For Women Only

Israel's David, Greece's Orpheus and Hollywood's Harpo Marx are probably the three best-known harpists of all time. Nevertheless, in these effete times harp-playing is virtually a female monopoly, and 99% of America's 4,000 harpists are women.

This week 20 of them descended (20 more were expected) on the little seashore town of Camden, Me., which calls itself "The Harp Center of the Universe." From now until September, except for the short hours from midnight to dawn, the ring of their gold-plated harps will argue with the soft whisper of wind in the firs and the beat of the sea against the cliffs of Penobscot Bay.

Just one of Camden's harps will be plucked by a man. Black-haired, excitable, French-born Carlos Salzedo, 60, is the maestro of Camden's harp school. Arturo Toscanini wanted him as first harpist in his Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and imported him to the U.S. in 1909. Salzedo is now a concert harpist, who turns pedagogue in the summer colony which he founded fifteen years ago to fill the demand for symphony orchestra harpists.

The harp, Salzedo believes, is the most divine of instruments, but he is realistically aware that even harpists have human frailties. At the mere suggestion of allowing men in his colony, he covers his face with his hands and sways unhappily back & forth: "Eet is out, out, OUT! Even if harpists are great artists . . . they are only human, and the same theengs happen to them that happen to other people . . . an elopement or something much worse."

Teacher Salzedo rules his brood of high-strung harpists with a soft voice and an iron hand. He begins the summer session by outlawing the wearing of slacks, ordering the hair to be worn on top of the head ("It goes with the instrument") and personally trimming each student's fingernails to the quick.

Twice a week during the two-month session, the young women come to "The Temple of the Harp," Salzedo's pastel-hued, ultra-modernized house, for instruction either from the maestro or from his 32 -year-old American wife. The rest of the time the busy fingers pluck on their Berlioz, Debussy, Saint-Saens lessons--or on the compositions of Salzedo himself. Says the maestro: "Only males can compose. Women, including women harpists, are made to compose babies."

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