Re: Teaching Analogy



Mary Jacobs wrote:
"ktaylor" <childbloom@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:234d5e3c-faa1-4295-b5e3-dd90d6db617e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(snipped)


I don't know how old your student is, but children below the age of 10
or so generally (there are exceptions) do not resonate emotionally
with music or even initiate expression in their playing. There are
reasons for this that have to do with brain development. Thus the
ability to initiate "expression" in music is cognitively based and is
based upon a certain maturity. When young people begin to initiate
interpretation they are notoriously clumsy about it but, over time,
become more nuanced as they mature and understand style more.

Kevin Taylor

I agree that an ability to interpret is down to a degree of maturity, my son
is 16 and now has that ability 'switched on' and it has made a big
difference to his playing. He can now play a rubato that has you on the edge
of your seat, and sounds 'right'.

Regardless of age I have wondered in pieces such as the Villa Lobos preludes
where timing isn't strict and interpretation is everything, how a
professional's sense of that timing can sound so perfect, even though
professionals can play the pieces so differently... but that a students
'inner sense' of timing on these pieces can be so BAD. There are examples on
youtube. There must be innate rules for this flexiblity in timing.

How do we know whether our personal innate sense of push and pull on the
timing of a piece is a car crash or a triumph?

Mary

The ability to self-reflect seems to be, itself, developmentally
based. That is why technical focus is often lost on the very young.
Not to say that the very young cannot be taught proper technique just
that it must be done in a way that doesn't necessitate self-
reflection. Piaget wrote a book about the ability of the child to
understand the mind ("A Child's Conception of the World".) It clearly
demonstrates why teachers often do not understand the nexus between
technique and motivation. Interpretation is also like that. Piaget's
last stage of development he called "formal". It happens between the
ages of 14 and 20. It is the difference between the car wreck and the
rubato you mention.

Kevin Taylor
.

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