After teaching a Violin Pedagogy class at Peabody last week, a comment from a Conservatory pedagogy student, whom I had taught during her high school years, struck me. After working on ways to help young students learn to balance the bow comfortably at the frog, she said “Oh, now I REALLY understand what you were doing with my bow arm all those years!” While it may seem like an insult to our teaching when a student doesn’t fully understand what we have been doing, I think it is a reminder, instead, that even when the motor memory takes over as we work on physical aspects of playing, it is often later that a string player fully understands the concepts behind the motions. Now that she is more mature and is revisiting her own playing from a teacher’s perspective, all those years of martelé strokes and “wobbling” at the frog are making sense on many levels and her own playing is falling beautifully into place with fuller understanding. What does this mean to younger students and parents? It means just keep doing those warm ups every day so you develop freedom and fluidity in your playing, and ask your teacher questions along the way.
Rebecca Henry
String Dept. Chair
Peabody Preparatory
No comments:
Post a Comment