Klarinet Archive - Posting 000886.txt from 1998/04

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: On teaching (was Charlie Neidich etc...)
Date: Fri, 17 Apr 1998 06:05:07 -0400

James Rosen posted a most thoughtful note. In it he discussed
a class with Charlie Neidich in which James contrasted his
teaching method (of what happened to be K. 622) with the teaching
methods of others.

I'll make a black and white case in order to hilight the points
I want to make. James did not say these things, I am simply
putting them into contrast.

One class of teacher was the type who described through specific
instructions how you should play the work; i.e., "Louder here,"
or "Here like a trumpet," or other descriptive notions.

The other class was how James described Neidich who spent his time
on matters of Mozart's intentions and avoided specifics of how
you as the player should do this or that specific thing; i.e., if
you understand the intentions, then you will come up with your
own way to do this or that thing.

I never did much teaching. I simply never had time for it. But
every once in a while I would wind up at a music camp for a week
where I was put in charge of a dozen players and out of that
anguish would come a performance 7 days later. And I always tried
to understand which of those two approaches was the superior.

Mind you, I am not going to close this note with the statement that
"clearly this way is far superior" because I really don't know,
though I have feelings on the matter.

I always had the suspicion that when someone told me to do this or
that with a work, what he or she was telling me was not how the
work should go, but how that person liked the work to go. Dave
Weber used to do that in my lessons with him, and Dave was a very
effective teacher. But I always bristled when he said, "Play this
passage in this way," partly because I wanted it to zig and he was
telling me to zag, and partly because he was such a wonderful
musician that he could do those things and achieve something very
personal but all I was doing was mimicing him instead of thinking
for myself. There was a passage in the slow movement where he
always nagged me to play it like a trumpet, and I once tried
to exercise a little independent thinking by saying, "But I am
not a trumpet" at which point Dave pounded me 6 inches into the
floor (but nicely).

The point I am trying to make is how much teaching should be
specific criticism of performance elements vs analysis of
compositional details?

I don't think there is a single answer, of course. But which
way has the potential to achieve greater success from the student's
point of view? Now I don't propose a study of psychological nuance
with a young man or woman who has had only a year's worth of
playing of the instrument, but I wonder how much of the detail that
is given by teachers to students is done not because it is right,
but because the teacher likes it that way (not that that is bad).

Whenever I worked with Rosario Mazzeo, he NEVER told me what to do.
He simply created a joyous working environment and then what came
out was often great and also often less so. But he never said,
louder or softer. Instead he said, "Stravinsky told me that ..."
That kind of thing always overwhelmed me.

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Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
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