January 22, 2005 at 10:34 PM

"If your house caught fire, and you only took one thing with you, what would it be?"

"If you were stranded on a desert island and could only have one thing, what would it be?"

We've all pondered hypothetical situations like those previously mentioned, but how about a more practical scenario? If you could tell your student one thing to think about while practicing this week, what would it be?

I teach piano as well, and my most advanced student is a sweet, ambitious high school foreign exchange student from Switzerland. She signed up for half-hour lessons this year, which proved to be way too short a time span to cover her Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Bartok. To further complicate things, she showed up ten minutes late this week. In the twenty remaining minutes, she wanted to show me her latest efforts on the third movement of the Moonlight sonata. I knew she had practiced nothing else, so I agreed. I listened as the minutes ticked by, knowing that she wouldn't even make it to the finish before the end of the lesson. What concluding remarks could help her for the upcoming week? Correct the C natural in measure 187, watch the staccatos in measures 152-67, practice the octaves in the recapitulation... I didn't have time to say all the things I thought of while she played along, especially with the existing language barriers. If I only had two words for her, and for any other student this week, what would they be?

SLOW DOWN!

From Pauline Lerner
Posted on January 23, 2005 at 4:13 AM

"If your house caught fire and you could only take one thing, what would it be?" This (sort of) happened to me once, years ago, when I was in graduate school in biochemistry. The fire alarm bell went off in the apartment building where I lived in the middle of the night, and we all had to evacuate. I was only partly awake and, besides, there was no time to think. I didn't realize what I had done until I was outside the building, standing and watching. I looked down at my hands to see what was in them, and voila -- my violin and my research notebook. Fortunately, there was no fire, just a false alarm.

This entry has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.

January 22, 2005 at 10:34 PM

Subscribe

Laurie's Books