Music education reconsidered

[mikkeljs]

For a couple of years it has returned to me daily, how important it is to develope in a carefully selected direction, if you really want to develope seriously! Highschool [the biggest mistake in my life] and group lessons at the conservatory has taught me the same. Some few basic rules can be said:

1 Avoid all kind of group work or class lessons, even if there is only 5 in the class and they are all intelligent.

2 Have only few and carefully selected teachers.

3 Avoid all kind of predictated pensum.

I think very few schools, if any, fulfils all 3 wishes, perhabs the first 2 could work in expensive elite schools. At the conservatory in Copenhagen, I have experienced though, that the cultural lack of discipline combined with musicians who fight for it, plus a government who gives money for everything without questioning it, result in a good musical envirement that fulfils 2 and 3 above, and for 1 you can cheat and stay home practicing. It´s a very strange envirement. And I´m lucky to have probably the best danish pianist as my teacher. I have a very close relation to her, and the fact that there is almost no particular predictated pensum of pieces pr year, we can focus on my personal technical problems and discuss the process of developing with an open mind without getting interrupted with tests or unnecessary rules.

During the summer holiday we wrote together, trying to substitute lessons with emails, and I discovered the quality of taking the time to express in a sentence, what I want, instead of getting stuck at lessons. The quality that you don´t need to prepare a highest level performance once in a week followed by mental breakdown from dissapointment after a lesson, gave me more time to practicing effective. Then I could catch up my serious problems and write about them instead. Of cause that doesn´t solve all problems - for me it solves 60-80% - but for many other pianists it doesn´t. The point is, developing is something quite individual and cannot work in groups, like exercise catching a ball with one hand doesn´t work with 10 balls at once at different places.

Another idea could be a lesson, where you only practice different parts of a piece in front of your teacher, and get response that way. Then you don´t have to spent 2 days on preparation of a performance, preparation that doesn´t give you anything in the manner of longsighted practicing, like scales, differanciated exercises and your favorite nasty problems. I will soon present this idea for my teacher as well.

My experience with predictated disciplines like theory lessons, music history and everything else in the danish school system that has some set of rules, is that it sucks! Even at the conservatory - everyone, at least all the pianists, hates it and stay home. I really can´t see the point of spending 4-6 hours pr week writing a Bach invention. After 2 years of theory lessons, which I had to participate in, I had a feeling that I had learned absolutely zero. Lots of rules and work, and nothing constructive compared to fx attending a concert. Every time I tried to get the juice out of the materiale during the theory lessons, the teacher said: that´s not interresting, or I don´t know, forget about it or maybe, or whatever you say like he didn´t even care about theory, a craft I loved before entering the conservatory. How can anything good come out of this kind of lessons?!

Now on 3rd year, I finally got my first ever group lessons in my life, that actually works good, composition. We are 6 students from different instruments, and the reason why it works so fantastic is, that there is no list of predictated disciplines!  We can bring our own stuff or prefer what to talk about. It may sound primitive, but in fact it means that we are looking for our big questions in life and ask them directly - and then eventually get the answer, an answer for many things in life and every day all in one concept.

In short, it matters so much, how  we are using ourselfes. Anyone who practice an instrument can understand that concentration of work is not a sub topic of music, but the one that takes most space. From 5 minuttes of meditation, you can get, what took others 1 year by digging a hole.

The danish government keeps brainwashing and trying to fill more subjects on the scedules of the conservatory. I have been showing my disrespect and anger for 2 years now,  but no one are listening, no one cares about the musical development thanks to bad habits of what is right and wrong, thanks to democracy, the enemy number 1, and lazyness.

As I see it, this has to be shared among as many musicians as possible, and we have to fight for change. It wouldn´t cost more money, if all those subjects were merely suggested to the students so they could go, if they wanted to. In Germany, Poland and other places, the situation is even worse - they have to take highschool diploma for entering the conservatory - stupid, stupid, stupid! 3 years of complete waste of life and lack of practicing!? That only kills developement. When I heard about this, I realized that it is also a problem for the entire university system in Denmark, which also demand the high school diploma, something that not every genious of math or psycics are capable of going through socially, and are therefore frozen out from having a career at all.

I´m very curious to know more about the music education outsite Denmark, and how you find it to take high school?

I was also considering publishing an article on this in the newsletter of the conservatory in Copenhagen, to get students and teachers involved with it.

Mikkel   

[david johnson]

since i'm not familiar with the danish language, i'm not convinced i understand your thoughts as presented in english, though you wrote well.  too much of does not make educational sense.

if one can beat bach's work, don't study him.  if one can't, get with the program.  i believe most of us know wherein we fall on that.

does 'predicated' mean playing/composition fundamentals and basic forms?  those need to be mastered as well as possible.
some students can do this intuitively, some have to work quite bit toward it...and most possess a combination of the natural/work-for-it tendencies.

some of us in music education work see hundreds of students per week.  i certainly do.  my general thrust is that the students end the academic year with more knowledge and performance skills than they began it.  this happens on various levels and must be based upon the 'predicated' material that is most basic to all of them.

dj

[mikkeljs]

not predicated, predictated....a list of stuff each student has to go through pr year.

