Life lessons 'n shit (or, a little late night pedagogical musing)...

I teach a lot of F*@&ing piano lessons every week. This week has seemed particularly long (which is probably why I used the F word to describe piano lessons...wonder how often that's been done...hm...)

Anyway, I was reminded today of something my piano pedagogy professor used to say in graduate school: "Always remember that you are not teaching piano, you are teaching people." He reiterated the same sentiment by telling us to, "teach the child first, music second, and the instrument third."

Like so much one learns in school, this is a concept that made sense to me in the abstract while I was sitting in the classroom but has become increasingly practical in the day-to-day grind of teaching.

There are days when teaching music history or teaching piano really is less about the subject or the instrument and more about the person sitting in front of me. Piano students have parents who get divorced and death touches everyone - regardless of age. College students raise children on their own while trying to put themselves through school. Some college kids even fight in wars - real ones - like, in Afghanistan and Iraq.

And I find myself, in the midst of all the awful stuff that sometimes makes up people's lives, trying to convince a 19 year old that Baroque opera is worth a second listen or an 8 year old that articulation and the shape of a phrase matters.

I'm keenly aware that my role is that of music teacher not music therapist. There are brilliant music therapists in this world who are well-trained for that job. However, anyone who teaches music is mindful of the fact that because music is personal and because it so often elicits emotional responses, the teacher/therapist role is sometimes blurred. The only way around that reality, I'm convinced, would involve a dispassionate or clinical approach to one's students and one's subject.

I really have no conclusion or point to this little rant, except to say that this has been a long week. Oh, and that I think teaching music is important and that it makes a real difference in people's lives.

And one more thing...

I've been meaning to post the following quote from Alex Ross's insightful article from the New Yorker last month on fictional music/musicians in literature. Seems to fit here:

"When we listen deeply, we aren't simply registering music's ebb and flow; we are remaking music in our own image, investing minor details with private significance."

Investing minor details with private significance.

Exactly.

Back to school blues (quote of the day)...

It's the first week of school and I'm dragging my heels a bit. I just had a really nice two weeks off and, as Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke can tell you, Reality Bites.

I spent a lot of time alone this summer and I think the sudden onslaught of students is overwhelming. All I want to do at the end of the day is sit in total silence and read. Feeling a tad like a hermit reminded me of this quote I heard on an episode of This American Life recently:

"Here's the thing about people: I don't really like them. That's why I find racism so curious. There are so many reasons to dislike people. You're gonna go with color? So I avoid the people whenever possible, try to keep my distance. It's really better for everyone."

~ Shalom Auslander

Ira says (quote of the day)...

"Teaching music is like any teaching except that when you fail, it is loud. And failure is so easy. Every note is a chance to mess up."
~ Ira Glass

From an old This American Life episode on music lessons. You can listen to the entire episode here (it includes an excerpt of David Sedaris singing commercial jingles in Billie Holiday's voice).

It is always more fun to blog about your thesis than to actually write it (quotes of the day)...

Last week I ordered several books and articles through inter-library loan. You know the old tracking-down-an-original-source-to-make-it-look-like-you-found-it-even-though-you-really-found-it-in-an-already-overused-secondary-source trick? Anyway, I picked up my books last night. I was looking for one quote in particular in a book by French composer and conductor Manuel Rosenthal titled, Satie, Ravel, Poulenc. The book is about 2 inches by 3 inches small. You gotta love the French...





Rosenthal was one of only a few pupils of Ravel. The little book contains several brief anecdotes about Satie, Ravel, and Poulenc. Since it doesn't take long to read a 3-inch tall book, I managed to get through it last night. Here are a few of my favorite parts:

"The French think life is interesting. That is why they have created a cuisine, which is a pretext for enjoying ilfe and for being together around a table. As long as you are enjoying the food, you remain at table exchanging ideas and discussing your feelings. French music starts from this same circumstance." ~ Rosenthal

"Like a French garden, French music has to be clear, precise and delicate. There are no lies in Satie's music." ~ Rosenthal

"You know, I think it's very difficult for an artist to marry, because you never know how much harm you do to your companion. Perhaps it's too selfish to marry - you never know how wicked you will be, unwittingly." ~ Maurice Ravel in conversation with Rosenthal

Piano Teacher Diaries (quote of the day)...

Student (age 7): "Miss Katie, guess what!? I practiced!! And I'm not even lying this time!"

