How do you help your students learn about (their "own") interpretation ?

[m1469]

I am currently brainstorming on ways to do this.  Where my brainstorm is springing from is the idea that there is not a single "correct" way to play, in general, as well as even a single piece.  So, how do you help a student find their own way and keep it refined, or at least inentional ?

Aside from needing to convince others of a person's specific way, maybe having it be intentional is all that really matters... (?) 


m1469

[pianistimo]

this may not be the best way - but you could give them some cd's of interpretations that YOU consider good - and tell them that these are your own preferences in style and give some reasons why.  giving the reasons might give insight into what IS a good interpretation.  or, if it is a piece that you personally play - maybe play it for them once.

some teachers do this, some don't.  i don't think it hurts a student if they only hear an interpretation once or twice.  if they try to listen to it every day to emulate it - that's probably more on the plagaristic side.

[Bob]

Give them your ideas to help them at first.

Ask them to come up with some options.  Maybe point out a specific place where they need to make a decision.

Be sure they are technically capable.  I remember on of my teachers harping on me able interpretation, but I couldn't even play the notes well -- Not much point worrying about a crescendo when you don't have the notes down.

Recordings of different interpretations are good.  Even if they are not playing the piece.  Just the idea that a piece can be interpreted differently.

I wouldn't push it.  When they are ready they will.  Make them aware.  Make sure they can hear the different elements of music and can play those different elements -- like articulation, dynamics, tone, etc.  Make them aware that they need to make decisions and decide on what interpretation they want. 

[m1469]

Yeah, I guess your last line is along the lines I am thinking.  But, I just have been having some crazy ideas.  The root of it is that I don't want to teach anybody how to play my ideas, per se, ever.  Not truly even to begin with, at least in theory.  What I want for them is to learn how to be able to make these decisions on their own.

My thoughts went further along those lines in that, if I am always having them do only what I think it should be, they are not actually learning the skill of how to interpret something for themselves, they are learning how to play like somebody is asking.   What that somebody is asking might be acceptable and valid in terms of interpretation, but still, is it really helping the student actually learn an actual skill ?

So, I was thinking.  Take Bach for example.  Yes, ideally, have them listen to several recordings and while they listen, have a clean score for each and then they can mark in what the articulations are for each performer.. etc.  But also, what if I never (theoretically) made an actual decision for them regarding how they were going to play it in performance ?  What if I just made them play it in all sorts of ways (including extremely exaggerated ways) and play each one "convincingly" and then to a large degree left the performance decisions up to them ?  Not sure how that would fly.

I guess the bottom line is that, there is not really ever a "correct" way to interpret a piece.  And therefore, they cannot really ever stand on a certain interpretation as concrete.  What they can stand on though, is their own ability and skill  to interpret and make decisions based on what they know and can do.

I feel like I am not expressing myself very clearly  :-

m1469

[pianistimo]

i hear you and have tried to do this for myself (purposely not listening to other recordings a lot) - but for me and probably other students - if you did not grow up going to as many concerts as others, listening to as much music as you could, and just practiced piano - you were in a sort of 'bubble.'  so, to get out of the bubble, i think it's good to listen to others without 'over listening' or even 'over analyzing.'  just to 'get a feel' for the ideas that you personally like.  and, then trying to remain inside whatever the composer's intentions were/are too.

ps i went to a lot of student recitals - but not as many professional artists recitals when i was younger.

[Bob]

I depends on your students.

A lot of mine just want a taste of music.  That's all.

I'm wondering what kind of students you have m1469.  It sounds like you might be treating them like college music majors -- which is great, but I wonder if they will go for it all.  I have scared some of my students when I start talking about "authentic" editions, researching the piece, purity of your interpretations, and all that.  I put myself off from playing too sometimes with that.

[lostinidlewonder]

i find interpretation develops as you learn more pieces. A great deal is learnt from listening to recordings as pianistimo mentioned, the ideas that the great masters of the piano have preserved with their recordings are absolutely essential for anyone studying music.

Personally I find that Bach is the best to develop musical interpretation simply because he never wrote volume dynamics and his tempo markings are not necessarily speed indication but character of sound, much different to other composers useage of tempo indications. So with Bach we are left on our own determining the most effective way to play music which was really never written with the modern piano in mind, a big challenge.

