The Tyranny Of Tradition In Piano Teaching

The strict traditions of piano teaching have remained entrenched for generations. The dominant influence of Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), the first composer-pedagogue of the instrument, brought about an explosion of autocratic instruction and bizarre teaching systems, exemplified in the mind-numbing drills of Hanon's "The Virtuoso Pianist." These practices--considered absurd or abusive by many--persist today at all levels of piano education. This book critically examines two centuries of teaching methods and encourages instructors to do away with traditions that disconnect mental and creative skills.

The strict traditions of piano teaching have remained entrenched for generations. The dominant influence of Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), the first composer-pedagogue of the instrument, brought about an explosion of autocratic instruction and bizarre teaching systems, exemplified in the mind-numbing drills of Hanon's "The Virtuoso Pianist." These practices--considered absurd or abusive by many--persist today at all levels of piano education. This book critically examines two centuries of teaching methods and encourages instructors to do away with traditions that disconnect mental and creative skills.

This book gathers a set of works highlighting significant advances in the areas of music and sound. They report on innovative music technologies, acoustics, findings in musicology, new perspectives and techniques for composition, sound design and sound synthesis, and methods for music education and therapy. Further, they cover interesting topics at the intersection between music and computing, design and social sciences. Chapters are based on extended and revised versions of the best papers presented during the 6th and 7th editions of EIMAD–Meeting of Research in Music, Arts and Design, held in 2020 and 2021, respectively, at the School of Applied Arts in Castelo Branco, Portugal. All in all, this book provides music researchers, educators and professionals with authoritative information about new trends and techniques, and a source of inspiration for future research, practical developments, and for establishing collaboration between experts from different fields.

Using factors extrapolated from historical and social science literatures to frame the observations of twenty current U.S. piano teachers, A Portrait of Contemporary U.S. Teachers of Piano: A Musical Journey explores the contemporary U.S. piano teacher through a social science lens. Drawing on many interviewees' experiences with teaching piano, Barbara Stolz argues that each teacher is an artist and a pedagogue, teaching approaches are eclectic and pragmatic, and knowing each student is paramount.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Richard Chronister was one of the pedagogy greats of his time. During the last forty years of the 20th century, he was a driving force for better piano teaching and better training of piano teachers. His influence reached from large universities to small independent studios, and his name was linked with both the most basic principles and the most recent research. His accomplishments were legendary. He started the first university degree program in piano pedagogy, served on six different faculties, and developed a new piano method. He was co-founder of the National Conference on Keyboard Pedagogy and the founder and editor of Keyboard Companion magazine. All his professional life he asked searching questions, such as: How can I build on children's innate love of music? How can I teach so that my students keep learning, practicing and making music? How can I teach my students to become independent learners? What can I apply to my teaching from discoveries of the past and of my own time? How can I become an acute observer of what my students are doing? And of what teachers whom I observe are doing? And of what I am doing as a teacher? This compendium contains Chronister's best answers to these questions and many more. They come from his articles, addresses and lectures. Whether speaking or writing, his style is always lucid, informal and engaging. He never pretends to have the final answer, and invited his audience to consider his advice and reach their own conclusions. This book deserves a place in the library of every serious piano teacher!