It’s spring in Ithaca, New York, and one never knows what kind of weather that might bring. One day is beautiful and warm, and the next day I need my parka and gloves on again! I have learned that one can never predict the weather. As someone once told me when I moved to Ithaca, “There is no bad weather, one just needs to dress right!”
My students are like the weather. Some are warm and some are freezing. Some are thoughtful and others are spontaneous. One will come to his lesson tired and lethargic, while another will barely be able to sit still on the piano bench. As a piano teacher, I love and embrace this diversity. There is never a dull moment in a day filled with piano teaching and that is what inspires me.
As I ponder reaching out to my diverse population of students, and trying to find the spark that ignites them on a particular lesson day, it occurs to me that the challenges are often ones of finding a balance between creativity and practicality. Put another way – between subjectivity and objectivity. The most wonderful thing about music is that learning, teaching, and experiencing music requires a constant attention to the balance between those extremes. This synthetic thinking is what makes the discipline so valuable.
If you find yourself wondering why one of your students plays the notes, rhythms, and articulations with almost perfect accuracy, but (sigh), with little imagination or creativity, and yet another student plays with great drama and sensitivity, but absolutely the most bizarre fingering you’ve ever witnessed - - you will begin to identify with piano teachers’ challenges the world over.
Let me give you an example to get us started. My sweet Gina (not her real name) came to her lesson and very deliberately and accurately played CPE Bach’s Solfeggietto for me. It was fairly even and steady and at a tempo she could handle. What more could I want? Well, it just didn’t have any life. It could have been a finger exercise. I contemplated how to inspire her to hear the drama in the music, and having no great ideas at the moment, suggested that perhaps we could think of a story. Mind you, I had NO good ideas for how to fit a story with Solfeggietto! Gina thought for just a minute and then said, “I know – it’s Cinderella!” My first thought was, “Oh, good, she’s thought of something” and my next thought was, “Oh dear, how do we tell the Cinderella story by playing Solfeggietto?” What happened next was something that was spontaneous and memorable. The minor key immediately fit with the step-sisters, and thankfully there were three transpositions of the minor theme. Gina and I had great fun in the next few minutes figuring out the story of Cinderella, and when she played it the next time, it was full of ugliness, beauty, love, and imagination.
In future articles I’ll explore some other ways to find that delicate balance between the extremes of subjectivity and objectivity in lessons with our wonderfully diverse population of students.
Deborah Martin, D.M.Mus., daughter of a piano teacher and school teacher, began her teaching career at the tender age of 12. She studied piano with Bruce Sutherland in Santa Monica, CA and was selected to join the Young Artists Guild. Subsequent studies led her to Baylor University (Roger Keyes) and Indiana University (Karen Shaw). She has been on the piano faculty at Ithaca College since 1992 where she combines teaching with serving as Chair of the Performance Studies department.
