A meeting of the minds.

Relationships

Bruce Berr: Each of you represents the highest leadership of two different kinds of music teaching organizations. Gary, could you field this first question? How do you view the relationship between MTNA, which is commonly referred to as an "umbrella" organization, and the Frances Clark Center, one that has a particular focus?

Gary Ingle: One of the nice things about the relationship between our organizations is that we complement each other; we're not in competition. Some people from the outside might look at it and think: MTNA has its conference, the Frances Clark Center has its conference, and so they must be competing. But we aren't.

Louise Goss: We really aren't at all. And what has been so surprising and gratifying to us as a new organization is that an organization as old and distinguished as MTNA should give us such enormous encouragement and support. I think it's true to say that no single aspect of our start up has been as meaningful as the help we have had from Gary, his board and his staff.

GI: MTNA's mission is to advance the professionalism of all music teachers, regardless of whether they're teaching piano, strings, voice or any applied area. The Frances Clark Center is focused on one particular aspect of that--and that's the keyboard teacher. In a sense, MTNA is the breadth organization that tries to deal with issues impacting all music teachers, whereas the Clark Center is the depth organization that a music teacher would be involved in, both in piano and pedagogy. As teachers of any applied area become more aware of what the issues are out there, then, more than likely, they'll be coming to both of our conferences. Ours will not go into the same depth that the Clark Conference will in terms of certain pedagogical details. At the MTNA Conference, the same keyboard teachers can be exposed to other ideas from other perspectives.

It's absolutely vital that we have organizations like the Frances Clark Center that are looking at something in-depth and that have a point of view, enhancing everything they do. There are many of these point-of-view organizations throughout the country, and MTNA should be drawing all of them in, so that we all can look at the various perspectives. MTNA does not have a particular point of view, other than to advance the value of music teaching and music to society, and to promote the professional growth and development of music teachers. With that broad vision, we can incorporate all these different points of view into the organization and make sure they have a voice. In that way, a greater truth can be achieved through what we have done. If MTNA were to adopt a point of view, then I feel like our effectiveness as an organization would be diminished.

Relevance

BB: I would like to ask about the perceived relevance of our work. We're living in a highly materialistic society, and we teach music, which is mainly spiritual. We all grapple with perceived relevance. Louise, how is the Frances Clark Center dealing with this?

LG: The relevance of what we do as music teachers is our prime topic. We have the luxury of very in-depth focus, and that focus is how to make the best educational principles apply most practically and effectively to the teaching of music at the piano. This reveals itself in two closely related areas: the most effective music lesson at the keyboard for the individual student or group of students, and how to make that lesson more practical and meaningful for the teacher so that teaching skills can continue to improve. When I do my work in this setting, my goals for the teacher are specific and professional; my goals for the children are simply general and humane.

This is also the essential relevance of the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy (NCKP), in that it involves a lesson for a student and it reveals the skill of the teacher. Of course, MTNA works in those areas too, but not as specifically.

GI: The relevance for MTNA comes through its basic mission as an organization. Our mission is actually threefold:

One, we have a relevance to society as a whole because our mission is to advance the value of music and music teaching to society. We are a music teachers' organization, but we are not just focused on music teaching. We know that it's important for us to be on the vanguard of advancing the value of music education to everyone out there.

Two, we want to advance the professionalism of the music teaching profession; that's the profession as a whole, not just our members, because there are many things we do as an organization that are relevant to all music teachers and not just to those who have joined MTNA.

Three, to provide specific services and programs that we have developed just for our members.

Every day, we are looking for ways to make the mission happen, so relevancy is a constant thrust.

"Typical" Students

BB: In the 2001 NCKP and in MTNA Pedagogy Saturdays, the emphasis has been on music education for all students, not just the most gifted. I believe it's not a coincidence both organizations consider that important. Louise, I'm sure this is near to your heart.

LG: It absolutely is, and I completely agree with you.

BB: Why do you believe so passionately that every child should have music lessons as early as possible?

LG: I think it's essential that every child should have good music education as early as possible. It should also be for as long as possible, because I think it counteracts, more effectively than anything else I know, some ot the things that are wrong with today's society. A child who has good music instruction becomes a stronger and more creative person, and a more independent learner. They become participants rather than passive consumers. I'm very worried about children who spend so much of their time just passively consuming, especially the long hours in front of the TV. To actually be creating in some kind of musical way is going to change their lives--their minds, their spirits, their health--especially their mental health. Creating leads to health, happiness and successful lives. I agree with Aristotle that music is one of the basic cornerstones of education.

