For many piano teachers as well as their students, keeping repertoire (old and new) in balance supports musical growth. Yet with time constraints for students influenced by in-school academic demands and after school activities, preserving the growth of one piece, partnered with a technique regimen, is a mountain to climb.
Teachers who learn side by side with their pupils, also experience time shortages for practice owing to heavy teaching schedules and family life demands. Given such challenges, they may barely manage to keep up with repertoire their students are navigating. Being immersed in advanced compositions, investing extra time in fingering assistance, harmonic analysis, and phrasing suggestions, mentors may put their own individualized learning projects on hold.
Despite the dearth of time available to both teachers and students in their retrospective and new piano learning journeys, the value of creating a balance between the two should be considered.
In my own experience as a decades long teacher, I make sure to revive pieces that I have learned in the past, parsing them out each month–providing consecutive days to reassess fingering (my biggest revision), and to re-evaluate phrasing/dynamics. During subsequent weeks, I will play these pieces every two or three days to reinforce my revisions and to instill relative comfort in playing them. By the same token, I always make sure to have a new piece on the rack to stretch my own learning curve. With these, I set no deadlines in absorbing them which hopefully, trickles down to those taking their musical journeys beside me.
Students, with less learning experiences, will often express frustration in revisiting older repertoire. The most common chant is, “I can’t believe how this piece that I thought I’d known, feels completely new–It’s like I never played it before.”
Such a response is understandable when a pupil is still building reading skills as well as a relaxed supple wrist, floating arms approach to the piano. In addition, the original exposure to the piece that is being revived, was in an initial layering or foundational phase, so its first exposure might not necessarily be expected to survive a long hiatus. A second and third revisit spaced over time (with additional learning layers) will likely bring the pupil greater satisfaction.
Overall, parceling voices, understanding harmonic flow, and delving into greater contexts of knowledge about a piece, bodes well for its review. And building technique by studying scales and arpeggios around the Circle of Fifths provides a reinforcement of past and currently new repertoire study. (Chords, cadences, etc. that spring from them, give theoretical framing to enlarge musical understanding)
In general, teachers should alleviate their students frustrations surrounding repertoire revisits by reassuring them of steady incremental musical growth with patient, step-by-step practicing–emphasizing that an old piece once experienced as new and perhaps a bit intimidating, will, in time, be a compatible friend under the hands. Nevertheless, there should always be a healthy margin of space to improve and grow this same piece over time, while new ones are percolating. These newer pieces, by dint of their fresh and challenging landscapes will make the older ones feel less out of reach.
***
Example of my having revisited Chopin Prelude in E minor, Op. 28, No. 4.
***
I recall this piece that was requested by a student who asked to learn various Enrique Granados Poeticos. It was NEW for me at the time, ushering in an enticement with the composer’s remarkable repertoire. Naturally, this composition grew my understanding of Granados, while it simultaneously advanced all my studies and improved my teaching.
from Arioso7's Blog (Shirley Kirsten)
https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2022/11/20/the-value-of-revisiting-past-repertoire-while-learning-new-pieces/
No comments:
Post a Comment