On Teaching

Gavin Black is the director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. His website is www.gavinblack-baroque.com and he can be reached by e-mail at gavinblack@mail.com.

Motivation, Practicing, Fun, Guidance, & Projection II

This month I will continue questioning, musing, speculating—almost free-associating—about aspects of our ways of working with our students, and about how that process connects with the students’ lives and their many paths to learning music and to getting something important out of that learning and that music.

Remembering Peter Williams

However, a sad coincidence makes me start with a comment or two, and an anecdote, about Peter Williams. Just before I sat down to write this, the news came across the computer screen that Peter Williams had died. [See Nunc Dimittis, page 10 in this issue.] That made me remember my first introduction long ago to the first few of his many books: my teacher Eugene Roan mentioned that he valued Peter Williams’s writings especially because he asked more questions than he gave answers. I was jolted by this realization: that in starting last month’s column noting that I would be asking more questions in this series of columns than giving answers, I was subconsciously paying tribute to that aspect of Williams’s work. And indeed, Gene Roan was not the only person to notice that about Peter Williams. Several comments I have read online say exactly that about him. My own feeling (not based on anything he said to me, since, to my regret, I never spoke to him or communicated directly with him) is that his approach was simultaneously based on the perpetual asking of questions—the refusal to view anything as settled or determined in the way that can seem like ossification—and on valuing real and copious information as a spur to understanding and to art. This seems to me to be a very fruitful and also rather life-affirming combination. 

I once attended a combination lecture/demo and masterclass that Peter Williams conducted at the Schuke organ in Voorhees Chapel at Rutgers University. It was thirty-something years ago, and I don’t remember the specific topic. I do remember being (as someone very young and very much a beginner) astonished that someone so august, with actual books to his name (and impressive ones at that) could be so relaxed, friendly, and informal. I think I was still then in the grip of a youthful reluctance to believe that anything with the authority of the printed page could have flexibility to it. I had heard what Gene Roan had said, and knew that I liked that approach. But I still couldn’t quite believe that an “authority” really thought that way. His tone at this class helped me begin to internalize that as a possibility.

Furthermore—and this impressed me a lot—he conducted this class wearing sandals and other very informal summer gear. When he sat down to play the organ, he played in those sandals. I don’t remember what I thought then about organ playing and footwear. I am not sure whether this confirmed for me or actually started me thinking that simple comfort while playing might be an underrated value. Since I base much of my thinking about technique and teaching on the importance of comfort, naturalness, and relaxation, I consider that moment in Voorhees Chapel to have been quite significant for me. 

Now to get on with some questions . . .

Fingering

I wrote last month that “I sometimes respond to a student’s asking me what fingering to use in a passage by asking ‘what do you most deeply want out of life?’” And, as I said last month, this is sort of a joke—but not entirely. Questions about fingering are often phrased like this: “What is the fingering here?” or “What is the fingering for this passage?” Of course this way of putting it is predicated (probably subconsciously) on the assumption that there is a “correct” fingering, or at any rate that other people have already deemed what the fingering should be. I understand that most students who ask such a question are not strongly asserting that they believe that there can be only one correct fingering and that someone else has already worked it out. It’s just an underlying flavor to the thinking. But in any case, my first response is to examine the question. Whose job is it to know what the fingering should be then and there for that student? Shouldn’t it be the student—of course with help from me, since I am there and can interact, not the kind of help that just gives one answer. However, if a student wants to work within a particular tradition, or has habits that stem from a particular tradition, then perhaps that student’s comfort will be enhanced by hearing about ways in which others with more experience in that approach have worked things out. I am inclined to be uncomfortable with this, and to believe that what a student should actually be learning is specifically how to work things out from scratch for him- or herself. However, that is of course one of my biases that I need to acknowledge and re-examine. 

Once or twice I have had a student who specifically wanted to use, by default, Marcel Dupré’s fingerings for Bach. This could have been because of something that a previous teacher suggested, because of something that they read, or just because those fingerings have the authority of something printed in a real book. My initial impulse is to be against this way of working out fingerings. Even if it is done with flexibility—with a willingness to view those fingerings as just a jumping-off point—it still strikes me as an inefficient path for arriving at what is right for a given student. However, if I myself have the flexibility to let that student start with something by which he or she is intrigued, then I discover a few things. One is a more complete picture of what is gained or lost by a particular approach to fingering. I also discover something about my student’s thinking, and about where past work and study have brought that student. And, most importantly, the student and I together learn something about the philosophy of fingering and of learning fingering. Will any of this outweigh the loss of efficiency when working on fingering is filtered through the ideas of a very different player—one who can’t participate actively in the discussion? I don’t know. But if it is in keeping with the student’s interests—and thus keeps the student interested and involved—it might work out well. 

