Social Learning: Now More Relevant than Ever

After ten years of conducting an experiment using social learning techniques to teach piano to young learners I am astonished to realize that their learning has been modeled on two distinct areas::

The first is listening.  I, the teacher, furnish the model for listening.  They know that I really pay attention to what they play and value their instinctual responses to music, whether manifest in right notes or wrong.

The second is motivation which they, the students, model for one another in a way that I never could without making assumptions I find inappropriate--more about that in another post.   Listening for them seems to entail the in-depth perception of the drive that motivates each student to play as they do.  This is music making at an intensely personal level.

Striking is that the students never repeat themselves: They do not want or attempt to play a given piece the same way on two different occasions.

Also, that they trust one another to perform at their very best.  No judgment is involved, so why not? 

They surpass their own capacity over and over again.

Schubert and Rossini

I enjoyed the Mannes Opera's wonderful production of Rossini's La Scala de Setta  just one day after reading how much Schubert admired Rossini--a connection I would not otherwise have made.  In the Rossini there is a magnificent drunken scene in which the servant, Germano, holds forth at length about how smart he is, leaving the audience to substitute for the word "smart" the more apt word "drunk," as inferred not just from the bottle from which he repeatedly swigs, but even more explicitly from his nonsensical coloratura singing.  Displaced accents, unresolved harmonies, abrupt switches of direction are the giveaways.  When coupled with the text it functions as a lesson in the technical skill required to render total inebriation.

Schubert;s delight in drunken music is explicit in some pieces, especially the four-hand piece Notre amitie est invariable, which veritably hiccups.  But there are traces of it in many of his works.  

Music and Social Learning Theory

I recently found out about social learning theory as expounded by Albert Bandura at Stanford University.  It offers a psychologist's view of the approach to teaching at which I have arrived after decades of experimentation.  The essence of it (in my words, of course) is that we learn by modeling.  When there is no leveling according to age or skills each individual within group of learners will pick up characteristics from the others, usually at a depth that far exceeds superficial skills.  In my class, which ranges from a blind autistic individual to some superior intellects, the students apparently respond to one another's motivation.  The integrity of the learning is extraordinary as each student surpasses his or her own expectations.

Bandura does not address music in his study.  The essential skill that I as teacher model is not playing so much as listening.  As I listen intently to each student, so they learn to listen intently to one another and to themselves, from many musician's standpoint, the hardest skill to learn. As for the musical standard, it is set by the composers, who seem to be included in our community of human openness.

Never have I seen young people go so far with their ability to comprehend works of the masters.   

My Moderato Instincts Backed Up

Reading Albert Einstein's exhaustive study of the life and works of Schubert I was interested to find a sentence in which he points out that Beethoven never used the term 'moderato.'   He goes on to say: "The lyrical quality--that's the answer." 

What's so Great About Print?

In a compelling interview a mime was holding forth on the virtues of wordless communication, maintaining that words are simply not up to the complexity of human emotion and the subtleties of intended meaning.

It got me thinking about the parallels between words and music notation.  Unfortunately the notation is, in too many instances, taken for the thing itself.  But sound cannot be written down. 

When we learn to read music does anyone ever introduce the notion that the sound might be other than the expectation of the sound, or are we left to puzzle out on our own the non sequitors that may reveal the most meaningful aspects of a composition? 

Really Reading Music

A brilliant student who did not learn to read music easily, though she read books voraciously, proved both to herself and to me that she not only read but really read music when she balked at playing a cadence because, she said, "It won't sound good."

I can think of no more convincing demonstration that reading music is a matter of dealing with expected sound rather than with the mechanics of producing a neutral noise which then awaits transformation into music.

She was right, by the way, in finding that the chords in question would not sound good.  A cadence in 3/4 time, they were a hemiola, i.e., two consecutive measures with strong chords every second, rather than every third beat.  This shift in accent radically changes the sound.

As a teenager obliged to accompany annual high school Messiah performances I was convinced that Handel did not know how to compose because, with the hemiolas improperly performed, many cadences felt hopelessly unresolved.

Music and the Vernacular

By chance I tuned in a live radio broadcast of a Carnegie Hall event the other evening.  Clearly a fine ensemble, the orchestra was playing music that raised the question "why?"    Trying to figure out the "who" on the assumption that the two would turn out to be intertwined, I listened on to the end. 

Sure enough.  It was the Simon Bolivar Orchestra of Venezuela, comprised of musicians now in their late 20's, all products of El Sistema, Venezuela's famous music program for public school children, conducted by their friend and fellow Sistema graduate, the extremely gifted Gustav Dudamel.  I stayed on for the second half of the program, fascinated.  The music, mostly by Mexican composers, was admirably chosen, especially as it featured a large (11!) percussion section, who got to strut their stuff big time.

I know that people are trying to organize a program for American children, modeled on El Sistema.  I attended an event over the weekend showcasing some local children and was delighted and moved by them and by their families.  Needless to say, I love what music does to all of us.

But I wonder whether the well-meaning souls who are working so hard to get this together here in the US of A will have the good sense to start the children with our music, with their music; to avoid the all--too-common insecurity of American music teachers who feel obliged to start, not just with Europe, but with Europe of the 18th century, as if that alone defined music.

Many, many contemporary American composers have produced wonderful material that addresses that very problem very effectively.