Making Connections: Harpist Composer Sophia Dussek - PHH 193

So for instance, if you've ever struggled with some giant chords in music of Baux or Krumpholz, both of those who were major harpists and composers at this very same time, those giant chords weren't the struggle on a 19th century harp the way they are on one of ours. So it's not your hand, it was their harps.

Welcome to the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast.

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Welcome to the show. Today's episode focuses on the music of harpist, singer and composer Sophia Duschek. This is partly music history, partly harp history, and partly harp technique, but it's really about connection. I want to help you feel a connection to our roots, to some of the musical and harp traditions that aren't merely history but are part of the fabric of our daily harp playing.

There's an African proverb that says, walk.

Like you have 3,000 ancestors walking behind you. We harpists so often feel that we're.

All alone on our journey, when the.

Truth is that we are only the newest leaves on a tree with many other branches full of other leaves, a tree three whose roots were formed long ago. And every time we play, we are continuing the traditions of those harpists, so it makes sense to learn a little about them. The things we learn about our roots can help us connect to the music we are learning today in a deeper way. That's why I chose connection as the.

Fifth of the five growth areas I.

Identified in my book Kaleidoscope. Practice, Focus, Finish and Play the Way youy've Always Wanted because when you take time, even occasionally, to enrich and enlarge your musical experience, that's your musical experience apart from your playing. You bring more understanding and dimension to everything you play.

And in today's podcast, I will help.

You make those connections between the music of 200 years ago and the music.

That you're playing now.

So today, our Musical Way Back machine will take us to the turn of the 19th century, when harp playing had yet to be eclipsed in the drawing room by the piano. Picture any screen adaptation of Pride and Prejudice that you've ever seen and you will have the right atmosphere. In fact, our heroine for today, Sophia Cory Dushek, was born in the same year as the author Jane Austen.

So put on your best muslin frock.

And we'll get going. But first I want to jump in here and let you know about a couple things that are coming up very soon at Harp Mastery. First is our February seminar. And you may remember that our seminar series is sort of a My Harp Mastery Membership Lite version. It gives you access to our Monday night calls and the the PDFs worksheets that go along with those without the rest of the membership. So it's a great way maybe test out my Heart Mastery membership or maybe just jump in and out and take the seminar courses that most interest you. This month we're going to be working on Fingers. It's a Technique Month and the theme is called just scales and arpeggios. Two, we're going to be using scales and arpeggios and showing you how to use those to make your fingers more even, to make them more precise, to get them to play a little faster and to get them give them more facility and flexibility. So those will be the calls that we'll be doing in the month of February and invite you. If you are not a My Heart Mastery member, sign up for that seminar and join us on those calls. I'd love to see you there. Also coming up Tomorrow, that's Tuesday, January 28th, I am doing my Finish it clinic. This is a 90 minute group call where we'll be working through the techniques that you need to finish your pieces. And I'm really doing this as much as I can. Like a coaching call, sure, I'll give you the techniques and the information and there will be a lot there that you can use. But I really want to work with all of you on the call. So bring a piece with you and one that you're having trouble getting finished. We're going to get you past that hump and tell you how to get it done. So this is a really impactful call. As I said, it's more like a coaching call or a workshop caller than it is just a plain old webinar. So you can check that out and join us. But it is happening tomorrow, so you need to get in there and get this one done. So I invite you to join us for that seminar. I will put the link in the show notes. You can also register directly from the app or from the upcoming events tab@heartmastery.com.

And now if you're ready, we'll engage.

That way back machine and we'll go back to the year 1792 which finds Sophia Cory in London. At the age of 17.

Sophia had.

Moved to London with her family. The family had been settled in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her father, Domenico Corrie, was born in Rome and he made his living in Edinburgh as a singing instructor and as a music publisher. And in about 1788, the family made a move to London, where the publishing business more or less took off. And of course, it gave Sophia a.

Lot more opportunities to pursue her musical studies.

She had been studying singing with her father from the time she was very little, and she'd been performing from a young age as well. And so she was already well known as a soprano. So when they moved to to London, she continued her studies with some of the leading music masters of the time. And gave her London debut in a very prestigious concert series, the Salomon concert series, in 1791. And in this particular performance, Franz Joseph Haydn was directing from the harpsichord.