It is very tough to write in words how to interpret Bach, but it would be nice to go through every single piece and write our own interpretations over it. I see the amount of writing on each students paper which I teach Bach, there is a great amount of interpretations, quality of notes etc, I can estimate one page of notes could have over 3 pages of words as to why we should do it this way. The logical statements are important to make so you understand why you do this over that. Other composers do not require us to think so carefully because they write all their dynamics in for us and are quite clear what they want.

I like to play things ridiculously bad for a student, make them laugh at incorrect playing. Basic volume controls like cresendo and decresendo I tell students very early on that when you come to a cres start softer than you normally would and get louder. There is no point in starting off too loud because getting louder will be difficult and so the cres is neglected (of course we must always look at the musical context, we might want a weak crescendo). Likewise coming to a decresendo start louder than you normally would and get softer. I might demonstrate an ineffective quality of note, bad accents, staccato, legato etc. Also highlight bad tempo, over done rubato, speeding up or slowing down when it is not needed (especially for scale runs). Millions of different examples, it is good to show how it is done badly and contrast it immediately with good playing. Then the student can hear two ways of playing, a bad and good, then make decisions how to come somewhere inbetween, their own method.

Generally my pointer to developing students is to always over do expression then tone it down later on. If there is a melody play it as loudly as you can, then later on control it. There is nothing worse than playing too weak, but playing too strong is ok, because it is easy to bring it down, much harder to bring things up.

I generally find that a lot of younger students cannot really make mature decisions as to how a piece should be played. I couldn't imagine a 6 yr old playing Rachmaninov with PASSION. They do play it, all the notes really nice, but the intensity, the connnection with the emotion won't usually be there, there simply hasn't been enough life experience to relate to the music. When something should be sad or furious or whatever the most effective way to bring that emotion out is firstly through the physical excecution, but to let it tell a story, to let it sound natural and not just a physical excertion we have to connect with it emotionally and understand the sound as a human feeling/memory. To me I think this develops passionate playing, playing with the heart/soul.

[pianistimo]

that's great advice.  i never thought about writing out how i interpret a piece (and possibly listening to a recording and marking in other interpretations).  suppose if you copied a piece two or three times - you could compare interpretations.  i thought i did this already in my head, but i suppose that here and there - there are places that i just 'wing it.'  that's probably not so good.  agreed about feeling, too.  i am finally understanding what my teacher said about exaggerating the dynamics as you said.  it makes sense to tone them down instead of trying to raise them up.

[m1469]

I depends on your students.

A lot of mine just want a taste of music.  That's all.

I'm wondering what kind of students you have m1469.  It sounds like you might be treating them like college music majors -- which is great, but I wonder if they will go for it all.  I have scared some of my students when I start talking about "authentic" editions, researching the piece, purity of your interpretations, and all that.  I put myself off from playing too sometimes with that.

Yes, I understand the need to be sensitive to what might or might not be too much for a student.  But, I do treat them quite seriously, although we still have fun together to a degree.   Most of the students that I may have thinking in regards to "interpretation" are ready for it.  The more advanced reading-wise they are, the more we can explore other things.  It also depends greatly on the individual.

I have a 12 year old who is extremely mature and extremely intelligent and artistic.  We have an understanding about life in general, that exists on a much different plane than any of my other students, with the exception of one (one of my little 6 year olds... he he).  With her, I do spend a little more time with interpretation, and she is very interested and "gets" the value in seeing an autograph manuscript of a piece she is working on. 

But again, I am still learning how to help her learn how to make interpretive decisions... well, I am still working on that myself.

m1469

[nomis]

I think that really atmospheric pieces will help here, especially pieces by Debussy. BTW, they do not necessarily have to be able to play them, as you are teaching them on how to make intepretative decisions.

For example, the Prelude from Suite Bermasque. It has many mood changes and so is an ideal piece. The opening is marked forte and sounds fairly grand. You can then give suggestions as to how to create the grand sound. Play the bass notes stronger than the others (strong bass gives a feeling of solidarity) and hold the pedal well before playing the notes so that the maximum number of sympathetic vibrations will occur and thus increase the volume and hold it until measure 3. This is method one. Method 2 would be to change the pedal at the C7 chord. It results in a clearer sound, but the soldarity of the F major opening is lost.

