{"id":832,"date":"2015-09-07T11:27:05","date_gmt":"2015-09-07T15:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/?p=832"},"modified":"2015-09-07T11:27:05","modified_gmt":"2015-09-07T15:27:05","slug":"master-teacher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/2015\/09\/master-teacher.html","title":{"rendered":"Master Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LD<\/a>I\u2019ve long been accustomed to using the word \u201cmaster\u201d in relation to music. I\u2019ve driven myself to master certain aspects of my craft, I\u2019ve recognized the hours required to attain mastery, I\u2019ve encouraged my students to do the same. And, of course, I\u2019ve ushered many a student toward a Master\u2019s degree in the 30+ years since I received my own.<\/p>\n

Living in North Carolina, though, brought to my attention another meaning of that word, a meaning that had no resonance in my upbringing: the master as slaveholder. When I first moved here in 1987, I thought of American slavery, when I thought of it at all, as a distant, abstract concept. My ancestors came to this country long after 1863. All of them settled in the Northeast, where I grew up. Even after years of living the South, where slavery was once a part of daily life, the idea of it only claimed my attention on far-flung occasions. I may have even thought that people who dwelled on it were living in the past.<\/p>\n

Just to be clear, I\u2019m not talking about racism, which I was exposed to from an early age. Racism is not, in my experience, limited to particular regions. I\u2019ve seen it everywhere I\u2019ve been. What I hadn\u2019t considered, until recently, was the specific heritage of slavery, and I gave it little thought.<\/p>\n

But twelve years ago a guest composer, African-American, addressed the topic in a seminar. He said slavery was a living thing in his family: harrowing stories told by an elderly aunt at the kitchen table about the things that had happened to his great-grandparents were an indelible part of his being. His descriptions brought a truth home to me that I hadn\u2019t fully considered before: the imprint of long-ago events and eras on individual family histories.<\/p>\n

For years, I\u2019ve begun my Counterpoint class by reading the opening of Johann Josef Fux\u2019s seminal text on the subject. Fux\u2019s quaint and florid style is both illuminating and amusing. The book is written as a dialogue between a teacher and student — Aloysius and Josephus — so I have always had two students read it out loud.<\/p>\n

One quaint and florid detail that can be counted on to get a laugh is Josephus\u2019 manner of addressing his teacher. \u201cOh revered master,\u201d he exclaims, and the sound of one counterpoint student addressing another in that way always gets the room chuckling.<\/p>\n

In the last couple of years, though, I started wondering how that word \u201cmaster\u201d would feel to me if I had ancestors who were slaves. It\u2019s not a question I want to ask anyone who might know. It doesn\u2019t seem fair to expect any one person to speak for such a large group: some might shrug it off, while others could find it truly disturbing. But the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of getting a questionable chuckle out of something so unnecessary to the topic at hand.<\/p>\n

So this year I typed out Fux\u2019s three-page introduction, substituting \u201cteacher\u201d every time the word \u201cmaster\u201d appeared. Not sure if the time spent was necessary, but I don\u2019t suppose I have to know in order to feel like it was an appropriate thing to do. We may not be able to solve the world\u2019s challenges, but we can certainly take every opportunity to make incremental improvements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve long been accustomed to using the word \u201cmaster\u201d in relation to music. I\u2019ve driven myself to master certain aspects of my craft, I\u2019ve recognized the hours required to attain mastery, I\u2019ve encouraged my students to do the same. And, of course, I\u2019ve ushered many a student toward a Master\u2019s degree in the 30+ years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/curves\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}