It's Not the Ears, but How We Hear

“Teaching takes patience.” I thought this thought. I even thought this thought was thoughtful. But what I thought I thought was not what I thought I should thought. Think. Not what I thought I should think.

Wait.

“Teaching takes patience.” This is a truism. I think it is true... ish. What I have been finding with my own teaching has been slightly different. I'm not actually patient. I mean, I am. But that patience is not the result of some inherent virtue that I have. Although it is a virtue...

Dammit.

“Teaching takes patience.” Yes. Yes it does. But where does this patience come from? That's the important bit. Some people might be patient because they have a high sense of mission. Their clear sense of purpose allows them to slog through to the greater good. I am not really one of those people. I suppose that makes me terrible, but I don't care. Haters gon' hate. Instead, some people are patient because they enjoy the job, like me.

But the more I think about it, the odder and odder that statement becomes. “I enjoy teaching.” It's a bit like saying “I enjoy getting flogged by an 800 pound gorilla.” Especially when it comes to music. How many parents out there have literally told their kid to stop playing for five goddamn minutes because jeezus, that violin sounds like a toddler in a fist fight with a fennec fox.

Not in so many words, I mean. Just, like. “Hey, I think you should probably stop for today, you have math homework to do,” except you didn't really care about the math homework, it was just a convenient excuse at the moment. Don't lie. You know you've done it.

I'm not even the kid's parent, and I not only hear that kid play for thirty minutes, I also hear pretty much the same thing in thirty minute increments for 4-5 hours a day. And yet I say, “Oh yeah, I enjoy teaching.” At face value that seems like the height of insanity. This is not something a normal person says.

But what I have come to realize is, I am not patient as an inherent virtue. I am patient as a result of a mind-set. It's a kind of mental misdirection. When I hear a mistake, the something I sometimes say to the student is “Yeah! That sounded awesome! It wasn't right, but sure sounded cool.” This is especially true for missed pitches, or weird sound effects the cello can make if you're not careful (or if you're supremely careful to make that sound on purpose).

Usually, the student hears this and is at first amused. They laugh, because that's not what teachers are supposed to say. Teachers are supposed to say, “Oh my god that was awful, you're awful, everything about your life will be awful until you do that again and do it right. … [student messes up again] … Oh. My. GAAAAAAWD.” So, you know, it's funny and, I must imagine, somewhat relieving to hear that while they didn't play what they set out to play, they at least made me say something weird.

Then I play it back at them, and that's when they realize I'm not just blowing smoke out my ass. What they had done was honestly, truly cool. And sometimes, the “mistake” they made sounds better than whatever is written in the part. I mean, not on its own, necessarily. Usually I take what they did and recompose what we're playing to include and expand upon the “mistake.” Have you heard that insufferable Suzuki vl.1 French Folk Song played in an Arabic scale? It's kind of neat.

I don't do that all the time. I only do that when it's actually cool, otherwise it will lose all its value. But what the student doesn't realize is, I'm actually doing that a lot in my head. Nothing they ever play is anything I don't want to hear, because while they're busy trying to figure out how reconstruct sound from a bunch of squiggles and dots, I'm hearing techniques Kaija Saariaho uses in her pieces for solo cello; I'm hearing musical indeterminacy the likes of which would make The New York School blush; I'm hearing Ives as melodies from different practice rooms overlap; or Ligeti as the orchestra warms up.

That's how I can be patient. When I'm teaching, I'm not hearing a student screwing up. I'm hearing music. It may not be the music on the page, but that doesn't matter. That is totally, utterly, impossibly inconsequential. The student may or may not ever play that page correctly, and all we can do is make some changes and try again. If they do, great, if not whatever.

So they didn't play what was on the page. But what they did play... What a sound!

Lead by Teaching

Tickets are boughten, bags are packed, we're on the train to Valuetown. Classical musicians and music lovers have an instinctive feeling that classical music is valuable. However, we can't just assume that other people will see it in the same way, not least because the forms and harmonies which structure classical music often sound foreign and unintelligible to people who aren't used to them. So of course, some amount of teaching is assumed, even if I don't personally believe that an audience member needs to know everything going on in classical music to enjoy it.

