Category Archives: Learning

Singing for Ceasefire

29 Monday Jan 2024

Posted by in Learning, Peace, Protest

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The day after the horrific attack by Hamas last October 7, I was in a conversation with a Christian Palestinian who lives in Nazareth and who was currently traveling in the US. She offered a clear-eyed analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict and of the generational trauma that makes the conflict ever more complex and seemingly intractable. She was devastated by the atrocities by Hamas and further heartbroken by the anticipated response by Israel’s government. Her message to us: The vast majority of people in Palestine and Israel want peaceful co-existence. But now there will be so much more violence. So many more people will die. We will need your support. As I listened I clung to remote hope, that for once those in power could imagine a different and more effective response to violence than more violence.

Nearly four months later the death count and humanitarian crisis continue to build to unbearable levels in Gaza, and civilians remain held hostage in both Gaza and Israel. The response, tragically, has been warring madness, supported by billions of US tax dollars.

It is with this backdrop that a recent trip to Washington DC to visit my daughter morphed into a profound experience of learning, activism, and solidarity. Greta and I both wanted to participate in peace witness events planned by Mennonite Action, a new organization led by young Mennonite Christians with an immediate goal of ceasefire and a long-term goal of a political solution that brings about a lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis. There were varied ways to be involved in the primary day of action, including an outside prayer service, petition delivery to Senate and Congressional offices, and an inside peaceful demonstration that could lead to arrest. I had been inspired by Mennonite Action’s work in recent weeks, but wasn’t sure where I would fit in. I thought to myself: I’m not very activist-y. I may not have the courage required for civil disobedience. And, I thought of those around the world who are thrown into terror, including so many children, who don’t get to choose courage but must find it anyway.

When we arrived at the DC area church that hosted Mennonite Action on Sunday, we were greeted by my cousin Cindy, co-pastor of the congregation. She handed me our Grandma Lapp’s apron as she motioned me to the painting area. Before and after an evening meal and prayer service, the gathering group added bright color to banners designed to resemble quilts. The signs offered messages like Let Gaza Live, Free All Hostages, and Send Food, Not Bombs. Cindy and I briefly imagined our Grandma’s response to our participation. Although she may be baffled that we were painting signs rather than preparing food in the church kitchen, we thought she would like that we took turns wearing her apron.

On Monday we attended a full-day Peace School at the second church that hosted us. I learned that the inside action would be centered around hymn singing. Well, that’s my vibe, I thought. I received Greta’s gentle encouragement to consider the inside action with her and wistfully thought about how much my Dad, who died a year ago, would have wanted to join us.

The day was full of worship, training, and community-building. In her keynote, Sarah Nahar brilliantly wove together lessons from the civil rights movement with the peace witness of early Anabaptists. If we don’t destroy the earth, we could still be in the early church, she reminded us. The peace school included a clear rejection of anti-semitism, and there was acknowledgement that as we act for peace, Mennonite and Christian histories of oppression need to be reckoned with. We listened carefully to possible scenarios of Capitol Police response to the action, and received training on how to engage respectfully with them. We pondered and discussed our motivations with others. I worried to myself about how our action, how my participation, could be misunderstood or wrongly characterized by others. I also considered my freedom, security and privilege, including a flexible schedule and full support from my work supervisor to participate in whatever way the Spirit led. I would be taking on minimal risk in the peace action that could lead to arrest, while others would be taking on more risk or simply did not have the option.

Toward the end of the afternoon there was a call for one more song leader for the inside action, and a not-so-subtle glance from my daughter. I finally stood up. 

On Tuesday morning we gathered and prepared at the third church hosting Mennonite Action, a walkable distance from the Capitol. Later that morning we entered the Cannon House Office Building in separate groups and wandered the halls for a while. When our group leaders were cued we calmly walked towards the rotunda and sat in a tight circle as we began singing. I was moved to tears when I noticed that several pastors among us were wearing their clergy stoles, including my colleague David Cramer (read his reflection on the event here).

