ALL you Conservatory Proffs out there!

[pianowelsh]

Hi esteemed conservatory teachers! I would like to ask you a very simple question which may have an involved answer.
Q What in your opinion is the most significant difference in the training you recieved and the training offered to your students in the department in which you teach? Do you think that there are any gaps in student knowledge today that were not there previously and how would you personally like to see the conservatoire system of education change in the future to develop the kind of musicians you percieve as relevant to the 21stC perf industry. Lots there! have fun..

[pianowelsh]

You guys are all either really shy or your just playing with my mind!!!

[rachmaninoff_969]

Hey fellow enthusiast...I'll take a stab at that one.  The most significant difference is most certainly the rather "lax" approach that is taken today.  I feel that professors are too concerned by the possibility of a few students "falling off the cliff."  Homework assignments are never as extensive as they should be, and even when filtered down to simple tasks, they are rarely carried out successfully by any student.

With composition students, the largest problem is that they do not know harmony inside out.  Modern techniques, and complete musical ignorance on behalf of some teachers and "composers" is to blame for this.  With performers, the problem lies in ambition.  Rarely is a student guided properly through the stepping stones of music that are so necessary for a mature musicality in the university years.  Often the "naïve" student attempts works that he/she may be technically prepared for, but not musically. 

Vocalists are a whole other story.  They are notorious for having minimal training, no ear, and limited experience with mediums outside of vocal music.  It is so important that one is immersed in the WORLD of MUSIC...not just music for a particular instrument or a particular composer/period...or anything restrictive like this. 

There are certainly gaps in the student knowledge of today, but also of yesterday.  There are many who enjoy music, but only a select few who truly love it.  When a pianist, composer, or any other musician is able to live with music for it's own sake, and not for the sake of impressing anyone else...well that is a true artist.  The reality is, there are many people who can play any given piece in any repertoire, but very few can play them well.  It is the same with composition.  Many people compose music..."complex" music, with very interesting ideas, but only a select few are able to develop these ideas into clever pieces.  It is not about who can be the most absurd.  The ear must always be the final judge.

Lastly, I would like to address the issue of persistent studying.  Music, unlike most other degrees, is a FULL-TIME study.  It goes on 24 hrs./day, even when you are sleeping.  There is always something new you can listen to, something else you can discover in a certain piece, or something innovative that you can create.  It is so important to always strive to learn more.  No one is ever a "complete" musician.  The largest overall problem in music is, well to be frank, the amount of musical idiots who are allowed into certain programs.  This does have its reasons of course (ie. financial requirements, quota of intn'l and homeland students etc.).  Out of every 5 students I meet, I would say that one is deserving of studying music at the university level.  It is a question of being more strict, and telling those who are not meant to be in music the truth.  It can be put nicely, but it is not fair to allow them to continue in a field that they have no knack for.  Please note the distinction here...I am speaking of requirements to study at the university level...music for personal enjoyment is of course open to all, and I encourage it.

As an example, allow me to give you the following outline for the first two weeks of a class in the history of piano music (Classical to late Romantic) that I am teaching.  There are 3, 2 hour classes per week.

Week # 1

Class #1 - Haydn (bio of life, the keyboard instrument he played on and wrote for, formal analysis of his sonata in e-flat major Hob XVI: 49)

hwk:  Listen to 4 Haydn symphonies of your choice (including at least one of the London symphonies).  Provide a formal outline for the exposition of any movement in sonata form from one of the symphonies and relate the structure to that of the sonata studied in class.  As an introduction to the next class, sight read through the Concerto in C major for piano (WoO ?) for which I provide the score.

Class #2 - Randomly select students (2 at a time...one for the orchestral reduction the other for the solo part...with the music of course) to perform a selected movement from the concerto.  This lasts for about 30 minutes (not everyone will play)...then I play the concerto in full with one of my students playing the reduction and we take apart the piece formally and identify the idiomatic structures used by Haydn (I ask the quesiton: Why is this piece idiomatic for the piano?)  The homework for class two is as follows:

Listen to at least 2 concertos by Haydn (1 early, 1 late) and  compare the formal structures.  Provide a harmonic analysis of an entire concerto of your choice to submit (Haydn doesn't take too long).  This acts as an introduction to the next class in which I discuss voice-leading in the classical era using the students' work as examples.  Not surprisngly, only 20% of the students correctly identify most of the progressions. 

Anyway, I won't bore you with more class material, but this is the idea.  In the second week, usually 20% of the students have dropped the class, and I am left with about 70% who are genuinely interested in learning, and 10% who are interested but just barely hang on.  Out of respect, I do tell the students in the very first class that my courses are intense, very intense, but that they will learn a great deal.  Anyway, I hope these examples and my response help slightly.

- D (McGill University)

[rachmaninoff_969]

if you are interested in the rest of the first two-weeks of class then just let me know, I'd be glad to continue my description...I just didn't feel that it was necessary.

