One Hundred Years of Harpists

By Thomas Wolf

“Keep cahh-lum… be brave!”

Carlos Salzedo meticulously instructing one of his students in 1936 on properly muffling the harp strings. (Photo credit: Kosti Ruohomaa Black Star Collection, Penobscot Marine Museum, ©Black Star.)

My earliest childhood memory of the great harpist, Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961), was watching him prepare a young woman for a summer house concert in my grandmother’s music room in mid-coast Maine. I couldn’t have been older than nine or ten. I was mesmerized by the unquestioned authority of this wrinkled old man with a thick accent exhorting her to remain calm and the cult-like devotion of his young accolite looking up at him. Salzedo was short in stature—in fact, he wore platform shoes to elevate his modest height. But at moments like the one I witnessed, he was a giant—a true French “maître” (as many of his students were instructed to call him).

Salzedo was one of the most influential and important harpists of all time. His contributions and innovations to harp technique, his numerous compositions and arrangements, his structural redesign of the instrument, his influence as a pedagogue on several generations of harpists—all this complemented what had been a distinguished career as a performer.

Carlos Salzedo in 1924, the year he inaugurated the harp department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. A few summers later he would establish the Salzedo Harp Colony in Maine. (Source: Carlos Salzedo - Wikipedia, accessed 9/10/24.)

It was in consultation with the legendary dancer Vaslav Nijinsky during one of his summers in Maine that Salzedo developed his distinctive system of aesthetic gestures that he later required of all his students when they played. And on the occasion I witnessed, those gestures were only one of the many details he was focused upon. Every other aspect of his pupil’s upcoming performance was under the microscope. It began with his selection of the music to be played and the technical and interpretive aspects he insisted upon. He demonstrated how, when, and how rapidly the young woman was to lift her arms, close her fingers, and open her hand to properly muffle the sound. He spoke about the positioning of her head and her body movements when she played and when she bowed. Salzedo had even decided what she would wear.

By the time Maître was done with the “rehearsal,” a special pep talk exhorting the young lady in his unique, Frenchified English accent to “keep calm and be brave,” seemed apt. It might ease her anxiety when she faced the real audience some time later in the day—though my hunch was that this would be nothing compared to the stress of the rehearsal I had watched.

If all of this effort seemed far too much wasted time and energy for a celebrity musician—devoting several hours to a student’s preparation for a mere house concert—it was repeated countless times each summer as Salzedo prepared upwards of fifty harpists for performances in our modest-sized Maine community. Maître, who had inaugurated a harp department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia in 1924, would, a few years later, establish an international summer school for harpists—the Salzedo Harp Colony—where women (and a few men) from around the world came to study with him. It didn’t matter whether they were nine-year-old prodigies or older harpists already established in their careers, studying with Salzedo and undergoing his rigorous pedagogy was a critical step in their musical development. And playing concerts was an essential part of the training.

It didn’t matter whether they were nine-year-old prodigies like Heidi Lehwalder (pictured above) or harpists already advanced in the profession; they flocked to Camden, Maine each summer to study with “Maître.” (Photo: Carlos Salzedo | Harp Wiki | Fandom.)

Alice Chalifoux in Maine in her ninties, still teaching many hours each summer day. Credit Camden (Maine) Herald.

Upon his death in 1961, Salzedo bequeathed the Salzedo Harp Colony to one of his star students, Alice Chalifoux (1908-2008), who by that time had been the principal harpist of the Cleveand Orchestra for thirty years. Like Salzedo, she was short—less than five feet tall (she claimed that she changed her clothes backstage in Severence Hall inside a harp case since all her fellow musicians were men). But she too was considered a giant of the instrument, a musician who insisted on the same high standards, discipline, and method as her forebear. Chalifoux had studied with Salzedo not only at the Maine Colony but also at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and had absorbed his method of playing and interpretation. She would continue the Colony with the same devotion, hard work, and attention to detail until her own energy flagged at the age of 94 in 2002.

Fast forward to July of 2024, when nearly a hundred harpists descended on mid-coast Maine for a reunion and to celebrate nearly a century of the Salzedo Harp Colony in Camden. Weekend events included two major concerts involving thirty performer-harpists—most of whom had brought their harps to the event. All the works played on both days were either original compositions by Salzedo or arrangements by him. And all the harpists who played these works had been students at the Colony at one time or another. The first night, the program was held in the Rockport Opera House, a magnificent 1891 venue where numerous harpists had performed over the century.

Seven harpists rehearse in the Rockport (Maine) Opera House in July 2024 while thirteen additional covered harps sit ghostlike on the stage awaiting their use later in the weekend.

A highlight of the evening was the appearance of 87-year-old, Judy Loman, one of the most accomplished and successful of Salzedo’s students, who had served as principal harpist of the Toronto Symphony from 1959 until 1991. Still demonstrating a dazzling technique and sensitive musicality, she performed one of Salzedo’s most popular (and difficult) works, “Variations on a Theme in Ancient Style” as the finale of the evening, followed by a long, standing ovation.

The next day, harpists mounted an even more ambitious undertaking. There had been a tradition, established by Salzedo, of large ensembles of harpists performing outdoors in Camden’s scenic Bok Amphitheater.