As a song leader and about a dozen hymns in, I was among the first to be arrested. This was a surprise as we were in the middle of the circle and not easy to reach. This group didn’t need leaders to sing, though, and the hymns continued as we were held and processed in the building and as we were taken by buses to a warehouse for further processing.

The next few hours were time outside of time. Uncomfortable and vulnerable moments were eased by good preparation and kind companions. Later that afternoon I received my citation, paid my fine, and was released along with a handful of others. We walked out of the warehouse into the bracing cold and into the warm care of the jail support team. 

Love and gratitude buzzed around the church basement as we joined the group gathering there. 130+ arrested individuals trickled in over the next couple of hours, in addition to hundreds who sang hymns outside and delivered petitions to their representatives all afternoon. As they arrived, I embraced old and new friends, my cousin, and that daughter of mine. 

Looking back, I wish I had been less hesitant, that I had shown up and stood up with less doubt and anxiety. And, I know that one of the journeys I am on in life is learning to be less afraid. I think I am making progress.

In the middle of the rotunda while enveloped by a glorious sound, I felt a new and deeper connection with the historic peace church I grew up in, with all its past and continuing imperfections and with all its lived commitments and unrealized potential. I felt a stirring, an awareness of the Spirit singing her own song back to me: Yes, you belong here. You were formed for this, and the world needs this.

The words of our hymns, songs and chants now ring in my ears. This verse from the hymn Let there be Light has especially lingered, perhaps because it is what we were singing moments before I was escorted away, as shown in the video below.

Let woe and waste of warfare cease, that useful labor yet may build…its homes with love and laughter filled! God, give your wayward children peace!

May it somehow, someday, be so.

Making the awkward not awkward

03 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Learning, Practicing, Teaching

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Photo for Blog

I’ve been thinking about the idea of awkwardness lately. “Awkward” is common in the lexicon of my daughters’ generation, and not necessarily seen as a negative.  “It was so awkward,” my older daughter once said with delight after finding herself on a dorm floor full of college boys as she and her friend looked for her friend’s older brother. Some of our best stories come from initially awkward encounters.  I wonder if what makes the outcome of these stories ultimately positive is that we were able to push through the awkwardness to something better on the other side.

A memory from over a year ago, captured in the photo above, points to this – with a college class in September 2013 I found myself spending the day volunteering at the nursing care facility at our local retirement center.  Our tasks were simple – to sing songs, play games, take walks, and generally interact with the residents – but felt anything but simple as the 20 of us stood in that initially awkward space. As a collective shyness permeated the room, one young woman moved towards an old woman, grasped her hands, and began a conversation. Claire’s model empowered the rest of us to spring into action.  There was more awkwardness throughout the day, to be sure, but we now had more trust in ourselves to push through it.

This memory helps me identify two ways of thinking about awkwardness.  First, we can embrace rather than avoid awkwardness, whether the awkward moment is humorous or just difficult on the way to something better. Second, we can be confident in our ability to make the awkward not awkward. In my piano practice and teaching I think about this when there is a technical quandary – a part under the fingers that doesn’t feel, look or sound right (or usually all three at the same time).  In my own playing my first tendency is to deny or avoid this awkwardness and keep playing without addressing the issue, with a foolish hope that it will eventually take care of itself.  My teaching requires me to be more mature, which in turn strengthens my practice.  Identifying the awkward and exploring how to ease it leads to a time of experimentation at the keyboard – with hand placement and fingering, with gesture, with phrasing, with repetition and drill – until that beautiful moment when the awkward no longer feels awkward and has emerged into something smooth and authentic.

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Why do we do this?

19 Monday May 2014

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The Seven Teen Quartet at Goshen Middle School

This article, Art Makes You Smarter, reminds me of the questions being asked of various disciplines in schools and colleges these days: Why do you think your subject is worth studying?  If it doesn’t directly lead to desired academic and vocational outcomes, how does it indirectly support those aims?  In public school settings the “specials” such as music, art and physical education increasingly need to justify their existence, and are the first cut when budgets are tight.

