JAVS Spring 2024

with those pedagogues. They emphasized adjustments to physical technique, but relied most on translating their expertise through imagery. • Principle #3 Invoke Emotion with Intention º Suggestion: Think about what you are trying to get a student to do and how they would feel if they were doing it. Then consider stories that would make them feel that way. º Musical Corollary: Learning to express a variety of characters in music is a hallmark of the advanced musician. • Principle #4: Create Meaningful Calls to Action º Suggestion: Review your calls to action to make sure they ask communities to do something specific that will connect them to the cause and that they know how to do it. º Musical Corollary: Working on one’s sound is one of the most fundamental aspects of musicianship. Creating guidelines and dedicating a portion of weekly lessons for how to work on sound serves the student long into their future. • Principle #5: Tell Better Stories º Suggestion: Go beyond simply sharing messages to telling interesting stories with a beginning, middle, and end. º Musical Corollary: Playing a sonata or any repertoire is a form of storytelling, where the violist must discover and transmit a musical narrative to the audience. Rather, there is an elusive quality, a je ne sais quois , in trying to convince a student to make a change. This process of putting my learning under a microscope also demonstrated that changes occur in very small amounts and when a student feels accepted in a way that contains the added factor of optimism, where the expert believes unwaveringly that the student is capable of the desired change long before the student can recognize it for themself. Pianist Krystian Zimerman recently articulated his understanding of the differences between practicing and performing that can also be applied to understanding the learning process between teacher and student in learning to develop a concept of sound. Most of the time I am not an artist, I am a craftsman 98% of the time. In Italian, the word “artist” and “artigiano” is very close. Practicing at home is a little bit ridiculous because it is a little bit like standing in front of the mirror and looking at what the lips are you doing while you are saying “I love you.” Then

in life, when you meet the person, […] you know how to say this and sometimes it sounds completely different than what you intended. We don’t play notes, we recreate the reason that made the composer write these notes down, and to open the hearts of the audience. And for that, I need to love the audience, I need to respect my audience in order to cross this barrier from 98% and to open the remaining 2%. 12 Conclusion I feel lucky to have chosen a field that requires the old fashioned apprenticeship model of learning from a master craftsman or artist. While digital tools can aid the learning process, no amount of money can create an online course or a set of virtual lessons that communicates similar information in the way that in-person mentorship does. These digital approaches can aid in the process, but my approach to teaching needed more in-person guidance. Musicians are always budding, always in the process of learning something, rethinking something, retooling something in their playing. It is an ever-evolving process of becoming, something that is continuous throughout one’s playing career. Learning to retool one’s approach to something as fundamental as tone production is humbling in a way that demands patience for the process as well as optimism about the outcome. Teaching myself and coaxing my students to become more acute listeners signifies one of the hallmarks of a career path in music; it can be a privilege to show students how to analyze, to think critically, to weigh evidence, and to understand people and ideas, contexts, and complexity, deeply and thoroughly to help make the world a better, more humane, more thoughtful place. Karen Tuttle’s philosophy best sums it up: To integrate and fulfill what a healthy mind and body dictate is to live to full capacity. Few are so fortunate. Our struggle and discipline as artists is to keep open and alive the center of our feeling. We must respect and trust it profoundly, for it is our only genuine sounding board, and the only honest way in which we can project. 13 I am grateful to musicians from the Bavarian Radio Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Houston Symphony, International Contemporary Ensemble, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and St. Louis Symphony for their invaluable feedback, generosity, and time in the development of this inquiry.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 40, No. 1, Spring 2024

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