William Porter - Improvisation: Four Modal Variations on Salve Regina: II (Scherzo)
This week has been my first foray into remote teaching. I have never really had the need for it as a teacher and I have always been more than eager to travel wherever necessary for a coaching for myself. I also believe there is irreplaceable value in face-to-face connection and communication of ideas and inspiration – after all, that’s part of what music is all about. My students all live in Ohio except for one in New York. There are a few that would have been close enough to the conservatory to have remote lessons there, but our Stay at Home Order nixed that plan pretty quickly. I’ve had a lot of discussions with colleagues around the country about how and what we will teach and what to do if our students do not have access to an organ or harpsichord.
There was a lot of discussion within faculty about how to go about this, including a lot of emails back and forth to students about the availability of instruments once they were off campus. One thing I was clear about early on is that the piano cannot be a substitute for an organ or harpsichord and that I would not “coach” repertoire on the piano. There is, of course, a lot of excellent work that can be done on a piano – learning notes, alternate practice techniques, singing while playing parts, harmonic analysis, etc., but for beginning students especially, the whole point is for them to get used to a new environment for music making. They have to learn to speak a different language in order to create good sound on a pipe organ. Returning to the piano will only reinforce their piano instincts as opposed to encouraging new instincts for the organ. This is less of a problem for organ majors, who routinely use the piano as a tool (sorry, pianists) in learning repertoire and becoming more acquainted with their music.
So, what to do? For remote instruction, the instrument itself is a problem. I’ve had a few lessons with pipe organs using Zoom this week before the Stay at Home Order was placed, and the result was a limited ability to be completely engaged with the student and their work. Unless the student has a high quality microphone, the spectrum of sound coming from the organ quickly overwhelms whatever device or app they are using and distorts the sound, even on a simple 8’stop. It is impossible to hear the refinement of articulation. You cannot sense how sound moves through the room, and therefore cannot address it with the student. If the camera set up to see both hands and feet, it is too far away to focus on the smaller movements of the hands and fingers. You cannot reposition their hands and feet or truly demonstrate certain techniques and sounds by example – well, I can’t because I’m teaching from a harpsichord. Most importantly, it is nearly impossible to see the subtle nuances of their posture, hand and leg positions, and their physical breath as they play. All these things are critical to guiding and crafting a complete organist from head to toe.
All this being said, this is a great time to focus on something that students SHOULD be doing all the time but aren’t doing enough of – listening and score study. Most of my assignments this week revolve around listening to specific recordings and comparing them to each other and to the students’ own performances. They are not listening to see who plays better, but are listening for interpretive ideas, use of the instrument, use of the room, style, etc. This is also an excellent opportunity to continue to expose them to landmark and historic instruments that are not readily at our fingertips. I am very particular about which recordings/videos I pass on, as I want to keep excellent playing and excellent sound in front of them at all times so that it becomes the norm. These are not writing assignments, as I also want to reinforce the idea that musicians should be able to speak about music clearly, intelligently, and with some personal connection to their own imagination. They must be able to express their ideas to another person in a way that can be understood. I am also addressing the fact that too many of my students really don’t have a process to study a score very well, so we can easily peruse scores together via Zoom and start creating a structure they can build on for the rest of their careers.
I’m not sure how this will develop over the next several weeks. Our school has moved to online teaching throughout the rest of this semester and into the first summer semester, so I will not be face to face with a student again for probably 3 months. Recitals have been indefinitely postponed and exciting plans for summer music festivals are in danger of cancellation – but the work must go on. I know that one of the most important things I can do for my students is to model the behavior I wish for them to have. It’s not a model of perfection, but a model of a work in progress of an artistic and professional life that makes this life as an artist real to them, even in extraordinary times. I need to continue practicing and creating some sort of artistic structure and opportunities for myself during this time so that I can continue to grow and share with the students some of the strategies that work for me and the ones that don’t. Students need to be surrounded by examples of professionals in the craft of music making. They need to imagine how they might wish to craft their own life and learn to recover from the mistakes they make. The everyday immersion into music has been taken away from them and it is possible that we, their teachers, are all they may see of it for a few hours every week. Perhaps those few hours of modified normalcy are the respite we all need in this extraordinary time.