Dear Alma, The college wants me to give a concert and I can’t. Just can’t
OrchestrasDear Alma,
I am in my mid-30’s, teach at a small private university (which is about a half-time job), and on the weekends I play in a wedding gig quartet. I am from a medium sized city, and by the end of high school, I had learned 2 concertos (only some movements) and the equivalent of a recital program. I played in my school and youth orchestras, playing a movement of my concerto in my senior year. I grew up in the Suzuki Method, and my teacher was very specific. She would keep me on pieces for a very long time, meticulously working on details. I moved away from Suzuki when I was 16. I got into a solid music school for college but was absolutely overwhelmed by learning any new repertoire. Orchestra was a nightmare. I just sat in the back and faked it. I made up a slew of excuses from illness, injury and family problems to steer my teacher towards just reworking the pieces I already knew. When I graduated, I used these pieces and a well-spoken interview to get my university job, which I have had now for 10 years. I feel like I am living a lie. My school has been increasingly pressuring me to play in public, and I can’t even play the pieces that I am teaching. I never demonstrate. I try to only teach the handful of pieces I know but I think people are catching on. Some of my students complained to the administration. I spend half or more of the lessons on scales and etudes. They want me to play in a university quartet but there is no way. My reading ability is very low. I am starting to have panic attacks and all I do is try to pretend like I know what I am doing.
Please help, I am drowning
Dear Drowning,
This is not good. Not good for you, your health, or your students. When I read your letter, it screams UNHAPPY. You are not drowning, you are trapped in a frightening underwater nightmare, partially made by you, with a healthy dose of help from your current, blind music administration, your inexperienced childhood teacher and lazy college professor.
The one question I have for you is: do you love music? I honestly can see no love from your words, and this is the biggest concern, Drowning. Because without love and desire, music is a never-ending chore.
Is this what you want to do for your life? Or did you fall into it, and can’t find the courage to start a new career? This is the crux of the matter. I advise you to take some serious thought into what you want to do for your life. Mid-30’s is young. You have time to retrain for a new career. Maybe a related career, or an entirely new one. For example, you could even apply for an administrative position (at another music school or your current one), or talk to your school and see if you can transition into teaching classroom. You have weekend income from your wedding quartet, which doesn’t seem to give you any stress, so that income can sustain you partially as you transition into something new.
If you do want to keep teaching lessons, you need to buckle down, start to practice, and train yourself to become a better teacher. You can figure it out, if you have the passion and drive. Look at other schools and online resources to see what repertoire the students are playing in their recitals. Make a short list, and start to learn these pieces. For the current students, make it a priority to start to learn small sections of their pieces that you do not know, so that you can make solid suggestions and even start to demonstrate occasionally. Study recordings for nuance and fingerings. You can use resources such as (if you are a violinist) Simon Fisher’s books, or for cello, Practice Mind by Jensen. You can find a reputable online teacher for yourself, and take summer courses. You can ask your gig quartet to start to learn some Haydn or Mozart quartets. But you have to put in the hours. Lots of them. As much as you can – you have a ton of work to catch up on. But really, I don’t see this as the right choice.
I had a teacher for a summer who was an empty vessel. They gave me bland solo music, endless etudes and scales. I would come to the lesson, and the teacher would be sitting in their chair, with their slippers on, and wait while I unpacked. There was tension, and I didn’t know what to make of it, because I had been lucky to have always had warm, generous, funny teachers who were interested in furthering my interests and encouraged me to play with creativity and honest abandon. For this summer teacher, I would play my assignments, and then the teacher would ask me to play them again. After a second go-around, they would assign the next scale or etude, telling me to read and follow the instructions. There was a lot of material I had to prepare every week, and virtually no feedback or guidance. The teacher never made a move to unpack their instrument, make small talk, ask me how I was or what I needed help on. It felt like I was screaming into a void, like there was no oxygen in that dark, dank room. But maybe he was just scared shitless. Maybe he didn’t have the first idea of what to say, and was just desperately trying to stay above water himself. Maybe he was drowning.
This dark room is no place for you, and no place for your students. You both deserve better. You deserved better when you were a student, and your students now deserve the same courtesy. Release yourself from this whirlpool, let yourself dream of a new direction, and go towards it, no matter that it will take effort, money, and courage to leave this life behind.