Suppose that the Dupré fingerings are not for Bach but for a piece by Dupré himself? Then it might seem obvious that the fingerings are very fittingly authoritative—literally so. This leads, however, to questions about what fingering is for. Is fingering mainly about the piece and its interpretation, or is it mainly about logistics and comfort for the player (including how fingering habits might create predictability and repeatability)? Or is it about the instrument, and techniques for making the instrument speak? (All of the above?) Furthermore, suppose that the Dupré piece in question (such as Opus 28) was written for the express purpose of teaching a student how to begin working on Bach, and that the student does not want to adopt Dupré’s approach to playing Bach? 

Authenticity

This all leads to the question of authenticity, and why we should care about it. These can probably be summarized in two camps: authenticity for its own sake—seeking out and appreciating an awareness that what we are doing is what the composer would have done or wanted; and authenticity because we assume that what the composer really wanted is likely to be the most artistically effective, convincing, beautiful, communicative, and so on. (The former of these constitutes giving the composer authority, the second, trusting the composer.) Neither of these is demonstrably right or wrong, or excludes the other. Some players wish to start with the artifact as such—the music on the printed page—and reserve little or no role for authenticity or a reconstructed sense of what the composer would have done as a performer. 

The point here is not to sort all of that out. It is just that a student’s approach to fingering will inevitably reflect his or her approach to all of this—that is, to the student’s philosophy of life and of art. And as that approach evolves (perhaps with the help of the teacher), the approach to fingering should evolve as well (likewise with the help of the teacher).

Relaxation

What about relaxation? I have staked out (and mentioned repeatedly over the years) a position that relaxation is crucial to playing and to the learning process. I want students to be relaxed and happy and do things that they want to do not just because that seems like a nice state of affairs in itself, but also because I think that it leads to better learning. But I have no clear answer to how you induce relaxation. There is a paradox in that sentence—one that was embodied in a self-help book that was around when I was growing up called “Relax Now!”—the title sort of slashed across the cover in garish red letters. It looked like an attempt to intimidate people into relaxing. That, I imagine, can’t be done. 

The similar paradox in music learning is that we want students to relax, but also to believe that what they are doing is very hard, that almost no one ever succeeds, that they must be extraordinarily disciplined, practice a lot and always very well, that they must have succeeded by a very young age or they might as well give up, and so on. I or any other teacher may be quite good at not conveying that long list of dangers—it helps if, like me, you don’t actually believe in it. But it is still all there in our culture and its approach to music, especially music as a profession. 

And of course the basic part about work is not false: really learning music requires plenty of work. Part of my reason for wanting to make this work as efficient as possible—effective practice strategies—is to keep the process from being overwhelming in its sheer amount. However, I have to ask myself whether an emphasis on really good practicing can’t lead to pressure of its own. If I am not practicing perfectly, then maybe I’m losing out in some way. If not, why not? How can practicing be a relaxed or relaxing experience?

One thing that can help with relaxation is out-and-out silliness. What part can that play in learning an instrument or even in practicing? Quite a bit, I think. For example (minor silliness), it is quite a good thing for anyone who practices occasionally to play a piece focusing on nothing but physical relaxation. That is, let the hands, feet, and the whole self be almost completely lacking in muscle tone—almost slumped over. Certainly try to play the notes of the passage or piece, but give absolute top priority to being as over-relaxed as I have described. This will almost certainly lead to plenty of wrong notes. But it is a delightfully pure way to feel relaxed while playing. 

Other practice techniques

This is also good practice in keeping things going when you make a wrong note—possibly the single most important performance skill. Another paradox of working on music is this: if you really practice perfectly all the time you will in fact never make a wrong note. Technically, practicing well means keeping everything slow enough and broken down into small enough units that you never do anything wrong. But how can you ever practice the very thing that I just said was the most important performance skill? Surely that is the last thing that you want never to have practiced. So, is it possible to make wrong notes on purpose and recover from them? Is that a good idea as part of a practice regimen? I think that it probably is. (I continually demonstrate to students how much better it sounds when there are obvious wrong notes but no break in rhythm as compared to minor, fleeting wrong notes that the player allows to disrupt the flow of things.) Of course it isn’t pure: practicing making wrong notes on purpose and then continuing isn’t exactly the same as keeping going when a wrong note takes you by surprise. But it is useful, and, again, silly enough to be relaxing.

