Do you look at the students' scores during lessons?

[pytheamateur]

 When your student is playing a piece for you during a lesson, do you look at the score?

How important is that for you personally, and generally for good teaching?

My teacher hardly does that during lessons.  Rather than sitting next to me at the piano, he prefers sitting at some distance away from the piano.  Even when I'm playing from memory, he rarely takes the score to read.

As for the pieces in question, some he has never played before, some he might have performed in the past, but none he could play on the spot without any prior practice.  So I would hesitate to say he knows those pieces that I'm playing inside out.  If something doesn't sound right, or the musical picture is not quite right, he would have no difficulty in spotting these.  But I do wonder, if you don't have the score in front of you, can you really pick out all the minute details of the piece?

From what I know, in a masterclass, the teacher usually follows the score as the student plays.  Furthermore, the teacher might mark the score in the process.  I always thought this is the best way.  As for marking a score, my teacher never does that either.  And he is not keen on discussing fingering during lessons.  He even goes so far as suggesting that it is rather pointless to devise a good fingering and stick to it when learning a piece. 

It looks like his teaching method is unconventional.  Or is that just an approach that I am not familiar with?  All your comments are welcome.

[ajspiano]

When your student is playing a piece for you during a lesson, do you look at the score?

This is entirely dependent on the situation..  following are perhaps a couple of possible examples

If notes are a concern, and I have not personally learnt the work then yes I look at the score.
If interpretation is a concern and the student is not experienced enough to be forming their own then yes I look at the score and mark the score in various ways.

Conversely, where a student knows the notes and is more experienced I am far more likely to use my ears than my eyes.. and where I use my eyes, it is probably in relation to what the student is physically doing - not whats on the page.

One can usually tell when notes are out of place in a students playing without having to look at the score, so if in that mode, I would refer to the score if I notice something isn't right aurally.

Regarding your teacher not being able to play the works you are looking at on the spot. It would be ideal if he could, but, if you are at an advanced level this is a heavy demand to place on a teacher. What i personally find to be important is (and this is where I draw the line on giving advice if I can't do this) that the teacher can figure out how to play whatever small section VERY quickly in the context of a lesson. I would generally want to be able to play any subsection of a work even if not the whole pretty much on the spot because of the need to be able to both physically and aurally demonstrate a musical effect. If this is not possible I think its the teachers responsibility to spend some time with the work outside the lesson or plainly admit they are not willing to do that and so may not be an appropriate teacher anymore as the student is progressing beyond their teaching capabilities.

^as always though, in regard to this stuff there is no way I can legitimately judge your lessons or teacher without actually observing. The final call is on you, and the questions are "are you learning anything?" and "is my playing consistently improving when I follow my teachers instructions?" ...Teachers arent magicians, you do have to allow them sufficient opportunity to diagnose a problem and find a solution that works for you.. which isn't always an on the spot thing since you pretty much always have to take an idea away and practice it.

I definitely think notes should be made on the score (or atleast in a notebook of some kind)regardless of whether the score is constantly referred to in the lesson as this is a solid way for a student to be guaranteed to remember the content (excusing perhaps just recording the lesson).

[goodtone]

>>And he is not keen on discussing fingering during lessons.  He even goes so far as suggesting that it >>is rather pointless to devise a good fingering and stick to it when learning a piece. 

my advice would be to find another teacher. To master a piece it's important to use consistent fingering and the teacher should definitely be helping you with this and marking the fingering on the score or helping you do this.
GT

[asuhayda]

Yes and no.. of course it is extremely important to know the score that a student is working on.  But I usually study it before the lesson.. During the lesson I'm doing a lot of watching and listening.  More often than not, I'm looking at the student's hands.  I watch for proper technique, relaxation and fingering.  Usually, I will spot when a student plays the wrong fingering and then I will refer to the score to confirm.  It requires a balance because if I'm not watching the student's hands, I am missing critical things.  But, I also have to listen for tone quality and dynamics.... Conversely, sometimes, I'll just take the score away while the student plays from memory and follow along with the music and mark notes in the margins.  Obviously, that is during the "fine tuning" phase of learning a piece.

So, no. I don't think it's necessarily bad that your teacher isn't constantly looking at the score.  And his remark about fingering isn't compltely wrong... it depends on the type of music you're playing.  With Bach, for instance, learning the correct fingering is very nearly as important as learning the correct notes..  But this may be less true for say Gershwin or even perhaps Rachmaninoff or Liszt.  Usually, the less intricate the passagework, the less important the fingering.

[pytheamateur]

Thanks for all your responses.  I think on the whole he is a good teacher and I certainly improved a huge amount since I started studying with him 13 months ago.  I just got a little carried away in my last post because I got frustrated at the piano we use for lessons.

As for his approach on fingering, I was not being entirely clear.  Sometimes he spends time trying out a passage and then suggests fingering that might work.  What he doesn't do is become a slave to the fingering written on the score.