Klarinet Archive - Posting 000815.txt from 1998/08

From: "Dee Hays" <deerich@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Bad Audition (on bass clarinet)
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 10:09:24 -0400

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott M. Gerhardt <gerhardt@-----.com>
Date: Thursday, August 27, 1998 5:55 PM
Subject: Re: [kl] Bad Audition (on bass clarinet)

>On Aug 27, 4:30pm, "Dee D. Hays" wrote:
>
>> There is a time and place for everything in life. However, college is a
>> place to absorb the great mass of knowledge available. It is NOT the
place
>> to demonstrate your originality.
>
>It is, however, a place to explore it, reason with it, and to learn to
control
>it; certainly not to repress it.

OUTSIDE the classroom for the audience. In class you learn what the
instructor wishes to impart or there is NO reason to go to class.

>
>> It is NOT the goal of instructors and administrators to make your life
>> miserable. It is their job and duty to impart the body of existing
>> knowledge so that LATER in life you can build on it and develop original
>> materials.
>
>How much later? The instant your graduation cap returns to Earth? Ten
years
>after graduation? Most music students that I know are performing RIGHT
NOW.
>They're playing real music for real audiences who have real experience
being
>audiences. Many music students that I know (yours truly included) had been
>playing "professionally" for years before returning to school. Are we now
>required to unconditionally abandon our own experiences in favor of what
>teachers--some our own age and younger--tell us? Must I really wait
another
>thirty years before I can begin to understand what Brahms is trying to say?
>
>Students have ideas. They may be *immature* ideas but the ideas are not
wrong
>simply because one is "student" and the one who disagrees is "teacher."
WHY it
>is wrong or WHY it is right should be the issue, not simply THAT it is
wrong or
>right.
>
>Music is more than just technique. Much of it cannot be taught, it must
>actually be discovered. It doesn't have to wait until school is out,
however.
>Teachers can, from the beginning, give students the _room_ to make their
own
>discoveries, help them to _make_ discoveries, give them _credit_ for making
>them, and offer _confidence_ that they can do it again.

The body of material available to be learned is so great that the instructor
of a class MUST limit and select what is going to be covered. Again,
outside the classs, in your performances you and any one else can explore
other aspects of the medium to their heart's content.

Dee Hays
Canton, SD

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