GI: Our basic focus is on the student, and I'm very happy that our president, Wayne Gibson, has made what we're calling the "everyday student" a primary focus for the organization during his presidency. MTNA has done a very good job over the years providing outlets for highly skilled performers, and our competitions are among the most prestigious in the country. Now it's time for us to also focus on that great group of young people who are taking music lessons and aren't going to be the concert artists of the world, but they will be the audiences for the wonderful playing of the more skillful artists. It's important that they receive a solid music education so they can be informed people.

MTNA will ultimately be moving into all the areas: We should have programs from the "womb to the tomb," to be colloquial about it. As we all know, adults are one of the faster growing segments of the population who want to take music lessons, especially at the keyboard. We certainly are going to be focusing on that, and I'm certain that the Clark Center will be maintaining that focus.

Public and Private Music Education

LG: Gary, I would like to ask you a question about your perspective on where we stand in terms of breadth and depth of quality music education for every student in the public schools. When I went through school many decades ago, I had excellent choral instruction everyday from grade school onwards--five days a week. Beginning in seventh grade, I played in a band and in an orchestra, every day. As soon as I was in high school, I could sing in a special chorus in addition to having my daily choral class. It seems to me that starting from the time of Sputnik in the late 1950s, the emphasis began to go away from the arts and toward science and math. Gradually, the public school music teacher's mantle fell to the private piano teacher and to the director of children's church choirs. Bit by bit we have inherited the responsibility for basic music education for all children. I feel that now it may be making a small comeback, being rejuvenated to some extent in the public schools. Does this seem to you to be true?

GI: I think that's true in various locations around the country, but the jury is still out in many areas as to whether music will survive the budget cuts and the economic downturns all across the country. This underscores the point about the role of the independent teacher in all of this. Music in the public schools is a relatively recent phenomenon. It was in the mid-1800s that it actually went into the public schools, so it's been there only about 150 years or so. But well before that, music was being taught by what I consider to be the backbone of the arts in the community: the private teachers who provide the apprenticeship/mentor relationship. What that says to me is that the importance of the independent teachers will continue to be paramount, because they're not subject to the whims of a school board nor an administrator's pen--one signature can erase a music program from an entire community. That can't happen in the independent area.

BB: Louise, I know that the New School addresses comprehensive musicianship, and in some ways, this helps augment the music education that may or may not be happening in the schools. What is the curriculum there?

LG: People come to us for piano lessons, but our philosophy is that what we're trying to develop is not just pianists, but musicians. The curriculum begins with the subject area of music, and it moves to the specifics of an instrument only after that foundation is built. Our goal is to teach what you've just called comprehensive musicianship: rhythm, reading, theory, technique--all the parts of it as it applies to the piano. Our children move as if they were dancers, and they sing as if they were singers, and they compose as if they were composers, in addition to becoming skillful at the keyboard. We are not so much going out to touch every student in America with music education as we are to make every student who comes into our corridors, so to speak, as effective a keyboard musician as possible.

Impact on the Community

BB: The New School does not enroll just children in piano lessons--there are a broad range of ages. Could you share with us a little about the adults and seniors, going back to the relevancy issue?

LG: We view the children as the most important component of the school. But we are happy to offer teaching time as it's available to older students who are interested. Currently, we have a student body of about 240, of whom perhaps twenty-five are post-high school age students; these range in age from just out of college to age 80. We work with them in the same wide variety of ways we work with the children--group and private lessons for everybody and comprehensive musicianship at the keyboard.

BB: How often do you encounter people, children or otherwise, who have gone through your program and who emerged as a part of the musical community (not necessarily professional) in Princeton--in a sense, "music trees" (pun intended!) growing around your community? I assume that when you attend local musical events, you probably recognize many past students either on stage or in the audience?

LG: It's a small enough town so that does happen--Princeton is full of people who went through our program. It's fun to be able to track them as fully developed adults, using music as part of their everyday lives, playing for pleasure at home. They may be stockbrokers or homemakers or public school English teachers, artists, doctors, scientists or whatever. They are also putting their children into the New School. We are now having third-generation students--grandchildren of original students--which is tons of fun.

BB: You get to teach great-grand-students!