Same student a little later: "Did you know today was Earth Day?"
Me: "Yes, I did. Did you do anything special to celebrate at school?"
Student: "No! It was awful. They made us pick up trash off the ground!! It was disgusting. I picked up gum that was already chewed up. And then we all had to wash our hands again. I'm exhausted."

Andras says (quote of the day)...

This whole article (mentioned in post below) really is a good read. Make sure to click on the audio clips on the left side of the page to hear Schiff on several topics (they are short excerpts...just a couple minutes each). This quote is from "I Don't Like the Piano:"

"I don't play the piano because I like the instrument so much. I don't. Because, there are instruments I much prefer...the cello is the first one that comes to mind. I play the piano because it has the most wonderful repertoire. I wouldn't give it up for anything...."

Mr. Schiff, I couldn't agree more.

On procrastination. Or, William James says (quote of the day)...

"We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead.... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities."

1. From Talks to Teachers (excerpt from Ch. XIII "The Laws of Habit") by William James (yes, he is Henry's brother). You can read the whole thing here.

2. Now I have to get to work...

John Updike says (quote of the day)...

"The things humans do! The little creatures in the UFOs must have figured out the sex by now, and our cars, but the dreaming, and the praying, and the singing . . . How to explain music to them?"

John Updike says (quote of the day)...

"No matter in how many ways our lives are demonstrated to be insignificant, we can only live them as if they were not..."

From A Month of Sundays

Two for the price of one. Or, John Updike says (quotes of the day)...

Prompted by the sad news of John Updike's death, I started reading A Month of Sundays last week. It was a rather arbitrary pick. I just grabbed something of Updike's I'd never read before off the shelf at Half Price Books. I should have read it sooner. And I will probably read it twice. The protagonist is a minister who is the son of a minister and grew up in a parsonage. As the daughter of a minister who grew up in a parsonage, I am enjoying it on a very personal level. A sampling:

"How the fallen world sparkled, now that my faith was decisively lost!"

"I vowed to abjure the word "love," yet write of little else. Let us think of it as the spiritual twin of gravity -- no crude force, "exerted" by the planets in their orbits, but somehow simply, Einsteinly there, a mathematical property of space itself. Some people and places just make us feel heavier than others, is all."

Speaking of heavy things, that last sentence reminds me of this:

Dan Auerbach's live video of "Trouble Weighs a Ton" (duet with his uncle, James Quine)

"Trouble Weighs a Ton"

Out of the mouth of gangstas. Or, Lil Wayne says (quote of the day)...

"Ganstas don't ax questions." But they do answer questions from Katie Couric...

Lil Wayne and "Miss Katie" in a pre-Grammy interview:


Watch CBS Videos Online

And the quote of the day...

"Music is another form of journalism." Agreed. And I think people need to be reminded that all types of contemporary music - popular, art music, opera etc. - are hugely relevant artistic outlets that often can and do deal directly with our culture and "news." However, I'd amend that statement just a tad and say "editorial journalism," Mr. Wayne (er...um...is it Mr. Lil?). Mostly because I think the general consensus is that journalism requires questions, gansta or not...

Other thoughts: 1. Lil Wayne did a better job in this interview than Sarah Palin did in hers. Yikes. 2. We believe you are gansta. You don't have to tell us. Two words: eyelid tattoo.

Ranting against the machine. Or, Satie says (quote of the day)...

(I've been working on my thesis...so here is a quote for you with footnote...)

"People in general seem convinced that only the Official Establishment in the rue de Madrid can inseminate musical knowledge. Good for them; but I still ask myself – with hands clasped – why we musicians are obliged to receive a State education when painters and writers are free to study as and where they want. I have always said that there is no such thing as Artistic Truth – no single Truth, I mean. The one imposed by Ministers, a Senate, a Chamber and an Institute revolts me and outrages me – even though basically I feel indifferent about it.
With one voice, I cry: Long live Amateurs!"1


1 As quoted in Alan Gillmor, Erik Satie (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), 13. This passage is taken from Satie’s contribution to the summer 1922 issue of Le Feuilles libres in which the young composer attacked Lavignac’s book, Music and Musicians.

George says (quote of the day)...

I listened to GWB's final press conference this morning in its entirety on the way to a meeting. When asked about mistakes he may have made in the Presidency, this was his initial response:

"I have often said that history will look back and determine that which could have been done better, or, you know, mistakes I made. Clearly putting a “Mission Accomplished” on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake."