Harpists performing in Camden, Maine’s Bok Aamphitheater during the summer of 1936. (Photo credit: (photo credit: Kosti Ruohomaa Black Star Collection, Penobscot Marine Museum, ©Black Star.)

Decades later, in 2024, 25 harpists would repeat the feat with former Houston Symphony harpist, Paula Page, conducting.

Paula Page conducting 25 harpists in the Bok Amphitheater in Camden, Maine in works by Carlos Salzedo (July, 2024).

For our family, the events were especially poignant—my sister-in-law, Patricia Minthorne, was one of four living harpists present at the event who had actually studied with Salzedo (both at Curtis and in Maine). All the other participants had come later and had studied with Chalifoux. I was the only non-harpist present who had experienced his tutelage at two memorable coaching sessions in 1961, the year of his death. I was a fifteen-year-old flutist slated to perform Debussy’s trio for flute, harp, and viola and since the harpist in the ensemble was one of Salzedo’s students, there was no question that we would be coached by him. Having witnessed him in action years before, I was terrified, especially when I learned he had studied the work with the composer. But the harp student, Margarita Csonka, age 19, was fairly calm. Her superb gifts and training were so obvious that during the time we were preparing the piece, she received a call from conductor Eugene Ormandy, offering her a permanent position in the Philadelphia Orchestra, where she remained until her retirement decades later.

As a fifteen-year-old flutist, I was coached by Salzedo along with nineteen-year-old harpist Margarita Csonka on the Debussy trio, a work Salzedo had studied with the composer. Csonka joined the Philadelphia Orchestra a month later. My brother, Andy, holding the music, had organized the concert. (Photo: Luboshutz-Goldovsky-Wolf archive.)

I would return often to the Salzedo house for numerous coaching sessions over the years under the strict guidance of Chalifoux, performing with many different harpists. The house on the outside was a typical 19th century shingle cottage—the word “cottage” being a euphemism for a magnificent large dwelling for affluent summer residents.

Today the dwelling is located behind a high fence and a swimming pool was built that breaks up what was a grand lawn that stretched to the ocean. But in Salzedo and Chalifoux’s day, the property was completely open and students could amble across the lawn to the shore or to Marine Avenue on one side of the property.

If the exterior of the house was classic 19th century New England, the interior was anything but. Salzedo had engaged the French interior designer, Jules Bouy (1872–1937), a well-regarded exponent of Art Deco design. All the rooms were painted dramatic colors and each room had specially designed furniture. Alyce Rideout, the harpist daughter of Alice Chalifoux who had lived in the house during many summers, observed that not all the furniture was comfortable or practical. “There were three chairs on each side of the dining room table and all three were connected to one another. Getting in and out of them took a great deal of coordination with your seat mates.”

Detail of guest room at Salzedo House, one of many designed by Jules Bouy. (Source: Alyce Rideout.)

When Samuel Barber (1910-1981), then a composition student at the Curtis Institute’s summer school in neighboring Rockport, Maine, was given a tour of the interior just after it had been completed, Salzedo asked, “You like?”

Barber answered with a touch of a put-on French accent, “I no like.”

But despite the mixed reception by those who viewed the interior at the time, three quarters of a century later, many of the pieces of furniture had become collectors’ items fetching high prices at auctions of Art Deco interiors.

Lyon & Healy’s Salzedo model harp, originally designed by Witold Gordon, was based on Art Deco design.

Salzedo’s fascination with Art Deco and Modernism even led to a redesign of the harp. Working with the artist Witold Gordon (1885–1968), his exact contemporary, he convinced the Lyon & Healy Company to manufacture what became known as the Salzedo model. Introduced in 1928, its design was revolutionary. Instead of the lavish and ornate gilt work culminating in a gold crown on a standard harp, the Salzedo model was built from simple, dramatic wooden blocks with bold lines and angles, with a soundboard decorated not with complicated floral patterns but with straight lines of alternating color.

Each year, Salzedo, and then Chalifoux, assembled that summer’s “class” for a photograph in Camden often looking out to sea or with a rural flavor. Since some students came only for a short time, not all of them from the summer registration overlapped with the picture. But the assemblage was always impressive. Here for example, is the class from 1953. Notice that the 24 women are dressed in white as is Salzedo. The male students (of which there were four that year) mostly wore something dark—a suit jacket, shirt, slacks, tie, and/or belt. Given the usual association of harpists with the female sex, this visual separation was intentional. 

Salzedo Harp Colony class photo from 1953. Salzedo towers above the group on the right. (Source: Alyce Rideout.)

If there was one thing missing from the gathering in 2024, it was a “class” picture. Perhaps with concerts, receptions, and other festivities, that unique opportunity simply slipped through the cracks. But what was not forgotten was the culmination of the celebration on July 14, 2024. Traveling down the hill beyond the Salzedo house, the harpists dedicated a memorial bench above the shore line where Salzedo and Chalifoux had brought hundreds of harpists over the years, many of whom became leaders in the field. The magnificent view looking out to the ocean had inspired not only Salzedo and Chalifoux, but those who had made the pilgrimage to study with them. It was a perfect tribute.

Memorial bench (detail), Camden, Maine dedicated in 2024. (Thomas Wolf photo.)