See, you make the same mistake as those people who administrates the academy. You only think it is all about learning. But learning is not the same as learning a lot. It is in my opinion very different concepts that might eliminate eachother completely! My point is, that learning is the oposite of learning a lot.

Of cause one learn from studying Bach invention, but if you only study Bach invention for 40 years, you will never become a pianist. I can think of at least 10 other disciplines of theory that would give me much more than Bach invention could ever give anyone.

How can you know, if the students who ends the academy, wouldn´t have become much better if they had entirely other conditions during their study?

[karlhenning]

Of cause one learn from studying Bach invention, but if you only study Bach invention for 40 years, you will never become a pianist.

Well, you don't want to enroll in a 40-year program.

[mikkeljs]

when I was younger, I would like to become virtuoso in all disciplines like Bach-invention, 12tone, Palæstrina etc. and my composition teacher said to me, that I would waste my life until I´m 45 then.

But when you want to develope, one of the keys is about organizing your work and concentrate every second of your day. To select the kind of informations you want. If one particular problem always keep shining through whatever I do, there would be nothing more exciting than define and solve that problem and move to the next level, ínstead of doing random disciplines half of the day.

If I had come to just half of the lessons, which I have on the conservatory, I would be at a lower level as a pianist today and would only had come through 80% of my repertoire, and worse, I wouldn´t be able to work up such a feeling of 24/7 focused fingers, as I have now.

I know, that there are even more lessons in other countries, and fx in Paris you only have 3 hours left in the evening to practice.   In the evening! The music culture in Paris must be doomed....if it wasn´t for their many private schools.  

[mikkeljs]

Well, you don't want to enroll in a 40-year program.

I think it depents on what it is. But I think such a thing like meditation for ½ year would give you more, than Bach invention for 40.

[david johnson]

not predicated, predictated....a list of stuff each student has to go through pr year.

See, you make the same mistake as those people who administrates the academy. You only think it is all about learning. But learning is not the same as learning a lot. It is in my opinion very different concepts that might eliminate eachother completely! My point is, that learning is the oposite of learning a lot.

Of cause one learn from studying Bach invention, but if you only study Bach invention for 40 years, you will never become a pianist. I can think of at least 10 other disciplines of theory that would give me much more than Bach invention could ever give anyone.

How can you know, if the students who ends the academy, wouldn´t have become much better if they had entirely other conditions during their study?

oops, forgive my misspelling error...it was the ONLY mistake i made in the discussion.
you don't have a clue as to what you're talking about.
how i can know things is based upon my training, experiences, successes/failures.
i don't mind an argument, but damned if i'll spend too much time with what i think about your grumpiness.
40 years on a bach invention?  your hyperbole is a bit strained.
please present here something you've composed that is better than bach's material.

[mikkeljs]

how i can know things is based upon my training, experiences, successes/failures.

yes, but you probably also organize your way of developing as you get more and more experienced? Or am I the only one who cares about practicing concentrated?

[mikkeljs]

I´m choked, that you don´t share my opinion at all. 

My experience from every single day in school, high school and the conservatory (group work) tells me, that it doesn´t work at all. Teachers are bad, the program is bad, one is not allowed to work and develope individually, but instead you become brainwashed and terrorized. School has been the worst thing in my life, and if I ever get children, I will NEVER let them go to school, thats for sure!

The reason why I feel like this, is first of all because I want to develope, where most others don´t care much. At the conservatory, of cause we have good teachers and solo lessons, so thats perfect, but almost every single pianist students, I know of, hates the other lessons and stay home from them, since it only wastes our time.


So I don´t have a clue about what I´m talking about?? At least I know, what I got from school...a piece of s***. Why is it, that people think it doesn´t matter, what you study and how and from whom? It´s the essence of developing! The more rules and program you have in school, the less space you have. And most often teachers don´t organize the subject, and of cause it is individually, how you should work with one subject. I´m not saying that Bach invention is useless, but my lessons in Bach invention definately was! The same with chorale harmonization and Messiaen-style...I didn´t learn anything, but yet I had to spent 6 hours pr week for 2 years on it.


Imagine if all piano students was supposed to study all the same pieces, and if they had lessons in groups of 30 people, and if the teacher was only caring about money and did not have the right qualifications either. Thats how it is in high school and below and you see the absurdness if you compare. At many academic educations, they do have lots of group lessons.

The mistake is to learn, and haven´t learned enought. You can easily speed up everything x 100 if you just care a bit, fx supplying all schools and education programs with 1 hour of meditation daily. Why not doing it? You make a great example of educational statement of pour rationalism in saying:

please present here something you've composed that is better than bach's material.

So if I can´t, I must study Bach until I succed this step? Don´t you think there is more important things in music if you already spent 2 years on this? I´m sick of this brainwashing! It is one of the main reasons, why classical musicians never play modern stuff, and for modern piano repertoire, there is absolutely no ecxuse not to play it.