christmas not only do you have your regular music practiced, but you have a brand new arrangement that is yours. What's the value in having your own arrangement? Well, you can play it, for one thing. It suits your hand, it suits your skill level, it suits the way you like the harp to sound, and it suits the way you want that Christmas carol to sound. So you're going to have something brand new that is yours for this Christmas. We'll go step by step, and by the time we're finished with just those 3 days, you'll have everything you need to finish spiffing it up and make it exactly what you want. Plus, I'll be working on A Christmas Carol right alongside you, a different one, and you'll have that arrangement as well when you're done. So you'll have 2 new carols to play this Christmas. So I certainly hope you join me. It's going to be a lot of fun, and I hope It encourages you to take that leap into making music your own in this special way. And of course, we still have registration for the Chrysalis Music Workshop open. That's the workshop that I'm doing for flutists and harpists and composers. We'll be working with my friend Joan Marsh and my composer friend, uh, Louis-Anthony D'Elise. So we'll be working with flutists and harpists singly and in duos, and we'll get a chance to work with some real live composers as well. So that's be a fun workshop, and that's a live event happening in New Jersey at the end of September, and I'd love for you to be there as well. But let's start our discussion about silence, and I want you to think about what happens in silence when we're playing. First of all, silence in our playing, like silence in our conversation, can make us just a little bit uncomfortable, can be a space that we want to fill. They say nature abhors a vacuum. Well, I think it works the same way for us and silence. It's just, we need to do something. And I think particularly because our approach to our heart playing is so often about the doing, silence is that moment when we ought to be doing something, or we think we should, and we don't have anything to do. This is why we run into some of the basic rhythmic issues that we do, right? Perhaps you've been told in a lesson, perhaps you've heard on a recording that you actually made the, the value of some of the long notes in your music just a little too short, or maybe you made a long rest just a little too short. You skimped on it is the word I often use with my students. Ah, you cheated us a little bit on that long note, or on that rest. You didn't quite wait long enough. That kind of silence, and whether it's, you know, silence that is truly a rest when nothing is happening or just a long note, happens because we're so anxious to do the next thing that we compress the time in our mind. It's as if we've already done this, so nothing's happening, so let's get on to the next thing. And sometimes It— sometimes we ignore an entire beat, right? And it's like, oh, you mean I only made that whole note 3 beats long? Oops. Or more often, it's just a little bit of time that we shave off, and that actually works against the rhythm. That helps us, whether we want to or not, rush through the music instead of just letting the music settle into a steady beat. So we are not always comfortable with that silence. We don't know what to do, or we're anxious to get on to doing the next thing. If we played an instrument that needed to sustain a note, like a violin or a flute, when they see a whole note, they're actively playing through that whole note or that half note. They're actively moving the energy of the music forward. For us as harpists, we let go. We have to let go of the note, and it sustains itself, but it sustains in a decay. Once we play it, the sound may continue to ring, but it just gets quieter and quieter. It fades away immediately. We don't have a way to keep adding energy to the note, and I think that's one of the reasons that we are sometimes a little bit too anxious to move on. We want to keep things moving, and the sound is dying away. Once we release it, right, once we pluck that string and release the sound into the air, it's done. Our role in it is done. We can't control it anymore. Of course, that's the beautiful thing about the harp, that resonance is a wonderful thing, and it's part of our expression. But using the silence well, or using that moment when the note is sustaining or needs to be sustained, using that moment well is what is so difficult. So we're going to talk about two kinds of silence here: the, the silence that happens when we're trying to sustain a note, or the silence that happens when we need to stop the sound, which for us, as I said a moment ago, is also an action because we need to physically stop it with a muffle. Otherwise, the harp in its most beautiful way will just keep ringing and ringing, and that might not be what the music needs at that moment. So silence can be active in two different ways, can't it? So let's look at each of those and see how those different kinds of silence play out in our harp playing. I want to talk about the second kind of silence first. This is silence that is written in the music. It's a rest, and it is actually silence. As harpists, we look at rests, I think, a little bit differently than some other instrumentalists because we'll see a rest in the music But we're not always, nor do we have to always, actually create total silence. If