Observations of Otto-Werner Mueller as a Master Teacher

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 12:53:33 -0400

Performer's Agency and the Ideal of Transparency: Practical Contradictions and ideological tensions facing performers of classical music

Mon, 5 Apr 2010 10:02:24 -0400

Investigating the Secret World of the Studio: A Performer Discovers research

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:52:40 -0400

By Mathias Wexler

Completing a mid-life doctorate is a massive undertaking that might be considered unusual, even if one had practical reasons such as receiving tenure or obtaining a more secure position. But if one was already a tenured member of a college performance faculty, colleagues and friends (and family!) might be forgiven if they considered one somewhat eccentric, if not downright masochistic. As my doctoral journey comes to a happy conclusion, ending five-and-a-half years of late night study and writing sessions, steamy summers in New York dorms and sublets away from family, it also brings to completion a major research project. It is immediately clear that the effort was worth it, if only for the gain of a vastly broadened perspective on music teaching and learning, and on my new engagement with and appreciation for the research process. It seems appropriate to reflect briefly at this juncture on my motivation for undertaking this project and, as I emerge a mid-life music researcher/performer/artist-teacher, the implications for my understanding of music learning and teaching.
I had already been teaching cello performance for 20 years when I began to be curious about the nature of the beast. It had always been clear to me that the college music studio was a unique place in the music school environment. After all, students and their teachers work together intensely, one on one, over a period of years on issues encompassing everything from phrasing and fingering to what clothes to wear at the next recital. Through this process they develop a certain kind of intimacy that classroom teachers could never hope to attain. To “be in the studio of” so-and-so means something special. Every single student at every school of music, whether majoring in performance, music education, theory, or music business, takes music lessons as a core part of their curriculum. Where I teach, performance teachers form the largest single block of faculty positions, representing the largest department within the school. We had been hired because we could play our instruments well and had demonstrated a certain amount of professional success, which meant we had recorded, toured, been reviewed, and promoted ourselves effectively in the competitive world of classical music. But something had begun to nag at the perimeters of my consciousness, so gradually that for a number of years I didn’t recognize what it was.
As the years went by, I gradually put more energy into my teaching, even though like most applied teachers, I had been hired primarily on the basis of my playing and professional accomplishments. By the time I was awarded tenure in 1999, teaching had become my major focus, and the same forces that had driven me to excel as a player now began to drive me to excel as a teacher. I needed to know that I was as good a teacher as I was a player, that I was giving my students the most I could. I came to realize that because I had had little or no actual teacher preparation, and therefore knew nothing about what might be thought of as “good” studio teaching beyond instinct and experience, I still had a lot to learn. Nor, I realized, did I (or likely my colleagues, for that matter) have any opportunity to reflect on teaching issues since becoming a full-time applied teacher.
This situation was not likely to change since college studio teachers like myself generally have no program-sanctioned opportunities to address a lack of teacher education. Department meetings are used to communicate new directives from the Dean or to discuss committee business and department policies. Concert receptions are viewed as primarily social. Beyond this, the studio community has no traditional and recurring venue to encourage communication among colleagues. In addition, the extreme privacy of the studio teaching process has created a culture that reminds me of an ad I once saw in a magazine pumping the virtues of Las Vegas: ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas’. The studio has traditionally been a private, hidden locale, almost akin to a religious sanctuary. Urban (2005) has called it “a sort of shrine, where technique, musical expression and artistic vision is passed on, one-to-one, in a secret rite not made up so much of facts or rules but rather the teacher’s personal repertoire of opinions, experiences…and shots in the dark (p. 1).” Perhaps that is why until recently there has been so little research done on studio teaching: subjecting the personal and sensitive culture of studio teaching to empirical research might, irrationally, be seen as a kind of betrayal.
As I wondered how I could improve my teaching, I began to ask what might be considered “good” performance teaching, whether there were or ought to be general standards by which applied teaching could be judged, whether existing educational theory could inform our practice, and what might be the relationship of that question to the preparation of music teachers. I became particularly concerned about the teaching curriculum—or lack thereof-- for music performance majors, a group that will become the next generation of college studio teachers. I was also concerned about the experiences of music education majors, for whom there seemed to be no clear curricular connections drawn between studying classroom teaching methodologies and learning to play their primary and secondary instruments well. Content was everything—and performance pedagogy was seemingly ignored.
