In teaching Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, I can safely assume that the student has taken piano lessons for at least 8 years and therefore has an excellent foundation in reading music. At this point in a child's musical career, the major focus would be on expression and musical phrasing. Therefore, my primary cognitivist/gestalt approach would be to encourage the child to think musically about phrasing and expression.
Within the cognitivist approach, the child should memorize the music as quickly as possible by associating the sections of the piece in his or her memory with other pieces that he or she has already learned. Therefore, it might be a good idea to search through the music with the student to discover places where the music represents warm-ups from the Czerny (such as any arpeggiations in the accompaniment, for example), and relate those sections to the Czerny in his/her mind. Another concept would be to develop a story behind the music that each section is telling so that the student can use the story as a trigger to remember the sounds of the music during that section.
To focus on thinking about phrasing and expression, the student can associate the different sections with different emotional ideas. For example, the beginning of the piece is very peaceful, while a section later in the piece sounds more disgruntled. If the student imagines the peaceful phrases to be an angel with new wings hopping from cloud to cloud, while the disgruntled section is a jealous little angel who does not yet have his wings, he or she may be able to recall the musical material more quickly for memorization. After the student has memorized the work sufficiently, he or she may be able to bring more new ideas or develop the musical ideas with more meaningful expression. By learning the whole piece, the student has a greater overarching idea to perform, which will make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.
No comments:
Post a Comment