Who Gets to Decide Who Plays the Violin?

I recently read a rather heart-rending post on one of the Facebook violin sites about a little girl born with severe muscular problems who wanted to play the violin, but her doctors advised her parents against it saying that to give in to her request would be setting her up for failure.

I am happy to say that this young lady, after years of begging for the opportunity, was finally allowed to start studying the violin and now, many years later, a CD of her playing is about to be released! Not only that, she says that playing the violin greatly improved her impaired muscle coordination and math skills.

Failure?

I would say she has had a resounding success. But this brings us to examine what success and failure mean.

One person’s idea of success can often be another’s idea of failure. For sure, the doctors were thinking about pursuing the study of the violin up to a high level, attending conservatory, etc. How do I know this? Because this has happened to me in my own studio, only it didn’t have the above happy ending.

I once had a student with spina bifida. She is severely disabled, has no feeling from her chest down, can’t move anything except her arms and head or sit up straight without a special chair. Her aunt called me saying that she thought it would be a good idea for this child to have music lessons and to be able to play with other children so she could have at least one activity where she was “normal.” And I agreed. But what instrument??? By process of elimination we finally decided that the violin was the only possibility, even though I would have been very happy to have found another instrument for her – taking on such a student carried a scary amount of responsibility for me. Why?

One guiding principle in my teaching is we must teach our students the habit of success. What is my definition of success? Trying something, no matter how small the task, and succeeding at it. This brings you to attempt another small step and succeed at this, too, thus promoting faith in yourself and the knowledge you can solve difficult problems if you tackle them the right way and in small enough doses. My job as the teacher is to make sure that my student, perhaps with a little hard work and persistence, is capable of whatever I give her to learn so that success is always achieved, even if only in tiny increments. However, I had never taught a child with such severe disabilities and had to hope that my intuition and experience would see me through.

Faith – or Yet Another Reason Why Playing the Violin is Important

Recital time has arrived which always makes me reflect on the difficulties of preparing a student to play in public. There are various phases of mastering and preparing a piece for performance:

1. Learning the notes.
2. Deciding on the fingerings.
3. Solving the technical problems.
4. Learning the bowings.
5. Learning the dynamics.
6. Deciding what the phrases are.
7. Paying attention to thousands of little tiny details not included in this list.
8. Deciding on the interpretation.
9. Putting it all to memory.

That’s it, right? Nope. There is one final ingredient students have to add:

10.  Faith.

That’s right faith. I don’t mean this in a religious sense (although that doesn’t hurt), but faith in themselves and, more importantly, faith in their hands. They have to trust their hands that they have prepared so well. I often tell my students that the body is a donkey – if you prepare it well with good habits, then the donkey will always do the same thing the same way. But you have to trust the donkey – that it will go through the motions and take you where you want to go. So if you have prepared your body and your mind well, then relax and enjoy yourself and let your spirit and the music speak!

The problem is that when students start to have stage fright, thinking that they aren’t capable of performing their recital piece well, they are forgetting that their hands know an awful lot and that the body has a really good memory. We think “ourselves” is only what’s in our mind and emotions. The study of the violin should teach us all that we are composed of three elements that must all work together to make beautiful music: the mind (to learn and to practice) , the soul (for expression) and the body (to actually play the darned thing).

The idea is to take the student’s focus away from “himself,” i.e., what he thinks is himself – that capricious monkey we all have in our heads which can play tricks on us – and put it on something he really can trust: his body memory. If the student has done the same thing the same way 1000 times, then it is probable he will do it the 1001st time the same way as long as he keeps his mind on the music – hearing what he wants to do in his head. Why does he have to keep his mind on the music if his body will do the job for him? Because if a student does not keep his mental attention firmly on the task at hand, a wandering or hyper-critical mind can disrupt the whole process by talking louder than a student’s body memory. It’s synergy – mind, body and soul must work together to make something greater than the sum of its parts.

So faith and trust. Two little words we teachers don’t use enough. Yes, it is part of our job to teach students how to have faith in themselves. And how do you get your student to the point of being able to have faith in his whole self and trust in his preparation besides teaching him to practice? Explanation, explanation and more explanation. What do we explain apart from the obvious technical stuff? That we human beings are complicated and we tend to divide ourselves up (mind, body, soul). One of the few moments that a person is a wholly integrated human being, that is, using all his elements at the same time to the highest level, is when he or she is playing music – especially an instrument as complicated and difficult as the violin.

I often ask my students why they like to play the violin (I differentiate practicing from playing in this question for reasons you can well imagine). They often say don’t know, meaning they can’t put it into words. So then I give them my explanation (having had a lifetime to think about it) about being a whole human being in the moment they are playing. They love it. It makes them feel important, makes them aware that what they are doing is important and that playing the violin must be taken seriously even if they can only practice very little. I also emphasize that music is not only good for the person playing (mental, physical, and spiritual development) but for whoever listens to it, too, which is why we have to be careful how we play and even how we practice. Who knows where those sound waves wind up?

Why We Should Take Children to Concerts, Part 2

Why We Should Take Children To Concerts, Part 1

A few weeks ago, a well-known Russian virtuoso came to town to play a famous violin concerto with a pick-up orchestra. I immediately called all my students and insisted that their parents bring them to the concert. Why, you might ask, is this so important even for children as young as five or six years of age?