From a Friereian perspective, my undergraduate studio teacher was an apt representative of the “anti-dialogical banking educator (Friere in Flinders & Thornton, 2004, p. 128)”. The studio teacher was in charge, the student was the passive receiver, and everything was controlled by the teacher, down to time of the dress rehearsal before my senior recital. To say that he “suggested” the repertoire we studied, what music we programmed, and how we interpreted music is a misnomer. He was in total control. In my experience of the traditional studio paradigm, students were passive. The teacher spoke, the students listened and tried to do exactly as instructed. The teacher ‘knew’ much, and we knew little. If students were judged to succeed, we were complimented. If not, we were excoriated. This kind of approach makes a student extremely dependent and risks squelching creativity in a field where it is supposed to be the primary currency. It took a full 15 years as a professional musician before I had the courage to consider changing certain fingerings in Bach’s Solo Cello Suites given to me in undergraduate conservatory. Hardly the attitude or approach of a creative artist!
Given my background and the nature of my questions, Kassner’s (1998) article entitled “Would better questions enhance music learning?” was very influential as I began to form the basic questions that would guide my research. “What kind of teacher are you?” he asks. “Are you primarily the ‘sage on the stage’ or the ‘guide on the side?’ Are your students empty vessels passively awaiting knowledge…or are they active thinkers…(p. 1)”. Kassner argues that facilitation rather than telling, nurturing curiosity rather than disseminating knowledge, is the mark of an effective teacher, and knowing how to ask questions is a key teaching strategy. Although Kassner was writing for classroom music teachers, he also raises important and transformative questions for studio teachers. Could a non-authoritarian approach work better for studio teachers? What would a non-authoritarian lesson be like? How might studio teachers develop a dialogue with students? The gap, I realized, between educational theory and studio practice might be very great indeed.
In the process of thinking about studio teaching, I remembered an experience I had had at the Banff Centre in Alberta, Canada, in the summer of 1981. The Centre hosted an Artist-in-Residence program in which master teachers gave masterclasses to all the participants regardless of instrument. For example, a visiting pianist might hear clarinetists, cellists, flutists, a guitarist and any other instrumentalist who wanted to interact with them. The implicit understanding of this program was that the master-teacher would be able to impart musical wisdom regardless of their limited understanding of the technical basics of the student’s instrument. Clearly, different instrumentalists shared musical issues. Other questions occurred as I thought about the process that allowed different instrumentalists to learn from each other. Did different instrumentalists ever learn differently, or could there be overarching pedagogical principles that inform the studio learning process? Could studio teaching be viewed as a process in which the pedagogy of various instruments were different shades of the same color?
As I took more education courses as part of my mid-life doctoral work, I kept coming back to the application of educational principles to the studio process. A music performance teacher needs to have the musical skills and instrumental knowledge to help solve student problems, and this is where most conservatories and music performance programs have traditionally directed their energy. But what about music pedagogy? How would Kassner (1998) teach if he were a studio teacher? The essential question for music teachers has always been how to bring students to a knowledgeable state—without discouraging creativity. For me, the question has become, how can the applied music teacher remove him or herself from the center of a dependent relationship where the student is forced to be a passive receiver?
I believe that performance teaching is on the verge of a conceptual revolution, and it is the studio teacher/researchers that need to step forward and draw upon their experiences for the benefit of all. Serious questions need to be investigated and the results may lead us to a completely new conception of what music teachers do.
Where should we situate the music studio conceptually? Is there a therapeutic element that needs to be more openly addressed? How might musical skills, teaching attitudes and practices be best developed? Might there be such a thing as a music studio curriculum? What would be its principles? Are the pedagogical or philosophical principles of studio teaching commonly found across teachers of different instruments? If there is a studio community of common practice and attitude, what might this imply for teacher preparation curricula? What do studio teachers do? What are their values, strategies and goals? What are their psychological issues? What problems need to be addressed? How can we prepare musicians to teach studio better?
These kinds of questions motivated me to undertake an education doctorate. I hope to further the exploration of this crucial educational process, and allow research to inform and enrich my life and my students’ lives as an applied music teacher. I hope that this rumination may serve as a call to action for studio teachers, both with and without doctorates, to bridge the traditional separation between the applied music and research communities, and to contribute their experiences and observations to broaden and deepen our understanding of the studio teaching process. In a rapidly evolving musical world, we can do no less.

References

Friere, Paulo (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. In The Curriculum Studies Reader, David J. Flinders and Stephen J.   Thornton (2nd Ed.). Oxford: RoutledgeFarmer, 2004, 125-133.

