{"id":29831,"date":"2022-07-25T11:15:16","date_gmt":"2022-07-25T09:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/?p=29831"},"modified":"2022-07-26T08:53:23","modified_gmt":"2022-07-26T06:53:23","slug":"the-world-harp-congress-cardiff-day-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.camac-harps.com\/blog\/en\/latest\/the-world-harp-congress-cardiff-day-three\/","title":{"rendered":"The World Harp Congress, Cardiff: day three!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rainbow<\/a>

Rainbow strings and one way to notate a tune: each coloured building block represents a note<\/p><\/div>\n

The World Harp Congress<\/a> has already featured some really interesting teaching classes. Yesterday, Morwenna Louttit-Vermmatt gave a great workshop about learners with additional needs, and today, Csilla Gulya\u015b introduced us to the Kod\u00e1ly method. Of course, the two sessions had different points of focus, but both made us reflect that there are many available keys to unlock music for students. For example, Morwenna has come up with rainbow-coloured strings<\/a> for harps. Combined with various forms of colour-coded notation, these offer an alternative to reading sheet music, whose many black-and-white lines can be difficult for dyslexics. She also discussed ways for music-making to be inclusive for non-verbal or physically handicapped students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kod\u00e1ly’s method, meanwhile, is not focused on additional needs but aims to train children’s musical ears in as natural a way as possible. It begins with nursery and folk songs in the child’s mother tongue, includes improvising and experimenting, and emphasises the fact that music is for everyone. As such, music becomes part of the culture the child is already immersed in, rather than a separate task to learn by rote. Singing with different gestures and syllables to mark time was clearly particularly effective (rather than counting, which must be one of the hardest ways to teach rhythm to small children).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Tribute<\/a>In the second half of the morning, we felt privileged to attend a moving tribute to the late Ann Griffiths, compiled by Helen Davies and presented by Val Aldrich-Smith. Ann studied with Pierre Jamet at the Paris Conservatoire and returned to Wales determined to transmit this style of teaching, founding summer masterclasses to which she invited international professors. Standard now, it was, Val reminded us, trail-blazing at the time. Ann was also one of the earliest supporters of Camac harps, and we will always be grateful for her faith in our instruments when they were very young.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Milena Hoge gave an impressive workshop-demonstration on advanced pedal techniques for jazz harp: early attempts to copy them later failed, but practice makes perfect and hope springs eternal. Milena is currently a jazz student at the Hamburg Hochschule f\u00fcr Musik – and it was a strong afternoon for Germany at the WHC, for Milena was followed by Evelyn Huber and Margaret K\u00f6ll’s fantastic duo recital of Welsh triple and Big Blue electroacoustic harp. With music ranging from Dowland to Evelyn’s own compositions and Gregor H\u00fcbner’s “Barcelona”, specially written for this combination, the sound was varied, original and blended really well (for the curious who were not there, Evelyn has a recording of Barcelona available here<\/a> on YouTube).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\t\t