What Your Desert Island Pieces Say About You - PHH 260

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. We're talking about your desert island pieces today. So here's the picture. It's— granted, it's the most unusual shipwreck in all of history. So somehow or other, you have ended up alone stranded on a desert island with just your harp. Now it's interesting to consider how this might have happened. I mean, did you swim to shore after the shipwreck with your harp strapped to your back? Maybe you used it like a raft and your harp is what saved you. But whatever happened, somehow against all the odds and flying in the face of reality, you ended up on this island with your harp. Even more amazing is that your harp is in tune, no strings have broken, and the weather is exactly what your harp needs to stay happy. But wait, there's more! As you explore the island, you discover a charming hut which will be a perfect shelter for you and your harp. And when you enter the hut, you discover a harp bench, a tuning key, and a music stand. As you move closer, you realize that there is some sheet music on the stand—3 pieces of music, in fact. And they just happen to be your 3 favorite pieces in the whole world. Wow! Unbelievable! All right, yes, this is unbelievable. This harp version of Gilligan's Island isn't going to happen, but, but thinking about your 3 desert island pieces is kind of fun. Which pieces would you pick if you could only choose 3 pieces to have with you? And what do those pieces say about your harp journey so far and your harp dreams for your future? Your desert island pieces can actually help you focus or refocus on what is important to you in your music. They can be a source of motivation or inspiration or growth or all of the above. They are both a reflection of what music means to you and where your harp happiness lies. Thinking about what your desert island pieces would be can tell you a lot about what you love, what you do well, and what you should be doing next. If you're like me, the choice is not an easy one. I have closets and shelves and cabinets filled with music. Just picking 3 pieces feels impossible, but I have done it, and I will share my choices with you as well as tell you why those choices are important to me. Not only because they're pieces I love, but because they remind me of what I need to be doing right now in my playing and what I need to be doing right now to make sure I stay in that harp happiness zone. So it's a fun scenario to think about, and I think you'll enjoy this discussion and maybe find a little enlightenment in it too. Now I've also included a link in our show notes today to a blog post I did on, on this, on sort of this topic. It's called Music on Your Desert Island List, and I did this blog post quite a while ago, and it explores sort of the other side of desert island music. We're not choosing your desert island music to play, we're choosing it listen to, slightly different, and it might be an interesting read for you too. Also, I do have a little challenge for you. I am sharing my desert island pieces with you, what they are anyway. I'm sharing those with you today. I'd love it if you would feel like sharing your desert island list with me too. You can email me at podcast@heartmastery.com. I'd love to know what pieces you would take on your desert island or what pieces you hope would be sitting on that music stand for you when you got to that island. So it's a fun look at this topic today, but there's some value in it too, and I hope you find both of those things as we start on our discussion today. So let me share with you where this idea came from. I mean, not that it's an original idea, but it was brought to mind because of a book I'm reading at the moment. I'm reading the novel Bel Canto by the novelist Ann Patchett. It's Bel, B-E-L, Canto, C-A-N-T-O. And bel canto is an Italian phrase that refers to— well, it means beautiful song or beautiful singing, either one. And it's actually a style of operatic singing that originated in Italy and was particularly in fashion in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. And this would have been in operas like operas by Donizetti. They're ones we think of as bel canto, and it was a beautiful, very fluid, agile, precise vocal technique. So it's a particular vocal technique, and in this novel there is indeed an opera singer. Without giving too much of the plot away, I can tell you that this opera singer is involved in a hostage-taking event. She's come to sing a concert in a private home, and the concert is invaded by these sort of paramilitary types, and the hostage-taking attempt goes sideways in very strange ways, and I won't tell you about that part. But as this goes on and as the kidnapping goes on for weeks, the opera singer finally requests some music so that she can sing. She's gone a couple weeks without singing and she knows she can't go any longer. And she requests some music and she's able to get a whole box of music delivered and brought into the place where they are being held. So That just sort of got me thinking, if somebody, if, you know, if I were in a situation like that, which I can't imagine, but if I were, would there be special pieces that I would request? I mean, in this book, she just gets a whole box of music and she, you know, all of it is stuff she wants to sing. Okay, that's great. But I was thinking, would there be special pieces that I would want to play, special music I would want to have with me. And so that's kind of what got me thinking about this and got me back on the desert island kick. So now that you know where this came from, let's talk about desert island