• Home
  • About
    • PianoMorphosis
    • Bruce Brubaker
    • Contact
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

PianoMorphosis

Bruce Brubaker on all things piano

Why (not) demonstrate?

March 12, 2012 by Bruce Brubaker

It’s the routine of many piano lessons: Teacher sitting next to student sitting at the piano. One copy of the written music. Student and teacher examine it together. From time to time, teacher reaches over, or deseats student, in order to demonstrate details, or even phrases of the music. (In an unkind moment, I have called it “piano-teacher-position.”) In an alternate version, the teacher occupies a second piano, demonstrating sound, techniques, phrases, or more — that the student repeats back.

Let’s not deny teachers provide models. Following from my own teacher Jacob Lateiner, I sit apart from my students, at some distance. I read from a separate copy of the printed music. I aim not to demonstrate on the piano. I do sing notes, intervals, or phrases. When I arrived at New England Conservatory I had the second piano removed from my teaching room.

It may seem that a piano lesson is a passing-on of specifics, techniques of playing, and details regarding particular pieces of music. “Today, we will learn Chopin’s First Ballade.” I was somewhat perplexed though, at a well-known summer master class series, when I was asked, “Do you teach the piece, or do you teach the student?” Following came something like: “Mr. Fleisher teaches the piece.” (And a few celebrated teachers do offer a student only a single lesson per piece. All there is to say?)

I prefer to believe that what’s happening in a “lesson” is the scrutiny and exploration of process. That’s why very satisfying work can occur with music not known in advance by the “teacher.” All those details of enunciation, metric grouping, fingering, the pedal — are not the point. From lessons the student comes to know, as Schoenberg puts it, “… that one must come to grips with all the problems — not how to.”

When explanation and singing won’t do it and I succumb to playing during a student’s lesson, it feels like a little failure. Better for the synthesis of ideas and the grappling with issues to lead to sounds arising from within the student, the analysand.

Share on Facebook
Facebook
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on Reddit
Reddit
Email this to someone
email

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: analysand, analysis, Arnold, Chopin, demonstrating, First Ballade, Fleisher, Leon, lesson, New England Conservatory, piano lesson, piano teaching, piano-teacher-position, Problems in Teaching Art, Schoenberg, teaching

Comments

  1. Janet says

    March 14, 2012 at 6:56 pm

    Where have you been all my life? 🙂

    Does this represent a new way of thinking or did some of the greatest teachers of the past already have this viewpoint?

  2. Catherine Shefski says

    April 23, 2012 at 10:02 pm

    “I prefer to believe that what’s happening in a “lesson” is the scrutiny and exploration of process.”

    Hear! Hear! This is the kind of coaching every student needs to be able to make intelligent decisions about interpretation and style and to ultimately continue on and grow as a musician.

    • Ariel says

      April 23, 2012 at 11:01 pm

      Wait. I thought teachers were supposed to teach. This all sounds New Agey.

Trackbacks

  1. SuiteLinks: March 16 « Piano Addict says:
    March 16, 2012 at 9:28 pm

    […] Why (not) demonstrate? […]

Bruce Brubaker

Recordings such as the new American piano music albums I make for ECM, InFiné, and Arabesque reach many listeners, and seem to break through some old divisions of high culture/pop, or art/entertainment. My fans are listening to Frank Ocean, Skrillex, Nicki Minaj — even the occasional Mozart track! Spotify, iTunes, Twitter, YouTube allow music lovers to discover music they could not have encountered so easily in the past. Live performances begin to reflect what’s happening online: this year I play at the International Piano Festival at La Roque d’Anthéron, traditional concert venues in Los Angeles, and Boston — as well as nightclubs in Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, Lyon, Geneva, and New York’s (le) Poisson Rouge. Read More…

View My Blog Posts

PianoMorphosis

Music is changing. Society's changing. Pianists, and piano music, and piano playing are changing too. That's PianoMorphosis. But we're not only reacting... From the piano -- at the piano, around the piano -- we are agents of change. We affect … [Read More...]

Archives

BB on Twitter

My Tweets

Social

  • View pianomorphosis’s profile on Twitter
  • View pianomorphosis’s profile on Instagram

Recent Comments

  • steven d on Dispatched

    unbelievably perceptive. thank you for this!
    Posted Mar 05, 2018
  • deanne on Piano Sonata as Video Game: Anomalies in My Reception of Beethoven’s Music

    adding layers to a video game... amazing, yes!, and please write more
    Posted Dec 03, 2017
  • Gregory on Digging to France

    French have a fascination with Les Américains born in great part from having been liberated in 1944. Like all true...
    Posted Jul 25, 2017
  • Christine on Rising Tide

    This is really a remarkable series of thoughts about a piece that I thought we already knew too well! You're...
    Posted Jan 10, 2017
  • Frederick on Misprision

    It's certainly true that in classical music playing the way some famous pieces are played seems to have little connection...
    Posted Feb 28, 2016

More Me

BB on the web

“Glass Etude” on YouTube

demi-cadratin review of Brubaker solo concert at La Roque d’AnthĂ©ron

“Classical music dead? Nico Muhly proves it isn’t” — The Telegraph‘s Lucy Jones on my Drones & Piano EP

Bachtrack review of Brubaker all-Glass concert

“Brubaker recital proves eclectic, hypnotic, and timeless” — Harlow Robinson’s Boston Globe review of my Jordan Hall recital

“Simulcast” with Francesco Tristano on Arte

Bruce Brubaker hosts 4 weeks of “Hammered!” on WQXR — “Something Borrowed,” “Drone,” “Portal,” “The Raw and the Cooked”

“Onstage, a grand piano and an iPod” — David Weininger’s story with video by Dina Rudick

“Bruce Brubaker on Breaking Down Boundaries” — extensive audio interview at PittsburghNewMusicNet.com

“Heavy on the Ivories” — Andrea Shea’s story for WBUR about Bruce Brubaker’s performances and recording of “The Time Curve Preludes” by William Duckworth

“Feeding Those Young and Curious Listeners” — Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times on the first anniversary of the Poisson Rouge

“The Jewel in the Fish” — Harry Rolnick on Bruce Brubaker at the Poisson Rouge

“The Post-Postmodern Pianist” — Damian Da Costa profiles Bruce Brubaker in The New York Observer

Bruce Brubaker questioned at NewYorkPianist.net

“Finding the keys to the heart of Jordan Hall” — Joan Anderman in the Boston Globe on the search for a new concert grand piano

“Hearing and Seeing” — Philip Glass speaks with Bruce Brubaker and Jon Magnussen, Princeton, Institute for Advanced Study

Bruce Brubaker about Messiaen’s bird music, NPR, “Here and Now”

“I Hear America: Gunther Schuller at 80” — notes and programs for concert series, New England Conservatory, Harvard University, Boston Symphony Orchestra

“A Conversation That Never Occurred About the Irene Diamond Concert,” Juilliard Journal

Bruce Brubaker plays music by Alvin Curran at (le) Poisson Rouge

Share on Facebook
Facebook
Tweet about this on Twitter
Twitter
Share on Reddit
Reddit
Email this to someone
email
Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2018 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in