I rarely write what is characterized as a fluff piece, a filler blog that meanders around the powers of positive thinking and related platitudes. Such flighty commentary often sounds time-worn and replete with cliches.
Yet, I have to admit that in my own cosmos of practicing and learning, having all-embracing "PATIENCE" frames my most fundamental pathway to musical progress and development. (Naturally, this paradigm filters down to my students, who are consistently reminded that their journey is taken in "patient, incremental baby steps.)
In so many words, Patience is my mantra that I spread far and wide with the fervency of a musical missionary.
But putting Religion aside, I have observed through decades of teaching, that many adult students have a particular, self-inflicted time line for learning a new piece to their level of "expectation." They nip the word "patience" in the bud, setting a preconceived deadline for the type of achievement they have subjectively determined.
Perceiving pages of notes, many crowded with double and triple beams in fast tempo, they resist the very slow temporal framing that magnifies all the necessary details in the score. Add in a need to practice with separate hands that comports with this mega-lens view of a composition. So through this parceled undertaking, it takes PATIENCE to unravel the many dimensions of learning: fingering assignment, meter, articulation, harmonic analysis, structure, phrasing, dynamics, mood, character and more.
Finally, without PATIENCE underlying a learning experience, a student cannot begin to ENJOY the PROCESS of engaging with a new piece.
And here's where PATIENCE is wedded to gratification in the present. It is NOT delayed gratification as is commonly assumed. The JOY of exploring in the here and now; breathing into notes that are relaxed in time, so that they are "felt" from their inception through their decay, and how they relate to notes that precede and follow them, is made possible by a SUSPENSION of time, where it does not exist with limits, but instead has its own temporal inner space.
I guess, I'm somewhat influenced by my Eurhythmics teacher, Inda Howland when I laud these timeless metaphors that she well- integrated into her life as a musician and teacher. And if there was anyone who had a wealth of "patience" it was this treasured Oberlin Conservatory icon.
To summarize and integrate the ingredients of "patient" practicing by way of a video representation is difficult, since many adult students have traveled through many months of practicing a particular piece, realizing that there are always more enlightenments on the horizon at each learning juncture.
In this particular sample, one of my pupils, who has "patiently" worked on the Beethoven Bagatelle, Op. 119, No.1 for several months, if not a year, is sculpting, shaping lines with the added dimension of wedding words to phrasing in a SINGING frame. At least as this lesson unfolded, the best prompt to improve the contour of a particular phrase was to seize upon a few choice words with the added ingredient of Harmonic rhythm to clarify the contour of a phrase to final cadence.
I'm reminded here of the impressionable delivery of pianist, Irina Morozova when she made words and music the theme of the video I was privileged to make and circulate. (The link is included below). This approach is inevitably part of a progressive unraveling in the learning process that I referenced earlier. (As it happened I was studying this very piece, Chopin's Nocturne in Eb, Op. 9, No. 2, and it brought some "new" revelations that I was open to absorb without a defensive, boundary imposed attitude.)
When the student is patient, he/she is open to these new awakenings, transformations, re-assessments, and refinements that are the keys to musical growth and development.
LINKS:
Music and Words: The window to learning the Chopin Nocturne in Eb, Op. 9, No. 2 (Irina Morozova)
The gift of Irina's "patient" practicing:
Eurhythmics, A whole body listening experience
https://arioso7.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/eurhythmics-a-whole-body-listening-experience-video/
Original Content: Patience and Practicing
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