you were a pianist, you would take your finger off the key, the piano would stop the sound, and there would be silence. Granted, perhaps some overring, but the piano would be muted. The sound would have stopped. If you were a flutist, you would stop the air, and that would stop the sound. But when we see a rest, most of the time we just let it go. There are some times when we're very observant about the rest because we know the music requires it, and we muffle—we stop the sound. But most of the time we don't observe rests the same way as other instrumentalists do, and I think that's okay. There are different pieces, different kinds of music, and we all know them when we come across them where that silence is imperative, where we have to muffle, we have to create the silence because it's part of the drama, part of the, the, the intent of the piece. But most of the time we treat that rest as if it were just a long note. And I think that is okay, but we need to be aware of that. We need to be aware of the meaning of the rest and treat it just a little bit differently, at least in our mind, so that we're understanding that we're not actually holding the note through on purpose. The harp might hold the note through for us. But we're not actually holding it through on purpose. What we are doing is making time for that rest and observing it in that way. Remember, it's not just a thing, a hole. It's not something to skip over. It's not a waiting time. It's not a pause. It is part of the music. And considering it from its purpose, its intent, I think is what's important. Does it mean that we play the note before the rest just a little bit differently so we're at least mindful of the fact that the composer wasn't looking for that note to sustain through the rest, but that it's going to sustain through the rest because we can't or don't need to or don't want to muffle it? So I think the intent of the rest is something that we do need to be aware of, and we need to make some decisions about, because it is a moment of silence. And if we think we do need to create the silence and muffle to stop the sound, then we need to consider that as part of the music and decide on its own meaning as well. But there's another kind of silence, and that would be our sustained notes, right? This isn't a rest, this is a note that is held. And as we were talking before, obviously we can't actively hold that note, so we have to do something different so that we can create that idea of the sustaining quality. Of the note even as the note is decaying. When you think about those two things, they're not that different in the way we approach them. There's a rest, and yet we still often let our strings ring through the rest, or it's a sustained note and we can't really do anything to sustain it. It's a really subtle difference in our playing And it's a challenge, I think, that is specific to the harp because most other instruments don't have this problem. They make the distinction in their playing, and we need to make the distinction too. But the question is how. I think the secret to this is gesture. It's what we do with our hands in between the notes. Gesturing on the harp, I believe, is important. I mean, I'm a Salzedo-trained player. I learned the Salzedo method, and he was very, very focused on what he called the aesthetic gesture, which is more often called raising. And other techniques like French technique, Grangini technique, etc., do different things with your hands after you play. But I think that whatever kind of gesture you do, whatever it is you learned, gesture is important, and it's not just because it looks pretty. I think gesture has the ability to remind us as players what the note is really doing. Once we've played it, it— does it have life? Is it holding through? Is it letting go? And while I'm not suggesting that we choreograph every rest or long note, I think that remembering that what we do with our hands after we play, in essence the follow-through for the note, is part of the note. It is part of what we're doing to convey what's happening in the music. I know that this is not an easy concept. It's not an easy thing to practice, and sometimes it can be tricky to wrap your head around the idea that it's not just about getting to the next strings fast. It's about playing the note that you're supposed to be playing all the way to the end of the note. When we play a note and just move right on to the next one, move our hands on to the next one, we've discounted what is actually happening in that note. Of course, this is really evident in a piece that is slow with a lot of chords or single notes that need to sustain. It's very evident there that if we just play the first chord and get on to the second one and then you know, we've got our fingers on the strings and we're going to wait until it's time to play it and then we play it. We've forgotten to give the chord that we just played its full meaning, its full intention, because it's not just a play it and get on to the next one chord. It's a sustained chord that we need to remember we are sustaining. And that's where gesture plays into it. Again, it's not just a visual thing. Granted, gesture looks wonderful for the audience. If you've got people listening to the harp live, they are also watching you play, and they will experience the gesture certainly in a visual way. But that visual is the visual