Listen: We Need a Direction

Through my previous post I have put an emphasis on those music instructors that how important their teachings affect to people’s interests to the classical music study, I just have a new realization that not only music instructors should take the responsibility of drawing people’s attention to the classical music, but also all of our classical musicians actually should seriously think that in what way we can effectively introduce our classical music to more and more audiences, which include some who have not experienced classical music yet. A reason, which triggers off the new realization to my mind, is that that many audiences are not clear enough what the music actually is about when they listen to. Obviously, this is not audiences fault, but our musicians should take the responsibility for. I believe when a composer write a music piece is always for something or dedicate to a particular person, such as Antonio Vivaldi’s “four seasons”(see the left), or Beethoven’s piano sonata entitled “moon light”. So the job for our musicians is that we should clearly introduce our music in various ways. For example, to give a short lecture about the music which we will play in a concert is necessary. This week I have found two very interesting blogs, one of them was entitled “Everybody Loves Classical Music: They Just Haven’t Found out about It” was posted by Alex Rosu, a Political Science major student, the other one was entitled “Classical Music Education” was posted by Jamie. The reason to choose first one is that Alex Rosu is not in music major study, I think that it is important to know how those people like Alex Rosu thought about our classical music, because our music should face to various audiences. The second post which I decide to choose is that through the whole blog actually is about how what benefit children may receive from classical music education. My responses to both of these items can be found below and at the respective sites.

“Everybody Loves Classical Music: They Just Haven’t Found out about It”
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To me it is always interesting to see other people’s posts about their view to the classical music. Especially they are not major in music studying or professional musicians. I have a feeling that those unprofessional actually hold a key of helping our classical musicians to make a good improvement, because their preferences, complaints, or suggestions to classical music actually are the result of reactions to our classical musicians’ achievements. A reason which leads me to think in this way is based on my music study experiences. I remembered that before I started my instrumental studying, I felt that I was so musical, so gift to the music. However, when I began my music studying, I felt that I was not talented at all in music studying. Because of this weird feeling, I was confused for many years. But now I have figured out the problem that when I listen some recordings (because the quality of those recording are so good), I was so moved so that I was dreaming to make a same wonderful moment by playing an actual instrument. However, when I started my instrumental study, because of those technique problems which I have to spend time to fix always disturb my original interest to the classical music, so that my goal of playing music often become technique practice. At this point, I have to say a way of leading from a music teacher is very important, because we need those professionals give us a good leading when we are new in a field of study. For example, if a teacher always tells us that fixing technique problems is to help us to support our musical goals, our practice would enhance our original interests to the music; if a classical musician did not give a successful concert or did not make a good recording, I think I would not be interested in classical music.

Through reading your post, I can feel that how your passion is growing to the classical music although your first impression to classical music concert was not so good. In fact, this is a point which I am very curious that what motive encourage you to try second time to be in a classical music concert? I especially like the feeling which you shared on post that “There are something magical seeing humans actually working to make music, observing the childish joy of some, or the detached, cerebral expressions of other,” because this one of good reasons to encourage myself to treat music study as my major study. Lastly, I also like the video which is about Benjamin Zander (see the right). From this video I have learned many things. One of them which I really want to mention is about how we should lead more and more audiences to know what we as classical musicians are presenting. Thank you for your post.

“Classical Music Education”
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After reading this post, I feel that we need more and more posts like this to support our classical music, because we as music instructors or musicians should use our intelligence to lead people in our music world, to allow them to recognize that what classical music actually benefit and gift to them. At this point, I want to say that classical music education is not only for children, but also for their parents too. In my opinion, I do not believe that every parent have experienced in a classical music concert, particularly a good one, but I do believe that once the those parents realize if classical music is really good to them, even they will push their children to have a classical music education, because parents always hope that their children to have a chance to taste something valuable. Therefore, the job for our musicians or music instructors should use an effective way to introduce our classical music more and more people. Recently, I have watched a video (perhaps many people have watched it) which basically shows Benjamin Zander, a conductor of Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, that how he lead his audiences to appreciate a classical music piece. I think that this is a good beginning to make more and more people know about our classical music and it is a good example for classical music education.

Additionally, I really like the three true examples which you have listed out on your post. It is very convinced to me. Thank you for your post.

Music Lesson: Help!

I believe that when many people start to decide to have their first music lesson or first musical instrument study with a music teacher by themselves because their senses of music have been activated by hearing a beautiful song or a particular tone of an instrument from a live concert or radio, etc. This is a very important reason to allow those people to make their first step enter the music world.

The following tasks obvious turn to those music instructors that they should lead those people, who are interested in studying music, to walk into the deeper place of music world in order to allow those people to know more about music, to make them enjoy more what music has brought to them, even to encourage them to create their own music.

In many ways, as an instructor to give a music lesson to students is not a difficult thing as long as the instructor know what goal he/she intend to approach for a lesson. However, the difficult part from a music lesson, which may challenge every instructor, is that whether the goal, which an instructor tries to approach, really makes students feel that they are taking an enjoyable, helpful and encouraged lesson, so that students want to study more by themselves in the field of music study.

There was a report with a title: “Music lessons 'not good enough'” that appeared recently on the BBC news board, which straightly pointed out an issue that half of school music lessons in England needed to improve, because students who were in those music lessons were not positively making progress in music.

