PIANO
PEDAGOGY
FORUM
v. 2, no. 1/January 1, 1999

FORUM ON PIANO PEDAGOGY

Andrew Hisey, a native of Canada, is Assistant Professor of Piano and Piano Pedagogy at the Oberlin Conservatory. He holds degrees in piano performance and pedagogy from Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Canada) and from The University of Michigan, where he studied with Nina Lelchuk, Arthur Greene, and Joanne Smith. At Oberlin, Andrew coordinates secondary piano studies and student piano teaching, and directs Piano Lab, a pedagogy laboratory program for area children that he founded in 1995. Dr. Hisey was the 1988 Ontario Young Artist Competition winner and has performed throughout that province and the midwestern United States. He won the University of Michigan's graduate concerto competition in 1992. He is in frequent demand as adjudicator and workshop clinician, is active as a solo and collaborative performer, and served several years as coordinator and instructor in the All-State Piano Programs at the Interlochen Center for the Arts. As part of a continuing project to perform the complete works of Shostakovich for piano solo and piano in chamber ensemble, Dr. Hisey presents this year a two-recital traversal of that composer's Opus 87 Preludes and Fugues. In March 1999, he will present a lecture-recital, Soviet Snapshots: Teaching and Performing the 24 Preludes of Dmitri Shostakovich, at the MTNA National Convention in Los Angeles.

Andrew Hisey
Oberlin College Conservatory of Music
77 West College Street
Oberlin, OH 44704
440.775.8253
Andrew.Hisey@oberlin.edu

Functionality For Twenty-First Century Keyboard Musicians

by Andrew Hisey

A large part of my own professional effort is directed toward helping young music students move forward on the road from "dysfunctional" (or non-functional) to "functional" at the keyboard. I interpret this to include developing an understanding of music theory in a concrete and practical way, playing music with some understanding of how it is constructed, and finding ways of using the keyboard that support a student's own area of music study. We piano teachers group such skills as harmonization, transposition, and improvisation into the category "functional skills." What is this concept of "functionality"? Who is "functional"? Does "functional" carry with it a different meaning than it used to? These are some of the questions I have grappled with on my own and I will do so in a more public way in the following paragraphs.

The word "functional" and its antonym "dysfunctional" have seen increased general use in recent years. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that "functional" means "designed for or suited to a particular operation or use." A strong sense emerges that for an act to be functional, there must be a recognizable and integral connection between what is done and the reason for doing it. In short, an act must achieve its desired end if it is to earn the label "functional."

I will begin by examining certain parallels between music and spoken or written language in the hope of establishing that music is meant to be communicative, that music practitioners have in the 'language' of music a vehicle eminently suited to making a difference in their world. After proposing several categories of historical or traditional functionality, I will attempt to understand and state in broad terms some of the ways in which the world has changed in recent decadesÑand how these have rewritten our definition of functionality. Lastly I'll offer a few ideas for achieving that new functionality as teachers and performers, allowing us to remain relevant to life in the coming decades.

Music And Language

On many occasions, I have been struck by what seem to be compelling similarities between language and music, and between the study of language and the study of music. Like language, music can be viewed as an intentionally communicative art. Parallels between music and the language arts seem to emerge quite naturally. In both, communication is enhanced by at least some shared understanding between author and reader, composer and listener. There must be some agreement about vocabulary, grammar and syntax or, on the musical side, chords, harmonic progression, melodic motifs and phrases, voice-leading and modulation. Connection also is enriched by a shared understanding of expressive intent and a link, however tenuous, of common interest, emotional understanding, and human experience between creator and receiver.

Both music and language can be - some would say must be - expressed in performance. A medium or performer is necessary: a printed text, electronic sound recording and reproduction systems, or - what interests us the most - a living interpreter. This individual or group must be able to establish and maintain the connection between composer and listener, author and audience by use of language, bolstered by a palette of physical and facial gestures, timbral and dynamic inflections, and other, less tangible components of human communication.

