The things that this place has given me are astonishing - a true sense of purpose as a collaborative pianist, countless lessons in life and music (actually, in that order), and a sense of urgency that repertoire and languages must be learned and polished immediately.
The program is divided into two categories of students: Fellows and Young Artists. Fellows, in general, are graduate students or beyond (early professional or pre-professional). Young Artists tend to be finishing undergraduate or about to finish (or having just finished).
I feel so grateful that I get to work here again this summer.
I had terrific sessions yesterday with the students. In one of the sessions, the student and I were working on an excerpt from Barber's "Hermit Songs." We were working on how the verses start differently (sometimes Barber uses retrograde-inversion to differentiate the vocal line starts of each verse). Then I realized that the student maybe wasn't thinking about the overall structure of the piece ...
So ...
We laid the piece of music on the floor and analyzed its sections.
First, we just spent time picking the large sections. (I would say that no matter how large the piece is, anything from a Chopin Mazurka or a Sondheim tune to a Mahler symphony movement, divide the piece into two or three large sections. Not eighteen or nine or eleven).
Here is a photo of "top-down" - from Arkansas:
Next, we chose further subdivisions per section (so, within a section, we chose two or three divisions per that section). Every piece will be different. In this particular Barber piece, the sections and sub-sections are delineated clearly by piano interludes, verse changes, or key changes).
We don't necessarily have to start practicing at the beginning of a (concerto, song, piece, movement). Much better to eat the frog, one bite at a time, and not necessarily start with the head. It's also easy to get bogged down and overwhelmed with any over-abundance of something in a piece: lots of text, tricky rhythms, or tons of black notes.
Here is a "bottom-up" photo from New Mexico:
I had a major revelation about myself at Eastman while taking Theory 402 with Dr. Headlam. He introduced us to the big-picture concept of "top-down" or "bottom-up." He explained that learners had a default, but we could train the other side. I discovered that I was definitely a "bottom-up" learner, seeing details (but not necessarily getting them all). I would get so overwhelmed with the details that big-picture ideas, including big-picture scope of a piece, would be missing entirely (and some of the details would be missing too, so therefore, the audience wasn't getting much).
Now, as a result of this teacher and his work with us, and the doctorate in general, I'm a "top-down" thinker. Understanding the largest confines of something allows you to break it down, and then break it down again (again, again) , until you can actually really get some work done.
I was delighted to have this time with this student yesterday. I feel that it helped, and I learned something in the process about her, about how she looks at a score and will then go forth and prepare a performance.
