{"id":409,"date":"2010-09-13T08:11:31","date_gmt":"2010-09-13T08:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp\/2010\/09\/job\/"},"modified":"2011-10-20T17:57:57","modified_gmt":"2011-10-20T21:57:57","slug":"job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/2010\/09\/job.html","title":{"rendered":"Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently, Meredith Monk<\/a> asked me about my job — my teaching job<\/a>. She mentioned that although at least one university invited her, she hasn’t held an academic position. There’s Philip Glass’s story about Mme. Boulanger<\/a>‘s offer to write a recommendation letter which, she said, would get him a college position when he got back to the U.S. He declined the letter, he says, because he certainly would have used it!\n<\/p>\n

\nCan you be the best possible artist and teach? Can you ever become the best possible artist if you don’t teach?\n<\/p>\n

\n\"hochAJ.jpg\"<\/a>For some, teaching is an important component of learning. I’ve developed as a musician by being involved in the artistic work of my students. Trying to explain can clarify. My improvement has been general, and sometimes specific — in particular piano pieces that I play better now, conceptually and physically, after working with students. It would not just be wordplay or bureaucratese, if we call teachers “learning specialists.”\n<\/p>\n

\nPerhaps, in medicine, exceptionally good doctors who don’t teach are somewhat suspect? I feel this way about musicians who will not teach at all. It might be more convenient or painless, but it’s not quite responsible.\n<\/p>\n

\nTeaching and learning can be practically “useful.” Apprentices to the celebrated painters of the Renaissance benefited from observing the masters. They also did a lot of the work. “Here kid, paint the hand.”\n<\/p>\n

\nAnd if Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Nico Muhly, or Maurizio Pollini are not holding down academic positions, Gabriel Faur\u00e9, Ferruccio Busoni, and Messiaen did. Alfred Cortot ran a school, as did Mendelssohn, Rudolf Serkin, and Josef Hofmann. More recently, Emanuel Ax<\/a>, Joshua Bell<\/a>, and Kirill Gerstein<\/a> have taken positions in musical higher education — if rather limited ones.\n<\/p>\n

\nIn the U.S., some musicians want teaching jobs so they can have health insurance. (I was uninsured for more then five years, until I started teaching at Juilliard.) In the music business, there were (or still are?) some managers advising their clients not to become faculty members.\n<\/p>\n

\nOften, it seems music is trapped in an historical anomaly — the pretense that composing can be separated from playing can be separated from hearing music. The scrutiny of, and engagement with music that occurs when I’m in a lesson with a student is not categorically different from what occurs when I am in the laboratory (I mean the concert hall), making sounds on stage or listening from row J — or even writing these words now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently, Meredith Monk asked me about my job — my teaching job. She mentioned that although at least one university invited her, she hasn’t held an academic position. There’s Philip Glass’s story about Mme. Boulanger‘s offer to write a recommendation letter which, she said, would get him a college position when he got back to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[108,104,107,106,105,110,109,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-cortot","9":"tag-faculty-position","10":"tag-kiril-gerstein","11":"tag-meredith-monk","12":"tag-musical-higher-learning","13":"tag-musical-research","14":"tag-performance-as-research","15":"tag-teaching","16":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/pianomorphosis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}