Taking A Second Look at Salzedo’s Music - PHH 046

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.

What famous harpist has his 137th birthday this week? Carlos Salzato, that's who. This harpist and musical innovator was born in arcachon, France on April 6, 1885. And on today's show, I would like to introduce you to a scientific of his music you may not have encountered, including some music not only playable but even suitable for lever harp. But before we get started, you're going to need to know a little of my own background. I was, musically speaking, brought up in the Salzido tradition. My teacher studied with Salzedo. I went to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where Salzato had founded the harp department. I even had my lessons in the Salzido room. And so Salzedo's tonal language became part of my musical education from the very first day I started the harp. In fact, my first harp recital piece was tango. And I loved learning Night Breeze, which I'm going to play for you later today. I remember learning the Prelude and Team and Song in the Night, also called Chanson dans la nuit. And then I went on to learn the five preludes and the modern study etudes and everything. Salzato from scintillation and ballade to traipsing through Arkansas. It was a little like I imagine it might be if you grew up eating the cuisine of your parents homeland. One which is very different from the food in the country where you were growing up. For instance, you know, kimchi might have been your comfort food in a land where Mac and cheese is more standard.

And because you live in essentially two different culinary worlds, you develop an appreciation for many kinds of foods. Well, for me, I grew up on Salzato's music, and it never seemed strange to me, although I could certainly hear the contrast between much of his music and the music of other composers. What I learned later was why his music sounded different, not just in terms of the ways he used melody and harmony, but in his entire approach to the harp, his idea of the instrument itself. So today I'm going to share a little of the insights that I have gleaned from studying his music. I'll play a few short pieces for you too, and I hope that somewhere along the way, you will decide to try some of Salzido's music for yourself. One note here. You don't have to be a Salzato harpist or learn the Salzido method or technique to appreciate his music. In fact, his music may help strengthen your technique, whatever method you play.

Now. Speaking of technique, April is Technique Month here at Heart Mastery. So each week on the podcast, each week this month, I will remind you about one of the essential factors in your technique and how to work on it the right way. Plus, I want to make sure you know about one of the Heart Mastery resources dedicated to helping you make your technique stronger and more reliable. I mean, we all want fingers we can trust, and that starts with doing the right kind of technique practice. Today, I want to remind you very quickly of the benefits of a proper warm up. Now, warm ups can have lots of components and you can do them lots of different ways. But the real aims of a warm up are one, to prevent physical injury by actually warming up your body, those little fingers, your bigger muscles, getting your body prepared to play safely and comfortably and to create a transition between your daily life and your heart playing, it's to prepare your focus. I mean, when you think of a warm up that way, or at least for me, when I think of a warm up that way, I feel. I feel differently. You know, it's not just something I'm doing for my fingers, but it's something I'm doing for me. I'm creating that little moment that, you know, just a couple of minutes of warm up doesn't have to be more than that, but I'm creating those few minutes to help bridge that, that space, to turn my focus to a different place, to get it ready to do heart practice instead of, you know, laundry or cooking or computer work or even doing a podcast, right? Anything. So that's what that warmup needs to do. And when you do your warm up properly, it needs to be slow, or at least to start slowly. Relaxation, slow movement. That's part of A warm up. Be sure you're checking the elements of your technique and your posture. A warm up should be a time you look forward to and enjoy. It doesn't need to be long. And after all, it can't be too long. You don't want to use up your valuable practice time or your energy, your warmup. So today, and I'll talk to you again a little bit more about this at the end of the show. But I'm going to recommend our warm ups with a focus. There are five different warmups, PDFs, videos you can play along with, and they're going to help you warm up your mind, your body and get you ready to play. So I'll talk to you a little bit more about that later. But right now let's get on with today's topic. You can find plenty of information about Salzato's life. The Wikipedia article on Salzido is very thorough. And I love the book Pentacle by Marietta Bitter. That's a terrific resource and you'll find a link to that in today's show notes too. But I'd rather talk with you today about Salzaido's music, what makes it unique, why I love it, and why I think you might enjoy playing it too.

So think about what harp music would have been like in the year 1900. Now, Alphonse Hasselmann was composing and he was teaching at the Paris Conservatory. Henriette regnier, who was 10 years older than Salzato, was a rising star both as a performer and as a composer. This is the time when Debussy was writing and in fact he wrote his dances for harp and Strings in 1904. Maurice Revelle composed his introduction and allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and strings the following year, 1905. So think about this beautiful music. And I mean, you can hear it in your head, right? It's lush, it's warm, it's romantic. It's what I like to call harpy. That was harp music in the year 1900. But the world was changing and it was changing quickly. The 20th century promised exciting advances in science and technology. The arts were moving forward to embrace and experiment with new ideas. Then a world war erupted, transformed international relations. Progress, growth, change was everywhere. Composers were experimenting with making music in new ways too. This is the time of 12 tonalism.