Practicing while it is really noisy is also a good idea—that is, a “bad” idea that can be fun and also serve as good training for some aspects of our work. A student can try practicing while there’s other music on—at home this can be the stereo, at the organ console it might be a device with headphones. I recently spent some time practicing clavichord while a recording of piano music played. It was interesting: I could tell that the (very quiet) clavichord was making sound, but I couldn’t tell that that sound had pitch. It was a great concentration exercise. (This reminds me of what Saint-Saëns reported, namely that in his days as a student at the Paris Conservatoire the piano practice facility contained twenty-four pianos in one big room. Everyone could hear everyone, and you really learned to concentrate and to listen.)

How about playing too fast? That is, playing a passage faster than you can play it and faster than you would want it to be. This of course can be fun. One of the big obstacles to students’ practicing slowly enough is that it is often just plain more fun to play fast. So perhaps playing too fast should be separated out: when you are really practicing a passage, do all of the things that I have described in past columns: slow enough, fingerings that are well-planned, and so on. But once in a while just let something rip. This ties in with the previous few paragraphs: if and only if you keep things physically relaxed are you able to go really fast, and if you try to tear through a passage much too quickly, you will make wrong notes, so you can practice keeping things going. (If you don’t make wrong notes, it may be fast but it is not too fast. So go faster!)

I have noticed (this month I seem to be writing more than ever about the production schedule of these columns) that during the part of next month when I usually write the column, I have a recording session. It is for a Frescobaldi harpsichord recording that has been in the works for quite a while. This juxtaposition has given
me the following idea: I am going to keep notes, a sort of diary of the latter stages of my preparation for those sessions, and then of the sessions themselves. The June column will be an edited selection of those notes—an account of some of my thoughts and experiences from the recording process. It will end up being a natural extension of some of the musings
of these last two columns. Its relationship to teaching as such will be, I assume, tangential but real: examples of thinking and working and trying
to make things come out well in a certain kind of musical situation. In any case, I hope that it will be interesting.

Gavin Black is Director of the Princeton Early keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].

Thoughts on teaching
interpretation
Interpretation is fascinating from many points of view. These include the relationship between interpretation and technique, how different approaches to the problems of authenticity affect interpretive choices, the history of different interpretive schools, the many elements of interpretive choices—tempo, registration, phrasing, articulation, rhythm, rubato and agogic accentuation or the relative lack thereof, and more—and in general, the strange phenomenon of how different performances of exactly the same notes can be.
With organ music in particular, interpretation begins with the choice of instrument and the venue—in effect, this is the beginning of the registration process. Sometimes—most of the time for most of us, in fact—the choice of venue and organ comes first. This part of the interpretive process is turned upside down: we choose music that suits the instrument and/or the room, or we make decisions about how much we feel that the music needs to be an exact fit for the situation or how much we can bend and stretch and compromise. This is all part of the interpretive process, and it shares with the rest of that process the fact that different players approach it quite differently from one another.

