Playing from an Attitude of Gratitude - PHH 079

Welcome to Practicing Harp Happiness, the Harp Mastery Podcast. My name is Ann Sullivan and I'm a harpist, teacher, and founder of Harp Mastery. I'm all about creating more harp happiness in the world by helping harp players like you play the music they want the way they want. But as a harpist who nearly flunked out of one of the most prestigious music schools in the world, I although later not only graduated, but I went on to teach there. I know from personal experience that learning the harp is way harder than it looks. Here, each week on the Practicing Harp Happiness Podcast, I show you how to solve the challenges of practicing and playing the harp. Whether it's about making your fingers behave or learning music faster, or getting your piece's performance ready, or just learning to enjoy your playing every day. Sounds great, doesn't it? Let's get started.

Welcome to the show. This Thursday, we will celebrate Thanksgiving here in the US and it's a big deal for us. According to a recent survey, Thanksgiving edges out all other holidays, including Christmas, to rank as our most popular holiday. And it's really about three things, right? Food, family, and football. Oh, right. It's about being thankful too. Now, we try to be more intentional about keeping an attitude of gratitude at this time of year, but it sure isn't easy because Thanksgiving is also the official kickoff for the holiday shopping season. So the thankfulness is often tinged with a touch of frenzy as the Black Friday sales begin. Now, I'm sure you're receiving plenty of reminders to be thankful this Thanksgiving, but I wanted to add a special harp themed reminder. My idea actually grew out of the Play It With Confidence intensive from just a few weeks ago. We spent a lot of time in that course talking about mindset and choosing what matters to us in our playing. For me, and for many of our intensive participants, that mindset shift was powerful. Suddenly, playing the harp wasn't about self consciousness and fear. Practicing the harp wasn't about the impossible quest for for perfection. It was about the gift of music itself. Now, one story I shared on the intensive really resonated with a lot of the harpists on one of our calls. And it was a moment where someone who heard my music expressed appreciation in a way that left a lasting impression with me. And it wasn't in response to a recital or an amazing performance. It was just background music in a dentist's office, of all places. And today I'd like to read the actual note that was given to me that day. Plus, I have another story of musical gratitude that I hope will touch and inspire you. But today's episode is about more than just remembering special musical moments in our harp journey. It's about incorporating a sense of gratitude in our daily harp harp lives in ways that will keep the frustration away and let the harp happiness shine. Now, I will have an assignment for you as part of today's episode. I'm going to have a couple things, a couple suggestions to help you realize an attitude of gratitude in your daily harp playing. And I'm going to ask you to try one of those things and then to email me@podcasteartmastery.com and let me know what your experience was as you tried those. So it's really, really simple. But I would love to be able to share your experiences anonymously, of course, on another episode of our podcast. So consider the suggestions that I make, or try one of your own and see what you can do to put more gratitude in your heart. Playing. So I'm looking forward to your answers on that, but right now I have some stories to share with you.

Now, perhaps you recognize those three octaves. They're the three beginning notes from the Prelude in C Sharp Minor for Piano by the Russian pianist composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. And the story I'd like to share with you today is about Rachmaninoff and a piece that he wrote and dedicated as an act of gratitude. Now you can do a Google search and you'll find lots of classical music pieces that were acts of gratitude. Specifically one. You'll find them for specific events, celebrations, or perhaps as a cure from a disease, or perhaps just celebrating music itself, like Schubert's famous Ode to Music. But.

The Rachmaninoff piece that I'd like to talk about today is his very famous Second Piano Concerto, because it was a long time coming from Rachmaninoff.

