Fragment of Introduction, Cadenza & Rondo (played by Letizia Belmondo)
Research Issues
- A short biography
- his/her quality as a player
- his/her quality as a teacher
- did he/she use a personal method while teaching
- Why did he/she start composing
- Did he/she take composition lessons (with whom)
- Did he/she influence other composers and how
- Did he/she influence the development of the building of the instrument
- How did this harpist-composers contribute to the contemporary way of harp playing (teaching, methods, idiomatic writing, compositions)
musical Education
By his father. Later on with Ch. N. Bochsa in London. In 1828 he studied composition with Maximilian Leidesdorf and voice with members of the Guglielmo family.
Why the harp
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Why compose
Early 19th century it has been seen as a high level of development/education if one could play more than one instrument and be able to compose
Reception by other harpists
……………….
Reception by audience
Greatly appraised by other musician-composers like Liszt, Berlioz and Chopin and audiences like the courts
How did he/she contribute to the harp repertoire
Innovations/ way of playing with all different ‘colours’/ great introduction of the double-action harp/ compositions still played
What innovations did he/she discover; how did he/she influence harpplaying then and in the future
-Single, double and triple glissandi in both hands with enharmonic notes (invention PA
-Fluid sound. Tuning key glissando (invention of PA)
-Harmonics. Single to quadruple in left hand, single or double in right hand
-Sons étouffés
-Pedal slide, as to obtain a diminuendo that is controlled by the motion of the pedal. = portato
-P.d.l.t.
-Doubling at a lower third. Used much in his Romances
-Three-handed technique; developed by his pianist friend Sigismund Thalberg, but claimed by PA
Broken chords divided in two hand and a middle-register tessitura
-Trills. He prefered those on enharmonic notes
Could he/she be considered ‘modern’ at their time or still now
How important has he/she been as a teacher
He was a ‘Harp Professor’ at Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna. He wrote a method, but did not live long enough to finish and edit it. But fingering/scales/daily exercises/attitude: it is all described