Kassner, Kirk (1998). Would better questions enhance music learning? Music Educators Journal, 84, 29-36.

Urban, Guy. (2005). Book reviews. College Music Society Symposium, 39. Retrieved from www.music.org.

Mathias Wexler recently completed an Education Doctorate in College Teaching (Ed.D.C.T.) at Teachers College, Columbia University. Since 1995 he has served on the performance faculty at the Crane School of Music, recently being promoted to Professor. In addition to his studio duties, he serves on Crane's string education faculty, teaching string techniques to music education majors. Mr. Wexler has had articles published by the Chronicle of Higher Education and has written for American String Teacher Journal, where he served as a member of the AST Editorial Board and the Fulbright Foundation’s National String Committee. He has been the ASTA Chapter Advisor at the Crane School and as a member of the NYASTA State Board has chaired the NY State ASTA String Competition. He has appeared as a cello soloist and chamber musician in New York, Boston, San Francisco and many other musical centers. Prior to 1995, he served as Artist-in-Residence at the University of Virginia where he founded the Monticello Trio, a touring piano trio. The Trio was nominated for a Grammy award in 1994. He has collaborated with many eminent artists including the Muir Quartet, violist Michael Tree, the American Quartet, the Brentano Quartet, and the Lark Quartet as well as Boston's Musica Viva.

ON PERFORMANCE: The Passion Beneath the Wigs: Emotional Impact in the Classical Period of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:31:56 -0400

By Paul Shaw

Much has been said and much has been written about the Classical Period in Western Art Music. So much so that “classical music” has become, especially for the uninitiated, a convenient, shorthand label for an entire tradition extending from Gregorian chant to the music of Elliott Carter. One year ago, my wife, Anne, and I were visiting the museum dedicated to the life and music of reggae legend Bob Marley in Kingston, Jamaica when, totally unannounced, Rita Marley, Bob Marley’s widow and founding member of his back up singing group, the I Threes, emerged from an office on the premises. Excitedly, we introduced ourselves as fellow musicians . . . but classical. Without missing a beat, and in a most gracious tone, Rita responded, “Bob’s music is classic too.” In that instant it hit me – different hairstyle, same passion – hence, the title of my discourse, “The Passion Beneath the Wigs: Emotional Impact in the Classical Period of Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven and Schubert.” Whether music is performed under the umbrella of flapping dreadlocks or the constraint of powdered wigs, whether it is viscerally generated or it springs from interpreting the hieroglyphics of a meticulously crafted score, whether it is written down or not, what’s the difference, really? All that is classic achieves implicitly two of our deepest yearnings as human beings – to be understood and to be remembered.
In a pre-concert interview on October 29, 2008, I heard the contemporary British composer James Dillon say that the difference between popular music, his first love, and classical music, is that the latter is written down. It was not until he heard Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps for the first time at age 19 that he wanted to know how such affecting musical ideas could be committed to paper. Immediately following his comments, Japanese pianist Noriko Kawai performed the North American premiere of his 90 minute-long work, The Book of Elements, and I thought, “This might as well have been created on the spot.”
Perhaps this is the highest praise for the classical performer, when notated music strikes the listener as an improvisation. The opening movement, although atonal, seemed to hover around the note E-flat. In principle, this feature as well as the movement’s improvisatory nature reminded me of precisely the same E-flat with which I began the opening cadenza of the Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 in a performance less than three weeks prior. Despite the more than two centuries separating Beethoven and Dillon, one elemental truth remains – the impassioned performer still has the power to break the hermetic seal of musical notation, thus revealing the composer’s emotional intention.
In Piano Concerto No. 5, Beethoven appears to subvert the rising Romantic ethos by supplying his own cadenza for the work along with the now famous admonition: Non si fa una Cadenza, ma s’attacca subito il seguente. In the 1812 Vienna premiere, Beethoven permitted his student, Carl Czerny, to play an improvisatory passage at the customary moment displaying his piano virtuosity, but with the composer’s blueprint as the impetus. The monumental figure of Beethoven, standing at the crossroads between the Classical and Romantic periods, instructed, “Instead of a cadenza, tackle immediately the following.” Even the spontaneous moment needed to be governed by formal restraint – the essential embalming agent of emotion. Without notation, that is, emotional containment through concrete formalisation, I never would have met Beethoven, and Stravinsky never would have fascinated James Dillon with the possibility of memorializing his own creative passions.
In Chapter One of his book entitled Critical Entertainments, Charles Rosen presents a rather cynical view on "The Aesthetics of Stage Fright." He characterizes the composer as an invisible puppeteer and envisions an unconsciously cruel audience, not listening attentively in silence, but watching in a dead hush as the performer moves unsteadily like a "tight-rope walker poised over his perilous space." With so many ropes and strings attached, the performer teeters in fear between Apollo and Dionysus, textual scholarship and pianistic virtuosity, sense and sensibility, playing from memory and playing by heart. I submit that this perceived pitfall is the performer's platform spanning the chasm between the dead hush of a written score and live musical performance on-stage. It is in the seamless transitions between knowing and feeling that great art is made; and the classical style's efficacy lies not so much in restraining emotion as in managing contrasts, balancing thought and action. The written and the performed become one.
Commitment to direct statement and proportional integrity may be appropriate to the classical tradition, but empfindsamkeit is by no means dead. The artist must infuse the artifact, the musical score, with emotional life unfettered by permanent engravings such as bar lines and dynamic markings. Ever so often, piano students are instructed to paste expressive devices onto their performances as a substitute for emotional insecurity. This is not what I am advocating. Rather, as Leopold Mozart (1719-1787) stated in his Treatise on Violin Playing, "One must know how to change from piano to forte without directions and of one's own accord, each at the right time." Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (1718-1795) elaborates:

The rapidity with which the emotions change is common knowledge, for they are nothing but motion and restlessness. All musical expression has as its basis an affect or feeling. A philosopher who explains or demonstrates seeks to bring light to our understanding, to bring clarity and order to it. But the orator, poet, musician seek more to inflame than enlighten. With the philosopher there are combustible materials, which merely glow or give off a modest restrained warmth. Here, however, there is but the distilled essence of this material, the finest of it, which gives off thousands of the most beautiful flames, but always with great speed, often with violence. The musician must therefore play a thousand different roles; he must assume a thousand characters as dictated by the composer. To what unusual undertakings the passions lead us! He who is fortunate, in any respect, to capture the enthusiasm that makes great people of poets, orators, artists will know how precipitately and variously our soul reacts when it is abandoned to the emotions. A musician must therefore possess the greatest sensitivity and the happiest powers of divination to execute correctly every piece that is placed before him.

Extract from: Marpurg’s Der Critischer Musicus an der Spree, Sept. 2, 1749. Quoted as a footnote in: Mitchell, William J., Essay on the True Art of Playing Keyboard Instruments by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, trans. & ed. WJ Mitchell, Cassell And Company, Ltd., London, 1951, p.81.

Even classical music needs to live and breathe. The emotional flame must burn beneath the glow of enlightenment if the composer's message is to be fully understood, taken to heart and remembered.
France's first lady, Carla Bruni, who was in New York City in November 2008 promoting her latest CD in the popular genre, reminded NBC Today Show’s Matt Lauer that the sensual pleasures of passion are preceded by its original meaning: suffering! Haydn mitigates that suffering with humor, Beethoven struggles in frustration then resigns in sublimity, Schubert works out his own salvation in wanderings of heavenly length. And Mozart? “Wigs off, ladies and gentlemen, a seamless genius!”
Regardless of history – oral, recorded or personal; regardless of culture, genre or style; we all endure suffering, and therefore share the capacity to understand, contain and communicate its full range of emotions. Moreover, the passion in our DNA is constantly resurrecting and immortalizing the human spirit in daily pro-creative acts as miraculous as childbirth and as complex as composition and performance. Do not be fooled by the generally accepted guises of fashion, status and decorum. Let us remember always, that beneath the wigs, beneath the musical figures and their forms, human suffering is weaving an emotive style unique to each composer and indeed, specific to each piece. As instruments of human understanding and remembrance, shouldn’t Paul and Anne Shaw’s role, Rita Marley’s role, James Dillon’s and Noriko Kawai’s role, and indeed, the role of every single composer, performer, artist teacher and educator be con passione a piacere s'attaccar il seguente?

Paul Shaw holds BM, MM and DMA degrees in Piano Performance from The Juilliard School. He was a top prize-winner in the William Kapell International Piano Competition and the Young Concert Artists International Auditions. His recordings include Live from New York, It’s Paul Shaw and Le Grand Tour. Since 1992, he has served on the Faculty of the University of Minnesota School of Music where he is Associate Professor of Piano.

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