Then onto the A minor section (there are no measure numbers). You can play the measure without pedal so that the melody can be played staccato, or you can ignore it and play it using normal legato pedaling. You can also hold the una corda pedal down to give it more colour, as it is vastly different from the opening section. To me, it sounds mysterious, so the left pedal is ideal.

As you can see from above, I have given different suggestions as to how to play each little section - you can probably do this with many pieces (if not all) and the student can choose which suggestion to use for each section.

BTW, Scarlatti sonatas could be great material too - listen to Horowitz's recordings (1960's one) as you can hear the tonal colour changing all the time - sometimes very rapidly. Yet you can play the same piece without so many changes yet still arrive at a convincing interpretation.

[squinchy]

How about associating a story, or at least a series of emotion-words or physical movements with a piece?

When I was younger, my (very strict) teacher would tell me where to crescendo, decrescendo, and accent; at the next lesson, I'd try to remember to play what she said/wrote. I usually forgot, and I never progressed much because she was insistent on "interpretation."

I think I kept forgetting to make those changes because I saw them as discrete tweakings I had to make to my perfectly good, monotonous series of notes. However, if emotions or descriptions are associated with sections, it's harder to forget because the crescendi and accents seem to be means to achieve an end instead of being an end in themselves.

For example, in Bach's G major minuet (the most famous one), I used to see it as:

Start soft. (M1, 2) Get louder; crescendo to the end of M3, then decrescendo. Stay soft and swell to the end of M7. Get softer. Repeat--a little differently.

However, if I had thought of it as a story:

"Fancily dressed, a young man walks into a ballroom--not timidly, but like a person who wasn't extremely outgoing. He sees a lady fluttering her fan and gazing in his direction; confidence rises to a peak at M3, but he restrains it as he walks toward her, politely...."

The dynamic changes would have been a way to show his rise in confidence/lack of, not a series of things to memorize or 'figure out.'

Since there can be so many ways to apply stories to pieces, a student can easily develop his distinct story, and therefore, interepretation.

[tiasjoy]

How about associating a story, or at least a series of emotion-words or physical movements with a piece?

  I was going to say the same thing!

I have a 9 year old at the moment polishing SaintSaens March of the Royal Lions.  There are four lines of music - p, mp, mf, f.    I've told her to imagine she's watching a marching band gradually walking towards her.  We talk about how it would sound when they're in the distance and how the sound would change as they get closer and closer.  She brought out the dynamics beautifully and was grinning from ear to ear.

A much older student sight read through Chopin's Prelude in E minor with no problems, responding obediently to all expression markings dynamics, rits etc.  Still, the performance was flat.  I told her to think of a wretched person in agony, struggling just to keep walking, every step excruciating agony.  then I stopped and simply asked her, "Have you ever felt that type of emotional pain where you think you just can't go on?"  The answer ... 'uh...no...." It's like ... (changing tactics slightly) every note is difficult to press down because you just don't have strength in your arms ... etc.    She was able to focus less on the notes that told her to press 'E, Fsharp" and to listen to the music she was producing.

Still, I am aware that really she was just interpreting my interpretation!   To get them to come up with something heart felt and passionate completey on their own hasn't been achieved in my studio except by me!

Anyway I've given the above student a piece of music,  and asked her to think/feel two different emotions and come up with two different ways of playing the same piece.  She'll perform both of them at the next lesson.  It's a piece she learned a few years ago, so besides from some polishing she only has to focus on interpretation, not notes.

[keyofc]

For beginners, I usually remind them of the title.  I'm talking very basic elementary pieces, but it usually helps a lot.
I realize you are all talking about higher interpretation - but they are all at different levels.
For the older ones, I never give them something that they are not already dying to play.  I know this will change for them when they get older and they will have to play pieces they do not select
But I have never been able to learn interpretion in a theoritical way - I have to connect with the music and so if they connect, they really try. 
I think LostinWonder hit on a good point,  Because of the life experiences that we have had, interpretation is easier.  Although I do remember crying when I was five years old on my kids piano because I thought a song or chord I played was so beautiful.  Who knows?  So sensitivity has a factor there too......