Reach your hand up above the water. Someone will take it and help you into a new, better life.
Picture: Facebook Music Teachers page
Is this for real ? Or is it an invented person that represents what some students think their instrumental teachers are doing ?
I too am doubtful.
The shred of plausibility lies in the reality that there are multitudinous colleges with music departments out there and they’re not all going to be able to stock their part-time, adjunct-instructor teaching slots with Los Angeles studio pros who can knock out anything put in front of them.
I think this is a put-on although I know people in the lower edges of the music world who are somehow passing for talented and carefully arrange things so as not to be caught at it.
But this sounds like the plot of a Robert Benchley movie.
Have you thought about taking some lessons from someone who specialises in teaching adults? They might be more psychologically aware, some are effectively therapists anyway!
Lucky she has a university position, despite a woeful CV and lack of expertise. Unfortunately, many music lecturers are like this. All talk and no substance. Shameful.
I do love music. Even then, the business side could be a grim business.
Aged 30, I realised I was never going to pay a mortgage from performing. I retrained as a barrister and made a successful and enjoyable career out of that.
It was very hard work, but suffering as you are at present is just as hard.
Think outside the box. Say your prayers. Go for it!
This sounds like a bitter student imitating their teacher wrote this.
Dear Drowning,
Stop teaching and get an administrative position. Most department heads I know and know of are completely incompetent in their core business.
Yours,
Pff
Such a sad and horror story at the same time.
Alma, thank you for not beating around the bush, thank you for saying what has to be said.
I understand your problem and am very in line with much of what Alma has to say to you.. But I will briefly say what I honestly think, then telling you exactly what I myself would do if I was in your shoes…You are at liberty to do or not..
Firstly, consider carefully whether your own student experiences have led you into “imposter syndrome” (Research that term – it can destroy lives and inhibit careers)
Secondly, I would find an excellent interested advanced music tutor a little distance away from your own area and have a great lesson every fortnight or so. Work confidentially hard and watch your own skill grow..Tell no-one–at least at first. You will then, more and more teach from an attitude of new confidence after a term or so! Time to fight back bravely.. Other people are not all perfect either… Good luck..
Practice, learn easier pieces, practice more, then practice playing those easier pieces in public at other locations (small churches out of town), and sight-read daily. You can do this. I remember my surprise once at learning that a prominent instrumental professor was playing a small recital in a tiny little church an hour away from where they taught and that that was just a warm-up recital to prepare for bigger performances of the same repertoire elsewhere. Good luck!
Yikes. What’s sad is that there are so many talented, eager musicians graduating with doctoral degrees who really want to teach at the college level and have the ability to do so, but there are so few jobs for them. I feel for this person who wrote the letter and is clearly in over their head, but especially feel for those who love music, want to teach and perform at a high level, and are finding that there just are not enough opportunities to go around.
Dear Drowning,
Not everyone succeeds. You haven’t. Deal with it or move on.
Signed,
….
Yikes. Whole lotta bad karma to
answer for.
Mid Thirties is midlife crisis time and the perfect moment to change direction. Something new that invigorates you. Give yourself a year to find it, but get out of your current role and don’t lose your self-esteem. I changed in my 30s from a high flying but stressful career in IT to working in the most challenging schools and changing live. It does work.
Terribly sad. There is a way forward, if this person is open to trying any approach that comes to mind.
I don’t have any first hand experience with the Suzuki method, so I hesitate to evaluate it. But classical music is at heart a written art form. As Bartok once noted, it is unique among musical styles in that our repertoire exists first and foremost as written documents. I always wondered how you learn it without a great deal of time spent developing the skill to read and interpret the notation.
I recognize the strengths of the Suzuki program–fostering community, family involvement, the important understanding that the last thing young children want to do is to spend time alone in a room. But I wonder if it is wise to continue with Suzuki past a certain point.
“I just sat in the back and faked it.”
That’s what half my high school band was doing.
