Klarinet Archive - Posting 000072.txt from 2008/01

From: "Keith Bowen" <bowenk@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Metaphor
Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:49:54 -0500

Sarah,

I absolutely agree that metaphor is very important in the teaching process,
and we have to use it wherever we cannot employ a precise physical
description. Thus, descriptions of breathing in terms of stomach muscles and
diaphragm are not metaphors, but "support" is a (pretty good) metaphor.

My point was that you have to find the right metaphor, one that instantly
works with both teacher and student. Roger Scruton in "Aesthetics of Music",
makes the important point that if you try to explain a metaphor it totally
loses its impact. You have to know the metaphorical situation from your
education or experience before you can use it as a metaphor. And if your
student does not share that knowledge or experience then it is almost
useless for teaching.

I had such an experience once, when I was trying to improve my tone in a
certain range (the higher part of the clarion register). I could hear that
it needed improving, and two teachers had a go at helping. One said "You
have to spin the air", which meant nothing at all to me. The other said "You
have to focus the tone, you have to bring the fuzzy undefined bits into the
core of the tone". Then I could do something with my mouth that worked. Both
are metaphorical descriptions, no doubt air spinning meant something useful
in the experience of the first teacher, but the second was the one that
worked for me.

Sometimes I think that teachers can start to believe that their own
metaphors are physical fact. They can certainly come to believe that a
student who does not understand their metaphors is at fault. Some metaphors
are so deeply embedded in the way we perceive music that this is easy to do;
for example we almost all think about "movement" in music, but this is not a
literal, physical description (nothing moves in the linear, mechanical
sense) but a metaphorical one.

It's probably not quite true that you cannot learn a metaphor. The jargon of
a profession includes ordinary words given, precise technical meanings (e.g.
"dislocation" has equally precise but very different meanings to a physician
and to a solid-state physicist), but also includes metaphors, such as (in
our case) "movement" and "support". If the metaphor is sufficiently
widespread it can be learned, essentially as a code. I'm sure that
generations of students have asked "what do you mean by 'support' (in
clarinet playing)?" and then gone on to use it themselves.

Keith Bowen

-----Original Message-----
From: klarinet-return-92486-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org
[mailto:klarinet-return-92486-bowenk=compuserve.com@-----.org] On Behalf
Of sarah elbaz
Sent: 06 January 2008 06:45
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: RE: [kl] Metaphor

>
> Lelia wrote
> >>I can't imagine a precise definition, one that doesn't depend on
metaphor,
>
> Keith wrote
> Lelia,
>
> I think this (metaphor) is the precise problem in communication.

I find that the use of metaphor is extremly important in the teaching
process.
We have to use words to describe a musical phenomen and the use of "every
day" language
will make it simple. Metaphors belong to our imagination - and since music
starts were our imagination ends
(and this is also a metaphor...)
that it the closest we can get to music with words.

Sarah

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