LG: Exactly! And all of these families are the ones who buy the concert tickets, support the performing organizations and sing in their church choirs.

Conferences

BB: Gary, continuing on the topic of education for the everyday student: How have you felt about MTNA's Pedagogy Saturdays, particularly in the last few years, covering broad areas that address in a down-to-earth way the teaching of the typical student?

GI: I've been very happy with the quality of the programs that Pedagogy Saturday has presented over the years. I'm grateful the Pedagogy Committees have been willing to take a broad approach to the topics that were addressed, especially incorporating the various applied areas into the sessions. What makes MTNA unique is the fact that our emphasis on Pedagogy Saturday focuses on more than just the keyboard approach. We bring in experts from other disciplines, as well as those who address learning styles and the like, so that our members can look at it, hear it, see it and experience it. All is done with the hope that the interaction of all of these differing applied disciplines will knock some rough edges off everyone's pedagogy and maybe polish their approaches better than if we were operating in a vacuum.

LG: I had a feeling when Pedagogy Saturday started that it was just more keyboard pedagogy. Gradually over the years, it has broadened to include some string pedagogy, perhaps vocal pedagogy, maybe even brass pedagogy. Seeing the applications to other disciplines is very important and very helpful. It will be a great strength to MTNA and to those of us who are engaged in pedagogy to have it remain as broad as possible because the Frances Clark Center addresses pedagogy in its own conference from the angle of only one discipline.

Constituencies

BB: As both of you know, I serve on the MTNA Pedagogy Committee. When we solicited videotapes for the 2002 Pedagogy Saturday, we were hoping to get tapes showing instruction in all applied areas. After our initial e-mail call, we did get numerous inquiries from nonpianists. However, by the time the deadline passed, for the most part, only pianists submitted tapes for consideration. Any ideas on what we could do to remedy this in the future, so there is not a misconception that we're just dealing with keyboard pedagogy, since the breadth of Pedagogy Saturday is its unique strongpoint?

GI: The misconception you are mentioning regarding Pedagogy Saturday is a microcosm to the macrocosm that the organization deals with on an everyday basis: that MTNA is a piano association. That perception is easy to come to, because the great majority of the members of MTNA are teaching piano.

BB: What is a ballpark percentage?

GI: It's probably 75 to 80 percent. Much of that is demographic, because most music teachers out there are piano teachers; there are more students taking piano lessons than other applied instruments. Whereas, the string and voice teachers have an association of their own, the piano teacher doesn't, so MTNA serves in that role. Despite the fact that we are Music Teachers National Association, we are really the primary association for the piano teacher. That's why MTNA has the makeup that it does.

My personal viewpoint is that it seems that keyboard pedagogy is the most advanced of the pedagogies. There seems to be more of a commitment from keyboard teachers to looking at pedagogy and its importance to their teaching than some of the other disciplines.

LG: And more of a history, too. We've been doing it for so many more years.

GI: Yes. We talked earlier about the breadth and depth issues. On the one hand, MTNA is the breadth association for all music teachers, but because the core constituency is piano, then we also have to serve as a depth organization for the keyboard members of our association. Despite this fact, we have to constantly remain in touch with the fact that MTNA is the association for all music teachers out there and keep working against those stereotypes.

BB: As the head of such a large organization, with so many layers of people between you and the actual music students, how do you get a feel for what's really happening in various parts of the country as a result of the work that teachers are doing? I think if I were in your position and were so far removed from the students themselves, I would wonder whether I could really tell what is going on.

GI: There are two aspects to that. One, we have that great volunteer force in our association. We have members of the board of directors who are all practicing music teachers; they have students, and they are interacting with them every day. We have state, division and local presidents who are all teachers. We have made a conscious effort as an association to provide avenues for these individuals to get together and talk about these issues and what's going on in the association and in the music profession. We have what we call a Summit for MTNA Leadership; every year we bring in all our state and division presidents, national chairs, board of directors and the staff. We meet together, and we talk about how we can be a better association and better meet the needs of our members. All of this occurs on the basis of everyone's evaluation of what's happening in their individual area. That's the greatness of a volunteer association like ours: When you provide avenues for dialogue and discussion, you get this mass of leaders and experts together to keep the association in touch as a whole. This promotes new ideas and new ways of doing things. These ideas are constantly bubbling up, so we can take a look and see if they can reconcile. Take the issue of group teaching, for example. This has really started to surface for MTNA in our partnership with the National Piano Foundation--sponsoring the group teaching training seminar that was so successful last fall [2001] in Indianapolis.