So you can see just how prestigious.

This concert series was. During that same time, the pianist and composer Jan Ladislav Duszek was making his way to London from France. Dusek was born in Bohemia, which is part of modern day Czech Republic, and he was by this time a world renowned artist and a world traveler. And he had been most recently in France, made a tour to Italy, and when he came back to France, he was certainly caught up in, to some extent, in the beginnings of the revolution that was happening there at that time. And so in 1789, May or June of 1788, 1789, he emigrated from France to London to England, and he settled there in 1791. Duschek also performed on those very same concerts where Sophia was performing, that very same series. In fact, on the 15th of June of that year, they actually played a piano duet together. And then eventually they were married in September of 1792. At this time, of course, Sophia was 17. The marriage turned out not to be a particularly happy one, and eventually the couple separated. Perhaps that separation was hastened by the fact that the publishing business that Duchek had entered into with Sophia's father had essentially failed and was bankrupt, and Duschek actually fled the country to try to avoid debtors prisoners. In any case, Duschek died abroad in 1812, leaving Sophia free to remarry. She married a viola player. They settled in Paddington, where Sophia opened a music school, and she continued to compose and to perform until her death in 1847. But of course, what really interests us about Sophia Dushek right now is her music. And perhaps you don't know it, but. But her most famous harp composition is from a set of three sonatas for harp. These sonatas were published by her father's company under her name, but published in France erroneously under her husband's name. And this caused some confusion for a little bit of time. But this is a set of three sonatas. And the third sonata, the sonata in C minor, is a favorite of harp students of all, all ages. The first movement has lots of energy and drive, and here's how that movement starts.

Oops, a little wrong note there. Ah, well, now the Andantino movement, that's the second movement. Slower and a little bit more poignant. Very charming and graceful.

Still.

Sa.

And of course, like many sonatas from this period, this one ends with a very sprightly rollicking rondo. And here's how that movement starts.

In many ways, Sophia's music was typical of the time. This was the age of Haydn and Mozart. Music was elegant and charming and sparkling, the hallmarks of this later classical period. In music. Generally, the classical period is considered to end around 1820. So you can see she was right in there in this part of music history. Now, the musical innovations around this time were the development of the sonata form into that three movement form that we're familiar with, you know, where it's like fast, slow, fast, like in the sonata I told you about before. So that was something that came into common practice and popular practice around this time. The string quartet became a popular form of music making at this time, and of course, the rise to predominance of the piano, which was due largely to Beethoven. So as music left the classical era and moved toward that more passionate romanticism.

The harps of the time simply couldn't.

Compete with that new pianoforte. Now, since you're listening to this podcast, I don't have to tell you that the development of the harp through the ages has been one long quest to figure out how to create accidentals. Hooks, levers, discs, pedals, all of those are just a part of our history. But in Sophia's day, this is what the harp was like. The concert harp, as opposed to the folk harp. Yes, they were different even then, was smaller than it is today, with fewer strings and a lighter tension. And the pedal mechanism was considerably different. The die cut steel rods that allowed the modern harp to achieve such a great size weren't part of the early 19th century technology. Nevertheless, petal harps were in use, and possibly in use earlier than you think. For instance, by 1720, the single action harp had been developed. And by single action, I mean there were all seven petals. And actually the number of petals wasn't standardized.

At first they got up to seven.