It is therefore good to see the mounting evidence that art makes you smarter, though too often we forget its other value. I readily fall into this myself, telling the prospective music college student who wants to be a doctor that med schools love undergraduate music majors, or preaching to my daughter that piano is a part of her education because of what it does her for mental acuity, and for how it develops good discipline and fine motor skills.  I believe in these rationales, but I wish it was enough to say, or that at least I would remember to also say, “Because it will bring you great joy and because the world needs art.”

Two recent conversations reinforced this wish.  A few weeks ago my daughter Greta was describing the experience of sight-reading through a new piece with her 60-member 8th grade orchestra.  It was an exciting work with a rich sound and perpetually moving parts, and the reading of it for the first time felt both dangerous and thrilling as they rallied on, determined not to fall apart. When they made it to the end, the silence of the room felt amplified. “It was so satisfying.  It was like we all took a big sigh together when we were done and just wanted to stay in that moment.”

My other daughter, Naomi, is in 5th grade and part of a traveling soccer team. The spring season recently started and I wondered how she would handle the additional demands on her time. One evening practice fell during a cold and damp day and I assumed it would be drudgery. But on our way home from the field, she said with a sweaty glow, “Mom, I am exhilarated right now. It feels so good to move.”

This is why we do this.  Yes, kids should have more recess and physical education at school because it will help them learn better. Yes, there should be more arts exposure and experience because of the great academic outcomes. Yes, in today’s world it’s naive to think we won’t need to defend our place in the educational system with proven outcomes.  But more than this and beyond this, we need movement and we need the arts because they uniquely satisfy and exhilarate something within us. This is enough.

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Paradoxes

05 Wednesday Dec 2012

Paradoxes

For a while I’ve been fascinated by the written assignments piano teachers give their students. Whether or not these are closely looked at, they are valuable artifacts of the term of study. Here is one for a chemistry major taking his second semester of lessons with me. I enjoy thinking about some of the paradoxes I find on this piece of paper — ideas that I hope to remember in my own practice and life:

• Detail work leading to more freedom, less care
• Slow enough for forward motion
• Heavy and relaxed
• Mindful repetition

 

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From Smug to Chastened

02 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by in Learning, Teaching, Time

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Around midterm I was feeling smug about how busy we keep our students in my department.  I was fully aware, but newly reminded, of how much our music students are balancing.  They are working diligently at their full-time course work, have part-time employment, are involved in multiple ensembles, and practice their instrument several hours per day alone or chamber groups.  They say yes to opportunity and rarely complain. I find out from time to time about ways they are involved in non-musical ventures across campus and am further impressed. I am amazed at how well they balance these demands.

I was also feeling smug about my own level of activity and that it is good that I model the juggling of teaching and administrative work, a family life, involvement with a church community, and a commitment to my own writing and musical growth.  Sure, I deal with stress, don’t always get enough sleep, and wish I could give more time to most tasks, but generally it’s good.  Life is good.  I’m blessed to be busy and fulfilled and there is a certain thrill at that manic part of the semester when the pace is fast and ridiculous.  I thrive on it.  At least, I think I do.

There is this nagging worry, though, that maybe we are teaching and practicing the wrong thing. What if this ability to manage so many varied responsibilities, more than are really possible in one day, is not what we should be nurturing?  Too often any real exploration of an idea or in-depth problem-solving doesn’t happen because there simply isn’t time or space for the immersion that is required.  Too often we are doing too much with not enough sleep, exercise, time, or focused attention.

I know this extreme busyness is part of the semesterly cycle.   Papers, exams, juries, and grades will soon be done, next term a safe distance away, and we will all breathe. We will have, as a friend once described it, a good collapse.  We may even find some time to focus on a task we yearn to explore more fully.

