Taking a Lesson from Chopin: Legato and Rubato - PHH 184

Practicing Harp Happiness

There are three ways we learn how to play the harp. The first and most obvious one is by doing. Playing and practicing is our “go to” method for learning. You can’t actually learn to play the harp without playing it.

When my son was about 12 or 13, he fell madly in love with football. There weren’t any teams he could play on at his school or in our community, so he had to be content with playing football video games. Not the same thing, of course. Even so, when he got to high school and finally had the opportunity to play on a real team, he was actually surprised to find out how different the game was when he was on a real field instead of a virtual one.

The second way we learn is by instruction, by having someone show us how to advance our skills or teach us new ones. In today’s world there are countless ways to get instruction: lessons, coachings, videos, online courses. But instruction can teach us more than how to get our fingers to obey our commands. For example, a music theory class can help us learn the elements of music like keys, harmony, melody, structure and form. That’s an important part of our harp playing too.

Today, though, we’re going to talk about the third way to learn to play the harp, and that’s through music itself. This is the part of learning that goes beyond the doing, beyond the fingers, notes and rhythm, to discovering how music communicates and learning how we can communicate it through our harp playing. This may be an advanced concept, but the methods we are learning today (going back to learning method two, instruction) are ones every harpist at every skill level can and should use. We are going to talk about how music can show you how to be more musical. If that sounds a little circular, don’t worry. I’ll sort it all out for you.

Our particular focus areas today will be two techniques that are extra challenging for harpists, more so than for other instrumentalists. We’re talking about legato and rubato, and we are going to be looking at them through the music of two pianist/composers, John Field and Frederic Chopin. Whether you’ve played their music or not, there is a lot for us all to learn from them, so get ready for some beautiful music and some ideas you can use to make your own playing more expressive and beautiful.

Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:

• Join our 12 Days of Harp Happiness 2025: Nocturne for a Midnight Clear
• Related resource Maybe Your Music ISN’T Romantic blog post
• Harpmastery.com

Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at [email protected]

LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-184