Mendelssohn and Mozart

I have a lot of favorite composers.  It was really hard to choose just two to look at today.  But I managed, at least until I start thinking of more.  First, I'll analyze Mendelssohn's "Reformation" Symphony, his fifth:

I am forever in awe of the way Mendelssohn is able to combine instruments to make such beautiful, amazing harmonies.  His work is intricate, but the melodies are simple enough that we feel at ease listening to them.  I think I can learn a lot from Mendelssohn to use in my teaching.  The way Mendelssohn goes back and forth can be compared to using different teaching techniques.  If you're always teaching the same way, not only are you boring, but you are likely missing a lot of your students.  Not every student learns the same way, so we need to use different approaches to allow all students to learn.  This also helps students learn better, and makes things more interesting.

A good teacher can also weave a beautiful story, much like Mendelssohn's symphony.  When done well, this story pulls the students through the lesson, and they can't help but learn.

Next, I'd like to look at something by Mozart.  Here's his Concerto #3 in G, K. 216, mvt 3: Rondeau, performed by Itzhak Perlman with the Weiner Philharmoniker:

(blogger would not let me upload a second video, so here it is on youtube.)

What I love about Mozart is the simplicity, transparency, and clarity of his pieces.  Sure there's some hard music, but it's very playable because it is also so predictable.  Mozart follows very closely the "correct" chord progression of I-IV-V(7)-I, so as you are playing, you know what is coming.  This also makes it very pleasing to listen to.

I can learn from this with my teaching, too.  If I present clear, simple lessons, they will be easier to understand.  Oftentimes we get so caught up in everything we want our students to learn, that we make our lessons far too complex.  While these may be really cool, the details tend to get lost and contribute to our students' confusion.  However, if I take a page from Mozart's book and teach simple, transparent lessons, they will have better understanding.

Music Project

Just in case it doesn't work on Facebook, here is my Music Project:

It's also up here.

Music

For my project for this unit, I analyzed some bits of Barber's Adagio for Strings.  However, the song is over 7 1/2 minutes long, and I was only able to play less than half that.  The entire piece is totally amazing, so I thought I'd analyze the entire thing here.

(If that is not viewable, it is also up here.)

So, how does this relate to teaching?  Other than the obvious (me being a music teacher and all)?  I think it tells us that we can find a story in anything; indeed, many different stories.  We need to help our students look beneath the surface to find these stories.  For example, I presented two different stories for the Adagio.  If I were to ask my students what they heard in this piece, they would likely respond with something like "a lot of really hard notes that are played really slowly, with some super high notes."  If they saw the music, they would describe it something like, "a hard piece with a lot of flats."  They need assistance to see beneath the surface and discover a story in a piece.

This also shows us how many different things go into creating a compelling experience.  There are TONS of elements here that contributed, and everyone will interpret every experience a little differently.  It relates to our own experiences and education.  So what may be very compelling to one person, perhaps is not compelling to another at all.  Or it might still be compelling, but perhaps for different reasons, or compelling in a different way.

Work of Art Project

I'm still struggling with how, exactly, to complete this project.  I'll definitely be playing Bach's Partita #2, but what about the commentary?  I'm supposed to be exploring what makes a piece more or less compelling.  I know how to do this, but I still need to figure out how this affects the experience for the audience.

It's not so much a matter of I don't know what the audience is experiencing.  I do.  I've experienced several performances, the good, the bad, the ugly, the really fabulous, and everything in between.  It's a matter of articulating what I'm feeling.

How exactly does adding dynamics and phrasing effect the experience?  Or adding different bowings and bow techniques?  What exactly am I changing to create a different experience?  One of the problems of doing something for a long time, is that it stops being part of your conscious thought, and becomes much more automatic.

However, on the other side, I am a music teacher.  I should be able to articulate these thoughts, in order to teach my students about them.  Having thought about it some, I'm still not sure what I'm going to end up saying, but I know it will help me be a better teacher.

I think, in reality, I'm going to end up having to do all my recording before the storyboard is due.  I will need to actually experience it in order to figure out how these different elements affect the experience.

Diverse Interpretations

Last week, I came home to a missing duck.  I couldn't find her anywhere.  In the morning, when I went to let out my birds, I found her . . . carcass is the only word for it.  She'd been quite thoroughly eaten.  There were feathers everywhere.