It sounds like the main issue is that the OP has not developed an effective capacity to read music efficiently at a level commensurate with the repertoire he/she is playing (i.e.: it seems that instrumental technique is *not* the main issue). In my own experience teaching, coaching, and accompanying, I have encountered instrumentalists and singers with such limitations quite often, even among those tackling advanced repertoire. What the OP needs is to take intensive lessons/coaching with an erudite teacher/coach (who need *not* play the same instrument as the OP… indeed, it might be better for the teacher/coach to play a different instrument, so that the focus is on the reading/analysis rather than on instrument-specific technique) who will help the OP cultivate his/her capacity to sight-read effectively — this entails a synthesis of theory, analysis, and an appreciation of how to spot and realise patterns/clichés quickly (with a little analysis, one discovers that a lot of repertoire is replete with scales, arpeggios, diminished/dominant 7ths, and other familiar patterns).
With the right guidance and the right kind of practice, effective sight-reading is a skill that can be taught, cultivated, and improved rapidly. The OP will need to work hard and set aside plenty of time for lessons/sessions and practice (and be willing to work on exercises or pieces that he/she may consider “insultingly easy”), and finding a good teacher/coach for this kind of work will take some careful and diligent research (and may entail the OP travelling some distance… but given the OP’s position, travelling to another city and engaging a teacher/coach with no connection to the OP’s institution may be preferable in the interests of discretion).
Finally, I would add that, if you are a fluent sight-reader with an astute analytical mind and a strong insight into a variety of repertoire, it is *not* necessary to have played a piece in order to teach and demonstrate it effectively (the purpose of demonstrating is not to give an instantly perfect performance worthy of a commercial record, but to exemplify a pedagogical point you are making about an aspect of playing… obviously, you need to be able to play to a high standard commensurate with the exigencies of the passage being demonstrated and the pedagogical point being made, but a *slightly* imperfect demonstration can still be useful, provided that you acknowledge the shortcomings immediately and use the imperfections as an opportunity to explain the challenges and considerations that are associated with the passage, thus making the pupil more sensitive to them and better able to listen for such flaws in his/her own playing).
I’m sorry, but this sounds like an English professor who has read few books, and those with difficulty. It is borderline fraud, and I feel for any students who have passed through this person’s hands. They have been, and apparently continue to be, severely cheated of the teaching they seek by attending this institution. As for whoever hired him or her…very sloppy.
I recall Tom Cruise saying how, before he got Scientology, he couldn’t read the scripts he was given.
He’d hire someone to read them to him until he had it memorized.
Most of these music departments are a joke and should not be handing out performance degrees. They are filled with people like this poster who failed at performance so teach instead. Gullible parents and students then pay their way as they produce more failed performers who will then carry on with the fraud and become bad teachers also. It is a huge racket
A few important things haven’t been mentioned in the question. This is from somebody who has been having an imposter syndrome for a very long time, plus a lot of pressure growing up. There are a lot of suppressed emotions in it that don’t allow for an objective view, and it is fascinating that the panic attacks haven’t started earlier.
No university out there would ever hire somebody with little input as presented here. The background was definitely checked as one cannot simply “talk” their way in. How you make music did make an impression on people, and it’s probably you who couldn’t or didn’t know how to ever embrace that. That’s just what people with severe imposter syndrome do.
Now, why is this question interesting for every musician out there?
Many students entering the professional world have very similar stories. Internationally.
We are living in a period of time when students’ injuries are peaking in numbers, depression rates are skyrocketing, and grownup musicians are not seeking help in time, either friendly or professional.
We play from our emotions, and since yours have been blocked, so is your music-making.
Therefore, there is nothing wrong with your talents. Contemplate that.
What is blocking you is just your access to them, and once you remove your blockages you will also realize that.
If you decide to embrace that finally, for the very first time, you will be the best possible teacher out there.
You will be able to understand, adjust, and instruct simply everyone. Just remember to turn your listening inside, especially for this first period of time. This is your only duty now.
There are many teachers out there in a similar situation. If not in full 100% then at least in one chunk of it. You are brave beyond words, and it is remarkable that you’ve come this far. Any switches you ought to do now are not only for yourself but for everyone who will come across your work in the future.
You’re a pioneer, and by writing here, you show that you are (unconsciously) already aware of it.
Probably, your next phase will include reaching way, way more people than you did so far as it took a special person to endure all of this so far.
P.S. Your inner language sounds like the language of people who didn’t accept you fully in your childhood. That’s how I know you’re not giving us an objective view of your storyline.