[pianonut]

you sound like a very concientious professor.  i have found that i don't have as much time as i would like to study during the week (three children) but am going for it anyway.  as you mentioned, eating and sleeping music(by listening a lot), is what i do when i don't have time to go into as much depth.  right now, we are also analyzing haydn's operas.  one question posed was "why are haydn's operas not as well known as mozart's? what are your thoughts on this? BTW i can't wait to get to
'the Seasons.'  This class has got to be my favorite listening class.

Tell us more about exposition form, ok.  i am basically relearning what i learned in undergraduate school because of the time lapse.  what do you look for when you read the score vs listen.  or can you just  listen.  or should you always do both?

[pianobabe56]

rachmaninoff_969~ I would appreciate it if you could continue with this! I find this very interesting! I'm seriously considering studying piano at the university level, and I would love to know more in-depth what this would entail!

[dinosaurtales]

Yes please!  I am interested, also!

[pianonut]

i guess i shouldn't have posed the question 'read the score vs. listen' because that is simply a time factor question that i come up against when i have been practicing the piano and it's late at night (and i want to call it quits).  my kids think it's sort of funny in the morning when i get up and don't know what day it is.  that's all i meant by making time to study for 1 or 2 hours versus a quick listen.

in my 18th-19th century class our prof. made it clear that we have to do both.  he stresses listening for 'points of articulation' that mark off units of musical thought in a composition.  so, i am learning to listen for melody changes, harmony changes, texture changes, and sound changes.  this has helped me when i listen: for statement, contrast, repetition, repetition with variation, and development.

in the exposition, as far as i understand (reading reinhart pauly's book) about the classic symphony, they start bringing out themes.  haydn's early symphonies  (starting in 1759 with symphony #1 and ending around 1775 with #26) experiment with the form (using canons and fugues, minuets, etc.)  then #26 La Lamentatione is an experiment with an ancient gregorian melody stated as a cantus firmus by oboe I and violin II.  in this book, it says that hayden (from this point) no longer was composing symphonies purely for social and entertainment reasons.

the storm-and-stress symphonies started with #44 in e minor, the 'mourning symphony.'  the second mov't, it says, has large leaps, syncopations, and a generally restless mood.  #45, the farewell symphony, is explained by haydn's biographer griesinger that it was written "to impress on the prince and his musicians, after a long summer at esterhaza, that they were more than anxious to return to their families at eisenstadt.  here, he followed the third mov't (presto) with a fourth!  the adagio, which ends with each part ending gradually, one by one.  cool! in the performance each player was directed to put away his instrument as soon as he had finished his part, to blow out the candle on his music stand, and to leave, so that at the end only two solitary violinists were left.

anyway, after all this i forgot what my message was about.  oh yes, the exposition.  is it true (as reinhart is saying ) that you only find more of a predictable layout (along the lines of sonata form) in the symphonies from 1780 and after.  he was saying that in the farewell symphony, the new theme doesn't appear until the development section, and then in an unexpected key.  also, it doesn't appear in the recapitulation.  surprises at the ending make haydn's early symphonies, i think, harder to analyze.

[pianonut]

i read, too, in pauly's book that symphony #72 (La Chasse) in 1781 was among the first symphony that haydn wrote that lended itself to a "working out" in the development.  surprisingly, the rhythm is what is used to unify everything.  the rhythm that is emphasized toward the end of the slow introduction 'becomes the basic ingredient of the allegro theme and permeates the movement from beginning to end.'  usually when i analyze, i'm just thinking of harmony, but now am realizing that it is so many things (orchestral color, texture, etc.)

i think pauly says that before haydn, there was more of a bringing out lines of individual instruments.  haydn went further and used all the woodwinds, etc.  and some forms become blended.  ie. sonata and rondo.

am learning, too, that mozart wasn't the only mason.  in haydn's paris symphonies,
#82 through #87 was commissioned by the masonic society Le Concert de la Olympique at about the time haydn became a mason in vienna.  these add chromaticism (first mov't of #82 in the transition from first to second theme).  he had mastered things and became more 'playful.'

ok.  i'm crazy.  here goes more info about the 'oxford symphony.' #92 was composed and performed in oxford on the occasion of haydn's doctorate in 1791.  he shows of "winds only" sections, which color contrasts with the others.  (clarinets appear in five of the last six london symphonies).  in 'oxford' symphony the key of the dominant is established in the ordinary manner, preparing the listener for a second theme; but the first theme returns instead!  'only at the end of the exposition does a new idea occur.'

so many things i once heard and am learning again.  haydn's most popular symphony 'the surprise symphony' famous for it's fortissimo chord (and denied by haydn as use to wake up someone in the audience) used much more orchestral color and brilliance.  another famous symphony "the clock" uses an unsual technique of development occuring before the end of the exposition.  the coda is extensive and amounts to a second development rather than a 'mere concluding passage' that emphasizes a home key.

[bernhard]

This is a most excellent thread. Keep it up!

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[pianonut]

i've learned so much from your threads!  mine are simply quoting my books, as i am learning so much that i didn't really know.

[pianowelsh]

Any other teachers out there?

