Anna Hagen Harpist

Serving Michiana with Elegant Music

Anna Hagen

Out of Tune With Grace

Stories

“There are a lot of strings on a harp.”
Not my normal lead-in but I like to start with understatement.

”My largest harp has 42 strings and each of those strings must be tuned every time I play,” I explained. I had just been called up to perform a harp solo at the last evening meeting of my Christmas Break Youth Retreat and was flipping for my music to play The Lord’s Prayer.

”Heat, humidity and movement all change the tuning and I promise you,” I continued, squinting into the stage lights, “the people who invented ovens powered by light bulbs used to manage stage lights because they seem to use the exact same equipment! The joke among harpists is that a harp takes 2 hours to tune and it goes out of tune in 10 minutes!”

My audience chuckled at my confession. Before my solo, a young man had shared a beautiful and sobering confession/testimony of falling and recovering. How do you follow total, humble honesty except with (lighthearted) honesty?

”The reason that I come to this camp,” I said, turning serious, “is to re-tune, to get in tune with the Holy Spirit, Christ and His Word. But a few minutes of life can throw me out of tune again.” I looked under the spotlights into rows of my teenage friends. “So my prayer is that this year we don’t just walk out but take from here a tuning key, an awareness of how to stay tuned in to the daily life of Christ. But I also pray that you keep ‘playing,’ because it is only when I am playing that I can tell if I am out of tune. After all, we all know from experience that, by the Grace of God, even out of tune instruments like us can make beautiful music.”

My audience amened as I pulled the harp back. After the crescendos and arpeggios of The Lord’s Prayer had faded from the speakers, I began to play Amazing Grace interspersing with verses of the hymn When I Survey The Wondrous Cross. Here is the last lyrics of When I Survey.

“To Christ, who won for sinners Grace
By bitter grief and anguish sore,
Be praise from all the ransomed race
Forever and forevermore.”

Isaac Watts

 

Little Drummer Boy

Stories

     If I could play one instrument other than harp, I would play drums. You get to control the rhythm and to hit on things and collect all sorts of cool gadgets like cow bells and kettle drums. Whatever orchestra or music group I play with, the percussion section always seems to have the most fun.
     So this Christmas I experimented with this secret desire to “percuss” even though I never touched a drum. One of the harp pieces I am practicing crosses a baroque and Flamenco flavor and instructs me to slap the sound board–the flat top of the harp’s hollow body–creating the sound of bongo. It is wild fun. As I worked out an arrangement of The Little Drummer Boy for this 2012 Christmas season, I tried inserting these slapping sounds. It must have been effective and authentic sounding because on the Sunday before Christmas, one of the audience members who had sat behind me asked me “How did you play the drums when there weren’t any on stage?” I confessed it was a thrilling moment. But I hadn’t yet brought my sounds before a real drummer.
     Between Christmas and New Years my mother and I took my large harp to a Christian Youth Retreat in Arkansas where in addition to meeting friends, listening to speakers and teaching some ourselves, I played in the rock worship band. Although I vigorously threw myself into the music, the harp is a quiet instrument. I am usually featured on softer songs, heard playing raining glissandos and improvising during ministry time. Then came the last morning meeting.
     The leaders began to pray for the band’s drummer. I started to run up and pray for him since I admire this drummer very much but then they called for his “brother musicians to come uphold him.” I’m not a brother. However, this left the keyboard and guitars unattended. In the musical stillness, I rushed around to the harp and began my newly arranged Little Drummer Boy. A burst of laughter from the back signaled my mother’s recognition and after a few measures, the rest of the audience clued in.  Well, almost all of the audience.
    Still deep in prayer, the leader lifted the microphone, and intoned, “Just listen to the beat of that music! How appropriate for a drummer.”
     “It’s The Little Drummer Boy,” his wife whispered to him, and then everyone was laughing.
I may not play the drums but my motto is the same as the Little Drummer Boy’s
Come, they told me
Pa, rum, pa, pum, pum
Our newborn King to see
Pa, rum, pa, pum, pum 
 
I have no gift to bring
Pa, rum, pa, pum, pum
That’s fit to give a King
Pa, rum, pa, pum, pum
Shall I play for You
Pa, rum, pa, pum, pum
On my drum, on my drum? 
 
I played my drum for Him
Pa, rum, pa, pum, pum
I played my best for Him
Pa, rum, pa, pum, pum
  Katherine Kennicott Davis

New Year’s Life

Stories

January, back to normal life and work, although playing harp for friends is too fun be burdened with the connotations of work. After two days of driving back from family and Christian Youth Retreat, I walked straight into my my weekly harp event where I spend an hour strolling a senior facility playing tunes on my small harp Maywyn.
It felt funny to be walking with my harp again. I take my largest harp to camp where I play with the worship band and augment my classical repertoire with contemporary Christian rock music. It is freeing and exhilarating to play with three guitarists and a keyboardist, although I wore earplugs the entire time to protect myself from the drumset!
From the music to speakers and workshops, this camp affirmed life, our life as family, our life purpose and how to set life goals. It was amazing to see my Christian family shake off the dust of a disbelieving world and stretch spiritual muscles into life again.
Returning to my regular harp event, I learned that while I was at camp, three of my senior friends from this facility passed away. On top of that, as I walked into the room of a lady I have played for every week for two years, her family warned me that she was also near passing. This beautiful friend has never spoken to me–a stroke left her paralyzed and noncommunicative. But she responds over and over again to hymns.
At the family’s request, I played the lady’s favorite hymn O Come, O Come Emmanuel. After all, as Charles Dickens points out, we should carry the spirit of Christmas with us all year long. As my fingers fought to remember the melody I covered myself by singing, realizing that the same principle that upheld life at my youth retreat is the hand hold for the dying: “Rejoice, God is with us.”
Knowing that this lady’s favorite hymns are in minor keys, I continued into the song O Sacred Head Now Wounded while the healthy sister stroked the stroke victim’s white hair. Here are the key lyrics:
“O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never outlive my love to Thee. “
This is the focus of life. Whether playing for teenagers with a worship band or ninety year olds at an Alzheimer’s unit, the strength that keeps us from fainting is love for He who is the Life.
Happy New Year
Mildred's entraptured

Nappenne Missionary Church Dec 15-16

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Good Tidings! Anna will be playing in Nappenee Missionary Church’s annual Christmas musical at 6 PM on Dec 15 and 16. Before the concert, Anna will also be playing prelude music for the cookie reception before hand. Come join us for cookies, carols and celebration of “Great Joy.”