BY
ADAM PARKER
By the time I earned my undergraduate
degree in music performance, I was pretty much committed. The next step was
conservatory. I auditioned at four of them and was accepted by three. I chose
the Manhattan School of Music, in part because of its location, but mostly
because a renowned voice teacher, Margaret Hoswell, had expressed interest in
adding me to her selective studio.
Hoswell was in ill health at the time
(this was 1987), and she gave lessons at her home on West End Avenue, a
25-minute walk from the school.
I considered myself lucky. I worked hard
to please Hoswell. I wanted to prove to her that her selection of me was
justified. Besides, she was the gatekeeper, the person who could open the door
to the world of professional music-making and push her students through it. She
wielded terrific power.
Imagine my distress when, halfway
through my first semester, the 57-year-old Hoswell suddenly died, leaving her
students in the hands of an assistant. The assistant was talented, but he did
not possess the key to the door that led to a performance career.
Unhappy at the school, I took a semester
off to think things through, then re-entered the program in January 1989 as a
vocal student of Theodor Upmann, a Metropolitan Opera baritone who had famously
performed in Benjamin Britten’s “Billy Budd” years before but was now
unequivocally over the hill. He was not a very good teacher either. And, it
turned out, he, too, did not possess the key.
I relay all this in an attempt to convey
the importance to a young musician of a certain kind of teacher, one who
regularly performs — or at least once had a flourishing career — and occupies
that rarefied space between academia and the professional world. Students
intent on launching a career as a performer seek out these teachers first and
foremost.
The three-way relationship between
teacher, student and school is complex and unusual. For we are not discussing a
typical course of study here — biology, say, or engineering, or comparative
literature. For musicians, relationships are everything; and they often are
long-lasting and multifaceted, fraught with emotion and subject to the
fluctuations of loyalty, attitude and studio dynamics.
In the wake of the Enrique Graf imbroglio,
in which the famed piano teacher and performer resigned from the College of
Charleston amid allegations of sexual harassment, it is helpful to understand
how this world works — the use (and misuse) of power, the unusual terms (often
unofficial) by which schools and teachers abide and the special student-teacher
relationship, unique to musicians.
Finding the
right teacher
Performers encountered over the years,
and several interviewed for this story, all have emphasized the importance of
the teacher as someone who provides not only musical instruction but personal
and emotional support.
“I take it for granted that the teacher
will be intimate and personally involved,” said Pedro Uceda, a pianist who
teaches at Charleston Academy of Music and has studied with several important
teachers in the U.S., France and his native Peru.
Most of his teachers were “motherly” or
“grandmotherly” or paternal, Uceda said.
Eunjoo Yun, director of the Charleston
Academy of Music, came to Charleston to study with Graf. He made an effort to
get to know Yun and assist her in many ways, from finding housing to getting
through non-music classes successfully, she said. He also helped secure travel
money for her when she had a chance to study abroad and, later, played an
important role in developing her music academy.
This kind of involvement is not uniform
among teachers, but it is common, these and other musicians said.
Music is the only field of study that
requires regular and extended one-on-one interaction between student and
teacher. Other kinds of professors might work with a student for a semester or
two, and almost always in the company of others.
When it comes time for a serious music
student to attend university or a conservatory, finding the right teacher is
usually the most important priority.
Micah McLaurin, an 18-year-old
Charleston pianist who Graf had taken under his wing, is now off to the Curtis
Institute, one of the most prestigious conservatories in the world. McLaurin
auditioned for three other schools — New England Conservatory, Juilliard and
the Cleveland Institute — all of which have excellent piano faculty. In the
end, he said, he chose Curtis because of its reputation, the full scholarship
it offered him and, mostly, the teacher he would study with, Robert McDonald.
“I knew I wanted to work with him,”
McLaurin said, adding that finding the right teacher is the most important
imperative when assessing a school.
The teacher-student bond is unlike most
academic relationships.
“If they like you, you start to develop
a close working relationship, because both rely on each other to help each other,”
McLaurin said. Teachers open professional doors (and increase their own
prestige when their students succeed). “Sometimes a teacher will really fight
for you, try to get opportunities for you.”