pieces. I mean, what for us harpists, for our discussion today anyway, would constitute a desert island piece? Granted, in my funny little scenario, there is a case for memorized music, right? If you end up on that desert island, how nice to think you have music you know and you're not relying on those 3 pieces of sheet music. However, memorization is not what I'm talking about here. Granted, in that situation, it would definitely widen your options, but let's figure out what a desert island piece would be. I mean, if you have to choose 3, you have to know how to choose, right? So I think it doesn't necessarily have to be a favorite piece. I mean, one of my favorite pieces is the Ravel Introduction and Allegro. I love to play it, but it's not a harp solo. I need 6 other players to play it, and I think I would feel very frustrated just playing the harp part. Because I like the whole thing altogether, and that doesn't fit my little desert island scenario. So if I could pull 6 other people onto my desert island with me, that would be great, and I could play that all day long. However, I don't have them, so I need to probably pick a solo. So even though the Ravel is a favorite piece of mine, it has to be off my desert island list today. I think as you're thinking about your desert island pieces, it has to be something that you won't get tired of playing. You could play it and play it and play it and it will still give you joy. I realize there's a time limit for everything, but you know, you know what I mean, right? You're just not going to get tired of playing it. You love it. At the same time, I think it has to be a piece that you won't get tired of practicing. This is really important for me. I need a challenge. I can't just pick pieces that I can play very easily. I want pieces that I can dig into and work with and, and find more interest in, not just technically but musically. So I need things that are a little bit more complex. So I need something that I won't get tired of practicing, and that might be important to you too. Again, realizing we're talking about a fictional possibility here, your desert island piece doesn't have to be a piece you've finished. It doesn't have to be a piece that you play well. It could even be a dream piece, one you haven't played but would like to play. After all, maybe you'll be stuck on that desert island so long you could learn it. So I— You know, it doesn't have to be a piece that's in your fingers right now. So spend just a moment and think about what those pieces would be. Something that you love, you're not going to get tired of playing it. Something, especially if you're like me, that you won't get tired of practicing, that has enough of a challenge that you're going to look forward to working on it every day. And As I said, it doesn't have to be a piece you even already know. It can be a dream piece. So if you know them, jot them down, and it's okay if you jot down more than 3. If you've got a list of 10, that's all right. We'll talk about how to narrow down that list in just a moment. Well, now that you have your list, or maybe at least a couple things to start your list with, what do you notice about your choices? What genre did you choose from? Are they all the same? Are they all classical pieces or folk pieces or religious pieces, jazz pieces? What did you choose? Are they all the same composer? Are they all from the same time period or the same nationality or the same mood or the same tempo or the same atmosphere? Or are they all different? I mean, maybe you've picked some things that are French classical music and Irish folk music and maybe something or other else. I mean, you might have picked a lot of different kinds of things, and that's great. But maybe you've picked things that are all the same, and that's good too. Just notice, there's no judgment here. Just sort of think about it, because whatever you chose Those are the pieces that you love to play. That's the kind of music or the kinds of music that you like. So think about those things, those things that you noticed, and using those factors, you can actually expand your list. And you can think about, well, all right, um, I like pieces from the Renaissance. So maybe I can find, you know, think of some other Renaissance pieces that I've played before or haven't played or want to play. Or maybe there's, you know, more folk music that I just wasn't thinking of. And you might be able to expand your list that way. Notice I'm still not talking about cutting down your list, but we'll do that in a second. But this is a way to help you think about other pieces that fit the qualities of pieces that you like. And you might want to include these on your desert island list, or you you might not. Now, for me, I can tell you that for 2 of my 3 choices, I definitely chose by composer. Definitely. I knew that I wanted music by this composer and by this composer, and, and then I just picked pieces from there. Not so much for the 3rd piece, but for 2 of them I absolutely did. And you might feel the same way, or you might not. That's fine, but I'm assuming that you might have a lot of choices. You might be thinking, "Well, I don't know, I could do this or this. I've got, you know, I don't have 3 desert island pieces, I have 30 on my list." So let's narrow it down just a little bit. And why do we want to narrow it down besides the fact that there are only 3 pieces of music in our desert island hut? Well, because it gives us a little bit more focus, and it gives us a place to start thinking about some musical choices for us. And we'll get to those in a second here too. But I want you to remember, as we start