My Manifesto on Teaching and Learning

To produce independently functioning musicians, the teacher must trust the individual student and demonstrate faith in his or her developing artistry and musical imagination. Above all, the teacher must guide students toward the highest possible level of awareness regarding the sound they actually produce. If patiently nurtured and cultivated, such self-awareness will gradually replace the need for imitation and correction.

A fundamental question needs to be raised: how does the student come to know what he wants and what he is to aim for in his practice?

Teaching, I believe, involves two essential activities, that of feeding in information and that of drawing out qualities and results. The ratio between these two aspects of the teacher’s art depends on the stage of development and the maturity of the student.

In the early stages there is much necessary input of information, but in the later stages the imposition of ideas can lead to a frightening dependency of the student on the teacher. A quick fix now may improve a passage instantly but, by providing it, the teacher may equally have denied the student the chance of reaching his or her own valid conclusions. Drawing out is a longer, more painstaking process and demands more patience on the part of both teacher and student, but ultimately it can be of more benefit to the student.

The teacher’s role at an advanced level is to reveal to the student his or her natural musicality and to help exploit and extract that which is already within. Pointing out short cuts to the solving of a problem may not be helpful to the student in the long run, and I have even seen it misused as a weapon merely to shore up the authority of the teacher and to confirm the status of the student as a vessel into which the teacher’s knowledge, insight and experience is to be poured. As Cicero wrote, “The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn,” words quoted by Montaigne in ‘Of the education of children.’ (1579)

Once I have heard a student play, I firstly need to be sure that what I am hearing is as accurate a representation of his or her musical intention as is currently possible. Only when we have reached the point at which I can no longer coax the student into improving through his or her own awareness and self-correction do I allow myself to intervene with specific points of advice. The work of the teacher as a provider of answers, ideas and solutions thus begins once the work of the pupil has reached an impasse.

Rather than merely pointing out details (inaudible short notes, unwanted accents, illogical phrasing etc.) I prefer to nurture a level of awareness that will allow the student to correct such faults without my having to point them out.  The student, of course, needs guidance, but I am constantly delighted to observe how much of what I may be tempted to impose on students is obvious to them because of their innate musicality, intelligence and taste: they simply need to be guided towards that which they already know. Leading a student towards awareness of a specific issue or fault previously unnoticed is a process more valuable, I believe, than the mere eradication of the symptoms of this lack of awareness. 

 Often, my imitating the student, instead of the other way round, is enough to draw his or her attention to details of this kind. Such imitation, if done with kindness and humour, has more benefit than verbal correction because it heightens awareness and teaches the student to hear: the teacher is, in this context, little more than another pair of ears!