Chapter XIII: The Teaching of the Piano

It is impossible, within the limits of a chapter, to do more than dwell on a few practical points connected with the teaching and organization of this work in a school. As was said in the preceding chapter, the ideal for all young children who are about to learn the piano is that they should first go through a short course of ear-training. If this be done, the progress in the first year's work will be about three times what it would otherwise be. If the ear-training be done along the lines suggested in earlier chapters, the child will have been taught to sing easy melodies at sight, she will have approached the question of time by means of the French time names, she will have learned to beat time with the proper conductor's beat, to find notes on the piano, and, what is more important, to know these notes by sound, in relation to fixed notes.

In this way some of the processes which a child goes through in beginning to learn the piano are taken one at a time, in company with other children, and are therefore not hurried.

When the time has come to begin the piano, the child should join a _class_ for this for one year. Such a class should not exceed six in number. During this time she will add to her knowledge the first principles of fingering, will play easy exercises for fingers, wrist, &c., and will learn a few easy pieces and duets.

From the very first she will be taught to analyse a piece before she begins to play it--she will find out the key, time, cadences, sequences, passages of imitation, modulations, &c. If the melody be within the range of the child's voice she will then sing it, beating time as she does so. After these preliminaries it is only a question of technique to learn to play it. The last stage will consist in learning the piece by heart. The day has long gone by when it was considered a sign of exceptional musical gift to be able to do this. All experienced teachers know that, provided a child is having its ear trained by some such method as that suggested above, it can learn a piece of music by heart almost entirely away from the piano. That is to say, instead of the wearisome repetitions which were formerly necessary before a piece could be played by heart, it is possible, directly the technique is mastered, and in many cases before this is done, to learn the piece away from the piano. The benefit of this is obvious, and the nerves, both of the player and of the unwilling listeners, are the gainers.

A little thought will show that it should be no more difficult for average children to learn a piece of music by heart in this way, than for them to learn a piece of prose or poetry by heart. The initial steps are exactly the same--the language has to be known, and it is then a question of memory, and memory alone. Who would think of learning poetry by heart by the process of repeating it aloud a hundred or more times? Yet this is what was formerly done in the case of music.

Sixty years ago no girl was considered educated who could not play the piano a little. Since then a reaction has begun to set in. The standard of playing has gone up to such a degree that parents are often heard to say that their child is not musical enough for it to be worth while to teach it an instrument. This is a pity. Music is used so much in our daily life that we cannot do without our 'average performers'. The soldier marches best to a tune, the sailor heaves his anchor to a song, the ritual of all forms of religion needs the aid of music; we need it, not only in the pageantry of our processions, but in the solemn crises of life and death. For these purposes artists of the first rank are not necessary.

Every child, however apparently unmusical, should be given its chance, at any rate up to the age of twelve years. During this time, the stress should be placed, for the unmusical child, not so much on perfection of technique, but on the ability of playing easy pieces really well, and to read at sight such things as duets, song accompaniments, &c.

If, in addition, the children have joined an ear-training class, they will, at any rate, be intelligent listeners for the rest of their lives to other people's playing.

For all children, sight reading should form part, not only of every lesson, but of every day's practice. Many books for sight reading have been published, well graded, some of them beginning with little pieces in the treble clef only, and going on to advanced tests. The following are a few, selected from many other excellent ones:

Schäfer (3 vols., published by Augener).

Hilliard (5 vols., published by Weekes).

Somervell (2 vols., published by Augener and Weekes respectively).

Taylor (1 vol., published by Bosworth).

As a child will need more than one such book in the course of her study, and as she cannot play the same test twice, a plan has been made in some schools for the music to be sold second-hand from one pupil to another, through the medium of a mistress, in the same way in which ordinary school books are sometimes passed on. This reduces the expense of constantly having to buy new books for sight reading. Another plan is to establish a lending library, each child to pay 2_d._ or 3_d._ a term.

In the teaching of 'pieces' music mistresses should bear in mind that children must, from time to time, revise those which they have finished. Nothing is more irritating to a parent than to be told by a child that it has 'nothing to play' to a visitor. The mistress who is anxious to get a pupil on as quickly as possible often overlooks this point, and an entirely wrong impression is given of the child's progress to the parent.

We now come to the vexed question of the interpretation of music by children. An interesting point can be noted about the practice of the early classical composers. They were accustomed to give the minimum amount of indication as to tempo and general detail for the performance of their works.

