The
Historical Harp Society

in collaboration with

The Amherst Early Music Festival

"Music of Italy and the Mediterranean"

at Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut

Ronald Cook, Artistic Director

Egberto Bermudez, Conference Director

Cheryl Ann Fulton, HHS President

Friday July 13^th – Sunday July 15^th, 2007

Amherst Early Music Festival / Historical Harp Society

ANNUAL WORKSHOP  2007

Sunday July 15^th – Sunday July 22^th

Schedule and Class Descriptions

The Amherst Festival Workshop Class Schedule: Click here

Class Descriptions:

Ron Cook:
The Troubadours in Italy  -  Early Morning
This class will explore performance on harp of the music of the troubadours who worked in Italy or were particularly admired by Italian writers and musicians. The course will explore the use of the harp both in accompaniment and as a solo instrument. The course will also explore the ornamentation of troubadour melodies and the performance of preludes and codas. The content of the class will accommodate harpists with varied playing proficiency and experience. Folk harpers interested in exploring medieval repertoire and performance practices are welcome, as are players of psalteries, gitterns, medieval lutes and other medieval plucked instruments.

Performing Medieval Narrative with the Harp  -  Early Afternoon
This class will explore the performance of medieval prose and poetry to the accompaniment of the harp or lyre. The class will review historical evidence for five different uses of the harp in accompanying narrative. The works considered will include lais and fables of Marie de France; works based on the story of Tristan and Isolde; the English Breton lai, Sir Orfeo; the French chant fable, Aucassin et Nicolette; razos and vidas associated with the troubadours; and stories from Boccaccio's Decameron. The content of the class will accommodate harpists with varied playing proficiency and experience. Folk harpers interested in exploring medieval repertoire and performance practices are welcome.

Collegium harps  -  Late Morning  Group coaching for those participating in the Festival Collegium performance.

Cheryl Ann Fulton:
Touch & Tone Technique for Harp   -  Early Morning
This class will introduce the basics of Cheryl Ann Fulton’s Touch & Tone Technique TM. Her approach treats the harp as primarily a melodic, and not percussive, instrument, with an emphasis on putting breath in the fingertips and playing from one’s center. It gives the player the ability to play legato phrasing on a plucked string instrument. It also enables the harpist to play with a full, rich tone and extensive dynamic range with no tension, stress or blockage. She will teach several of her Touch & Tone exercises, including the “Scoop” and “ Wave” and how they are connected to breath; explain her concept of horizontal gravity and how to use it for playing the harp; and demonstrate the biomechanics involved in keeping the wrist, elbow and shoulder joints completely open and relaxed while playing. Many of the exercises are like "yoga for the hands." We will look at specific musical examples to experience how this technique aids in deeper connection to music and expanded expressive capability. Harpists at all levels will find value in this class.

17th century Neapolitan Solo Repertory for the Arpa Doppia  -  Early Afternoon
This class will first review the history of the major sources on arpa doppia, and then cover the basic knowledge needed regarding tunings and maintenance of multi-row harps, as well as technique--basic duple articulation techniques, tone production, ornaments and specific techniques for accessing the middle row for chords and scale passages. Each student will be assigned one short work by Giovanni Maria Trabaci to transcribe and perform. Each harpist should come prepared with one solo piece from the 17th century Iberian/Italian repertory to be critiqued in class. For professional and advanced players of arpa doppia.

Improvising on the Italian Tenors  -  Late Afternoon
This class will use the recercadas of Diego Ortiz as a starting point to learn the basic chord patterns for the Passamezzo antico, Passmezzo moderno, Romanesca and Folia. We will also learn some basic melodies for the Gaitas, Marionas and Chaconas. A new pattern will be explored each day and recapped the next, and everyone will have a chance to improvise! Pitch will be at either 415 or 440, or we may form two groups, one at each pitch. Viols, recorders, lutes, and other instruments are welcome.

Judy Kadar:
Trecento: The First Generation   -  Early Morning
This class will explore compositions from the Rossi Codex, Jacopo de Bologna and Magister Piero. Around 1325 a new musical style burst forth in northern Italy; strong, expressive and florid secular song in one, two and three voices. We will explore the performance possibilities of these songs with harp and other instruments of the period. The class can accommodate high intermediate to advanced players, and those doubling on voice are especially welcome.

The Faenza Codex  -  Early Afternoon
The Faenza Codex (c.1425) contains highly ornate instrumental compositions mostly based on a substantially older repertoire, including works by Guillaume de Machaut, Jacopo de Bologna Francesco Landini and Anonymus. We will compare the vocal models and the Faenza versions, abstracting ornamental patterns with the aim of finding an instrumental style appropriate for our instruments and performing capabilities. The class can accommodate high intermediate to advanced players, and those doubling on voice are especially welcome. Recorders, flutes, lutes, vielles, psalteries and keyboards are also welcome.