In our culture. Today, Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto stands as an amazingly popular work. In fact, even if you don't know the concerto itself, I guarantee that you know at least one of the themes from the concerto. One of them became the song sung by Frank Sinatra, full Moon and Empty Arms. And that theme, of course, was also used in the pop music song from the seventies All By Myself. So the themes from this concerto are certainly well known. If you haven't heard the entire concerto, I urge you to go and listen to a recording of it. It's a remarkable work, and like many of Rachmaninoff's compositions, it has just a size, a majesty, a grandeur to it. That is incredible. In fact, Rachmaninoff had very large hands and played the piano with incredible force. So that some of his works are real challenges for other pianists because they just don't have the hand size or the strength to be able to manage them. But what we're really talking about today is the story of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. Now, Rachmaninoff was born in 1873 in Russia, and he was born into a musical family. Went to the Moscow conservatory, and by 1897, at the ripe old age of 24, he had already composed many piano pieces, some orchestral pieces, and, and he had composed his Symphony Number One, which unfortunately had not a good critical reception. In fact, its premiere was described as disastrous. And this put Rachmaninoff in a severe depression years long. And he composed very, very little, if anything, during this period. But he did have some wonderful therapy that he was fortunately able to have access to with a doctor named Nikolai Dahl, who was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. And Rachmaninoff's family had sought out Dr. Dahl as sort of a last ditch attempt to put Rachmaninoff back on good footing. So he. Rachmaninoff describes later that he felt like a man who had suffered a stroke and had lost the use of his head and his hands. After daily sessions with Dr. Dahl over the course of four months in 1900, Rachmaninoff began to improve and improved quickly enough that new musical ideas began to stir and he began to compose. And the first work to come out of this rebirth for him was the second piano concerto, was finished in April of 1901 and was instantly successful, enthusiastically received, and in fact earned him a Glinke Award, an award named for the Russian composer Glinka. And this was the first of five awards granted to him throughout his life. And it came with a big prize, a $500 ruble prize. This was in 1904. But the second piano concerto wasn't a once and done for Rachmaninoff. This became a staple of his work, of his performing as a pianist, of his conducting repertoire, and certainly a big part of his compositional output. He performed this concerto just about everywhere that he went. He and his family moved to New York City in 1918 and. And he spent most of the rest of his concertizing life in the United States doing a lot of work with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leopold Stokowski. But this Second Piano Concerto, the one that he wrote after his great period of depression, was dedicated to his doctor. And you can see the inscription at the top of the work dedicating it to Dr. Dahlia. Without the doctor's good help, Rachmaninoff may never have been able to recover from his depression, while Rachmaninoff and his family, of course, would clearly have been grateful to Dr. Dahl for his intervention in Rachmaninoff's life. But how much more grateful could we be that here, more than a hundred years later, we're still enjoying this beautiful piece of music and the pieces of music that Rachmaninoff wrote subsequently that never would have happened without the work of this good man. But let's stop for a moment and consider what else we would be missing if Rachmaninoff had never composed this Second Piano Concerto. I already mentioned Eric Carman's song All by myself from 1975, which was such a big hit using the theme from the second movement of the concerto. And of course, that's been covered by so many, many people, including Sinatra and Sheryl Crow and Celine Dion. But Eric Carman also wrote the hit Never Gonna Fall in Love Again, which is based on the third movement from Rachmaninoff's Symphony Number Two, also a huge hit, covered by many people. You'll find it in rock ballads, you'll find it in movies. There's the film Brief Encounter and the more famous film, perhaps the Seven Year Itch, the one with Marilyn Monroe. The theme is also in there. And of course, it's been used in gymnastics routines and skating routines from the Olympics all over the place. All of these things made possible only because Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony existed. My point is that we don't know how far the tentacles of one work of music can reach. When we play a piece of music, when we write a piece of music, that piece of music takes on a life that goes well beyond that single act of performance or composition.

We put it out into the universe and we don't know where it goes. Now, I promised that I would do a follow up on the story that I told on the Play it With Confidence Intensive. And this is just sort of a more personal experience of exactly the same concept, the idea that we don't know what our playing can do. On the Intensive, I told the story. This happened many years ago. I was doing a background music job at a dentist's office. This particular dentist had harp music in his waiting room during the week before Christmas, just as a little gift for his patients. And you think, wow, what a nice thing. You're in a dentist's waiting room and you get Christmas harp music while you're there. So it was kind of a Nice thing. And so for the five days or whatever before.

Before the office closed for the holidays, I would go in and play for a couple of hours and just, you know, as a little thing for the patients. And you don't necessarily do a lot of focusing on the, the people you're playing for in a dentist office waiting room, right. It's kind of quiet and subdued. The people come in, they talk to the receptionist, they sit for a little bit, they go out and you figure then, you know, they're, they're in the dentist's office, they come back and, you know, maybe they can't speak because they're all numb from whatever procedure they've had. You know, it's not generally something where you have a lot of interaction, but one day a young woman came in with a baby and it was clearly a brand new baby. And, you know, that's one of those things that draws your eyes. So I'm playing along and, and there's this woman and her baby and she, you know, sits down in the waiting room and goes to have whatever the dentist is going to do, whatever procedure it is, comes back out, takes care, everything with the, with the receptionist at the desk, and then comes over to me and gives me a brief thank you and hands me a note. And so I was playing and perhaps I should have stopped to look at the note at that point, but clearly her intention was not to interrupt me. So she left. And when I had finished what I was playing, I took a quick break and, and I looked at the note and was really overcome by what she wrote. Very simple, but it let me know that I needed to be a little bit more aware of the effect that music could have and the role that I had to play in creating environment for people. So let me read that note to you. This is what she wrote. On Monday, December 16, my daughter Mariana was born. Today is our first day out exploring the world. What a magical place to come. Mariana and I are being surrounded by such a heavenly musical treat. My family has always loved music and I want to pass along that love to my children. Thank you so much for the beautiful heart music. And then she signed the note. A simple note, nothing totally profound, except that it really did take me back. Just made me stop and think that my experience playing the music could sometimes be so insular. So much inside myself thinking about what I'm doing, what I'm playing.

And it was so easy to make the experience, particularly in a background music situation where you don't get a lot of feedback. Most of the time so easy to make the experience all about me. But it wasn't. It was never about me. It was about the people like Mariana and her mother, the people who just happened.

To be in a place in a time where the music was special to them.