Um...obviously. But can't we get beyond rhetorical mistakes and admit/discuss actual mistakes??

Oh, and he managed to say "misunderestimated" in the press conference this morning. "Misunderestimated." Again. Sheesh, George. It's not a word. Stop saying it!

Sylvia says (quote of the day)...

"God, is this all it is, this ricocheting down the corridor of laughter and tears? Of self-worship and self-loathing? Of glory and disgust?-"

~ Sylvia Plath (1954)

Wagner says (quote of the day)...

In general, I'm not a Wagner fan. He takes himself far too seriously and I just don't think an opera should ever last over five hours. Really, four is too much. Even three...

Anyway, even though i appreciate and like some of his music, his prose is the worst offender. His writing is over-worked, egocentric, and then there is the whole hating women and Jews thing... In short, it's just a little too German for me; and I've never been a fan of sauerkraut...or beer for that matter. So despite all that (and thanks for bearing with me through the rant), I came across a quote today while doing some research that I think is worth typing and reading a time or two. It's from his 1850 publication, Opera and Drama (what else is there, really?).

"Man is in a two-fold way a poet: in his beholding and in his imparting. His natural poetic-gift is the faculty of condensing into an inner image the phenomena presented to his sense form outside; his artistic, that of projecting this image outwards."

Definitely food (bratwurst perhaps?) for thought.
Vielen Dank, Richard

A little Sunday night Henry James (quote of the day)...

I'm still reading The Portrait of a Lady. Sometimes there is nothing better than a little Victorian feminism. Well, that is if you can call anything Victorian, "feminist". This tidbit was written by a man, of course, but what a delightful, polite little bad ass of a character he created in Isabel Archer:

"Isabel answered with much spirit. . . . 'I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all. . . . I wish to choose my fate and know something of human affairs beyond what other people think it compatible with propriety to tell me...'
'One would think you were going to commit some atrocity!' said Caspar Goodwood.
'I wish to be free even to do that if the fancy takes me...'
'You'll get very sick of your independence.'
'Perhaps I shall; it's even very probable. When that day comes I shall be very glad to see you.'

How to become a musician. Or, Satie says (quote of the day)...

"How does one become a musician? It is quite simple: one finds a teacher - a music teacher, if possible. One chooses him carefully, attentively, severely. One agrees a price. At this point, I prefer to tell you, one should not get carried away. An hour is quickly up, yes, one agrees a price, but...a good price...for oneself - moderate...yes. . . .

Next one must buy a metronome. Above all, one that is not too ripe...nice and plump...a little fat...one that works properly. There are metronomes that work out of time...like madmen. There are even ones that do not work at all.

The pupil must have a lot of patience - great patience - the patience of a horse, a big one. For it is useful to get used to putting up with the teacher. Just think, now: a teacher! he asks things he knows already & which you do not know. Obviously, he is taking advantage. . . ."1

1Quoted in Erik Satie A Mammal's Notebook, ed. and trans. by Ornella Volta, 132.

A little Thursday morning Henry James...

I've been reading James' The Portrait of a Lady as part of my ongoing reading-classic-novels-of-the-last-two-centuries-I-somehow-missed-in-my-education-thus-far project. This is my favorite part so far:

"'Young girls here - in decent houses - don't sit alone with the gentlemen late at night.'
'You were very right to tell me then,' said Isabel. 'I don't understand it, but I'm very glad to know it.'
'I shall always tell you,' her aunt answered, 'whenever I see you taking what seems to me too much liberty.'
'Pray do; but i don't say I shall always think your remonstrance just.'
'Very likely not. You're too fond of your own ways.'
'Yes, I think I'm very fond of them. But I always want to know the things one shouldn't do.'
'So as to do them?' asked her aunt.
'So as to choose,' said Isabel."

Sylvia says (quote of the day)...

"This hurts. Not being perfect hurts. Having to bother about work in order to eat and have a house hurts. So what. It's about time. This is the month which ends a quarter of a century for me, lived under the shadow of fear: fear that I would fall short of some abstract perfection: I have often fought, fought and won, not perfection, but an acceptance of myself as having a right to live on my own human, fallible terms. "1

1 From Sylvia Plath's Diary. Reprinted in The Norton Book of Women's Lives, 667.

Satie says (quote of the day)...

"Am I French?...

Of course I am...How do you think a man of my age could not be French?...

You amaze me..."1




1 Nigel Wilkens, The Writings of Erik Satie (London: Eulenburg Books, 1980), 68.