Yesterday was Monday. At 8.30 am Skype hoodled and V appeared on the computer screen with another singing lesson. I’m well into my fifth year and the telescope is now reversed: once it was broad structures, these days fine detail.
I deliberately upped V’s fee at the beginning of The Plague when her other students were losing their jobs and unable to continue. Subtly she has lengthened my nominal hour, sometimes to ninety minutes. I threatened to up the fee again and we both laughed.
Often we discuss music teaching in general. How discouraging is it for her when a problem arises and – for a time – I am unable to grasp her solution? I’d noticed she often varies her approach several times when this happens. This turned out to be fundamental. If she exhausts all her approaches she tells the student – kindly, I’m sure – she can do no more.
I have a long-standing problem which is still in the balance: singing duets, my most profound desire. The idea of being “ploughed” doesn’t bear thinking about. Especially during The Plague. But V has let me indirectly know my zest for learning seems undiminished, and she approves of the work I do on my own.
The teacher/student relationship is both intense and remote. Over the years I’ve picked up odd details, especially about V's daughters, but this is one area where my journalistic curiosity is put on hold. On the other hand I’m required to inspect the shape of her mouth and even the position of her tongue when we’re dealing with tricky vowel sounds. What I can say she is infinitely patient and can also work magic. I outline a difficulty and inevitably her recommendation involves something I’d never considered.
Learning is personality as well as facts.
You are fortunate to have found an excellent teacher, a true professional. Many people think they can teach, but sadly it isn't always the case, even when they are very enthusiastic about their subject.
ReplyDeleteGarden: I owe V a lot, not just for the quality of her teaching, but for the way she introduced me to the process of learning at my very first lesson. I covered this in the book I wrote about my first eighteen months as a student:
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Chapter 1. The First Lesson
Extract edited for length
Back to that first lesson. The scales were over... Out came the music stand to mark more formal proceedings. But what was this? V was handing me one of those ominous sheets of paper that separate beginners from those who know music....But surely V knew I didn’t read music.
I wish I could recall her exact words. Perhaps, “You’ll probably like this.”
Would I?
But things weren’t as worrying as I’d thought. What the score contained was the aria (from the Mozart opera The Magic Flute) O Isis Und Osiris... At the time I’d seen or at least heard the opera half a dozen times and knew what the aria sounded like...
But never mind that, V was already playing the ac-companiment and singing a justifiably higher-pitched version of the aria. I joined in where I could, using the score to pick out the German words... And I found myself following both (words and music notation). I can’t pretend I was “reading” the music as such but because I knew the tune I was able to grasp – here and there – how it was represented on the page. I felt quite giddy.
Meanwhile, throughout my discoveries the piano and V’s voice (mine to a much lesser extent) were filling the room with Mozart and increasing familiarity was demonstrating what a gorgeous piece of song-writing this was.
...This is going to sound terribly corny but it happened, I swear. My throat tightened and I couldn’t sing any more. I turned from the score and walked away a couple of steps. In tears. I mumbled something that may have resembled an apology, can’t remember.
V said “This is what’s supposed to happen.”
Wonderful!
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