The second aspect is my personal perspective. I have made it a personal goal to be out there, to be at conferences around the country, to go to our state conventions, to find as many venues as possible to listen to music teachers. I'm certain that many of my predecessors had their own ways of being in touch with the membership. I have probably taken a more aggressive approach to being out where the members are, rather than behind the desk in Cincinnati. Part of that is just style--my style is to be interacting with people, with our leadership and with the profession; you just can't do that behind a desk.

BB: Is a large percentage of your time spent traveling in this way?

GI: Quite a bit. It sometimes becomes a grueling travel schedule, but I believe the contact I have with the rank-and-file members of MTNA gives me, as the executive director of the organization, a better perspective to advise the board.

Performance vs. Pedagogy

BB: There still appears to be misunderstanding between the people who primarily teach performance, and the people who primarily do teacher preparation. I still hear comments such as, "College piano majors don't need much pedagogy, because they'll learn how to teach once they begin teaching." Another person said that when they were younger and took pedagogy at their conservatory, no outside assignments were given so the course would not possibly interfere with practice time at the piano. Another: "As long as one can play, one can teach." These sadly recurring rondo themes were addressed by Richard Chronister in a speech to MTNA way back in the early 1980s and was reprinted in a recent issue of American Music Teacher. (See page 31 April/May 2001.) We certainly have made some progress helping performance and pedagogy teachers understand one another and how teacher preparation is a separate but related activity. We've won some battles, but I don't think we've won the war.

LG: I agree with you completely.

BB: If I may paraphrase Richard's question from twenty years ago: Where do we go from here?

LG: I think the reason that you're still hearing comments like that is part and parcel of what happens to bad thinking, which is that it perpetuates itself. What you've quoted is the result of someone who has been too lazy to think through what pedagogy is or might be. It's somebody for whom pedagogy has no meaning. This is not a battle to try to fight where it exists, because where that attitude already exists you're probably talking about older people who may not be prone to change. If you're seeing this among younger people, then I think something dramatic has to be done. My belief is that the best way to counteract that misunderstanding of what pedagogy is and why it's important is by giving as many examples of the results of good pedagogy as you can possibly fit into your life, your schedule, your work. You simply have to demonstrate how different life can be if you are considering these things, as opposed to the way your life is if you're not considering them.

BB: At the New School how do you merge both performance skills and teaching skills?

LG: The master's degree we offered for so many years with Westminster Choir College was always referred to as a master's degree in both pedagogy and performance. We didn't let up at all on the performance requirements just because the students also had very heavy pedagogy requirements. We've taken a lot of grief about that--that our pedagogy students were overworked--no question, they were! But they did perform at a master's degree level, and they did do some exceptional teaching. The idea was to always keep the focus on both, because as they grew as performers, they also had to grow as teachers and vice versa.

BB: Have you had people who came to the New School for teacher preparation who had been exclusively performance-oriented and had difficulty at first grasping a different paradigm, but were eventually won over?

LG: For the most part, they came already won over--something about their earlier training, something about their former teacher, something about the recommendations they'd heard about the New School brought them to us eager to learn what it was we would try to teach them. If they were not immediately won over, I think as soon as they got into observing demonstration teaching, and saw the children at work in a frenzy of excitement about what they were learning, they just got with it.

BB: Gary, let's enlarge the scope of this issue. At MTNA conferences, there is a broad spectrum of people: At one extreme, we have some very concerned with the teaching process, and not as much on performance; on the other extreme, there are performers who appear not curious about the teaching process. Most people are somewhere in-between, but not necessarily in the middle. How do you get a conference such as this to help shorten the distance between the ends, so there is a more balanced view for all?

GI: The good thing about a conference like this is that we can get all of these various ideas, and put them in the crucible and stir them around, and see what becomes of them. As someone who is not a keyboard teacher--this issue seems to strike more of a chord in keyboard teachers because you have a better developed pedagogy approach than many of the others--I've been watching and listening and trying to get the lay of the land in all of this. It appears to me that there are those who are advocates of, for lack of a better term, the "artist-teacher approach" to teaching, where the idea is: The better you perform, the better you will teach; therefore, make someone a better performer, and they'll be a better teacher. On the other hand, there is the approach of modern pedagogy, like the one the Frances Clark Center espouses.