In the meantime, what types of lives are we modeling and promoting?  I told a colleague about my smugness leading to a chastened state and she laughed and said, “Well, smugness is usually a warning.”  College students struggle with anxiety like never before.  I may post articles about the benefits of caffeine on Facebook, but just as much research is out there about the dangers of inadequate sleep.  What if some normally dependable students turn in sub-par work a little too often, have too many weeks of weak practice, or show signs of substance abuse or other harmful ways of handling the stress?  At what point will I demand that there be less on their plate and less on my own so various tasks get the quality time they deserve?

As per usual, I offer no real answers.  And I don’t want a conclusion that says a liberal arts degree scatters our attention too much, nor a finding that we need to lower expectations of our students’ musical growth.  I’m convinced that one can experience meaningful study in one’s primary discipline while being broadly educated and involved. I also recognize that any discussion of scattered attention today is incomplete without addressing technology and constant connectivity. I’m encouraged by ways we do have of capturing immersion and enabling focus in education. Certain projects, like a senior recital or thesis, demand it.  Intensive January or May terms and curricular requirements like a Study-Service-Term in another country are the definition of it.

But during the primary seasons of life we keep asking for more and glorifying the ability to do it all.  Chastened a bit, I will keep thinking about what current and future habits we are shaping with this glorification.

Ways of Knowing

23 Tuesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Knowing, Learning, Music Theory, Practicing, Teaching

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The older I get, the more I know what I don’t know.  In high school and college I played piano with a clueless bravado that allowed my fingers to fly confidently over notes my brain did not fully understand.  Somewhere along the way I became a good sight reader. Was it those adolescent years in Kingston, Jamaica where I had more free time to practice?  Was it the high school choir accompanying I eagerly did?  My piano teacher in high school required regular playing from the hymnal — did this make me a good sight reader? Did it have anything to do with my constant intake of the written word?  The mysteries of why some pianists become good sight readers of Western notation and why others (often some of the best musicians) need more time to absorb the page in front of them are an ongoing hot topic in music pedagogy circles.  Good research is pointing the way to a combination of experiences and strategies.

However the mysteries are solved or remain, I better understand the downfalls of my sight reading abilities and sometimes wish I read less well. In college I was greatly challenged and wonderfully taught, and I played a lot.  But, perhaps in part because there was not enough struggle to read those notes, my knowledge became technical fairly quickly and theoretical awareness rarely surfaced in my individual practice.  My moment of truth (I think each musician has one) occurred in the spring semester of my junior year when I crashed and burned in a public performance of a Beethoven Sonata movement (it was Op. 10 No. 3, movement one, if you must know).  I had played it through from memory many times on my own and in front of my teacher, but I didn’t really know those notes on an cognitive level. I went into the high-stakes environment with an unfamiliar feeling of unease, perhaps finally mature enough to be subconsciously aware that other ways of knowing weren’t there to reinforce the motor-muscle memory in the fingers. The disaster and ensuing tears of mortification led to some of the most important conversations I had with my professors and began a turning point in how I practiced.  The innocence of clueless bravado lost, a new path was needed.

And yet, this turning point seems to be one of the longest curves of my life.  Now more than twenty years later, I still struggle to really know.  Today while practicing Bach’s delightful fugue in A major from WTC book one I felt that familiar learning-too-quickly habit take hold, the notes coming easily and my fingers and ears giddy with what they were doing and hearing — too much intake, too fast, without enough struggle to understand.  Of course the brain can’t be truly bypassed in this situation, and enough repetitions will eventually result in some actual knowing.  But, if I bypass the knowing struggle as my fingers weave their way through the material, I’m only inviting future trouble. So, I keep working at deepening the ways in which I know the music, in essence making sure the struggle is early in the process rather than late.

Here are the ways of knowing I now try to activate.  (These ideas are gathered from my teachers, my students, and various readings, but were particularly solidified when I read Geoffrey Haydon’s chapter “Memorization via Internalization for the Intermediate Student” in Creative Piano Teaching by Lyke, Haydon, and Rollin, 2011.)

1. There is the technical knowing, which I value more and more for its importance as I get older, even as I recognize it was too often my only route of knowing back then.  My fingers need more accurate repetitions than ever, to really have it.  I’m better at recognizing where they are close to faltering even if I can get through that moment, because under just a little bit of pressure, stumbles will happen in those places. There is no room for doubt in my fingers.

