OK! I'll take the bait. How about Chopin? The only 'teacher' he had was a violinist (thus doesn't count). Not only did he solve the technical problems presented by good ol' Beethoven and others of that time while Czerny and other performers were vying for top spot with their performances, Chopin came up with new problems for them to solve. He started composing his Op. 10 and 25 when he was 19! And many of the virtuosos of those days were stumped. One critic whose name escapes me sacarstically said that anyone attempting the etudes should have a surgeon on standby supposedly to cut up their hands for the large stretches. I do believe that it is generally accepted that he came up with the etudes all on his own. Many writers also write of him as 'largely self-taught'.
[Putting on my asbestos underwear...] OK! guys (and gals) flame away.
TTFN (Ta Ta For Now),
dennis lee
You are right, but not completely.
First let us clear some assumptions.
The most important teachers in any discipline a person will ever have are the ones no one gives much credit: the first teachers.
If you want to be a writer, you first must learn how to read and write. No illiterate can be a writer, (although he can be a great story teller and raconteur) no matter how amazing the stories he can spin are. But do we ever give credit to the primary teachers who taught Shakespeare to read and write? Why should lerning to read and write be so important to a writer? Could he not just tell his tales to someone to write them for him? Yes, he could, but here is the catch. The medium organises the message. You see, if you do not write, your thoughts will not be organised to make sense when in written form. So the first advice given to writers to be is: “Write!” anything, and anywhere, just write. In the beginning all you will write is rubbish, but this is not due to lack of inspiration, or of good ideas, is mostly due to not been able to “think” in “writing mode”. With guidance and practice, soon a subtle change takes place: One starts to think one’s ideas in such a way that they articulate themselves as by magic. And the result is that you can write as you think because your thoughts are organised in writing patterns. A raconteur on the other hand, organises his thinking in terms of oral presentation. This is one of the reasons why transcripts of such tales usually are flat and not as wonderful as when you heard them in their original medium. Likewise, just reading aloud James Joyce is not as rewarding as “reading” it.
So, it is the first teachers that are the really important ones. But as I said elsewhere, for teaching/learning to take place you must have three components: A willing student, a willing teacher and a conducive environment. If you miss only one of those nothing will ever happen. It follows that since Chopin “happened”, he must have been a very willing student, he must have had very capable teachers, and he must have had a very conducive environment. You can compensate to a certain extent the degree of contribution of each of these three factors by one of the others, but you cannot have a total lack or absence of any of them. Take Godowsky. His teachers were the weakest link, compensated by a superb willingness on his part as a student, and by a superb environment. But to say he was self-taught is simply not true. It is just a matter of doing the research.
Now let us see Chopin. Excellent, willing student? No doubt. Good environment? No doubt (his father was French and a school teacher, his mother was Polish, the household was musical). Good teachers? Actually superb teachers:
1. His first teacher was his mother, Tekla Justina Kryzanovska. (This is a common thread going through the lives of many so called “self taught” individuals in all areas of life). Since she was his mother, we do not regard her as his teacher. Why not? She was an accomplished singer and played the piano well (most ladies did in Victorian times – it was an obligatory social skill, and without TV, radio, cinema or computer games, they had plenty of time to practise). She taught him to play his first pieces, taught him how read and write music and encouraged him to compose. Chopin started having lessons with her at age 4, and by age 6 he was already kicking ass, and doing improvisations on the piano. First known composition: a polonaise, composed when he was eight years old.
2. Almost as important as learning a subject, is learning how to learn a subject. Chopin’s father was also his teacher, both in the school where he taught, and at home supervising Chopin’s homework and learning activities. It was his profession. So Chopin had the benefit of close, informal and constant supervision form both his parents.
3. His next teacher, now a formal one (in the sense that Chopin had “lessons”) was Wojciech Zwiny, the violinist you mentioned. However in those days there was nothing wrong with having someone – not a pianist himself – teaching the piano. The reason is simple: you did not have piano lessons, you had
music lessons. If you do some research you will see that far from being uncommon this was actually very common (examples that come to mind: Mozart’s father and teacher was a violinist, Betthoven’s father and first teacher was a singer, Godowsky’s first teacher was an amateur violinist). Also bear in mind that just because Zwiny was a violinist does not necessarily mean that he had no intimacy with the piano. There is a misguided notion that learning the piano is learning the minutiae of physical movement, physical technique. It is not. The truth is that if you can “hear” in your mind the sound that you want to produce, your fingers will comply. So the real teaching (of any musical instrument) is the teaching of inner hearing. Of course, if the teacher can produce for you the sound in the piano, and suggest ways to do that physically, it will be a great help and avoid a lot of experimentation. But since Zwiny was actually teaching Chopin simple stuff, there is no reason to believe that he would be unable to do it himself at the piano. And by doing so, he was teaching Chopin the very important principle of inner hearing and changing what you are doing at the piano until you can achieve your ideal inner hearing. This demands, focus, concentration, persistence and the capacity to follow instructions first from your teacher, then form yourself. None of these attributes are inborn. They are all learned. And taught. So I think your dismissal of Zwiny as a teacher just because he was a violinist is undeserved. Piano playing on its purely physical level is not that complicated. Musicality is the real problem. Witness Harold Bauer, who switched from violin to the piano in his 20s, without a teacher (it is often falsely claimed) he went on to become one of the piano virtuosos of the century.
4. Chopin’s next teacher – he was 14 by then and had entered the Warsaw conservatory - was Jozef Elsner, again not a pianist, but a teacher of composition. So you are telling me that a teacher of composition could not play the piano? Not even a little bit? And even if he could not, would that matter? By that time, Chopin physical technique was pretty much settled. So Elsner naturally concentrated on his deficiencies (you do not wash clean dishes, do you?). Are you going to tell me that Chopin’s highly pianistic composition style owes nothing to Elsner? Many people would like to believe so, But Chopin himself adored both of his formal teachers and had a lifelong respect and loyalty towards both of them.
5. Chopin was also taught the organ by Vilem Wurfel.
6. Chopin’s teachers were traditional guys; they schooled him on Mozart, Bach and Hummel, all of which become influential in his compositions. Both Bach and Mozart were his favourite composers.
So was Chopin self-taught? Only in the sense that everyone is self-taught, in the sense that you have to do your own learning, that no one can learn for you. Was he a superb student who could take the tiniest information from his teachers and integrate it and develop it and carry it further than anyone could dream? Certainly. Would he have played the piano if he had been born amongst the Congo pigmies, by himself? Not really.
Here is the sort of misinformation you read in the net:
“But teaching Frederic was not easy. He had a vivacious and determined personality, and much preferred to do his own thing at the keyboard. So that even though the young musician continued to have a variety of music teachers throughout his youth, he was practically self taught. “
You see, by all accounts we have, Chopin was very easy to teach. He was actually the dream student: a student who is willing to learn and who loves the subject. He did not have a variety of music teachers (just the ones I mentioned), he adored Zwiny, who was a gifted teacher in that he made his lessons entertaining, and at the conservatory, Elsner always stuck up his neck for Chopin when the other teachers complained he was “not following the rules: “Leave him alone, he is a genius!”. If that is not a good teacher, what is?
It is really simple, follow this recipe, and you get a virtuoso out of the oven:
willing student + good teacher +conducive environment.
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: Self-taught or With a teacher ?