1. There is great value in having your children see that someone famous does all the seemingly useless and annoying things that their teachers ask them to do: hold up their violins, elbow underneath, little finger on the stick, use the bow at the frog, watch the conductor and sit up straight (for orchestra players), stand up straight (for soloists), pull the bow straight, etc. It really does save the teacher a lot of hot air – or at least she can say, “If Viktoria, Anne-Sophie, Vadim, Gil, Hilary, Maxim, Shlomo, Sarah, David, Midori, Nigel, (name your virtuoso) are doing what I’m telling you to, then don’t you think you should too?”

2. If your children are fortunate enough to have a teacher who is also a performer, make sure you go to her performances – first to provide moral support, and second so that your children can see that their teacher practices what she preaches which gives more weight to her advice.

3. Attending a performance will reinforce the concert manners they learn in group lessons and recitals. It also teaches respect for other listeners and for the musicians.

4. They learn that musicians are mortals, too. Even the greatest of artists will make mistakes sometimes. Students are often shocked when this happens but it makes them feel more like colleagues, fellow perfection-seekers, rather than worshippers. They also feel a lot better about their own mistakes when playing in public. Seeing how a real pro recovers from a mistake is a most valuable lesson for students – it can change their perspective by teaching them that what’s important is the music, not the mistake: that the performer must keep going and draw as little attention to his mistake as possible to make sure that his public’s attention stays on the music instead of on whatever error he may have just made

Widening the Circle

Children are born egocentric, unaware they are not the center of the universe. But part of growing up means becoming aware of your ego and widening the circle around it: learning to think of others and to put their needs first. It means considering the impact that your actions and words have on the rest of the world and doing what’s right because it’s the right thing to do.

But it also means realizing that being a “nice” person can be the most egocentric act of all. Why? Being a good person and doing good deeds can be very ego-gratifying and even addictive, as any saint could tell you. That’s why saints often call themselves miserable sinners – doing good things gives satisfaction which means there is the horrifying possibility that they do the right things for the wrong reason: self gratification. Now most of us are musicians, not saints, so some amount of job satisfaction is right and necessary. Therefore, if doing the right thing for the music, or trying to anyway, makes us feel good, then that’s surely okay. If we give a wonderful performance, fully concentrating on the music, and afterwards the applause encourages and gratifies us, that’s fine, too. 

Too Smart for Their Own Good

Most of us have heard the comment at one time or another that certain people are “too smart for their own good.” What does this mean? The best definition I have heard* is “high intelligence and low wisdom.” So here is an equation for you:

High intelligence + low wisdom = lack of self-discipline, which is an accurate description of a number of my students. And I have often found that the smarter and more coordinated they are, the lower the wisdom and self discipline. This not only makes teaching them quite challenging, it may also predict future problems for the student. Why?

The reasons a child may have for not wanting to practice the violin are myriad (including low wisdom), but among the “too smart for their own good” set there is an overriding one: because it’s hard – it may in fact be the first thing they have ever tried that is difficult and they don’t have the self-discipline to deal with it. Many students who have had some difficulty at school, such as having had to study a lot to understand mathematics, for example, don’t have much trouble applying themselves to practicing an instrument because they are used to dealing with problems and working hard to overcome them. They also have a realistic idea of their own abilities. The intellectually gifted students, however, present quite another story. Yes, they may study a lot, but it’s mostly “busy work” for them. They do not have to struggle to understand and complete their homework. They are used to things being easy. So what happens sometimes when they confront the difficulties of learning to play a musical instrument? They discover something that is hard for them and

Knowing What You Want (my secret weapon) and Keeping It All in Balance

Years ago I interviewed Emmanuel Hurwitz who had been first violin of the Aeolian Quartet and was also a well-known teacher. He told me something I found shocking at the time. Once, when he was playing as a soloist with an orchestra in England, the concertmaster remarked to him in reference to his musical interpretation: “You’re lucky, Manny – you know what you want.” Hurwitz told me that he remembered thinking, surprised: “Doesn’t everybody?” He then had the horrible realization that many people, musicians included, do NOT know what they want when playing or otherwise.

Slow Progress: Finding Balance, part 4

When a student is not going as fast as you, the teacher, would like, or as fast as you think he may be capable of, you might say he is making “slow progress.” But notice that this definition is centered around what you want and what you think. In other words, your frustration or fulfillment as a teacher. The important thing to remember, therefore, is that any qualifying adjective you choose to describe your student’s progress – slow, fast, not enough, poor –  is strictly your opinion. In my experience, there is only one absolute, which is NO progress at all. That’s pretty easy for anyone to see, any other modifier being a matter of interpretation. Of course, parents pay you good money to make sure their child does progress, but being happy or unhappy with the results depends on everyone’s expectations.

So let’s say that you are doing your best to stimulate your students to practice and still not “enough” is getting done. This brings me to a really important misconception that students, their parents and their teachers often have, which can wind up truncating our students’ music education:

How fast a child progresses on the instrument signifies how much talent she has and whether or not it is worth continuing.

Finding Balance, part 3: Teamwork

What do sports programs offer students that we music teachers usually do not?

A team.

One reason that students put music practice in last place among their daily assignments is that they see playing music as a solitary endeavor. Traditionally, this is true. A student practices and plays alone for many years before he is eligible to participate in an orchestra and start having some fun. Always being alone with an instrument can be demotivating for a child, however. He just doesn’t understand what all the practicing is for. What’s the remedy?

GROUP CLASSES + PERFORMANCES = TEAMWORK  = PRACTICING = EVERYONE HAPPY

This is where we music teachers can slug it out with sports programs  – by making music into a “team sport” which offers the camaraderie and fellowship of teamwork that young people love, but doing performances instead of competitive games.

But aren’t there local school and regional orchestras that take care of this?