In my opinion, this report actually gives a strong emphasis to music instructors that their teachings seriously affect the future development of music. I would like to share a story from my teaching experience. Two years ago I got a chance to teach a student who want to continue her cello study with me, because she planned to prepare some standard musical repertory for auditions. In general, she was a good student, she practiced hard and she follows most of my suggestions about her playing. However, I still had a feeling that her playing was not nature enough, because I did not feel enough about her own thought to the music which she was playing, I only felt that her playing sounded simply like a collection of some other people’s ideas. So I tried to shared my opinion with her about how my feeling of her playing was and I tried to encourage her to train herself to think independently, but she unexpectedly told me that because her previous teacher said to her that she should follow all the suggestions which that teacher gave to her, so that she assumed that I was using the same rule as her previous teacher’s in her lessons.

The story is finished, but I think that as a teacher, particularly in music teaching, to simply ask student to follow his/her suggestion is not a good enough way to help student to make music, because as a music teacher who not only is responsible to deliver messages about the music to students, but also should lead students to their own artistic way.

I have a feeling that many modern classical musicians’ interpretations of the music, which compare with those who came from last generation, are quite similar although they have brilliant technique. Therefore, I still prefer to listen to those old recordings, because through music playing I strongly feel those old musicians’ own stylistic thoughts to their music. Here are some video examples of those last generation musicians, through listening to different tone color and style of musical interpretations on same type of instrument but different players, I want to display how all of them has their own unique thought to their music: Jascha Heifetz, David Oistrakh, Isaac Stern, Fritz Kreisler (only music track), Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman.

There many reasons may cause our modern musicians have similar music tastes. One of the reasons is because of development of modern multimedia technology. It is very convenient to listen to music from radio, television or Internet. Consciously or unconsciously, many modern musicians start to imitate what music they have heard. So this reason makes our music have a very slow development. To tell the truth, I rarely hear some people have some really fresh idea to the music or some new genre music in our current life time. The second reason is that many music teachers, even some teach students to a professional way, are not really teach students to develop students’ own music talent, instead, those music teachers just teach some musical pieces which they have learn from their passed teachers. Consequently, students are not able to independently analyze, present and interpret their own thought when they get some new music pieces. I have experienced this type class when I was in high school. I remembered that when teacher came to our class just told us how many pieces we should finish for a semester, and then, we just followed the teacher’s requirement to finish those pieces one by one. As last, we played a lot of music pieces, but we still had no idea how to analyze and present a new music piece by ourselves.

Obviously, music teachers play a very important role of training students in order to keep and develop students’ own individual musical talent. First of all, music teachers are musical artists, and they are leading more and more people to the way of artists. I truly hope that under our music teacher’s intelligent leading, our music will be on a vivid, spiritual and significant way.

The New Year with New Life: A New Blogger for Supporting Classical Music

To many people Classical Music is not an unfamiliar name, but if there is a question come up to us that how often does anyone go to listen to a concert of classical music? Everyone’s answer should be different, but those answers can be majorly divided into two types, one of them is go to the concert often, the other one obviously is not. In general, many people treat classical music as a type of serious music, because people usually dress up for the concert and during the performance people should keep silent until the music completely finished. In my opinion, these phenomena for a classical music concert are very normal. Does anyone not like to dress nicely in a public concert hall? Or how could we enjoy in those various beauties through music without focusing on? In fact, classical music is not only can present a serious character, but many others. I would like to borrow a sentence from Gustavo Dudamel (see left), the new Music Director of Los Angeles Philharmonic, he says: “classical music has many faces.”(click and see the video) I remember that my decision of choosing classical music as major study was strongly encouraged when I was six-year old after listening to the “peter and the wolf” by S. Prokofiev and watching the “Fantasia” by Walt Disney, because those classical music, which I familiar with, were pictured and characteristic by story reciter and animations. I am a music performance major student from Thornton School of Music at University of Southern California, and I am a new blogger user. Through establishing this blogger I am planning to create a positive atmosphere for supporting classical music. By using Internet I will often search and analyze latest news about classical music from such websites, NPR classical, Musical Criticism, Classical Net, BBC/Music/Classical and About.com: Classical Music, Arts Journal music, Music and Vision, Toppest/Classical Music. I will keep tracking freshest news from current music concert Hall in order to introduce new musicians or new idea of classical music performances, such as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Carnegie Hall. I will also find and analyze those current events from those academic music schools, such as Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, Thornton School of Music, in order to know what new orientation of classical music is in those place. Lastly, I will frequently search those new messages of the Influences of the western classical music in Asian Countries. For Example, from the New York Time/Music, we have messages about China, “Carnegie Hall Announces New Season;” from The DC Classical Music Meetup Group, there is a message of “Image China: Chinese New Year Concert 2009 – FREE!” There are also some particular websites which provide some upcoming news, for example, from GyeongGi-Do, there is the information about the “The 6th International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians” in South Korea; from GCIVC, there is the information about the International Violoncello Competition in Japan. In a word, to encourage our classical musicians to keep researching new orientation of classical music and to welcome our new fan of classical music is my goal of building this blogger. Welcome everyone!