Not Eliminating The Middle Man

The role of performer or mediator is a complex one. It requires, in my estimation:

a deep and personal knowledge of the language. It is almost unthinkable to imagine a truly convincing and humanly expressive oral interpretation of W. H. Auden's Funeral Blues, for example, by a neophyte of the English language - one who cannot extract the basic meaning of the text or its tonal shadings, one who has never used English to express his or her own thoughts.
a level of contextual understanding. I find it equally difficult to imagine an effective reading of this poem by an individual who has never experienced even a part of the loss, pain, outrage, and despair - the emotion - expressed in this poem. Of similar importance would be some awareness of the cultural meaning of crepe-bowed public doves and black-gloved traffic policemen, as well as the poetic device of metaphor used in describing the departed as "my North, my South, my East and West/My working week and my Sunday rest."
the "I care" attitude of a teacher. When it is the audience who cannot decipher the artistic language, it becomes the responsibility of the performer to attract the audience and elucidate what is presented. No interpreter who cares about communicating can long take the attitude that an audience must generate its own complement of interest, knowledge, and understanding.
the larger-than-life instincts of an actor. Every performer must be able to act. To convey the emotional and intellectual content of the Auden poem to a group of listeners, one must exploit the devices of exaggerated inflection, varied vocal timbre, meaningful pause, facial expression and physical gesture. One must be both bigger than and other than one's usual self.
a level of connection with the creator and the audience. Any oral interpreter of this poem plays audience to Auden's work, experiencing it as both reader and listener; and conversely, plays the role of the living Auden to a present audience, sharing the creative role with the poet himself.

Communicating: The Basic Functionality

In my years of adjudicating, masterclass teaching, and auditioning young pianists, I have observed so many performances that impressed me but did not touch me humanly on an emotional or intellectual level. Admittedly, most young performers have not yet the life experience to 'speak with their own voice' at their instrument; many have not yet had opportunity to understand the cultural, personal, spiritual or intellectual climate in which a work they are performing was conceived. They may evidence great joy and physical pleasure in the athletic feat of performance, and the concomitant recognition and adulation, but what sometimes fails to come across very well is the intellectually informed, but primarily emotional message of the music as it is probable the composer conceived it.

What is the function of a performing musician? What is it that we seek to do and to teach that will render music making a "functional" activity in twenty-first-century society, or at least in sizable segments of it? How must we re-define or edit our notions of functionality as we aim to be and help our students become "functional" for the coming decades?

Historical Functionality

Let us start by asking the question of how, over the last four centuries or so, musicians, and especially keyboardists, were functional or relevant in their social, political, and cultural spheres. In reality, of course, these categories of functionality were intertwined in the overall functioning of musical keyboard artists. Consider the following general areas of functionality:

Interpreter: Symbols into sound and sound into symbols. Through their development and knowledge of notation and technique, musicians have been able to bridge the gap between the composer's mind and the public's ears.
Enhancer: From earliest times, musicians have been called upon to accompany and thus enhance human activities of religious and secular, ceremonial and social natures. These activities have required a flexibility and ability to adapt their skills to the demands of changing personnel, acoustical setting, and time constraints.
Creator: Along a whole spectrum of creative skills, keyboard musicians have served as composers and improvisers, able to work from outline-style notation (figured bass), and to improvise cadenzas and chorale preludes, varied returns, tasteful ornamentation, and entertaining variations on popular tunes.
Collaborator: Through their work with composers, instrumental and vocal soloists, chamber ensembles, producers of music-theatrical productions, and larger performing forces, keyboard musicians have enhanced their skills and enriched their creative resources through the cross-germination of ideas. In many instances, keyboard players have also played leadership roles as conductor-soloists collaborating with and rehearsing large groups of musicians.
Technician: Instrumentalists, often even keyboard players, were responsible for tuning and maintaining their own instruments. Many modern keyboard players are in the almost unique position among musicians of not fully understanding their instrument or being able to articulate their expectations of the complex machine they play.
Disseminator: Keyboard musicians were largely responsible for bringing new music to the larger public and keeping it before them, through arrangements of symphonic, orchestral and operatic works. Before the advent of machine-reproduced music, keyboard musicians helped to define what was deemed 'popular' in a given time and place.
Entertainer: Keyboard musicians were highly visible public icons associated with popular and art culture.
Teacher: Almost every keyboard musician has taught younger generations of students at some level, at some time, in some way. Those with particular areas of expertise - improvising, for example - were recognized and sought out for more focused training.

What's Different Now?

