Klarinet Archive - Posting 000686.txt from 2000/07

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] enthused musings upon Mozart Concerto
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 08:33:52 -0400

Ed Lacy wrote,
>Now, we have 8th grade students who are playing the
>Mozart Concerto. No doubt there are students of this
>age who can manage the notes from a technical standpoint.

No doubt -- but I think the real reason my piano teacher sometimes resisted
assigning me the great classics was because he hated to sit there and listen
to some young kid butcher his favorite music. I sympathize. Better you than
me. ;-)

Ed wrote,
>However, when and if they go to college, their teachers are going to want
>to work with them on the Mozart. In many cases, when faced with this
>necessity, students feel that they are failures, because their reaction is
>likely to be, "But I've already played that." Of course, we recognize
>that there are various degrees of "playing" a piece.

Yes, sometimes students in my college English classes thought I was holding
them back when I assigned them to read authors they'd already studied in the
lower grades. That's not an insurmountable problem, though. I told my
students that their previous studies gave a good foundation for more advanced
studies that delved deeper. IMHO, a teacher of younger students can do those
kids and their subsequent teachers a big favor by making clear, from the
start, that an educated person doesn't study something just once for all
time. School and lessons provide us the opportunity to learn how to go on
educating ourselves independently, for the rest of our lives. Instead of
saying, "Now you're advanced enough to learn Mozart" (which sounds awfully
*final*), start by saying something like, "You've made such good progress
that you're ready to take your first look at Mozart. Most musicians go back
to him again and again over a lifetime."

Roger Garrett's strategy of letting students hear a recording of his own
youthful endeavor sounds like an excellent idea to me. The student who can
hear how the teacher progressed learns that it's standard operating procedure
to revisit the same work again and again, and that successful learning
doesn't mean sounding like an adult professional instantly, at age 13. The
real failure would be the arrogant presumption, "I'm so perfect now that I'll
never need to change a thing." I think kids are less anxious about hearing
attention drawn to mistakes, when they're encouraged to perceive rethinking
and revision as normal, useful aspects of learning. I think it's also
helpful to tape a young student's first Mozart, save the tape, and play it
back when you think it's time for the (now older) student to try Mozart again
from a more mature perspective. I'll bet most students hearing a four-
year-old tape of themselves will be very glad for the chance to improve on
it! I wonder if a particularly good time to do this might be right after a
student has worked hard to master a technical knuckle-buster. The student
could relax to some extent in the familiarity of the Mozart concerto, but
approach it in a more contemplative, analytical way.

Teachers need a good ear for students' learning styles, though, because kids
inclined to perfectionism can take that message too much to heart, and become
compulsive revisers, a pattern that can lead to severe performance anxiety.
(Been there.)

Lelia
~~~~~~~~
Headline news today: Light can travel faster than light.
~~~~~~~~

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