2. There is the theoretical knowing, which can seem overwhelming (so many notes!) until I remember that theory is any way of naming what I am doing.  I need ways of talking about musical passages, of identifying beginnings, middles, and endings.  Western music theory is my best path for this, even if I name a passage as simply as, “The place where the hand does the back-and-forth thingy with the E major triad.”  I have to be able to talk my way through an entire piece in one way or another.

3. There is the visual knowing, which has two parts.  First, I am increasingly aware of the photographic memory that develops when I’ve read a page of notation so many times.  (This is a useful way for me to review my knowledge, though not what I want to focus on in a memorized performance).  The other visual is recognizing and knowing the way my hands look on the keyboard when playing a given passage — the amazingly diverse topography found within those black key groups surrounded by just seven white keys.  Away from the piano, I find time to picture myself playing the piece; where I lose the view are places I need to better reinforce in my practice.

4. There is the aural, the knowing of the ears.  I’m learning to sing various melodic lines and practice improvisation on the patterns and harmonies from the music I’m learning.  Being able to trust my ears and improvise my way out of a trouble spot helps me integrate what is written. In the same way I envision myself playing the keys, I close my eyes away from the piano and hear my way through a whole piece to check my aural knowing.

And, finally:

5.  There is the body’s way of knowing.  Awareness of the physical gestures in use is an important part of this.  I am trying to pay attention to how different mechanisms are at work as the body plays various passages, from the feet to the sitz bones to the shoulders, head, face, arms, and fingertips.  Exploring and refining what feels best as the body experiences the music helps helps me recognize and trust the body’s knowledge of the musical experience.

Two final connections.

Until the most recent general education revision, the liberal arts curriculum at my college required each student to take one of two Bible courses  — either Reading the Bible or Knowing the Bible. In my advising sessions I often needed to remind myself that Reading the Bible was for students with previous biblical study background; it seemed to me that the other way around made more sense — that the more advanced course would be Knowing the Bible.  Our Bible/Religion department’s rationale was that you cannot read the Bible until you know how this canon was formed and organized.  Reading the Bible went much deeper into content and interpretation, and was for students who already understood the structure of the volume of books and how to approach a reading encounter with it.  This paradigm reminds me that much knowing goes into reading.  I know a lot already to be able to sight read music well, and it is a vital skill in my line of work. Knowledge makes reading possible. Repeated and mindful reading of any text leads to greater insight and satisfaction.

Recently I’ve noticed a change in how I respond to a familiar comment from students in their lessons. “But I know this.  I don’t understand why I’m not playing it better here.”  In the past I used this as an opportunity to explore nervousness and how to play through it.  Now, recognizing that insecurity about knowing (knowing what you don’t know) is often the main source of anxiety in performance, I respond, “You must not know it as well as you thought.  Let’s look at how you can practice so you know it exceedingly well, in a lot of different ways, and we’ll see if that makes a difference.”

I am still one who needs this lesson the most.

The best performance

29 Saturday Sep 2012

Posted by in Learning, Performing, Practicing

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Last night we had a music faculty recital with eight different performers to kick off our recital series for the school year.  The turn out was great and the reception afterwards was a fun gathering of college students, community folks, and children and their families who take lessons in the Community School of the Arts.

I played some Bach, of course — the two preludes and fugues I learned first for this project during the month of August. I described No. 13 in F-sharp major to the listeners as amiable and lyrical and No. 15 in G major as perpetually-moving and energetic. I also told the audience that I am taking on this project because I feel certain these preludes and fugues have much to teach me both technically and musically.  And while I didn’t say it last night, I’m convinced that attempting to learn the entire volume has a number of other life lessons to teach me as well.  Naming the idea of the music being my teacher somehow takes a little pressure off the live performance paradigm, this strange scenario with its deeply-set conventions and expectations.  I’m learning this music to learn, and performances in any setting are opportunities to share what I’ve been taught by the music, rather than to show what I can do.