It's actually much of the music from the 1920s and the 1930s sounds very discordant or harsh even to our ears today. But it was the avant garde, it was the new wave. And Salzetto very much wanted to be a part of it.

His idea was not about just continuing the traditional in which he grew up, but rather to make the harp an instrument of the present, an instrument of that time and of the future. I mean, his own musical ideas were radically different from those of his teacher, Hasselmann. He was looking forward. Salzeda wanted to explore what the harp could do, which is exactly what he did. This is in fact why Salzedo is credited with expanding our repertoire of extended techniques. You know, techniques like playing with the fingernails as a special effect, or tapping on the soundboard, or whistling with your hand over the wire strings, or those wonderful, you know, strummy kind of chords or the harp mute. And whether you love these techniques or not, most of them have become more or less staples of our 21st century harp playing. But not all of Salzedo's music was about those quirky techniques. A piece like Song in the Night, for instance. While it's characteristic of Salzato's use of extended techniques, it's not representative of his entire body of compositions.

When you listen to the way he uses melody and harmony, apart from any special effects, you hear music that sounds fresh and contemporary. Sometimes it's rich and overwhelmingly passionate, as in Ballade, other times clean and spare, as in the Prelude Antine. Other times it's simply charming.

Now, I'd like to play one of those charming examples for you. It's charming, it's short. That's not to say it's easy.

But it is a dear piece and I love it. It is called Petite Valse, Little Wall Sa.

Isn't that a sweet piece? It's a favorite. And it's published in a book, a book by Salzato, of course, called the Art of Modulating. This book was intended for harpists, pianists and organists. And it's got snippets of chord modulations between keys. But the best part of the book is the back. There are, I don't know, 14 or 15 short pieces for harp, and eight of those pieces are one page excerpts from each of the dances in his suite of eight dances. Like, you know, the gavotte, minuet, polka, Siciliana, bolero, segadilla, tango and rumba. So you have one page versions of all of those. And then there are these other little pieces like petit valse. Now, interestingly, most of these pieces, including most of the eight dances excerpts, are actually playable on a lever harp. You may have to adjust keys. For instance, Segidia's original key is D flat major. Which is, you know, not a favorite key of most lever harpists. So you might just have to adjust it and play it in D major. So you just read the same notes but just have your lever set for D major. Right. So they're totally doable. Actually, Petit Valse is one of the only pieces in this collection that has a petal change. The others are petal or lever change free. You know, I mean, who knew, right? You wouldn't think about those with salzado pieces, but.

You can. You can do them, I promise.

So that's petite voss. Now, most harpists who aren't familiar with Salzato's work think that it's all written for petal harp, but this isn't strictly true. I think it is fair to say that the. The pedal harp was where Salzato's interest lay. His melodies and his harmonies tended toward the chromatic, with plenty of accidentals. But there is some music, aside from the pieces I just mentioned that lever harpists could play and I think would enjoy playing. There apparently are some pieces for. For lever harp or Irish harp, as Salcedo called it, that have been lost. Pieces that we don't often see. There are some pieces, like the one I'm about to play for you in just a moment, that were in a collection, are in a collection to this day for non petal harp. And remember that when Salzadeh was writing, there weren't lever harps that were specifically designed for students. Right. You either were studying and learning the pedal harp and playing mostly classical music, or you were studying and playing the lever harp, which was a folk harp, and you were going to play folk music. There really was not a crossover. The troubadour harp was designed specifically as a training instrument for students. So let me talk for just a moment. This is a lion healing model troubadour harp, and it was the first lever harp, at least the first lever harp I'm aware of, that was designed with regular petal harp spacing and string tension, so. So that students could practice on a smaller harp without pedals. And then to use the, you know, the. The sort of word we would use for that, I guess, I don't know, to. To move up to a bigger pedal harp when they could manage it. So that was a student training harp. But that didn't appear until 1961. That was the same year that Salzato died. So there weren't training troubadour harps. And until then, there really wasn't a lot of. Or any crossover sort of literature. Right. The divide between pedal and lever harpist was very clear. So there wasn't a lot of music that was written for lever harpists in a classical vein. Because that just wasn't what happened. Salzaida wrote a little. Rainier has some. Hasselman has fewer than either of them. But the idea here is that or the fact that I want to impress upon you is that today the pedal harp worlds and the lever harp worlds are much closer. There's a lot of music that crosses over between the two, and the styles cross over between the two in a way that did not happen back when Salzedo was writing. So just bear that in mind. That's why we don't have a lot of non pedal music from earlier. It just didn't happen that way. But I'm going to play this piece for you from one of Salzato's non pedal harp, or as he says, Irish harp collections. This is called Tiny Tails. Well, the actual title is Tiny Tails for Harpist Beginners. These pieces are not for true beginners, so you don't have to take him at his word on that one. But they do give lever harpists some interesting short Salcedo pieces to play. Here's one of my favorites from this collection. It's from the second volume in the set, and it's called Little Jacques Lullaby. Now, the little Jacques of the title is Salcedo's own son, Jacques, from his marriage with Marjorie Call. And Jacques was born in 1939. And these pieces were published in 1940. So that lets you know this is Salzedo's lullaby to his son, Little Jacques. Little Jacques Lullaby.