It's like... When The Simpsons was in its prime, did people stop liking it even when they didn't get all of the multitudinous obscure or downright esoteric jokes? No. There was plenty of stuff for everybody to hang onto. But oh how you felt good when you got one of the jokes none of your friends got. It's like that.

Still, musical education in general is something we find missing in a lot of people's lives, whether it is classical or not. So lets look into some ways we can leverage what students we have to help create more societal value in what we do.

Disclaimer
Not everybody is a teacher. Oh wow, is this ever true. If you don't like teaching, if you don't want to teach, if you can't teach water out of a plastic cup, then don't. There are far too many good/great teachers who aren't being utilized because the pay is generally too low... but that doesn't mean the gap should be filled with terrible ones. Just because you can play doesn't mean you can teach, and if you really, honestly can't, just... do what you're good at, and play awesome concerts. Trust me when I say, everyone will be much happier that way.

First, Teach by Leading
It's not enough to be a teacher if you don't know what the heck you're talking about. Like, I could have a PhD in Physics, but that doesn't make me qualified to teach a high school English course. That makes me qualified to teach a college physics course. Should be obvious, right? Well, apparently it's not obvious to some school districts which require teachers to have a master's degree, but don't require a degree in the subject you're going to end up teaching.

Like, I don't know...Imagine you're reading Grapes of Wrath, and your teacher suddenly says, "A train leaves west from station A at 45mph, and a train moves east from station B at 30mph. If station A and station B are 400 miles apart, how long will it take the Joad family to find work in California?"

Trick question. They never find work in California.

Wait, what was I saying? Right. Teach by leading. Don't just teach your students. Play for them. As often as you can. Show them that you know what you're about and that you mean business. It's amazing how quickly you earn respect that way.

Then, Lead by Teaching
So now you have a bunch loyal minions. I mean, students. What do you do? You tell them about all of your concerts. More specifically, you tell their parents about all of your concerts. This achieves a number of things. First, it puts some bodies in the seats. This is important because ticket sales.

But just as importantly, you're filling your audience with people who are slowly learning how to listen to music at a higher level. The students not only get to see you strut your stuff, but they also get to hear their own learning. Over time, they start hearing more and more from pieces they thought they knew. They start to get Haydn's inside jokes. They start to hear why Claire de Lune isn't just sparkly vampires.

They of course fail to pick up on the subtle subliminal messages put in by the Mozartian Masonites and, much later, by the Schoenbergian Fraternity of Tonebros, but that's all according to plan. If they knew what they were really listening to, it wouldn't work.

Finally, Play Music with your Students
You know what's awesome? When a teacher you really respect works with you on what is being taught/learned. It can be as complex or as simple as necessary. But there's something really cool about that kind of collaboration. Suddenly, you don't feel like just a student, and you aren't just a teacher. You're two people doing what people have been doing for tens of thousands of years. Making art. And ultimately, isn't that what's really important?

I mean, besides the pay check.

Headbanging with Beethoven

I'mma let you finish, but Beethoven is the best composer of all time. Of all time!

There. Post over.

... ... ...

Ok, so not really. Beethoven is among my most common go to composers. It's really not hard to figure out why, either. He speaks clearly, directly, and passionately. He's not afraid to get up in your grill and shake you by the collar until you break a vertebrae, but then he'll show you the most sublime stuff afterward that you realize that's what he was trying to get you to hear all along. You just weren't listening and he got frustrated. That's all.

If there's one thing I can say about Beethoven, it's his ability to speak to an incredibly wide range of people. Did you know the Japanese sing Ode to Joy, like, all the time? Did you know Beethoven is usually listed among the favorite listenings of metal heads of all stripes? Heavy metal, Death Metal, Black Metal... In fact, the more I think about it, the more I realize metal heads have a somewhat peculiar affinity for classical music in general, not just Beethoven.

Perhaps it's the fact that metal is more virtuosic than your average bear. They don't just want the picnic basket, they also want the ranger's head on a pike. Not to say that metal is more complex than pop or regular rock, necessarily. It, like almost everything in life, depends on the case. But usually, metal solos are wickedly difficult to perform. Listen to the riffs of Metallica in their prime and compare them to Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, and you can probably hear some resemblance. The primary differences are modality and amplification.

Speaking of amplification, there is no doubt in my mind if you gave Beethoven a tube amp, he would blow the thing out in, like, 15 seconds.