narrowing this list, remember that your desert island choices are not forever. You change as a person and as a harpist, and your choices will change too. So don't feel like you're locked into these desert island pieces for any longer than it takes us to finish the podcast. I mean, that, you know, you can change your mind as much as you want. And of course, you probably won't ever be stuck on a desert island with your harp anyway. So, okay, this is just a little exercise. And it's interesting, I think, as an exercise just to think about, well, What do I like? I mean, how much time do we spend just thinking about music that we like? I know we spend a lot of time thinking about music that we think we ought to play, or that we should learn, or that somebody else played that we like, but we don't spend a lot of time thinking about what it is that we like about the music that we play and the music that we love. And it's, I think, very helpful to get a little bit of clarity around that. Now, I'm guessing that as you're looking at this list you have of music that could be a desert island list for you, your first choice is probably obvious. It's probably the first piece you thought of right away and you said, "Ooh, I need to have this one." And doesn't matter what it is. Maybe it's not the first one, but I'm willing to bet that out of all the pieces you wrote down or are thinking of right now, there's one that you know you want to include. So write that one down. That one's on your desert island list. Okay, it doesn't exclude everything else that is similar. It doesn't mean that you have to only choose mute other pieces that are similar, but it's just your first choice. Okay, now your second choice. Make your second choice a contrast in some way. It could be a piece by the same composer but with a slightly different feel. It could be a totally different kind of piece. You could make it a very similar piece, but I think considering the contrast of the two pieces is important. Why is it important? I mean, it's your desert island, right? You can play whatever you want, and I certainly give you permission to make your second choice whatever you want it to be. But think about how these two pieces might go together, not perhaps musically, although maybe they would, but if you had those two pieces— we're ignoring your third piece for a moment— those two pieces to play. How would it feel to go from one to the other? Would it feel refreshing? Would it feel like you're just doing more of the same thing? How would that feel? By the way, this is the same kind of consideration that we make when we're creating a recital program, right? We're thinking about what pieces go well together, pieces that relate but yet are interesting, so we're not playing just the same kind of music for our audience. So it's a good exercise to think about what qualities a listener would experience in one of those pieces and what they would experience in the other one. And of course, you're the one playing it and there's nobody to listen on your desert island. So you can think of it from a playing aspect too. I mean, if piece 1 has a lot of chords in it, do we want piece 2 to have chords the same way, or do we want this to have something different, some kind of arpeggio or scales or some other kind of finger pattern? So you can think about it from a playing aspect too. So that takes care of your first 2 pieces. The 3rd choice, I encourage you to go off the board. You could choose a piece that was similar to either your 1st or 2nd choice, you know, the same composer, the same time period, the same kind of piece, or you could make it radically different. There's not a lot of— there's not any, come to think of it— reason to choose any particular style or any particular criteria for this piece. You just get to say, "Hey, I think this one would work too." It could be something that is sort of the more changeable piece on your list. I mean, maybe you knew that your first piece was a piece you were going to have. You knew that one. And the second piece maybe was almost as obvious, but the third piece might be more of a, I like this one on Monday, but I don't know, tomorrow I might like a different one. At least that's what my third piece is. My third piece, I can change my mind depending on the day. Now, I, I've been hanging on to this third choice for a while now, but, um, it might, you know, I have not enough attachment to it as a desert island piece that I couldn't change my mind about it tomorrow. So next to each piece on your list, if you've got a written list, each of those 3 pieces, list why you chose it. What is it about that piece that speaks to you? What do you love about it? Do you love the harmonies? Do you love the way it feels in your fingers? Do you love the way it brings out the richness of the harp, or the beautiful melody, or the words it makes you think of, or the fact that you could sing along with it, or the picture it is in your head, the title. I don't know, but list why you would choose it. What is it about this piece that makes it so special to you that you'd be willing to be stranded with it? Yeah, that's something to think about, isn't it? It feels a little bit heavier But once again, this is forging a deeper connection with the piece. It's helping you find a way to connect not just with this piece, but teaching you how to connect with any piece that you play. Thinking about why you love it, why it's important to you, and all of that is really key to playing any piece musically. It's an important part of what we as harpists, or any musician, should be doing. It helps us bring our love for the music to the listener. It helps us