Beginning Harp  -  Late Afternoon
This class will cover fundamental three-finger technique for rank beginners, as well as for harpists who want to learn more about this technique. The following historical harp topics will be discussed: various methods of producing chromatics, damping, tremolo, and drones, as well as a brief introduction to use of the harp in music of the middle ages and Renaissance.

Short Faculty Biographies

Egberto Bermudez, Past-President of the Historical Harp Society, studied early music performance practice and musicology at the Guildhall School of Music and University of London Kings College.  Currently he is Professor of the Instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas at the National University in Bogota, Colombia.  He has published a number of works on Colombian music history, traditional and popular music, and musical instruments.  He is the founder and director of “Canto,” an ensemble specializing in Spanish and Latin American Renaissance and Baroque repertoire.  In 1992, with Juan Luis Restrepo, he established the Fundacion de Musica, an institution dedicated to disseminate the results of research about the Latin American musical past to the scholarly community and the general public.

Ron Cook has been performing on historical harps for more than twenty-five years.  He is a founding member and past president of the Historical Harp Society.  He has taught at the Society’s annual Historical Harp Workshop and contributed numerous articles and presentations to the Society’s Bulletin and its annual Historical Harp Conference.  He is also a past officer and director of the American Recorder Society and President-elect of Early Music America.  He performs regularly on historical harp, recorder, and other historical wind and stringed instruments.  For thirty years he has directed The Early Interval, a medieval and Renaissance consort performing both vocal and instrumental music.  He has taught recorder and regularly lectures on early music topics at Capital University.

Judy Kadar, under the auspices of Amherst Early Music, founded and directed the First Annual Historical Harp Conference and Workshop in 1984. She directed this event through 1991 when the American Historical Harp Society was formed. She is also one of the founding members of the International Historical Harp Society. She studied harp at Mannes with Lucile Lawrence, holds a M.F.A. in the Performance of Medieval and Renaissance Music from Sarah Lawrence College, and has been in demand as faculty at early music workshops since the late 70's. She lives in Berlin, Germany, where she teaches harp, historical harp, and ensembles in medieval and renaissance music. She has had multiple theater engagements with renowned German directors, co-directs the medieval and renaissance music ensemble “Collage,” and frequently concertizes throughout Europe.  In 2006, Collage presented a very successful new multi-media production of the Roman de Fauvel called "How the Donkeys Got Power," made possible through a grant from the Hauptstadt-Kulturfond (capital city cultural fund of Berlin). Collage holds an annual concert series at Zitadella Spandau, and it has released the recordings Blozen (a sampler from Neidhart von Reuental through Claude Gervaise), Musik auf Drie Richtungen (Sephardic, Arabic, and medieval music), and Die Juedin von Toledo (Sephardic music and the Cantigas de Santa Maria).  Ms. Kadar is also a member of “duo citariste” and “Jiddisches und Juedisches.”

Cheryl Ann Fulton, America’s premier performer of historical harps, has had an internationally successful performing, recording, teaching and scholarly research career since 1986.  As well as of historical harps, she is also a popular performer and teacher of contemporary lever harps. Her solo performance for the 2002 World Harp Congress in Geneva affirmed her rank as one of the world’s leading harpists. Her solo recital, performed at the John F. Kennedy Center, featured five historical harps on one program, of which the Washington Post said, “Fulton drew from all of them a serene and delicate sound.... remarkable instruments which Fulton played with total skill and reverent affection.”  A versatile recording artist, she can be heard on over thirty albums and soundtracks broadly ranging from medieval, baroque, orchestral, and contemporary music to Celtic music and film scores with many ensembles including Ensemble Alcatraz, Sequentia, Project Ars Nova, American Baroque, and the Boston Camerata. A leading scholar in the field of historical harps, Dr. Fulton, a Fulbright scholar and recipient of the Burton E. Adams Prize for Academic Research, is a contributing scholar for the new edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and A Performers Guide to Medieval Music (IU Press, 2000).  She has become a renowned and highly sought-after teacher of her masterful and expressive Touch & Tone Technique for Harp.  She has a full private studio in her San Francisco Bay Area home.

Editor (for ideas, submissions, questions about organization, etc.)
   Cheryl Pfeil von der Heyde, cpfeil@nomadharp.com

Webmaster (to report broken links, other technical problems, etc.)
   David C. Nelson, dchristiannelson@sbcglobal.net