Special
relationships
Because well-known teachers lend their
name and fame to the institutions with which they are affiliated, those schools
often grant them special dispensation. In exchange for the rise in
institutional prestige and the gain of talented students drawn to the school
because of the faculty member, famous music teachers are treated differently
than regular professors.
They are expected to maintain a studio
of private students first and foremost, not teach in the classroom. Sometimes
they are often granted tenure more quickly than others. They can be exempted
from extensive committee service, especially at conservatories. They are
encouraged (or at least permitted) to travel and perform, even during the
school year. They are offered opportunities to bring special guests to campus,
to start concert series and to collaborate with community groups, often in very
public ways.
The benefits go both ways — teachers can
bolster their reputations through such affiliations and have access to valuable
facilities and resources; they get job security — but it’s the school that
stands to gain the most, according to those interviewed for this article.
My teacher, Hoswell, never set foot
inside the Manhattan School of Music. She taught only from her apartment, and
to my knowledge did nothing else for the conservatory.
The special relationship between teacher
and school contributes to an environment in which power is regularly put to
use, often well, sometimes inappropriately. Fame is synonymous with power, and
to maintain one’s reputation, it is inevitable that celebrated teachers will
exercise their influence in order to reinforce their favored positions.
It is not inevitable that that power
will be abused, but preventing such abuse, when it happens, can be challenging
given the unusual dynamics involved and the inherent leeway granted teachers by
the institution.
Robert Jesselson, a cello professor at
the University of South Carolina, participates actively in his department’s
administrative activities, “doing all kinds of nitty-gritty work running the
school,” but he knows many colleagues, especially part-time instructors,
artists-in-residence and conservatory faculty, who don’t, he said.
In some ways, teaching music at a
university is harder than teaching other subjects, Jesselson said. The
professor must provide personal instruction and maintain a performance career. There
are no graduate students to fill in.
“In order to fulfill our professional
duties we need to be out there performing,” he said. “That means being away
sometimes.”
The student-teacher relationship is
based on trust, he said. “It’s a special kind of old-fashioned relationship”
that involves one-on-one teaching and is based on the mentor-apprentice model.
“It gives opportunities to the student
to have all kinds of exposure to professionals in the field,” he said. “It also
gives opportunities to the teacher to get to know students really, really well.
So I’m more than just a cello teacher to the students. I’m a mentor, a guide. Various
young people go through growing situations, even crises, that they need help
getting out of.”
Jesselson said he has only 20 students,
unlike many professors who might lecture to hundreds.
“I feel very fortunate to be able to
teach in this kind of a setting,” he said. “And students are very fortunate to
be able to have this kind of interaction with someone further along in his
career and able to guide them.”
Hungry for
experience
It may be impolitic to admit, but
artists can be moody, insecure and emotional, perhaps more so than your
average, say, banker or architect. Musicians must cope with terrific stress,
and they depend on others to achieve any sort of success. That dependence can
lead to questionable behavior in a world defined by intense human
relationships.
I remember in college asking my piano
accompanist out on a date only to discover a short time later that the reason
she demurred was because she was dating my voice teacher. I recall, too, the
dubious reputation for sexual exploits of the opera workshop teacher at my
conservatory.
Young music students are hungry for
experience and often emotionally needy; they turn to their teachers for support
and help. They share their insecurities, expose raw feeling and struggle to
achieve.
Once, in opera workshop, a soprano broke
down in tears in the middle of an aria. She had touched an emotional chord,
pulled up some painful memory that wouldn’t allow her to go on. The teacher was
full of enthusiasm. “Yes! Yes!” he proclaimed. “That’s it! Go with the
feeling!”
Music is all about that: plumbing the
soul and expressing emotion. That’s what makes it personal. That’s what enables
it to convey the full range of human joy and pain.
A certain vulnerability is essential if
the musician is to communicate anything honest and real. Teachers know that.
And they must persuade their students to believe it and let go.
No comments:
Post a Comment