communicate, and it starts with our why. You don't have to get too heavy with this, but spending a few minutes to think about it is important, I think. But now we come to the big question here. So now that you've done all this, you've identified your 3 desert island pieces, you've discovered why they're important to you, done a little bit of thinking about that, what do you do with this information? Aha, good question. Well, first of all, If these are pieces you have already played or are playing now, choose at least one of them to review and to keep in your fingers. You love this piece. You should be playing it all the time. This is one of your pieces. So be sure you choose at least one of them to do that with. If you don't feel like learning those right now, or you're putting them away, you could use the qualities that you identified, the, the whys, the what you love about these pieces. You could use those factors to help you choose your next piece to learn. I mean, look at the genres that you identified or the composers that you tend to like, and this is a great way to look for that next piece. It could be similar to one on your list And you can think, "Oh, alright, look at that. Well, I've done one piece by this composer. Let me try another one." I don't need you to get stuck in a rut, but it can be really helpful when you're thinking, "Gosh, I don't know. What should I play next? Well, I like this piece by this composer, so maybe I should try another one." Easy. Of course, if you have all 3 of these pieces in your fingers, or you think you could, You could plan to present all 3 of those pieces in a little program, or you could record all 3. You know, you have a nice collection of music and music that you love, so you could absolutely do that. I know that's not up everybody's alley, but if it's something that appeals to you, why not present your desert island? Absolutely. I would also encourage you to really dig a little bit deeper with each of these pieces. If these are pieces that you play, or even if they're not, look at those whys that you identified, the why you love those pieces. What do you love about them? If you are not playing those pieces right now, think about those same whys, what you love about those pieces, and look at the pieces that you're playing now And think about how could you play them differently? What could you do more of or less of or just differently so that a listener can feel the same way about the piece that you do? Obviously, if you're playing your desert island pieces already, you can apply this directly to those pieces. But if you're not playing them right now, you can still think about those qualities of those pieces that were so that was important to you and bring that feeling over into the pieces you're playing now. Can you do more with the dynamics? Can you do something more with the energy of the piece or the flow of the piece so that it really speaks to a listener the same way it speaks to you? That, I think, is something very valuable, and this is a transferable skill. This is one of those things that you can use for every piece you play. As you start getting closer to the finish stage with that piece, you need to do that kind of deep digging to really feel the piece and feel what it is that you want a listener to feel. Even if it's not your very favorite piece of all time, to play it in a way that communicates the feeling that the piece has within it. And the feeling that you can have about it, to play that in a way that communicates, is making music at the very highest level. And this doesn't just apply to pieces at the very highest level. I mean, you don't have to be playing, you know, a concert etude to be thinking about this. You could be playing, you know, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and play it with that same kind of feeling. I know it seems silly to think about it that way, but it's really true. And practicing getting to that level with a piece is important because it becomes a habit and it becomes a skill. So the digging deeper part, I think, is really important. Another thing you could do with your information is take one of those choices that you made and follow it down the path just a little bit. For instance, if you identified Debussy as a composer that you loved and one of your desert island pieces is by Debussy, well, let's go a little further down that French Impressionist route. What about music by Ravel? Another contemporary of Debussy's, or music by Ibère, or music by Saint-Saëns, who was a little bit earlier. But, you know, could you take music from that same era, from composers that Debussy was friends of maybe, and move that to the next stage? Or if you love Irish music, why not explore Welsh music or Scottish music or English music and really get into what feels different about each one of those? If you love music from the Middle Ages, investigate music by a composer from that era that you haven't heard of before, or whose music you haven't played before. This, this sort of following down the line, going further down the, the path there, this is how we learn and grow and expand our musical knowledge and our musical palette. We learn so much more by saying, okay, well I know about Debussy's music and I know how that works. So if I take music that's written by a contemporary of his, can I use what I've learned about Debussy's music to help me play that music by Ravel or that music by whoever else from that era? So this is how we grow. So those things are really useful little bits of information from your desert island pieces. So you can make your list, and remember, you can change your list at any time, but you can use those to inform your musicality, to inform the pieces that you're going to choose next, to help you create programs, to help you pursue what you already love to a deeper understanding of that particular area of music. All so Valuable. So much value there. But I know you're waiting to hear my choices, aren't you? Okay, but I'm going to keep you in suspense for just one more minute. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but there is a radio program called Desert Island Discs, and it comes from BBC, the BBC, and we hear it in this country on public radio. But it's been around since the 1940s And on each episode they invite a celebrity— could be a musician, could be an artist, could be a scientist, could be an author, could be just about an actor, could be anybody. And they invite them on, they call them a castaway, and they invite them to share their desert island discs, the recordings that they would want to have with them. And they do some other fun things like, okay, what luxury item would you like to have? It's kind of a fun show and it's always interesting to hear what these celebrities would pick. What I wanted to share with you right now was that over the years, counting in this list— this list covers the years from 1942 to 2011— and these are the 8 most requested artists. So these are actually composers whose works are, you know, were the most requested over that period of a long time, right? 1942 to 2011. So these are the top 8 composers, and some of them might surprise you, but I thought it might be interesting if I shared this list with you just so that you could think about these composers, none of whom wrote for harp particularly, at least not harp solos, but you could think about them in terms of music that you might like, or maybe that doesn't speak to you so much. So top composer, and this might not be a surprise to you, Mozart, followed closely by Beethoven and then Bach. Number 4, Franz Schubert. Number 5, Giuseppe Verdi, an opera composer. Verdi. Uh, Tchaikovsky. Think about all those beautiful ballets, lots of heart parts in those ballets, right? Tchaikovsky. Number 7, Remember, this program comes from the BBC, so it's coming from Britain, and the 7th composer is an English one, Sir Edward Elgar. The piece you probably know of his is Pomp and Circumstance, the, uh, the graduation march. But Elgar wrote some wonderful music besides that. Anyway, so he's on this list. And number 8, their top 8 of— so this is 8 of 8— is Giacomo Puccini. So another Italian opera composer. So I just thought that might be interesting to share this historic list of, you know, hundreds of episodes that they have done of this show. Those are the top 8 composers who have been requested by their castaways. So just something fun there. But my choices for my 3 desert island pieces I told you that my first two I was choosing by composer, and I knew that I wanted a piece by Bach, and I knew that I wanted a piece by Salsetto. So for my Bach piece, I chose, uh, Dewey Owen's transcription of the Bach Chaconne, which is from one of the violin partitas or sonatas. I forget which one. Anyway, the Bach Chaconne, it's a complex piece. It's got a lot of notes. It would keep me busy for a very long time, and I just I just adore it. I love the way Bach puts all these puzzle pieces together. I love the order in his music. I love the beauty in his music. And that would definitely be a desert island piece for me. So the Bach Chaconne. I sort of went through a bunch of Salsetto pieces in my head and I ended up choosing Scintillation. I love Scintillation. It is a piece that has so many colors in it, and it's got angularity in a way that the Bach does not. So it's a really nice contrast from the Bach, and it is one of my favorite pieces to play. So, um, Salsetto Scintillation was on my list, but I did have to think about the third piece because the third piece is the one that changes the most for me. But for a little while now, and, uh, it has been the same piece, and I'm going to share that one with you now. It is the Forêt Impromptu. The Impromptu Opus No. 86 for harp by Gabrielle Fauré. It's a wonderful piece and it has beautiful melody to it. It's got drama, it's got big lush chords, it's got some fast notes, it's got arpeggios, it's in D-flat major. I mean, what a great key! I love the Fauré, so that is on my list. So those are my 3 desert island pieces, at least today. The Bach Chaconne, Salsetto Scintillation, and the Fauré Impromptu. If those were pieces that were on that music stand on my desert island, I would be busy for a very long time, and I'd be happy for a very long time as well. However, I would miss all of you, so I'm glad that I'm not planning to be on a desert island all by myself and stranded without internet anytime soon. So those are my 3 desert island pieces. Remember, I would love to know yours. So do send me an email, podcast@artmastery.com, and, and when I gather in some results, I'll be happy to share those, sort of a tabulation of those results. We'll share them anonymously, of course, and share them with all of you. So that would be, I think, a lot of fun. Next week I'm talking about 3 things you can do to instantly— well, or nearly instantly— make your music smoother. If your music is suffering from bumps and dips and hesitations and all that good stuff, I'll tell you about 3 things that you need to do to make your music smoother almost right away. So that's next week's podcast episode. And until then, remember, every day is a day you can add more harp happiness to the universe to your world and to your desert island— no, 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.