Christopher Berg received his training at the Peabody Conservatory of Music with Aaron Shearer and in masterclasses with Andres Segovia at the University of Southern California. He made his New York debut at Carnegie Recital Hall in 1981 and has performed throughout the United States in recital and in concerto appearances with orchestra. He is a recipient of a Solo Recitalist Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and is the author of Classic Guitar Technique: Process and Essence and Giuliani Revisited (Mel Bay Publications, Inc.). He is Professor of Music at the University of South Carolina where he has directed the classical guitar program since 1978.
Christopher Berg
School of Music
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
803.777.7067
cberg@mozart.sc.edu
This article first appeared in Volume 2, No. 1, January 1, 1999.
My intention is not to present steps to good teaching. I don't talk about ways of approaching rhythm, interpretation, the importance of sight-reading, or how to get your students to practice. I am not writing about pedagogy in the traditional sense, the "what" you tell students to do. I want to explore the relationship between teacher and student in a way that will be helpful to teachers regardless of the specific content of their pedagogy. I want to offer teachers a different way of thinking about their work - a way that may help them and their students achieve their full artistic potential. That is the way of the true virtuoso.
Virtuoso teaching is more about helping students move towards conscious change than it is about getting them to do certain things. This advice is true for a teacher's development too. The best way to use this material is to read it over occasionally but not to try to "do" certain things. Rather, let the material sit with you, think about it, and one day an opportunity will present itself for you to respond to your students in a different way and for you to take a step forward into the unknown with them.
I once had a student who studied at a conservatory in Asia as a boy. During our work together I learned that his teacher would beat him whenever he made a mistake. The result was an adult who beat himself verbally whenever he erred. This created incredible tension within him, which only increased the chances that he would err and ensured that this cycle would never be broken.
Years later, while living in Switzerland, I met a retired Anglican priest. He told me that he enjoyed playing the piano but that he couldn't read music. I learned that he did have lessons as a youth, but every time he missed a note while reading music, his teacher would swat his hands with a ruler. The result was that he became "blind" to written music.
Students will learn through violence but what they learn is never what their teachers intend. Pedagogical violence is more than physical abuse. Pedagogical violence ranges from physical abuse through manipulation, arrogance, rudeness, to the inability to really "see" or "know" the student - in short, any act that treats the student as an object. Anat Banial, a well-known teacher of the Feldenkrais Method, states that ". . . violence distorts functioning in some way."1 I would add that students are usually unaware that their functioning has been distorted.
If these teachers could have known the destructive results of their pedagogy, would they have persisted? The likelihood is that the damage they caused would have been invisible to them. Either it would not manifest itself until years later, or the teacher would attribute its presence to the student's lack of talent or industry.
It is hard for me to imagine anyone teaching this way today. But I must ask, are there things we might be doing now that will have effects on our students we can neither imagine nor see? Are they learning hidden lessons from the way we are teaching them? And if so, what can we do to understand our own teaching and how can we change it for the better?
We need to carry within us a model for good teaching. How can we approach the teacher/student relationship so that it will flourish? Some of us may have had the wonderful fortune to work with a teacher who taught us with compassion, respect, high standards, who could see what we had to offer, what we needed, and how we could best learn. But others among us most likely had teachers who were gifted in some areas and blind in others.
While musicians spend thousands of hours studying and practicing their instrument, their teaching skills are neglected and left to develop haphazardly. Mastery of an instrument or voice does not automatically make one a good teacher. Yet almost all musicians will find themselves teaching others in a one-on-one setting. It is disturbing to see creative and intelligent artists approach their teaching without the creativity, intellectual integrity, compassion, insight, and flexibility they often bring to their performances.
The private lesson is a unique phenomenon in education. The relationships teachers have with their students are long term, close, and intense. While some students will be trusting and vulnerable and others headstrong and defiant, they all are trying to learn something of paramount importance to their lives. But it often seems as if the students who succeed do so in spite of the way they are taught. Despite good intentions on behalf of teachers and players, their efforts at improving their work will be limited if they cannot better understand the process of teaching and learning, and the medium in which these things occur: the private lesson.
If the process remains invisible, it is immune to contemplation and change. Yet change is the means whereby we improve: if a thing cannot change, it cannot get better. How can our teaching change so that we are able to see beyond the confining walls of our own experiences as artist, teacher, and student?
How can we develop healthier and more positive relationships with our students so that the act of teaching does not interfere with act of learning? A healthy student/teacher relationship will increase the possibility of joyous learning and the teacher bears most of the responsibility for the health of this relationship. The following are offered as suggestions to serve as catalysts to your own imagination so that the lessons you give may emerge as works of art, as finely shaped as any piece you might perform. This is the way of true virtuoso teachers. I hope that you and your students will flourish in your studio and that you can help them become independent and creative learners.
1. Your Relationship With Your Students
2. Teaching And The Teacher's Role
4. The Integrity Of The Lesson
1Frank R. Wilson, The Hand, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998), 252.
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