Sonata by Mozart, lyrics by Ima desperate teacher - music teaching techniques

American Music Teacher, April-May, 2002 by Jackie Edwards-Henry

One characteristic of a great teacher is the ability to be flexible in the approach used with students--finding 100 ways, as needed, to present the same concepts to different students. Many teachers use lyrics and words to help students solve musical problems. For example, a teacher might sing a student's name, "Ma-ry," to help the student produce a decrescendo in a two-note slur or sing "Go to here" at the point of climax in a phrase. According to Katherine Petree, author of "Tapping Students' Creativity," published in the January 1994 issue of Clavier, Leon Fleisher used the words, "I am the reluctant dragon," to help a student capture the character and articulation in the fugue theme of J.S. Bach's Toccata in C Minor. Additional resources for problem solving may be found in the writings on topics such as learning styles and imagery. Yet even techniques such as lyrics, learning styles and imagery, when used in isolation, can, at times, fall slightly short of the goal. For example, the image for a musical composition can become so second nature that students' minds, again, wander; or students might have clear ideas of what their music needs to communicate and still produce a rhythm incorrectly. Creating lyrics that grow out of imagery can force minds to focus and can assist with solving special problems. I have used imagery-inspired lyrics with both my precollege and college students to:

* Encourage rhythmic accuracy

* Voice the melody

* Assist phrasing and achieve climaxes in phrases

* Produce stronger dynamic contrasts

* Enhance or encourage accuracy in articulation

* Encourage steady tempo (and prevent rushing)

* Strengthen understanding of form and encourage changes in character, mood or color

* Identify, voice and articulate motives in contrapuntal music

* Strengthen mental focus, especially in passages difficult to memorize

Rhythmic Accuracy

A precollege student was preparing the first movement of Sonatina in F, Opus 36, by Muzio Clementi for local MTNA auditions. She had learned and memorized the work, and she created a story of the antics of a bear and a porcupine to solidify her memory and enhance her performance. Nevertheless, one rhythm pattern, which she sight read incorrectly the first week the movement was assigned, remained inconsistent. Using her story as a guide, I created the words, "I will prick you in the nose, now!" for the rhythm pattern, and the problem was solved instantly. (Figure 1)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Voicing the Melody

I assigned Rhythm Machine by Lynn Freeman Olson to a precollege late-beginning student. He liked the work immediately and played the notes and rhythms accurately at a steady, moderate tempo by the next lesson. His difficulty with the work was that the left-hand ostinato accompaniment overpowered the right-hand melody in measures 9-16 and 27-38. I worked on the voicing technique with the student, and he was, at best, moderately successful, so I tried lyrics. The title and the student's personality inspired, "I have this machine, yeah! I think it's real keen, yeah!" The student and I sang the words as he played the section. He achieved immediate success with the voicing and produced well-shaped musical phrases. (Figure 2)

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Phrasing

One of the nocturne style's most difficult aspects is shaping long, often irregular phrases. I assigned Frederic Chopin's Nocturne in E-flat, Opus 9, No. 2 to one of my freshman piano majors as an introduction to the nocturne style. She conquered the balance issues rather quickly but struggled with phrasing, so I used the work's title and created the following words: "There's calm in the night time, a calm that I do not feel in day time. I dream in the night time, that you will love me just as I love you." The words helped the student produce beautiful phrases. In addition, they also encouraged her to produce a better tone quality and play the work with much more expression and sensitivity. (Figure 3)

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

Dynamics

College faculty members frequently use their summers for personal projects, and a few years ago my project was a solo recital program that included Sonata No. 2 in D Minor by Sergei Prokofiev. I spent the majority of each day at the piano and worked in my vegetable garden for exercise and diversion. I was dissatisfied with my execution of the crescendos and decrescendos in the "A Section" of the work's scherzo movement. In an inspirational moment, I decided the work reminded me of the bumblebees bothering me when I was gardening. I quickly penciled in these words:

"Bumblebees, the bumblebees are busy pollinating all the veggies in the garden, oh the bumblebees, the bumblebees are buzzing `round my head, they drive me crazy so I stand and tell them, `Go away, please go away, oh go away, please go away. Oh won't you go, go away and let me pull my weeds, oh won't you go, go away and let me pull my weeds.' Annoying bumblebees, the bumblebees are busy pollinating all the veggies in the garden, oh the bumblebees, the bumblebees are buzzing `round my head, they drive me crazy so I stand and walk away!"