expression of the music. This is something we harpists can do that a lot of instrumentalists can't. We don't have to hold our instrument so that after we've played that sound, we can move our arms and our hands in a way that conveys the meaning of the music as we are no longer in charge of the sound. At that same moment, we're not in charge of the sound But we can show what that sound means. But the visual aspect of the gesture is really only the smallest part. It serves two other purposes. One is that that gesture actually sustains the sound in a specific way. I was not a great you know, raiser as a young student. You know, I didn't always remember to raise my hands, and this was something my teacher was very focused on. And I can remember playing something in lessons, and this happened many times, where she would not specifically be looking. Maybe she'd be marking music or getting out a new piece for me to play. She'd have her back to me, and she would say, "Oh, you need to raise there." And I was always mystified. How could she tell I didn't raise? She wasn't looking. And it wasn't that she had a mirror or eyes in the back of her head. She had ears. The sound is different when you let the sound go and you don't raise it, just kind of let it, you know, all right, fine, I'm done with that. It sounds different than if you move your hands and your arms through space in a controlled way, certainly, We're moving the air. Sound moves through air, and when we move our arms, that's how the sound moves through the air. It sounds different. I didn't quite get it as a child. I certainly grew to appreciate it, and of course I could do the same thing with my students. Oh, I can tell you didn't raise it. The sound just died. It didn't project. It didn't sustain. So that's part of what gesture does for us. Another part of what gesture does for us is this: it actually reminds us what our intent with that note is. Do we want that chord to be beautiful and resonant, or do we just want to get on to the next one? It shapes our mental approach to the music. It shapes our inner belief and understanding about the music, and that comes through in the way it sounds, not just in the way it looks. Gesture is important. Okay, maybe you're buying into my thesis that gesture is really critical to our playing. What should those gestures look like? And if you're not comfortable with this yet, if you've never done them, how do you get started? And what's right and what's wrong? I'm going to give you my own personal philosophy as it has been filtered through my years of study. And remember, I came from that Salsetto tradition, so I was taught to raise. I was also taught that there were different raises that looked different depending on what the music was trying to say. I could make abrupt gestures if that's what the music called for, or I could make graceful gestures and very long ones if that was what the music called for. You don't have to be quite that elaborate, but I would encourage you to start a couple— in a couple of easy ways. And here are some sort of easy exercises. Start by just playing octaves, maybe do one hand alone and play a low octave and then a higher octave. Doesn't matter what note. And watch your arm as you play. We're not going to do anything specifically different with your arm. I certainly don't want your elbows moving. We're not doing anything that creates motion that isn't necessary for our playing. We still need to keep our motion efficient. After all, we want to play accurately and quickly, and efficient motion is part of that. But as you're playing from a low note to a high note, you have geography to cover. You have a distance to cover. And you can do it directly. Just move your hand in the same plane from bottom to top and play. You can do it quickly. You can do it very slowly. You can make your hand have a beautiful arc that after you play the bottom notes— and of course you close your fingers— you make a gentle arc as you move up to the top note. And you're going to practice this gesture by closing your hand after you play that first octave, and then a gentle arc— not higher than the harp, not all the way up to the top of the harp even— just a gentle arc all the way up to that top octave. Put your metronome on to keep a very slow but steady beat and see if you can Time that gesture so that after you play the first note, you use the entire beat to get to the next note. That's choreographing the silence, and you can do that with your left hand and then do the same thing with your right hand. Our right hand is not always a beautiful razor hand. It doesn't always make those beautiful gestures, and I think that's because it's behind the strings from our point of view, and it's almost as if the strings have— are an invisible or an opaque wall. We can't see through it, and so we don't always notice what our right hand is doing. Our right hand, because it plays higher on the harp and the distance between the soundboard of the harp and the neck of the harp is less, right? It's a smaller vertical height. We're not going to move our right hand as high maybe as our left hand, but it still needs to realize that it's choreographing the time between one note and the next, and it still needs to have that relaxation. So what you're doing is you're thinking about making the motion smooth, making it have a gentle arc, and taking up the entire time. That's