When am I finished?

October 28, 2006 at 12:00 PM

While it's clearly too early for this in the case of any of the pieces I'm learning currently, I'm already thinking about defining criteria for when I'm finished with a piece.

The obvious answer is, you're never really finished. There's always room for improvement. It's the journey not the destination that's important.

I always used to keep this in mind when I was training, and I'm not sure it was helpful. I felt like all parts of "the journey" were equal and if you were always on "the journey" it didn't really matter where you were on it. It was too open-ended, too fuzzy and vague: like a long, boring car ride on the I-90 somewhere in the middle of upstate New York. It was demotivating.

So I think that at this point, while this is all theoretically true, I need a different approach on the ground. I need a milestone, a signpost, some kind of ritual to mark finishing a piece and moving on to the next. One criterion that comes to mind is, when I can play it from memory. I find that being able to play a piece from memory kicks in a whole new level of subconscious practicing modes. I can then work on the piece or passage in my head while my instrument isn't even there, while I'm doing something else altogether.

My impression is that "rote memorization" has fallen out of favor with many educators. I was never encouraged to learn to play a piece from memory while I was studying violin. Is playing from memory something people usually do these days? And if so, how?

From Susan D
Posted on October 29, 2006 at 7:14 AM

What an interesting question, Karen. On a cello forum I used to visit, someone wrote that it was a kind of 'spiral': you work on a piece and get it to your personal best at the time. Then you put it aside, improve, and come back to the piece a year or so later, bringing it to another level. And so on.

This makes a lot of sense, it acknowledges that one is never really finished with a piece, but one also doesn't labour at it constantly, perhaps getting bored with it.

My criteria for the sense of being 'temporarily finished' with a piece depend on the circumstances. Sometimes it's a performance, sometimes feeling that I can't play it to my satisfaction yet and need to put it aside and work on technique and easier pieces, sometimes it's a quartet piece that my quartet group gets tired of working on etc.

Simon Fisher in his book 'Practice' suggests that we should spend some time each week playing through core repertoire pieces that we're not officially 'learning', just to familiarise ourselves with them. Then, when we really work on them, they won't be completely foreign territory.

As a keen quartet player, I'm also trying to play through and put fingerings and 'X - difficult spot' markings in all the 1st vln parts for Mozart, Beethoven (not late), Mendelssohn, Brahms and Haydn quartets, to eventually have them all up to a reasonable 'play through' standard, so that quartet sessions become easier and more enjoyable. So my 'temporarily finished' standard for those currently would be getting through without total collapse, with good tone and intonation and some expression. Not a high standard admittedly, but a challenge for me!

From Richard Hellinger
Posted on October 29, 2006 at 5:48 PM

Couldn't you have used a better simile? I live like a mile from the I-90 in Upstate NY. lol

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

When am I finished?

Subscribe

Laurie's Books