carlos salzedo, please allow me to introduce you to joanna newsom + soup!

I've been trying to finish this song cycle for soprano, piano and harp and am very, very close. I had a meeting with my French tutor last Wednesday (at the always-amazing Cafe Latte in Saint Paul) to get the syllabic stresses correct and talk shop about what-have-you over some food. We may have been a little loud because the gentlemen next to us stopped me on the way out to question me about what kind of music we were writing.

Composing for the harp is a very strange thing for a composer who, like myself, writes primarily for the voice. In getting to know the instrument better I've gone through all sorts of listening phases: from Debussy's Dances for Harp and Strings to some sort-of-New-Age-y music by David Michael that is really, really good (listen here!).

Then there's the folk artist, Joanna Newsom. Anyone ever heard of her? I hadn't until my sister forced her album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, on me. Her voice is...um...a "singular" instrument. Here, listen.





That voice really felt awful to listen to the first time I heard it, but the fact that she sings and plays harp at the same time was just too intriguing not to keep coming back to the songs as a curiosity...and the harp stuff that she writes is totally hypnotic. The more I listened to it the more I was able to wrap my mind around what she was doing and desensitize myself to the grating nature of her voice. She wormed her way into my heart and I think I'm a fan now. Of course, with lyrics like "I killed my dinner with karate" how can you not love it?

Aside from just listening to all sorts of harp stuff, my other major resource has been Carlos Salzedo's landmark 1921 book, Modern Study of the Harp. It's a massively important work for harpists and, aside from the études that you would assume are in a book like this, there are all sorts of reference materials for how to do certain out-of-the-box stuff on the instrument. For instance, I never knew there was a harp technique called "Aeolian Flux." How many other instruments have technical terms that sound like a dystopic Charlize Theron sci-fi movie?

And, as over-the-top as that movie reference was, it's nowhere near to how over-the-top Salzedo writes. The first page of the book has nothing but the phrase "La harpe est a la musique ce que la musique est a la vie" written on it. Translated that means, "The harp is to music what music is to life." What does that even mean?




















Throughout the book's introduction he comes off as more of a harp guru than a harp teacher. For example:

There is nothing difficult. There are only NEW things, unaccustomed things.

When one is profoundly impressed with this truth, has meditated upon it and then put it into practice, calmness and confidence will ensue; and thanks to these indispensable qualities, musical practice becomes an agreeable pastime, leading towards the purest joys.

Now some of that might be the translation out of the original French text, but it still sounds like Confucius is trying to teach me the harp. You'll hear no complaints from this composer, though. The book makes me want to write a lot more for that instrument.

In gastronomical news, I made some amazing tomato soup recently. It's sort of a Cliff's Notes version of a Giada De Laurentiis recipe called Quick and Spicy Tomato Soup. My version has a bunch more onion and garlic (some of it raw) but pretty much everything else was unchanged. It was way good.