choreographing the silence, and you'll find that it gives you an incredible amount of time to relax. It will make your placing more relaxed and accurate, and it will help you understand the role of gesture when it comes to those sustained notes. Then think about the opposite. You want a series of short, uh, staccato sharp kinds of notes. Well, your left hand will do this easily because think about those thumb muffles that we play. Those require short, almost jerky gestures in order to be able to play them. So take a moment, play a little scale with thumb muffles or octave muffles, something like that, and look at what your hand does and realize how it is visually realizing what the music is doing. And if you put a beat of rest in between each one of those notes, look how by maintaining the pressure of your, or at least the contact of your hand on the strings, you're choreographing that intentional silence again. You're telegraphing with your hand what that note is doing as you are creating the muffle. Your right hand doesn't muffle in quite the same way, But see what you can do to create shorter, more pointed gestures after you play a short note. Now, does this mean you have to raise everything? You have to be conscious of every time you let go of the string? Well, as a true Salsedo Method player, I'm going to say yeah, you do. But you don't have to start there. Start with those beautiful sustained notes and just Understand the value of gesture. When you play your warm-ups, think about what your hands are doing in between the notes, not just what they're doing in the notes. So you're going to watch and you're going to listen and you're going to think about the intention of that space between the notes. And then you're going to do one more thing. I want you to get the same view of your playing that an audience member does. Now, this is not because you might be playing in front of an audience someday, but because we can't necessarily see what it is we're doing without being outside our body. The only way to do this is to take a video. I want you to video yourself playing a piece that you're working on or a piece that you know doesn't matter. And it doesn't have to be long, just a minute is fine. But pick a piece where you think that, you know, you want to see what your gesture is like. Take that video, then I want you to play it back, watch it, but with the sound off. I don't want you to listen to what you're doing, I want you to watch what you're doing. Once again, this isn't because the gesture itself is so important, but because I want you to see what it is you're conveying. Remember that our music is visual as well as oral. People look as well as listen. And also, the sound that we create changes when our gesture changes, and when our gesture reflects the musical affect that we want, then we get that intention, we get that affect, we get that mood or atmosphere, whatever it is, in our playing. Our gesture works sort of from the outside in. Not only does it sustain the note or muffle the note, but it reminds us of what we're trying to do. So I want you to watch that minute of your video. See if your gesture is reflecting what you wanted the music to reflect. I don't want you to get self-conscious about it, but I want you to think about what you might do differently. And then pick one thing. Do it as a little experiment. I don't want you to become stiff and self-conscious about this. I just want you to remember that Everything that we do when we play either serves the music or it doesn't. And in this case, we're working with that silence between the notes. The video will be enlightening, I promise you. You might love it, you might hate it, but either way, it will help you find that next level of expression in your music. Through gesture and through the silence. So to come back to the quote that I started with, the quote that's most often attributed to Debussy: "Music is the silence between the notes." We may not have silence, we may, but either way, we need to project the music that happens between the notes, and that's what gesture is all about. So I hope you experiment with some of this and, and, and try it out. It's a, a next level in your playing. It's a next level of the music, and I'd love you to find it. Now, uh, remember that we have our Compose for Christmas challenge coming up. You can register for that. That's going to be so much fun. We opened the registration for that last week, and it's Gonna be a great, a great time together coming up the third week of July. So that's coming up. We have the Chrysalis Music Workshop in September. That's coming up. So much going on at Harp Mastery. Next week on the show, I'm going to be talking about independence versus interdependence and how those play out in your harp life. And we'll be looking at some interesting aspects of that as well, not just finger independence. Trust me, we've got some more important stuff to talk about. So independence versus interdependence on the podcast next week. In the meantime, remember that every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to your world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time. Enjoyed today's episode? Then share it with a harpist friend, subscribe for your weekly harp happiness boost, and check out harpmastery.com or the Harp Mastery app in your app store for more resources and ways to connect. I'll see you next time.