I thought I would share a ‘music’ moment from my life last year while I was living in southern France working with Campus Crusade (Cru) and practicing harp as often as I could at the Conservatory of Montpellier. The music school was a five-minute walk from my apartment and I had to walk past a violin repair shop and a music shop to get there. Delightful. I wrote this in a letter to my sister last spring:
“I went and practiced at the conservatory for the first time since before Christmas and it was amazing! On the way home I wandered dangerously close to the music store and it sucked me in.
“(This store is lovely – full of tomes of music, old and new, on wooden shelves and piled in corners, and a little French man who lives in the corner and goes around the store pulling things off shelf after shelf when you ask him if he has any ‘musique, folklorique, française”).
“Anyway, I went there and found a beautiful, pristine piece of sheet music (Impromptu Caprice by Pierné: you can YouTube it) and I just had to buy it. It was only 6.60€ and it was so lovely with its pale blue cover and insides filled with close black notes… Also, Camille (one of the other harpists at the Conservatory) is learning it and she played for me before the holiday. I’m in love with this piece!”
Next post: A Harpist and her Inner Hit Man
Twin-Cities harpist Stephanie Claussen invites audiences to explore new locales and eras through her music. Influenced by her love of fairy tales, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the world music section at her local library, she performs a unique mixture of Scottish tunes, J.S. Bach, and anything rich in medieval or French harmonies. Sign up for her e-mail newsletter to receive important announcements and notifications of upcoming performances.