Day 26 - Harpo Marx

Day 26 – Harpo Marx

One of the resources that I use for myself and for students is YouTube. If you want to see a contrabass saxophone or watch silent monks perform the Hallelujah Chorus it's

the first place to go. I regularly recommend pupils search for the current piece they are working on to see performances. The standards vary from top quality to front room farce but we all need to learn what to do and what to avoid! The only time my carefully planned homework suggestion failed was when I recommended a young clarinet pupil search for some Latin jazz music to get an idea of the style as she was working on a Latin piece. I never quite worked out what the pupil's mother must have typed into the search but the first thing they viewed contained the foulest language and most offensive lyrics. The mother had to cover her daughter's ears and even had to watch it again, it was that filthy! By getting ready for school earlier than usual I did a quick search for one of the best known harpists, Adolph (later Arthur) Marx, better known as Harpo Marx. I remember watching some Marx Brothers films when I was younger and this mysterious non-speaking character with his distinctive facial expressions is the strongest memory from those films. There are plenty of clips of Harpo playing and I watched a brilliant Hungarian Rhapsody performance complete with a jazzy section that I don't recall hearing in Liszt's original. Further research led me to discover that he taught himself at first and had an unusual technique. After becoming famous he set about having lessons to learn it properly but all of his teachers were just curious to learn more about his different style of playing. I've no idea what today's harpists think to his playing but I feel a bond with anyone who has unruly curls!