I should mention here that I live in a rural area.  I knew, when getting ducks and chickens, that I would lose some.  Just 2 years ago, I lost over 10 birds - I have one bird left that survived that year.  So while I might seem terribly uncaring about it all, I went into this whole thing with the mindset that wild animals would occasionally eat my birds.  But it's still hard.

I was pretty sleep deprived that day, so my reactions were a bit dulled.  I moved her body out of the pen, let out the remaining chickens and ducks, and went inside.  Then I looked at the camera system.

A couple years ago, we had some kids come by when we weren't home and shoot our ducklings.  We of course couldn't prove it was them, but we're pretty sure.  So a couple months ago my totally awesome husband installed a camera system around the house, so if something like that happens again, we can catch it on video tape and actually do something about it.

So anyway, I went into the camera system to see if I could find out what had happened to my bird.  It took a couple tries, but I finally loaded up the pertinent screens.  And sat back to watch.  Even on 8x acceleration (which is as fast as our playback goes), an entire day takes a LONG time, so I very quickly started jumping randomly around.  I wasn't even positive my duck's demise would be caught on camera, as they don't cover our entire yard.  But, right about 4:30, I saw it.

On the right hand edge of the screen sat a bald eagle.  Right in my pasture.  Eating.  While details couldn't be seen, I'm pretty certain our resident bald eagle that lives across the street was indeed the culprit.

On the one hand, I'm upset to lose my duck.  She wasn't a favorite duck, I couldn't even tell her apart from her sisters, but she was my duck.  She rather regularly laid an egg a day.  But more than that, she was my animal, my responsibility, and I take keeping my animals safe very seriously.  However, it is nice to now know what happened to my animal, whereas before I'd find a dead/eaten bird, or just never find it, and never know exactly what happened.

On the other hand, I had a bald eagle sitting in my front yard!!  Now, I've worked with these birds quite a bit, doing rehab work, and I'm not nearly as enthralled with them as most people.  But still, a bald eagle!  Was sitting in my front yard!  Eating my duck.  Not so exciting.

Next summer, when I move my teaching studio to my house, that probably will not happen, as I'll have students coming and going the entire day.  And if it does happen, a couple of my students will probably get to hear some rather colorful language as I run off whatever predator.

But what does this teach me about teaching?  This was a pretty horrific event, but even I had different interpretations of it.  I need to remember that every student is going to have some different interpretations.  I'm sure some of the things I said about this event seem pretty off to you - you might have a completely different reaction.  Similarly, when I'm teaching a student a new piece, or even reviewing an old piece, playing a scale or exercise, whatever, I need to remember they may take away something different, and that's okay.  However, if I want them to learn something specific, like say, from a scale, I need to tell them about it.  But when it comes to their pieces, their music is their own, and their interpretation is right for them.

Work of Art

Initially, my thought for this project was to feature the orchestra I play with.  There is so much that goes into the work of art that is orchestral playing.  It starts with the composer.  Every composer makes numerous decisions about how they want their piece to sound.  Form, chord progressions, instrumentation, dynamics, accents, the list goes on and on.  Then the conductor gets his or her say.  They, ultimately, decide the tempo (composers often indicate a tempo, but the conductor really gets the final say), ask the musicians to play in certain ways, with certain styles, some get all the way to what part of the bow to use or what string to play on.

Then there are the musicians.  Each musician is constantly making decisions that affect the whole work, and all these decisions come together to help create the final product.

I thought, this would be great.  I could film some of our rehearsals, with Dr. Falskow, the conductor, making decisions and changes, I could film the final performance, could interview Dr. Falskow as well as several of the musicians.  However, as I got down to the end of the assignment, there was a major bug in this plan.  The project is due April 15.  We just had a performance, and are now beginning a month-long break, and we won't get back together again until early April, with our next performance in mid-May.  So, that wouldn't work.

Instead, I'll take a look at a solo work.  Bach wrote six sonatas and six partitas for unaccompanied violin.  These will be much easier from a practical standpoint, and also much simpler to explore.  That's not to say they're simple; not at all.  However, with only one instrument, there's only a couple hundred different little details to look at rather than thousands.  I can also include a clip of a professional playing the piece, which will assist in showing the difference between an "ordinary" performance and a "compelling" one.