Sharing what I learned went ok last night.  I felt the stress of balancing teaching, administrative and practice demands this past week, and became aware by Thursday evening that I was practicing with too much urgency and tension.  By Friday afternoon my left arm did not feel good, and I was struggling with some runs in the G major fugue. The opening pair in F-sharp major felt healing to me as an opener, and I tried to communicate the pure joy I feel when playing the G major prelude.  I took the G major fugue a little slower than usual and while it wasn’t the best performance I could give, I felt reasonably in control of its myriad themes and episodes.

This idea of best performance was one of the places my mind went after leaving the stage.  Relief merged with an all-too-familiar and so-often-echoed twinge of regret for musicians — it went better on my own!  I’m accepting it may always be so.  The best performances are often those when my family is asleep upstairs and I’m alone and done with my day, lost in the music at my Yamaha U1.  It’s nearly midnight, and I play masterfully.  No one else, except my cat Archie, hears this best performance. There is something a little bit sad, but also a little bit wonderful, about this.

I am not that important. I am loved beyond measure.

24 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by in Knowing, Learning, Teaching

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A shift has happened.  Schedules are fully in place — kids’ school and activities, full-time work, and evening meetings or events.  Summer was a gift, especially this first one in five years without doctoral demands and with children old enough to do their things while I did mine.  I am thankful for what we had, but the structure we inevitably needed has inevitably come.

Time at the piano and time to write about it will require more commitment and planning than before. When I set out on this project, though, I added the “and other adventures” to the title so if the practicing wasn’t happening I could write about what was happening.  This week one of the happenings was this:

These notes are from yesterday’s teaching faculty workshop.  Some years guest speakers give the workshop and these individuals are often inspiring and provoking.  This time we heard from our own colleagues on three themes under the meta question, “What is Unique about a Goshen College Education?” — Philosophical/Religious Underpinnings, International Education, and Pedagogies Within and Across Disciplines.

It was a great day. I geeked out on my love for Goshen College and my love for pedagogy.  Some highlights:

• From John D. Roth’s new book Teaching that Transforms (chapter 3 was one of our readings for the day) an exploration of the dispositions found in good teaching: curiosity, reason, joy, patience and love.  John, Professor of History, offered an Anabaptist theological framework for pedagogies anchored in our senses, and for the act of learning as a sacred act, as an act of worship.

• Kevin Gary, Professor of Education, spoke of a “great spiritual truth” that holds two ideas in tension — 1. you are not that important; 2. you are loved beyond measure.  Experiential learning happens best when we both suspend self and open self to the experience. I also learned from Kevin that I need to read some T.S. Eliot.

• Beth Martin Birky, Professor of English and Women’s Studies, reflected on how leading Study-Service-Term took her outside of her specialties but also deepened her scholarship as she began a multi-year research project about women in Costa Rica. Her commitment to personal engagement with the women she wanted to learn from and her ability to creatively engage college students in her research are models I want to remember.

• Ross Peterson-Veatch, Associate Academic Dean, suggested a working theory for our teaching, a bridging concept to help students: 1. know what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to; 2. have a structured experience; 3. have time for structured reflection; and 4. make a commitment to what is known now that wasn’t known before.  This theory reminded me of the educational philosopher Maxine Greene’s trio of steps for meaningful engagement in the arts (from her book Releasing the Imagination): 1. exposure; 2. active engagement; and 3. reflection.  Ross deepened this for me and also arranged it as a quartet with the addition of commitment.  Perhaps this commitment helps us avoid outcomes where we “had the experience but missed the meaning” (from the 3rd quartet of Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot — Thanks, Kevin).

There was more to this geek-fest — a “History of Goshen College in 12 Minutes” by Steve Nolt, the story of Study-Service-Term by Tom Meyers, the role of language-learning on SST by Dean Rhodes, and pedagogical vignettes by about ten other colleagues.  Kathyrn Meyer Reimer, outgoing faculty chair, did a masterful job of organizing the day and I’m grateful.