Conveying interpretation
to students
For teachers, primary questions about interpretation or interpretive stance are joined by questions about how to introduce students to matters of interpretation. These questions start with the over-riding one: whether or not a teacher should hope or expect or even insist that his or her students take a similar interpretive approach to that of the teacher. It often seems almost routine to do so. In listening either to established or to up-and-coming players, we often expect to be able to tell who studied with whom based on what the student’s interpretations are like. However, it is by no means clear that this is necessary or good. I will suggest below that teachers can be very happy with a wide variety of interpretive approaches on the part of their students. Another question might be put like this: if a teacher will not tell a student how to interpret and perform a piece—or a type of repertoire or repertoire in general—then how can that teacher help the student work out an interpretation of that repertoire, or how can the teacher help the student become a vivid and convincing interpreter of music in general? Yet another question is what sort of approach to interpretation to expect from students of different ages or levels of skill or experience. An intriguing question, to me, is this: does it matter whether or not a performance that a student gives is effective interpretively—or appeals to any particular listener’s taste—at the moment the performance is given, or is it more important that the performance be part of the long-term learning process? These two things are not always incompatible with each other, of course, but they are different, and they might suggest different kinds of input from the teacher. That is, if it is important that a given performance by a student be effective interpretively in a certain way, then it might be necessary for the teacher to coach the student in that way of playing the piece. If the goal of learning to perform a particular piece is geared only to the student’s longer-term development, then it might be better to allow the student to experiment, try things, listen, and learn, even if along the way this results in a performance that the teacher, other listeners, or perhaps even the student looking back on it later won’t like.
The question of whether a teacher should want his or her students to end up—as mature performers—playing the way the teacher does, that is, with respect to interpretive choices and overall interpretive stance, is philosophical. (I assume that every teacher wants his or her students to be as competent technically and as masterful in performance as that student can possibly be, whether that is more than the teacher, the same, or less.) Why is the teacher teaching? What does he or she consider important about music, about organ playing for church or for concert? What kind of contribution does the teacher want to make to the history of the organ over the next few decades or beyond, and does that contribution depend on nurturing a particular style of performance or approach to interpretation? Does the teacher feel that students represent the teacher: that colleagues, audiences, and possible future students will judge the teacher based on how existing students play—not, again, with respect to competence or mastery, but with respect to interpretation? If so, is this appropriate, or is it placing a responsibility on the students that is burdensome?
These are questions that every teacher must answer for himself or herself—or, perhaps more importantly, must ask and think about. The answers may change over time, and the questions may be supplemented by others—other ways of looking at it. I myself long ago came to feel that I don’t care at all what my students end up doing interpretively, as long as they feel that the act of playing music and making choices is satisfying to them. This is largely a matter of philosophy, and I don’t feel that it is necessarily the right way for every teacher to look at it. I also honestly don’t know what it says about other dimensions of my underlying attitude. Do I feel this way out of modesty—“my way is no better than other ways”—or something quite the opposite—“my way is so special that you need not even attempt it”—or selfishness—“it would be better if my students played like me, but I will withhold the information that they would need to achieve that”—or fear—“if I teach my students how to play like me they will do it better than I do, and render me superfluous”—or all of the above or none of the above? I am, in general, inordinately in favor of people thinking for themselves: my students, other players, other teachers, everyone—not just about music, but most definitely including music.
The more a teacher believes that his or her approach to interpretive matter is based on objective truth, the more likely it is that the teacher will want to try to pass that approach on to students. And, as a subset of that, we all have an obligation to pass on to our students anything that we honestly believe to be true—objectively true or likely to be so. A substantial amount of what falls into this category is information related to composers’ intentions or performance practices. I wrote at length about “authenticity” in my column of April 2010. In a sense, the principal thing is this: the most thorough knowledge about composers’ intentions and the circumstances of the composition and initial performances of a piece places surprisingly few limits on interpretive choice. That is, such knowledge may change the direction or nature of interpretive choices, but it does not effectively narrow the range of choice or tend to make different performances more similar to one another. This is like a comparison of infinities: the set of all possible performances of a piece is infinite; the set of all performances that respect whatever is known about the composer’s fingering and pedaling practices, tempo preferences, registration techniques, etc., is also infinite.
Analysis—contrapuntal, harmonic, or other theoretical analysis—can be another source of a feeling on the part of teachers that we have something objective to share with our students that might affect performance. Again, I think that it is very important to share such things with students, and I believe that this can be done in such a way as not to limit choices. For example, it is one thing to notice fugue subjects or other recurrent themes. (As I have written more than once, I believe that noticing anything that happens more than once is an extremely important and efficient tool for learning pieces.) However, it is something else entirely to move from noticing such things to reaching any hard and fast conclusions about what our analysis tells us to do in performance. (Again, comparative infinities: the set of possible performances by a player who has analyzed a piece for counterpoint and harmony is infinite, as is the set of possible performances by a performer who has not paid any explicit attention to those things.) As soon as we cross over into saying to a student something like: “of course you must phrase the subject the same way every time it comes in,” we have left the realm of the objective. This is one way of looking at it; however, it would also be possible to argue that the “sameness” of a theme from one instance of it to another lies in the notes themselves, and that phrasing and articulation of that theme can reasonably vary with the context. My point here is not to resolve a question like that, but just to suggest that we should all be as clear as possible as to what is neutral and objective and what reflects our own habits or biases. It is wonderful to share all of this with our students, but only if we are clear ourselves and candid with them about what we are sharing.

