Klarinet Archive - Posting 000128.txt from 2000/05

From: Tony@-----.uk (Tony Pay)
Subj: Re: [kl] How much it's up to you....
Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 17:35:13 -0400

On Tue, 2 May 2000 11:48:16 -0400, pattiesmith@-----.net said:

> Tony,

[snip of very contributive post]

Thank you, Patty. I very much appreciate what you wrote.

I was trying to say something different, probably not relevant to you at
all, to do with what sort of model of learning we may inadvertently
communicate here.

People who have a healthy model of learning, like you I suspect, can
take instruction or not, and there isn't an issue. It's all grist to
the mill.

(I might not *like* your mill, personally, but it's still a mill. And
if we want, we could go on arguing, and perhaps learn from each other
even.)

But people who have an unhealthy model of learning, on the other hand,
are often actually damaged by information, I'd say. Because they may
constantly be asking, and may never learn not to ask: but, is it the
*right* information?

You might say, at least they are discriminating.

But who does the discriminating?

Who does the discriminating is some internalised, what I called a few
months ago, 'marcellus', not *them*. And if you argue strongly with
some such person, you stand a chance of becoming their new marcellus.

The following story is not to seem to make me right -- in fact, the sort
of decision in it I now see as stupid in several ways. But I'm glad to
have learnt the lesson of that stupidity, because I want to have thought
for myself. And thinking for yourself (accent on 'thinking' here --
'not thinking' won't do, naturally:-) is what is *essentially* right.
In this case, the 'thinking for ourselves' was both technical and
musical, though it can be either technical *or* musical too.

So, some master at school asked me to play some piece, and I fancied the
last movement of the Weber Gran Duo Concertant, with my school pianist
in an end of term concert. So I thought, I should have a lesson on this
with my teacher (who wasn't part of my school) -- because I'd never
studied it, only played it through for fun. Taking a lesson on
something you're going to perform is what you should do, right?

But then -- and I remember the room, the time, everything -- I was
playing it over, and I thought, what would happen if we actually
performed it *without* my having a lesson? I don't remember my exact
age: I suppose I was about 14 or 15. And what I realised was that
*nothing* would happen, apart from the performance, because essentially
the matter was between me (or us, rather) and Weber. And of course, he
was dead -- or rather, he was dead in *one* world...

So we did. And we really worked on it, too, beforehand.

I sometimes think of trying to organise that my students have this sort
of experience, because I found it such a liberating one for myself. But
of course, if *I* have them do it......

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

... One person's <grin> is another's <groan>.

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