And that was a good thing. But by single action, I mean that the petals only had one notch. Today we use a double action harp, which has two notches. So the single action harp could allow every note to be raised one half step, very much the way levers on a lever harp work today. Except, of course, you were doing them with your feet. What this meant was that single action harps were usually tuned, guess what key they were tuned in? E flat major, just the way we often tune lever harps that way today, because it gives you the most range of the most popular keys, right? You can get a few sharps and a few Flats and everything in between. So the most common keys get covered if you have three flats. But by inventing the double action harp, which was patented, I think, in 1810, the double action harp allowed the performer to play in every key because we could play in as many as seven flats and, and all the way through to. In as many as seven sharps. And when you consider that that was the state of affairs in 1810 and it's still pretty much where we are today, makes you wonder just how fast technology is advancing. But the harps were smaller than they are now, and so they were a little bit lighter and the strings had less tension. They weren't quite as hard to play. And they may, depending on the harp, have even been closer together than the strings on our harps today. So, for instance, if you've ever struggled with some giant chords in music of Baux or Krumpholz, both of those who were major harpists and composers at this very same time, those giant chords weren't the struggle on a 19th century harp the way they are on one of ours. So it's not your hand, it was their harps. I mentioned before that Sophia Dushek's music was very typical of music of the time. And in fact, if you do a little bit of research and you look up music that she's written, you'll find that While there's the one volume of Sonatas, she wrote 10 volumes of favorite airs. So an air like a song, an air. And she would do collections of three favorite popular songs and do sets of variations on them. This was a really practical and useful kind of a thing. First of all, if you take a song that people already know and like a popular song, she used everything from the Welsh lullaby all through the night to tunes from the operas of the day or other folk songs, melodies that people knew. And then she arranged them into a theme and variations, right? So the melody would be the basic theme, and then you do sets of variations which gave virtuosity and flash to the song. So this was something that worked out really well because virtuosity was what people, what, what audiences wanted to hear when they went to a concert in a concert hall or when they had musicians to play in their drawing room, they wanted to hear the brilliance, hear the flash and the D and all that technique that went with it. So the theme and variations idea gave them a two for one, because it would be a tune that they knew and already liked, and then a set of variations that made the performer look really good. Now there are a lot of these that she wrote and they all have dedications. She dedicated them to her hostesses, she dedicated them to her concert sponsors, she dedicated them to her more well to do students. The dedications, of course, made sure that she stayed in their good graces and kept earning the money that she needed. And of course, it gave the arrangements themselves some additional cachet to have some patron's name on them. Of course, Theme and Variations are always fun to play, aren't they? They give us a nice melody and a way to practice our technique that goes along with it. So in addition to being fun to listen to, they are fun to play. And if you haven't looked at any Theme and Variations by any composer, I urge you to take a look and try one because they are a lot of fun. Of course, if you've ever played the Pachelbel Canon, for instance, that's a form of Theme and Variations. It's not exactly Theme and Variations, it is more like a chacon. It's got a ground, a bass line that repeats and varying melodies over top of it that happen to be in canon. So that's yet another layer. But Theme and Variations are a lot of fun to play, so I would urge you to check one out if you haven't. If you're interested in playing some of her music yourself, I would suggest that you take a look at the sonata if you think you're up for that. It's published in lots of different editions and easy to find. Or you can use the IMSLP website, the International Music Score Library Project. You can find some copies of her music there that you can download and take a look at. Most of her music is not very lever harp friendly, although in particular the Variations on the Welsh Lullaby all through the Night are hihidnos. I have no idea if that's how.

You say it, but that's what I tried.

I just wanted you to be able to recognize it when you saw it. It's in her favorite airs book Number one. That can be worked for lever harp without much difficulty. And I think you'll find that in some of the other favorite air theme Variations as well. So just a word of caution there. If you're a lever harpist, these can get kind of tricky. But just if you choose wisely and make a couple adaptations, you can practice.

These and play these and enjoy them too.