This is Your chance to say how good things were in your day (or indeed  - please disagree and say its fantastic nowadays). Im really interested to see how conservatory music education has changed over the years. Thanks rachmaninoff for your views. Its really for folks like Dinosuartales etc that I ask because they often don't have much of a clue when it comes to deciding Conservatoire or Uni because the delineation in many ways dosent seem so clear nowadays and its tough on students to comit to 4 or more years study. They ought to know what they are going to get is a good sound education and have the oppertunity to develop high levels of performing expertise but it is so often said that 'although the level of student performances is in many instances rising that student knowledge is frequently lacking'  - why is this ? why should it be? and in what areas have you found this to be true or Not true?

[thomas_williams]

if you are interested in the rest of the first two-weeks of class then just let me know, I'd be glad to continue my description...I just didn't feel that it was necessary.

Yes, please!  I am fascinated by it!

[wintervind]

I this an undergrad class? Can I join!

Hey fellow enthusiast...I'll take a stab at that one.  The most significant difference is most certainly the rather "lax" approach that is taken today.  I feel that professors are too concerned by the possibility of a few students "falling off the cliff."  Homework assignments are never as extensive as they should be, and even when filtered down to simple tasks, they are rarely carried out successfully by any student.

With composition students, the largest problem is that they do not know harmony inside out.  Modern techniques, and complete musical ignorance on behalf of some teachers and "composers" is to blame for this.  With performers, the problem lies in ambition.  Rarely is a student guided properly through the stepping stones of music that are so necessary for a mature musicality in the university years.  Often the "naïve" student attempts works that he/she may be technically prepared for, but not musically. 

Vocalists are a whole other story.  They are notorious for having minimal training, no ear, and limited experience with mediums outside of vocal music.  It is so important that one is immersed in the WORLD of MUSIC...not just music for a particular instrument or a particular composer/period...or anything restrictive like this. 

There are certainly gaps in the student knowledge of today, but also of yesterday.  There are many who enjoy music, but only a select few who truly love it.  When a pianist, composer, or any other musician is able to live with music for it's own sake, and not for the sake of impressing anyone else...well that is a true artist.  The reality is, there are many people who can play any given piece in any repertoire, but very few can play them well.  It is the same with composition.  Many people compose music..."complex" music, with very interesting ideas, but only a select few are able to develop these ideas into clever pieces.  It is not about who can be the most absurd.  The ear must always be the final judge.

Lastly, I would like to address the issue of persistent studying.  Music, unlike most other degrees, is a FULL-TIME study.  It goes on 24 hrs./day, even when you are sleeping.  There is always something new you can listen to, something else you can discover in a certain piece, or something innovative that you can create.  It is so important to always strive to learn more.  No one is ever a "complete" musician.  The largest overall problem in music is, well to be frank, the amount of musical idiots who are allowed into certain programs.  This does have its reasons of course (ie. financial requirements, quota of intn'l and homeland students etc.).  Out of every 5 students I meet, I would say that one is deserving of studying music at the university level.  It is a question of being more strict, and telling those who are not meant to be in music the truth.  It can be put nicely, but it is not fair to allow them to continue in a field that they have no knack for.  Please note the distinction here...I am speaking of requirements to study at the university level...music for personal enjoyment is of course open to all, and I encourage it.

As an example, allow me to give you the following outline for the first two weeks of a class in the history of piano music (Classical to late Romantic) that I am teaching.  There are 3, 2 hour classes per week.

Week # 1

Class #1 - Haydn (bio of life, the keyboard instrument he played on and wrote for, formal analysis of his sonata in e-flat major Hob XVI: 49)

hwk:  Listen to 4 Haydn symphonies of your choice (including at least one of the London symphonies).  Provide a formal outline for the exposition of any movement in sonata form from one of the symphonies and relate the structure to that of the sonata studied in class.  As an introduction to the next class, sight read through the Concerto in C major for piano (WoO ?) for which I provide the score.

Class #2 - Randomly select students (2 at a time...one for the orchestral reduction the other for the solo part...with the music of course) to perform a selected movement from the concerto.  This lasts for about 30 minutes (not everyone will play)...then I play the concerto in full with one of my students playing the reduction and we take apart the piece formally and identify the idiomatic structures used by Haydn (I ask the quesiton: Why is this piece idiomatic for the piano?)  The homework for class two is as follows:

Listen to at least 2 concertos by Haydn (1 early, 1 late) and  compare the formal structures.  Provide a harmonic analysis of an entire concerto of your choice to submit (Haydn doesn't take too long).  This acts as an introduction to the next class in which I discuss voice-leading in the classical era using the students' work as examples.  Not surprisngly, only 20% of the students correctly identify most of the progressions. 

Anyway, I won't bore you with more class material, but this is the idea.  In the second week, usually 20% of the students have dropped the class, and I am left with about 70% who are genuinely interested in learning, and 10% who are interested but just barely hang on.  Out of respect, I do tell the students in the very first class that my courses are intense, very intense, but that they will learn a great deal.  Anyway, I hope these examples and my response help slightly.

- D (McGill University)