But moving on. The main reason I bring this up is simple. The old guard of classical music was, and still is in many ways, quite exclusionary. Either it was classical and good, or it wasn't. Nowadays, that is changing, but I think we can do a lot to speed up the process. I think the main thing getting in the way of classical music's popularity is image. The idea that classical music is some stuffy, moth-balled, hoity-toity music that is irrelephant to the demands of contemporary culture.

Some of this is valid criticism. Stuffy? Perhaps. In fact, likely. Classical music performances are rife with hidden rules and rituals that are not intuitive to newcomers. Also, for some reason, clapping between movements of a longer work is received like somebody just kicked a puppy. Harumph harumph harumph! Clapping between movements! What an ignorant neophyte! Go to your shame hole and think of what you have done! Harumph harumph harumph! As for moth balls, well... It is not unlikely some sort of artificial preservation is going on with certain people in orchestras nowadays. I'm not going to point fingers, but maybe possibly we should rethink our idea of tenured musicians.

But irrelephant? First, that's not even a word. Second, I will paraphrase Steven Fry: "If you cannot find a way to connect with music of the past, that is more a reflection of your own lack of creativity than a fault of the music of Bach." Now, I personally think Mr. Fry is being a little harsh, there. People walk into a concert with assumptions about how music works, and sometimes classical music can, in fact, be rather overwhelming to a new listener. Heck, I didn't like Brahms until I was 25, and that was after studying music for 14 years. However, I think Mr. Fry has something of a point. What we have, here, is a failure to communicate.

How do we bring people into the fold? The primary focus has been on 'music appreciation.' This is one of those well-meaning but utterly misguided attempts to connect with people that has plagued classical music since the late 20th century. Lets put it this way. Do you think people "appreciate" the music they listen to over and over again? No! They love it. Otherwise, they wouldn't listen to it more than once. Do we want people to merely appreciate classical music? No! We want them to love it! That's what really brings people back, is the connection they make to it. Trying to educate people about how classical music works might open some doors, but the interesting details lurking beneath the surface (things like form, melody, harmony, progression, counterpoint, etc) are all secondary to the fact that the composers loved the music they wrote. All of those details are merely technical points which are incidental to that underlying state of mind. Bach wouldn't sign ever piece "With thanks to God" unless he really, really loved what he was doing.

So if not music appreciation, then what? How about this. One of my friends learned of my utter distaste for opera. He told me: "Look, full operas are dumb. You don't really go for the whole thing. You go for the one or two arias that you really like. Then, after a while, you start seeing how those arias connect to the other stuff around it. Pretty soon, you won't think opera is dumb any more."

Arias: They're like gateway drugs.

But he has a point. When you look at concert programs, they usually focus on one or two large pieces, with maybe a smattering of smaller stuff. But if we're trying to attract new people, this is exactly wrong. They've never heard classical music! They don't know what's out there! They don't realize how diverse and multifaceted classical music is! If you only ever present one or two pieces at a time, and new audience members don't connect with them, they're not coming back. But if you present a sampler platter... Now we're talking.

Then, a new audience member will hear the stark contrasts between Baroque and Romantic, Classical and Modern, Empfindsamer Stil and aleatory. Then, maybe, just maybe! One or two of those pieces will hook them. They'll go, "I want to hear more of whatever the heck that was." And you give it to them.

This is all well and good, but ultimately, it comes down to one thing. Passion. And this brings me back to Beethoven. Beethoven, more than any other composer I can think of (except possibly Shostakovich) knew how to cut to what was important. As musicians trying to bring these pieces alive for a new generation, we have to do the same. It is not enough to play the notes. It is not enough to play with feeling. We must play like our lives depend on it, like we will die if we do not say what we have to say. We have to pick people up by the collar, shake them, and show them the heights and depths classical music has to offer. We have to try again and again with piece after different piece to find a way to connect with each audience, one person at a time. And we have to trust that the composers we near worship truly had something worthwhile to say.

And if we find we can't perform in such a way? Then perhaps we'll have to admit that the composers we deify didn't have something worth saying. How do I know that's wrong? Because every fiber of my being revolts against such an idea. But it's not the audience's job to find the connection. It's ours.

Post-Script:
People head bang to metal because they're lost in the music. When people literally move to classical music, we'll know we're on the right track.