And to what conclusion does this lead us? Surely this--that these giants in music recognized the necessity for every performer of their works to express _themselves_ through the music, subject to the broad conditions laid down by the composer. As Hegel said: 'Music is the most subjective of all arts.' And is it not true that it is this constant necessity for personal interpretation, so strongly felt by the majority of artists, which gives the permanent interest to music?

We say, 'by the majority of artists', for now and then we meet an artist who seems to have strayed from the path of beauty, and who is devoting his energies to an ascetic determination to keep alive one particular interpretation of a composer's work, or works; who dictates these interpretations to his pupils, and who talks of other artists who feel the bounden duty of self-expression through the said works as 'outsiders', and 'not in the cult'. Such musicians do not appear to see that such an attitude is 'idolatry' pure and simple. They have not pondered the well-known anecdote of Brahms, who, when asked by a singer whether his interpretation of one of his songs was 'the right one', answered: 'It is one of the many hundred possible interpretations.'

A word must now be said on the organization of instrumental work in the school. It is important that this should be in the hands of one person, who will not only keep a supervising eye on questions of method, choice of music, lengths of lessons and practising, &c., but who will evolve some means of testing the progress of the pupils every term, in the same way in which their progress is tested in other subjects. The progress of the individual pupil should not be a secret between herself and her particular mistress!

It is a good plan to arrange a short recital every term in a school, at which from twenty to twenty-five pupils should play at a time. Such recitals should not exceed more than 1-1/4 hours in length. Nothing is more wearisome to the outsider than to listen to amateur performances which stretch out to two and sometimes to three hours' length. If the above plan be adopted, no child will be able to play more than one short piece. A mistress who is ambitious for the success of a few specially gifted pupils will sometimes suggest that a recital shall consist of the performance of two or three of these only, and that each pupil should play more than once.

Such suggestions should be frowned at.

What we want, if we have an educational end in view, is not so much to give the few musical children in a school the opportunity of gaining experience in playing in public, and indirectly of showing their progress to an admiring audience, but we want to give every music pupil in turn the same opportunity.

All children need experience before they can play to others in such a way that they not only do themselves justice, but give pleasure to their listeners.

Pieces played at such recitals should invariably be by heart. The nervous pupil may possibly break down at her first appearance, but she will be quickly succeeded by a more confident player, the little victim of 'nerves' will be soon forgotten, and the experience gained in this way is invaluable.

Before a recital a rehearsal should be held in the same room in which the recital is to take place. Few people seem to realize the immense difference made to children by a change of environment at such a time. The pupil who will play her piece on the piano without one mistake to her mistress, and in the room to which she is used, will often be troubled at playing it on another piano, and in another room.

A child was once known to break down in an evening recital, and when asked the reason, said: 'I have never played that piece before with a candle near me, and I didn't like the shadows on the piano.'

This sort of remark gives a real insight into the child mind.

Another small point may be mentioned. In the lessons just before a recital the mistress should go to the end of the room in which the lesson is given, while the child is playing her recital piece, in order that her supporting presence near the child may not be missed at the recital.

The recital will probably be followed by some form of reception by the school authorities of the parents of the pupils. No teacher should miss this opportunity of getting to know the parents of her pupils. A friendly talk over the progress, or lack of progress of a child will often result in sympathetic help being given at home, and, in any case, the teacher will probably learn something about the character and home environment of the child which will help her in her work.

Partly owing to lack of time, and partly because some pieces will not be ready, a certain number of children will not be able to play at the school recital. Such children should be gathered together at the end of the term, and should play to the mistress who organizes the work. In this way they too will gain experience, and a little focus will have been made for their work.

We must add one final suggestion. Each music mistress should keep a register, in which she notes not only the names of her pupils, the times of their lessons, absences, late arrivals, &c., but an exact list of all the work done by them, with dates. This is invaluable, not only for gauging their progress, but as a means of quickly ascertaining their work in musical literature. It is, alas! a day of examinations, and with the many little books of studies and pieces which have to be got up for outside examinations there is a serious fear of the systematic education of a child in classical musical literature being interrupted, or, at any rate, put on one side for a time. Such a book makes it possible for the mistress to keep a definite scheme of work in view for each pupil, and the busier the mistress, the more she will need some such aid to her memory.

The pupil should also keep a register, in which she notes the exact amount of time spent daily in practising, and the way in which she divides it. This book should be brought to each music lesson, and should also be shown to the supervising mistress at the end of each term.