Klarinet Archive - Posting 000125.txt from 1999/06

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: RE: [kl] Standing is bad (further flame bait)
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 1999 15:49:19 -0400

On Wed, 2 Jun 1999 11:44:15 -0700 , kevinfay@-----.com said:

[snip]

> My point of the debait (this is a pun, yes) is that there are teachers
> who force students to play standing (or from memory) when the net
> effect is to harm the sound quality of the performance. This bugged
> me when a pinhead teacher did it to me, and still does when I see it
> happen. Some people, like me, sound better sitting with music. (I
> suspect most people do, but am willing to accept others' assertions to
> the contrary). Sitting/standing or use of written music should be the
> performer's choice, IMHO.

This bit:

> Sitting/standing or use of written music should be the performer's
> choice, IMHO.

.... I would certainly agree with.

Whether that amounts to the stronger statement:

> This bugged me when a pinhead teacher did it to me [i.e. forced you to
> play standing], and still does when I see it happen.

I certainly don't know anything about your teacher, or what 'forced'
meant in this context, so I hope you'll forgive what I'm about to say.

Really quite often in my teaching, I ask students to do what they can't
(yet) do.

I might well back off if it didn't look as though the intervention would
work -- so to say I 'forced' them would probably be wrong -- but what I
am concerned to do is to set them a problem that they have to find out
how to solve.

In fact, I think that to present students with something (appropriately)
different is one of our highest responsibilities as teachers, after a
certain level. This something might be to ask them to play a passage in
a way that they'd never thought of, or to adopt a physical stance that
was at the time unnatural for them.

The idea is to expand their range of choice, and to have them grow.

Of course, as Pierre Boulez remarked, there is a time to be a student of
someone, but the time should be much shorter than is very often assumed.

Is the tagline appropriate, for once?-)

Tony
--
_________ Tony Pay
|ony:-) 79 Southmoor Rd Tony@-----.uk
| |ay Oxford OX2 6RE GMN family artist: www.gmn.com
tel/fax 01865 553339

... Man who eats too many prunes, sits on toilet many moons!

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