Klarinet Archive - Posting 000000.txt from 1995/07

From: Bruce Hudson <HUDSONB@-----.COM>
Subj: pedagogy, practice etc.
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 23:04:17 -0400

Well I've stewed and bit my tongue on this issue of musical
pedagogy about as long as I can manage-- should teachers be able to
articulate exactly what a student is attempting to execute, the
desirability of daily practice (even if already playing the music
"perfectly)," and now the desirability of private lessons for young
students has been drawn into question. I keep thinking, "who
cares about opinions from the ranks of aged neophytes? But this
business of how we learn (not to be confused with epistemology-- a
philosophical question having to do with "how do we know what we
know," i.e. in what manner is knowledge verifiable), and techniques
of practice technique are issues that interest me deeply. And it's
possible that my relative late involvement with music provides me
with a perspective that you, trapped deep within the belly of the
whale so to speak, you of much greater accomplishment and longer
association might have lost touch with.

First it seems self-evident that the techniques of musical pedagogy
and contemporary practice technique simply work. There are simply
more students of greater capability with each passing generation,
and I don't think we can attribute it to vitamins or the water.
The techniques of practice and teaching have simply become
increasingly refined and efficient-- less mysterious. And the
result is that at any given moment of a students involvement--
whether practicing or in a lesson-- the good teacher and an
attentive student can make superior use of the time and the effort.

I grew up in a medium sized midwestern town with relatively minimal
exposure to serious music, and like what I assume to be the
majority of the uninitiated, to me musical talent was that ability
to go to the piano and mysteriously play popular tunes (or be
somebody camouflaging years of lessons who would appear to play
effortlessly and without particular distress). And ipso facto, it
was abundantly clear that I had no musical talent-- even though The
Benny Goodman Story, which I saw when it came out at the age of 10,
inspired me more than anything in my life for at least the next
eight years after seeing it. (And it was the focus of practice and
pursuit of an ideal which inspired and moved me as opposed to the
any apparent ease Steve Allen portrayed as Goodman's ability to
play.)

For reasons I won't bore everyone with, I started attending the
better student recitals and faculty recitals at the University of
Texas (Austin) while there as a grad. student in economics. This
resulted in two rather life changing events: living with a very
fine violinist for a while and later marrying a professional
cellist. But for the moment I want to focus on the violinist.

First she was at Texas for one thing only: she had met Steven Clapp
at Aspen and came to Austin only to continue the positive benefits
of what he was doing for her bow arm-- Clapp wasn't just a fine
teacher; for her he was a specialist effecting a subset of the
business of playing the violin. From Texas she went with Pearlman
to Brooklyn College for a semester, a summer with the Santa Fe
Opera and the following fall she won an audition with the LA
Symphony, the youngest person ever in the first violin section I'm
told.

My point in all this is that from Judy I learned about attention to
detail and practice technique. Frequently she would spend three
hours and not get past a half page of music. And my notion of
talent was broadened to emphasize the ability to have a clear
notion of how a musical line should proceed, how notes should match
in timbre and intensity and probably most important, how to hold a
notion of perfection in one's head against the reality of the
execution and to have clear cut techniques and approaches for
narrowing the gap between the ideal and the reality.

Point of experience number 2: my wife just finished a masters
degree and the NC School for the Arts, and as a cellist, Bob Marsh
was her principal instructor. Bob started playing the cello at the
age of 24, and he went on to be principal at Dallas, Seattle and
Tulsa before coming to the School for the Arts. Whenever possible
I attended my wife's lessons: events scheduled for one hour that
never ended sooner than two and a half hours: non-stop cigarettes
burning in his bow hand and non-stop VERBAL analysis for the
duration. It was always my impression that there wasn't the
slightest innuendo for which Bob doesn't have an analytic approach
and solution.

It seems to me that what has happened, especially with strings, is
a diminishing of the mysticism, and with hard analytical "things to
do" the student can progress in something of a linear fashion. And
I wonder if the focus brought by the conservatories and the large
sections hasn't pushed that process in the strings past the winds.

And finally as to the issue of taking lessons. If you can simply
get a 12 year old's attention long enough (and a quick trip to the
Balwin International Junior High Piano Competition in your region
will quickly demonstrate the possibility of such a notion-- I'm
referring to the quality of musicianship among junior high pianist)
simply playing a well articulated Klose legato exercise ought to
cure any misconception that one is playing it "perfectly" once and
for all. When I first started with my teacher, Mike Cyzewski, I
made some observations here on Klarinet about realizing I had
chosen the instrument without nearly as clear an understanding of
the sound and subtlies of the instrument that I thought I had. And
that my previous appreciation had been primarily based on some old
Stoltzman recordings. Unfortunately the Klarinet discussion
degenerated into a comparison between Shifrin and Stoltzman-- which
was still quite interesting to me. One thing I'm convinced of is
that the dominance of high school and junior high band performance
in most young players' lives propagates a greater proportion of
mediocre teachers and inadequate notions of clarinet technique than
in the strings. But it seems to me that if one turns to the recent
feature on Kalmen Opperman for example one should get a vivid
portrayal of the significance of efficient teaching and attention
to the greatest subtleties of technique.

That about concludes my annual contribution from the peanut
gallery-- off to practice.

Bruce Hudson, HUDSONB@-----.com

Raleigh, NC

   
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