A sample interpretation
Many teachers who share my feeling that they do not aspire to have their students end up playing in their (the teacher’s) style still feel that the best way to teach interpretation is to ask the student to copy—more or less—the teacher’s performance for the time being and then to evolve later on from that to their own style and approach. This makes sense based on the notion that an inexperienced player—a student, especially a beginning student—does not yet have a basis of knowledge for shaping interpretations. This approach is also based on the idea that the best way to learn to think about performance and interpretation is to have the experience of doing something effective, and then either to react against it or to embrace it—or some mixture—later on, on the basis of other experiences and increasing knowledge.
In fact this is probably the most common approach and attitude, and most of those who expect their students to copy the teacher’s interpretive ideas also fully expect those students to move on from those ideas later on. I imagine that any approach to teaching interpretation has to include at least a dose of direct suggestion from the teacher to the students. Even when those suggestions are less than direct, they are not entirely absent. I myself have never said to a student “you should phrase this subject this way” or “play this eighth-note line detached.” However, when I invite students to play contrapuntal voices separately and in pairs, or to play a line omitting the unaccented notes, or to listen for the bloom in harpsichord sound when shaping a melody or a bass line, or to change fingers on repeated notes, or indeed just to play with a light touch, I am moving the student away from some interpretive possibilities and towards others.
My own reluctance to suggest—let alone require—specific interpretive choices stems from a feeling that such suggestions from a teacher have a tendency to have too great a weight of authority. We may honestly want our students to move beyond those suggestions, but the weight can be harder to shake off than we expect it to be. The whole dynamic of accepting, rejecting, debating, and evaluating the specifics of what we were told to do by (especially) an admired teacher can be a distraction for years or decades. Of course, every teacher has to become comfortable with his or her own approach to these things. My specific advice is just this: be open to the possibility of suggesting less and letting the students explore more, and make suggestions, when you make them, as lightly and informally as you can, consistent with getting the point across.
Here are a few suggestions for helping students to think about interpretation and learn about the effects of different interpretive choices.
1) Especially for beginning students, but also for any student who is not yet very familiar with a particular kind of repertoire, play something for the student two different ways, and ask simply which he or she likes better. With a line—recurring motive or not—the two ways will probably be two different phrasings or articulation patterns. In a full-textured passage, the differences might be of tempo or registration or again articulation or perhaps arpeggiation or something about rubato or timing. The differences should be noticeable but not a caricature, and the student should listen carefully, and then feel absolutely free to choose whichever he or she prefers.
2) Invite students to listen not just to what different interpretive decisions are like, but also to what they do. For example, does a line in an inner voice become easier to hear if it is articulated one way rather than another? Does it become easier to keep a sixteenth-note line steady if the accompanying chords are articulated one way rather than another or registered one way rather than another? Does a bit of rubato make a passage sound softer, or more suspenseful, or just static?
3) Ask students to listen—carefully—to at least six different performances of whatever they are working on. (Important note: listening to one performance is risky. It tends to lead to subconscious mimicking of that performance, which can then have the same difficult-to-shake weight of authority—perhaps for life—that performance suggestions from a teacher can have.) This listening can focus on a passage rather than a whole piece. Sometimes ask the student to write down anything they can think of to say about each performance, but sometimes don’t, so that the balance between pleasure and work remains healthy.
4) Ask the student to listen to a large number of performances of a short passage, paying very careful attention to something specific. For example, how do a dozen different players treat the rests between the several phrases on the first page of the Bach d-minor Toccata? How do several different performers treat the timing of the manual notes in the first sixteen measures of the Franck b-minor Choral? (I once, many years ago, sat with the great Canadian teacher and performer Mireille Lagacé, listening to the way that several different harpsichordists handled the transition from the first half to the second half of Variation 16 of the Goldberg Variations. It was extremely interesting and rewarding.)
With items 3) and 4) it can be valuable to suggest that several students do these things together and discuss what they hear. Of course, nowadays it is easy to find many performances to listen to of just about anything. As I am writing this, YouTube has over 7,000 performances of the Bach d-minor Toccata, but also several performances of each of a few less famous pieces for which I searched. This changes all the time. 