If we are to understand how functionality has changed and continues to change, it is essential to understand and articulate some of the ways in which today's world is significantly different. This, in turn, will help us to be clearer about how a musician of the future will be functional - relevant to the society in which she/he operates.

The following statements, I think, are true for North American culture, but may also apply convincingly to a larger cross-section of the world.

We value the instantaneous, the effortless, the personally convenient.
We value the power to choose for ourselves from the widest possible array of options.
We crave stimulation and sensation that in many cases do not require our active or "effortful" involvement or attention.
We are a visually oriented culture.
We value both pluralism and conformity. Although the rights and identity of the individual are held almost sacred, there is enormous pressure through peer groups, consumer marketing and advertising, and the existence of national and international standards, to keep up, be like, and achieve success as our world defines it.
Our instrument, the piano, is far from ubiquitous, and playing it no longer holds the cachet or reflects the necessary social finish it once did. General music education and literacy are much less valued than they have been historically. This area is improving, however, due to the devoted efforts of music educators, researchers, and scientists.
Ceremony, pageantry, and royal, government or philanthropic patronage are waning elements in our world, and involve a much smaller segment of its population.
More is More. A large cross-section of our world seems to operate on the principle that having more, getting more, doing more, and going more represent high human achievement. Many feel stretched and paralysed by the number of choices offered them, all of which involve giving something else up.

Musicians today, and for the foreseeable future, must deal with a world that is contradictory and fragmented, one where many espouse values that are frankly inimical to individual and collective art-making.

The New Functionality

Given the cultural climate of our time, the definition of functionality or at least the ways in which it is worked out must be radically expanded. Functionality for today and for the future seems to encompass three broad, but distinct, areas.

A general music functionality: Many of the "functions" of musicians as cited above are still valid and necessary. Music as a language still needs traditional practitioners - those who can understand it, share it, understand its instruments, create with it, entertain and enrich life's activities with it, and teach it. This is good news! Much of what needs to be taught today and tomorrow is what has always been taught by music pedagogues. In today's world, musicians may still personify fruitful effort, excellence, achievement, and dedication to an art that reflects the human drama, feeds the human spirit, and whose worth is primarily intrinsic.

Specialty functionalities: One beauty of living on the cusp of the twenty-first century is that historical aesthetics, sounds, and instruments as well as those of other cultures around the globe are eminently accessible and ready to be studied, used creatively, and appreciated. It's all here - right now! At no other time in history have musicians basked in the opportunity to be stimulated by and interested in musics of almost every time and place. Specialists and performers in jazz, early music and musical traditions of other cultures, as well as those who would explore music's connections with other components of human art and life - all of these, at least potentially, enjoy access to materials for study and performance, an audience to appreciate and critique their efforts, and an institutional climate to support their work.

The third, and most radically needed component of a vital musical functionality for the next century lies in what I will call communicative functionality. This is the soil in which the first two components may continue to flourish and thrive, and without which the musical arts may irretrievably falter. Many social and education paradigms that for decades seemed 'sure things' - public concerts, basic music literacy and education in public schools, affordable performance training, philanthropic and institutional support for the arts - the list goes on - seem to be vaporizing, or at least on the wane. Such "hinge" times in artistic history can be viewed with a doom-and-gloom longing for the way things were or they can be viewed as moments when the bridge between art and life is ripest for re-thinking, re-designing, and re-invigorating.

I must change as a musician in order to have ongoing and renewed connection with my world. I can't simply ape the proverbial ostrich and hope that I won't feel the growing pains of being an art-maker in a changing world. I want to do more than survive in the decades to come and I must do so by becoming aware of a few more pieces of my 'job description.'

As we consider our role as performing and teaching musicians in our ever-changing world, it is incumbent upon us to examine how we function in the world and to make the needed adjustments. Functionality in every area of life can be learned and must be taught. Let us develop and then take full advantage of our musically connective powers as the new century approaches.

Communicative Functionality: How To Bring It Into Your Studio

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PIANOPEDAGOGYFORUMv. 2, no. 1/January 1, 1999

FORUM ON PIANO PEDAGOGY

Functionality For Twenty-First Century Keyboard Musicians

© 1999 University of South Carolina School of Music

PIANO
PEDAGOGY
FORUM
v. 2, no. 1/January 1, 1999