And so I've hung onto this note, obviously, and it lives in my. In one of my Christmas music books, so that I see it every year when I take it out. And so it's a yearly reminder to be aware, to be intentional, to be purposeful, and to be grateful that I can be the means to convey this kind of special feeling to other people. Not that it's about anything that I play or how I play it exactly, just the fact that the music is being played and that it is touching someone.

So let's take this to a personal level. Let's think about the what ifs in our harp journey.

The what ifs are those things that might not have happened. For instance, in Rachmaninoff's story, what if Dr. Dahl hadn't worked with him? What if his family didn't find Dr. Dahl or weren't able to afford that kind of care for Rachmaninoff? So what if we hadn't heard someone play the harp? Would we still be playing the harp today if we hadn't heard someone else do it? What if we hadn't found a teacher? What if we didn't have the support of our family? What if we weren't able to rent or buy a harp if we didn't have access to an instrument? Oh, I've talked to so many people who were in the situation of, oh, I always wanted to play the harp, but my family couldn't afford one. I remember playing at a Catholic school once, and one of the nuns came up to me afterward, and she said, I always wanted to play the harp, and my high school had a harp, and I was so looking forward to getting into high school and being able to take lessons. But they only had one harp, and they only let one student start every other year, and I was the wrong year, she said. So I didn't get to play. So we had a little. A little harp playing that day, just the two of us. But, you know, those stories are there, right? What if we didn't have any Internet? How many of us are taking zoom lessons or teaching over zoom or talking about harp playing over the Internet? What if we didn't have that? Would your harp journey be where it is today?

What if we didn't have the ability to feel the emotional pull of music you know, not everyone does, and everyone feels it differently.

But as musicians, as players.

We feel that so strongly. What if we didn't? Would our harp journey be significantly different? Probably. What if we hadn't found the determination, the perseverance to practice even when the going was hard?

What if we hadn't fallen in love with the harp? Or more importantly, what if, after all our struggles to learn to play the harp and play our pieces well, what if we had no one to listen?

All right, before you discount that one saying, oh, well, I just like to play for myself, I really, you know, I don't play any place.

You know, having no one to listen to you might not feel important, but look at it the other way. What if you hadn't been there to listen to someone else?

Right. Listeners are important, so just think about that. So with all those what ifs, consider how much we have to be grateful for and to be grateful for in every minute of our playing. And what if we make that gratitude part of our playing? For instance, what if we can remember to feel gratitude for what we are able to do, rather than frustration at what we can't do, or at least what we can't do yet we could feel gratitude for the music that others share with us, thinking about how we first fell in love with the harp or that special piece, or just a music that made our day special or comforted us when we need it.

What if we feel gratitude for the opportunity to share our love of the harp with others? That doesn't necessarily mean playing for others, although that's a lovely way to pass along that gift. But being in a community, even an online one of other harpists, where we can find musical friends or soulmates, is an opportunity like that.

There are so many ways we can find the gratitude in our playing, and it changes us. It takes the pressure off as we remember that it's not about us, it's about the music. It keeps us in touch with that inner spark that first drew us to music and to the harp. Right? It's a reminder of why we do this, and it keeps us close to the people who can support us in our harp journeys, whether they're teachers, teachers, coaches, family members, or maybe just harp buddies.

So I told you that I was going to have some homework for you, and here are a couple of things I would like you to try. First of all, I want you to place something that you love today or this week, just music that you love and to enjoy it and to be grateful for the ability to do that for even just having the music right. And you get bonus points on this one, by the way, if you share your music with somebody else.

And then I'd like you to send a little note. An email or a text is fine, but I'd like you to send a little note to a harp buddy just to show that you're thinking of them. I know you have a harp buddy someplace. And item three then I'd like you to send me a quick email@podcastarpmastery.com with one way that you incorporated gratitude into your practice or playing this week. As I said before, I'm going to read them anonymously on the next podcast or in the next week or two. You and the idea here is that I want your acts of gratitude experiences of gratitude to help inspire others like you so that they can find that attitude of gratitude in their heart playing as well.

I want to take this moment to express my gratitude to you for listening, for sharing your thoughts with me, for sharing your time with me and your your ears in listening to this podcast. I am so grateful for that and so grateful for the opportunity to be able to share my thoughts and the wisdom from my teachers to pass it along in this way to you.

So thank you from the bottom of my heart. Now, next week here on the show, we'll be talking about that question that is on so many people's minds. I hear this all the time. They want to know, how long does it take to lear a piece? Okay, obviously not an easy answer, but. But we'll be talking about the factors that go into learning a piece and the different stages along the way and how you can speed that process up. Because I think so many of us spend too long trying to get everything right before we turn that piece into music and we slow ourselves down. So I'd like you to, I'd like to show you how to speed up your learning process without putting on the pressure, without making it harder. Just sort of greasing the wheels a little bit here, greasing the skids, getting you moving just a little faster as you get started on a piece of music. Until then, please remember every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe, to the world, and to your spirit. And all you have to do is play. Thank you again for listening. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and I look forward to talking with you again next week. Bye bye. 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.