And here's why I think we all should music like Sophia Dushek's music from this period. Whether it's her music, the music of her husband, because he wrote some lovely harp music as well. Music by composers like Mozart or Haydn or Krumpholz. These composers from that classical era, they teach us so much about how to approach the harp in a different way, a way that creates a lighter touch, more relaxation, more fluidity, and more speed. There is so much that we can learn from this music. First of all, this music is music that really puts our scales and arpeggios to the test. I know that you think you've been practicing those, and your scales and arpeggios are good, and you've been working on your etudes, and they're a real proving ground for this too. But this music, music from this era particularly takes that proving ground idea to a new level. The scales and arpeggios are part and parcel of this music. That's where the flash and the brilliant display of virtuosity comes from. Don't be afraid of them. We have so much harp music from this era now. Most of it isn't by the composers that people know, like Haydn or Mozart. I mean, we have the Mozart concerto, but, you know, you need an orchestra for that, right? So most of our music is by these harpist composers, people like Boxe, people like Krumpholz, people like the Dusheks. But this music is filled with charm, filled with lightness and energy, and it's a delight to play and a delight to listen to. This was a high point in harp literature. So if you look at harp music as a whole, you're going to see a lot of these composers and you're going to see a lot of the scales and arpeggios put to use in this. So this is a great way to really figure out why you practice scales and arpeggios so that you can play fun music like this. Of course, when you study this music, you'll also learn to work with trills and grace notes. And they make a lot more sense in the context of a piece like this than they do perhaps on their own. So this is a wonderful way to get some experience with those things. Now, for you left hand fans, you'll find lots of the Alberti bass pattern all over these pieces. Pieces by all of these composers, including Mozart, used that very famous pattern that's attributed to Alberti, where you play that left hand repeated sort of, you know, 1, 5, 3, 5 kind of pattern. And it's a very typical and something you need to learn to play. And when you can play these sorts of things, the, the Alberti bass, the scales, the Arpeggios and, yes, the trills and the grace notes, you will be able to play all of this music because it all uses this. But even more than just the technical stuff, the legato and the lightness that is embodied in this music is something we work very hard to learn. And it's so wonderful to be able to put this kind of musical framework and to understand how it can help give the atmosphere that we want to a piece of music like this. It's a great way to learn that. And after all, you can't play these scales and arpeggios and Alberti bass patterns and all the rest if you're not using a nice, light, relaxed touch. It's what's absolutely called for here. So it is a terrific way to learn that. And of course, if you're afraid to play fast, this will teach you how. So it will make you much less fearful of playing fast. You just have to get in there and dig into this music. Now, I realize I've given you a big challenge here. First of all, if you play the lever harp, this music might not be suitable for you, or at least not all of it will be easy, that's for sure. And no matter what your skill level is at the harp, whether you're, you know, relatively new to the harp or even an advanced player, none of this music is easy. But you can take it in small chunks. Even learning just the slower movements or the themes to some of these favorite airs will give you the idea that it'll put you in the mood. The candlesticks, the crystal chandeliers, the elegance that was the setting for performances of this kind of music. Now, I mentioned a source for her music where you could find some of her music that you could download from online. I will put that link in the show Notes, Notes. So be sure to check that out and you can look at some of Sophia Dushek's music, whether you decide to learn any of it or not. That's okay. There's always the right time to do that, and you will know if now is the right time. So thank you for listening to this episode. I hope this fired your imagination just a little bit and got you to think in a different way about music from the classical era. Music by Sophia Dushek. Whether you knew her music before or not, this is a really interesting topic for me. Not just Sophia and her music, but the idea of where harp music was, what it was doing at that time in history. It was such an exciting time for the harp with the development of the new kinds of pedal mechanisms. It was just such an exciting time and the harp was still in its heyday, you know, so that was a. And then of course, it got eclipsed by the piano and then has come back with a. With a bang. We know that. So all that is wonderful. So next week on the podcast, I'll be talking about something totally different. We're going to be talking about opportunity. Not just creating opportunity and not just recognizing it, but also embracing it. And I'm not just talking about opportunities to play or share your music, but opportunities that are in your own practice and playing. So we'll talk about some ways to learn that will stretch and support you as you find some new opportunities there. So that's next week on the podcast. Remember, if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, tomorrow is my Finish it clinic. We've got a lot of people who are going to be on the call and I certainly hope that you will be one of them. And I'll be helping you all learn about how to finish your pieces if you've gotten stuck and not finished, able to get that piece over the hump. Well, let's talk about it and let's figure out how to do that. So that's happening tomorrow. You will find that link in the show notes as well, or you can find the link to register@heartmastery.com or on the app. So I look forward to seeing you again on the show next week.

Do I get to see you or.

Do I just get to talk to you? I don't know. It feels like we get to visit at any rate. But in the meantime, remember, 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.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Practicing Harp Happiness podcast.

I release a new episode every Monday.

Morning so you can hit your practice week running. Until then, remember to practice your harp happiness every day.

See you next time.