And now, with my head full and my hands too quiet, I will play some Bach this weekend. I will trust that my own art-making will in some way nurture my teaching disposition into more curiosity, reason, joy, patience, and love to offer my students. I will encounter, experience, reflect, and commit to what is learned. I will remember I’m not that important.  I will be ok with this because I know I am greatly loved.

The WTC and Me. And Amy Grant.

06 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by in Learning, Motivation, Practicing

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My background with the Well-Tempered Clavier Book One is somewhat scattered, as is my whole piano past.   Were it not for a childhood experience in Kingston, Jamaica, I would likely not be playing piano today.  When I was nine years old my family moved to Jamaica for my parents to be country representatives with Mennonite Central Committee.  By then I had completed two years of mediocre piano study (on my part), but my parents had the sense to find me an excellent teacher in Kingston.  Mrs. Foster-Davis had huge and scary guard dogs outside her estate, an impressive studio with two grand pianos, and a commitment to the Royal Conservatory of Music piano materials and examination sequence.  Although she was nearly blind, she used a magnifying glass effectively to check my hand shape and fingerings.  She assigned music that was too difficult for my limited reading skills, but with a slower pace of life allowing lots of time to play piano I gradually rose to the challenge. I left Jamaica a couple years later having completed the R.C.M. Grade Four adjudications and returned to southeastern PA with the awareness that playing the piano was one of my best gifts.

Back home and working with another fine teacher, I learned some of Bach’s two-part inventions and enjoyed them as much as anything that allowed the fingers to fly around quickly.  I learned only one piece from the WTC book one in high school, a pair often assigned as one of the easiest, the Prelude and Fugue No. 2 in C minor.  The prelude is a classic pattern piece, an excellent rotation study for the fingers building to some fun tempo changes and improvisatory moments that nicely set up the fugue to follow.

I found special motivation for the fugue from the 80’s Christian contemporary song “Sing Your Praise to the Lord” made popular by Amy Grant. Composed by Rich Mullins, the song opens with six measures of the fugue and continues with some fragments as the song unfolds.  I am not much of a music snob (I went to a Merle Haggard concert last night, for goodness sake) and I loved this fusion of classical and Christian pop.  True, I loved it more in 1985 but I still kind of love it.

 

I found the sheet music and learned my first Bach fugue, or at least part of one, in this format.  I sang the song, pretending I had the ascending backup instrumentals supporting me at the piano, and dreamed of being Amy Grant but only better because I could also play the fugue part.

In a future post I will write more about my past experiences with the Well-Tempered Clavier.  Now I need to go practice, motivated by something other than wanting to be Amy Grant.

A dead white guy? Really?

29 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by in Knowing, Learning, Motivation, Practicing

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I am going to learn the Well-Tempered Clavier Book One by J.S. Bach this year.  I thought at this point in my life I’d be exploring music by living classical composers, finally learning the language of jazz, or even on my way to achieving my dream of being the next Joan Baez. Instead — a dead white guy?  One of the deadest, possibly most over-exposed white guys of them all?  Really?

But.  It is this music that I’m most drawn to these days. My fingers experience a unique joy as I play it, my brain is extra stimulated as I read, analyze, and listen to it, and it makes me sigh deeply and often for its emotional content. I feel a strong need to learn the entire collection (book one, that is).  Now.  This year.

For weeks I’ve been sightreading through WTC book one and reading commentary and analysis on the preludes and fugues. Starting August 1, I’ll begin some sort of disciplined process to learn on a new pair every two weeks with the hope that I’ll know all 24 within a year.

What is a disciplined process? What does knowing mean in this context?  Why do my fingers like this music, what does it do for the intellect, why does it make me sigh?  What thoughts about learning, teaching, leadership, relationships, politics and more might emerge while my brain and hands work through it?  These questions will be part of the experience, which I will process on this blog.

If others read this and experience the process in some way with me, I’ll be grateful to a very dead white guy for enabling that connection.