Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales
A Radical Manifesto for Piano Education
According to Plato, “life must be lived as play”.
How might this attitude to life benefit piano education?
We teach others to play the piano, but what do we really mean by play?
Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales
Originally published in 2002, A Common Approach is perhaps the ultimate instrumental music teaching manual. It offers a complete curriculum, accompanied by extensive lesson activities for most instruments, with specific schemes of work for piano and electronic keyboard.
Now it has just been fully revamped and made available as an updated, free online resource to support instrumental teachers everywhere. Whether working privately or in a school, all piano and keyboard teachers would do well to have a look at this extensive and superb material.
According to its publishers Music Mark,
“A Common Approach is an online resource to support music educators in their teaching practice and help develop a holistic approach to music education. Relevant to all vocal and instrumental teaching, including individual, small-group, large-group and whole-class lessons, music educators at all stages of their career can use the support and shared learning found in A Common Approach.”
Music Mark Chief Executive Bridget Whyte tells us,
“Twenty years after the original version of A Common Approach was published, Music Mark has worked with a skilled team of music tutors from across the UK to update and enhance this valuable teaching tool. Containing both universal guidance and instrument-specific content, this online resource not only provides a great starting point for trainee and early-career tutors, but also gives those who are more experienced the opportunity to reflect on their practice.”
This has particular interest to me because back in 2002, I was a member of the national steering group who put together the original version of A Common Approach which provides the ongoing foundation of this update.
It’s therefore time both to take a short stroll down memory lane, and to consider how the updated version of this milestone resource can help piano teachers today…
Continue reading A Common Approach 2022Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales
The French composer and teacher Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979) notably taught several of the most distinguished musicians of the 20th century, including Aaron Copland, Quincy Jones, Dinu Lipatti, Igor Markevitch, Daniel Barenboim, Philip Glass and Astor Piazzolla.
Recalling the first introduction to Boulanger, the Argentine musician Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) wrote:
“…When I met her, I showed her my kilos of symphonies and sonatas. She started to read them and suddenly came out with a horrible sentence: “It’s very well written” … After a long while she said: “Here you are like Stravinsky, like Bartók, like Ravel, but you know what happens? I can’t find Piazzolla in this.”
And she began to investigate my private life: what I did, what I did and did not play, if I was single, married or living with someone, she was like an FBI agent! And I was very ashamed to tell her I was a tango musician. She kept asking: “You say you are not a pianist. What instrument do you play then?” And I didn’t want to tell her that I was a bandoneón player…Finally, I confessed and she asked me to play some bars of a tango of my own. She suddenly opened her eyes, took my hand and told me: “You idiot, that’s Piazzolla!” And I took all the music I composed, ten years of my life, and sent it to hell in two seconds…”
Piazzolla is, today, remembered as one of the great icons of 20th century music – the creator of a new style called tango nuevo which drew on jazz, fusion and classical influences as well as the traditions of the Argentinian tango that he grew up playing.
At his death in 1992 Piazzolla had composed more than 3,000 works, and his music has been embraced the world over. And as well as his many recordings and film scores, classical musicians such as Martha Argerich have brought his music into the ongoing classical concert repertoire.
And though his music has met with a certain resistance from all quarters, including most vociferously in his own homeland during his lifetime, Piazzolla’s individual musical voice has spoken, and has become part of our heritage.
The advice of teacher Nadia Boulanger set Astor Piazzolla on a course that would allow him to be creative by being himself, and developing his unique personal expression.
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Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales
Educators often debate the relative merits of aural-based learning versus a notation-driven approach. Seeing the topic wheeled out for discussion again recently, I was reminded of a brilliant quote by legendary concert pianist Andor Földes, from his book Keys to the Keyboard written in 1950 :
“There is no such thing as a proper age for a child to start playing the piano. I avoid saying ‘to start his musical education’ because I believe that an education in music should start very early, perhaps years before the child ever actually learns how to read notes, or can find his way among the black and white keys.”
Földes’ basic point, made some four decades before George Odam’s seminal book The Sounding Symbol (1995) re-popularised the phrase “sound before symbol”, is that music is essentially an aural language, and that playing and reading must build on that foundation.
Continue reading Sound before symbol: lessons from history