It seems to me that the reason we still have to deal with all of this is the artist-teacher approach is the traditional approach that has been around for over a hundred years, so there's this weight of history that is pushing it forward. That worked back then because most of the students who were taking lessons were probably students who didn't need lessons; they were highly gifted.

BB: What Earl Oremus was calling during Pedagogy Saturday "Intuitive Learners."

GI: Right. Now that we have been broadening the idea that music is for everyone and not just the most gifted, then we realized the earlier paradigms wouldn't work. If you take a student who isn't as gifted but wants to learn to play, and pair that student up with a teacher who expects the student to become superb, you start having problems. All this brings about the development of new approaches to deal with those everyday students.

At an organization like MTNA, we don't come to the issue with any preconceived notion that one is necessarily better than the other. We want them all in here together talking, interacting, and then we reconcile. Frankly, that's the way I like it because our role as an association is to be a reconciler; there are many, many ideas out there, and our role is to try to bring them together. We reconcile the new with the traditional because there will always be the traditional and there will always be new ideas, and they will always clash. Rather than trying to avoid that, we should encourage the clash to make it happen in such a way that the impulse to do new things doesn't swallow up the tradition, because there are some great things that have happened in the past. We all are the legacy of that tradition, and we don't want the new to remove that. But neither do we want this force of tradition to eliminate any impulse for the new. They both are important, and we bring them together--the best minds in all of these areas--put them important, and we bring them together--the best minds in all of these areas--put them together and try to reconcile. If we can do that, we will have succeeded.

So many of us had the Grout book in undergraduate music history. For me, one of its most interesting quotations was when he was introducing monody and the transition into the baroque. He said, "Reconciliation of the new with the traditional is a task that confronts every artist in his own generation, and one that can be evaded only at the price of artistic suicide."

LG: That's a great quotation!

GI: Grout was talking of the creative impulses that resulted in the change from the renaissance to the baroque, the reconciling that had to happen there. For me, it is a perfect analogy for what we do as an association. Reconciliation of the new with the traditional is the task that confronts every association like ours, and we can avoid it only at the risk of the suicide of our profession. It's also interesting that even within an organization with a point of view, there is the need for reconciliation--even those with that same point of view have different experiences. So it's important that that happen in every organization.

Grout also mentioned different types of leadership in his discussion of Beethoven. He said that some people approach leadership as a continuation of the past--you follow up on the way things were done, and you try to make them better. The other approach to leadership, and this was what he was saying about Beethoven, was that you establish a new way of doing things that others will ultimately carry forward and build upon. That's what the Frances Clark Center is doing; certainly, in many cases it's what MTNA wants to do.

There are times when there is a necessity for a new way of doing things; the continuation of the past is no longer sufficient. Someone has to become the foreteller of the future, and they start leading people toward it. I think that's what Richard Chronister did, and what Frances Clark did, and others in this area have done. This is not to say that the tradition was bad, but there's a new way of doing things--we should constantly be reconciling. That's what will make our profession become the very best it can be.

Codetta

BB: Now a codetta: What have you enjoyed most about the conversation today?

GI: For me, it has been an increased awareness of the depth of commitment and the vision of Louise and her organization for the total comprehensive musical development of all children. That is a wonderful goal to have. It's an audacious goal, to a certain degree, but every organization should have those big, hairy goals that we strive for. Paraphrasing the poet, "Man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what are the heavens for?"

LG: I've enjoyed our discussion a great deal. It has made me even more keenly aware of Gary's view of his organization and of his leadership of it, and this in turn has broadened my own view of it. Because of what he has said this morning, I have remembered the importance of the coming together and the rubbing together of the new with the old, and the possibilities of reconciliation.

Bruce Berr has been an independent piano teacher and university professor over the past three decades, specializing in the teaching of piano pedagogy An associate editor and webmaster for Keyboard Companion magazine, he holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Washington University in St. Louis and a doctoral degree from Northwestern University.

Editor's Note: Gary L. Ingle, MTNA executive director, and Louise Goss, renowned pedagogue, Frances Clark Center chair and co-founder of the New School for Music Study, had a "Meeting of the Minds" at the 2002 MTNA National Conference held in Cincinnati, Ohio, in March. Bruce Berr, independent music teacher, joined the conversation and shares it here.