I really like this piece. I think it's interesting, it's unusual, it's sweet, but it's got a little bit more character than.

A regular old lullaby. Just a little bit of the salzido twist. That to me, makes it interesting and extra beautiful. Now, this piece is from the second volume in the Tiny Tales set. There's some other interesting short pieces here, too. The first volume of Tiny Tales is really useful as a progressive etude book. The etudes are disguised as very short pieces. And they're useful for beginning students, even for intermediate harpists. They're great for interval studies, and I find them very helpful. No lever changes at all, of course, in these pieces. So, you know, wonderful pieces to use for those things and a great way to get a taste of this different musical style. Okay. But I can't leave you without just a little bit of those fun glisses or fluxes as Salzato called them. And this is one of my favorite pieces. It's from a collection called Short Stories in Music. This is from the first series, and these pieces were composed in 1934. Now, this piece is definitely not a lever harp piece, but it is a favorite of petal harp students. And it's also a great stepping stone kind of a piece of. So that if you've wanted to learn how glissandos like this work and how you interpret the. You know, how you interpret them from just looking at them on the page. I mean, let's face it, you look at glissandos on a page and they can look pretty intimidating. And if there are petal changes, it looks even scarier. And then if you have a glist with more than one finger at a time in the same hand, even scarier. So there are techniques to learn, and you want to, you know, you sort of want to ease into them gradually, not do them all at once. So that's where this piece helps out. It's going to help you prepare for more complicated pieces that have more of this pieces like Song in the Night, for instance. But. But let me play this stepping stone piece for you. Now, once again, this is from Short Stories and Music, and it's called Night Breeze.

Sam sa.

Isn't that piece beautiful? I just love it. I think it has so much atmosphere, and it's truly a piece that could not be played on any other instrument.

So it's just. And that's what makes it special, right? It's a harp piece through and through. So I think that that sort of piece is something we all need to play. Now. While Night Breeze is not accessible, really as a lever heart piece, you will find lever heart pieces that you can play that incorporate these techniques, and I encourage you to try them. I also encourage you to try some of Salzato's pieces that do work on lever harp. There are so many facets to his music as there are in the music of any great composer. And I hope that. That if your only impression of his music before, before today was of, you know, discordant intervals or disjointed melodies or, you know, I. I just hope that our discussion today has given you a little bit more insight into the variety that exists among Salzato's pieces.

So. But I told you I would tell you a little bit more about those warmups. Right back to Technique Month.

So we do have a course called Warm Ups with a Focus and what I like about this course. And if you're looking to develop your to just strengthen your technique or your musicianship skills and warm up at the same time. This is exactly what you need because each of these five warm ups in this course focuses on one aspect of heart playing, such as rhythm or relaxation or learning music faster. For example, in our first warm up, I share my secrets for playing fluid and seamless rolled chords and how to play them without slowing your music down or taking too much time. And each one of these warm ups in the course there, you know, comes with a PDF that you can print and play and an hour long video where I work you right through that exercise. I did the warm ups with a Focus course live sometime back and we recorded it thinking that we might want to use this sometime. And students have found these warm ups so helpful that we created this. We created this course. You'll find it@heartmastery.com you'll also find a link to the course in the Show Notes. In the Show Notes for today, you will also find links to the sheet music of each of the pieces that I played for you today, as well as a link to a blog post that's related to today's topic and might interest you, and a link to the Pentacle Book by Marietta Bitter, which is about Salzido's life. And of course it's much more complete than anything we could do on the podcast here today. So if you're at all interested in that, that's a great resource. So all those links in the Show Notes and you'll be able to experiment as much as you like then with Salzada's music. Next week on the podcast we will be focusing on your left hand. We'll be talking about left hand literacy, things your left hand needs to know how to do. And we'll be talking, of course about the different circumstances in which it might be called on to do those things and how to practice them. Everybody should have a literate left hand and that will be our topic for next week. Until then, 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 play. See you next time.

Thanks for tuning into 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.