An Adventure in Teaching

Last week a 9-year-old piano student asked me how long a piece of music can be. It's an interesting question. She asked it because most of her pieces have lasted 30 seconds to about a minute, but we've been working on a piece that lasts more than twice as long as those she has played in the past. Most musical works fall in a range from 30 seconds to several hours. That may seem like a very wide range but if you think of the difference between the length of a pop song on a top forty station and that of an opera from Wagner's Ring Cycle and you begin to get an idea of what might be possible. Really though, a piece of music can be any length of time, as long as there is a way to perform it.

When this student asked the question, It made me think of John Cage's piece Organ2/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible). Cage wrote it in 1987, but it is based on an earlier piece from 1985. Most performances of ASLSP have lasted between 20 minutes and 24 hours, but this performance is going to last (is lasting?) 639 years. It is taking place at a church in Halberstadt, Germany. It began in 2001 with a rest that lasted for 7 months, and it will end in 2640. When a sound is changed, it is a major event in the world of new music scholars, who flock to the church to hear it. You can hear the piece as it plays at the projects's website (German). The next change will happen about a year from now on October 5, 2013.

I mentioned to this student the Halberstadt performance of Organ2/ASLSP. She had one or two general questions. I answered her questions and we went on with the lesson. I figured she would understand that pieces can be very long and forget about this specific piece since it's very much outside her experience. This week, I was pleased but surprised when she brought up the piece again. She had thought about it and had many more questions. What instrument is it for? How long is each note? Does someone sit and play all the time? Do people sit and listen? Why was it written? Can it be done faster and if so how fast? As we talked about it I realized that, for her, music was no longer narrowly defined - in at least one respect, it became limitless and exciting.

French Airs Project

I've been working on and off for years on a project of french airs. It started as one of my DMA projects but needs refining and polishing. I'm hoping these pieces will be useful as pedagogical tools.

So often, singers avoid standard French art song repertoire until they reach the sophomore or junior year of college because much of it is difficult. Not only does it require an understanding of advanced music theory, but with a few exceptions they are quite difficult technically.

The pieces I'm working on are from the 17th and 18th century and use a musical language similar (though highly adjusted to the French language) to those in the standard Italian arias singers are so familiar with (the 24 Italian Songs and Arias; and the newer 26 Italian Songs and Arias).

There are some challenges with this repertoire. First, French as it was spoken at that time was not the same as modern French. This is hardly surprising since 17th and 18th century English is quite different from today's English, but since I'm not a native speaker it's harder for me to adjust. Luckily, I found a highly useful online tool, the ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago. It includes several dictionaries from the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

Second, these pieces are only available in the U.S. as facsimile reproductions. Some are available digitally (see the Lully score above), but others are only in hardcopy form at a few libraries. I was fortunate to visit Oberlin College & Conservatory in the summer of 2008 where the Conservatory Library is full of excellent facsimiles.

Lastly, most of the scores include only a figured bass and vocal line or are for full orchestra and voice. The pieces must be arranged so that those who are not specialists in early music can accompany the singer.

This is the part I'm working on refining now. Although I made arrangements for a recital I gave in December 2008, that performance showed me that they still needed improvement. My goal is to have accompaniments that an intermediate pianist can perform, this way it will be more useful for high school level students who often don't have access to excellent pianists. It will also give more teachers the option of playing for their students.

I'll try to post more information as I continue the project, perhaps including a performance and/or a score.

Why Is Music Education Important?

A friend on Facebook (and in life), recently posted an article from The New York Times Well Blog on the importance of early music education called Early Music Lessons Have Longtime Benefits. I have mixed feelings about research that touts music as a gateway for other skills. So often music is viewed as important because it's "good for Math skills" or it "teaches children to concentrate" or that it "strengthens a range of auditory skills." Music is presented as a short-cut for intelligence. These things are all excellent side benefits to music, but what about the importance of music for it's own sake. It was a relief to read this article by Perri Klass that points out that music is valuable in it's own right:

There’s a fascination — and even a certain heady delight — in learning what the brain can do, and in drawing out the many effects of the combination of stimulation, application, practice and auditory exercise that musical education provides. But the researchers all caution that there is no one best way to apply these findings.

Different instruments, different teaching methods, different regimens — families need to find what appeals to the individual child and what works for the family, since a big piece of this should be about pleasure and mastery. Children should enjoy themselves, and their lessons. Parents need to care about music, not slot it in as a therapeutic tool.

For me, music is important because it is an essential form of human expression. Developing skills as a musician gives us a way to understand that expression and participate in it. It does this in a way that no other set of skills does. While more skills lead to more options for expression, musicians don't have to perform at a professional level to participate in it and benefit from it. However, in order to give their performance meaning they need appreciate it as a valuable expressive art; otherwise it is purely a trick-based performance (look what I can do) rather than a performance that communicates a fuller meaning.

Music teachers should start advocating for music for it's own sake rather than focusing on side benefits. The side-benefit approach may convince school districts to keep music programs short-term, or get parents to sign children up for lessons. However, when music becomes secondary to the potential cognitive boost it can provide, it suffers as a second-class subject. Music should be treated as a primary subject, as important as reading and math, because along with reading and math (and other subjects) it is a vital part of what makes us human.

link