Motivation, Practicing, Fun, Guidance, and Projection I

With this month’s column, I begin to muse about some aspects of our jobs as teachers that involve helping students to work in ways that are best for their own enjoyment and motivation: how to help students integrate their playing into their own lives, and how to integrate the students’ lives into our teaching. This is partly about the big picture: how much time can a student find to play? How much of that should be real practicing, and how much can be other sorts of playing? How can a student’s own interests and motivations interact with the requirements, needs, or demands of others? But it can also be about the immediately musical. I sometimes respond to a student’s asking me what fingering to use in a passage by asking “What do you most deeply want out of life?” That is perhaps sort of a joke, but not entirely, as I will discuss later on.

While I wish that any column of mine could be a discussion rather than just a one-way written piece (I ask for feedback from time to time, and often get some, for which I am grateful) this time around I wish that more than ever. The things about which I am musing this month are not concrete or demonstrably true (or false). They arise out of my own experience, and—much more than things like what practice protocol will produce the most efficient progress in learning a pedal line—they change or evolve over the months and years. That evolution is partly the result of new experiences with students, as well as an ongoing conversation between myself and others. I hope that a future column will consist of e-mails from readers about this column, with further thoughts of mine. Furthermore, I am trying to challenge or question some of my own thoughts or habits of thinking, and that process is made more fruitful by interaction with the ideas of others. You will notice that there are plenty of sentences here that end in question marks: more questions than answers.

Inspiring motivation 

I haven’t written much about how to keep students interested or motivated. That is in part because I—and to an extent all of us as organ teachers—have the luxury of working mostly with students who are well self-motivated. That doesn’t necessarily mean self-disciplined. Someone can be very well motivated and still not be very good at self-discipline and the kinds of efficiency and organization that we associate with that concept. I myself am a prime example. I am an organ, harpsichord, and keyboard repertoire “groupie.” But that often manifests itself in my perpetually distracting myself from focused work on practicing or writing with other things that are also about the kinds of music that I love listening to or reading. 

However, very few people are pushed into studying organ or harpsichord by circumstances beyond their control. Very few people go into any sort of music (especially “classical” music) because it seems like the best or easiest way to make a living. There always must be a large element of just plain loving it—being deeply interested. However, music teachers of piano, violin, some wind instruments, sometimes voice, perhaps other instruments, are often called upon to teach students—especially children—who are taking lessons because someone has twisted their arms to do so. This arm-twisting certainly isn’t necessarily or always bad. It is undeniable that young children don’t always know what they will end up wishing they had done or had learned, and very possibly one of the jobs of a parent is to introduce children to things that they can’t or probably won’t just find for themselves. That this creates a risk for over-coerciveness, for inappropriate pressure based on projection, and for all sorts of conflict and struggle to arise doesn’t mean that it isn’t also sometimes right and good. 

I have admiration and awe for music teachers who can make good things happen for students whose reasons for being there are not just their own genuine and deep interest. It is hard to find the balance between keeping interest, morale, and a sense of fun high and getting practical learning done. If there were not plenty of teachers able to navigate all of this extremely effectively then we wouldn’t have very many musicians around. But at the same time, I have always doubted how effective I could be in that situation. I think that it is not an accident that I teach a subspecialty that draws people who know that they want to be there (though I teach organ and harpsichord mainly because that is what interests me).

I don’t want to get too complacent about that. If our students are largely self-motivated, and if we can expect to take advantage of that in our teaching, how specific can we or should we get in understanding that self-motivation? Can we help students more the more we understand that motivation? Here I want to examine and challenge some of my own assumptions. One of them is that studying music is all about preparing for concert performance. This manifests itself in my own work: the only way I can make a bargain with myself to practice slowly enough (even though I know how important slow practice is, and have written about it here over many years), is to pretend while I am playing a passage slowly that I actually want to perform it at that speed. If I let myself admit what I actually know to be true, that I am playing slowly at that moment as a stage in practicing, I will begin to speed up, as much as I know that I shouldn’t. I strongly believe that every student should be working towards playing all of his or her pieces in concert. I wouldn’t explicitly say that this is what I think, but it operates in the background as an assumption. 

Concert vs. non-concert 

preparation

Of course, there are many reasons for working on pieces other than to play them in concert. One is simply interest—just to get to know the piece, or, to put it another way, to be able to play it for oneself. Another is to play it informally in a non-concert situation or in church. Yet another is to use a piece as material for becoming a better player overall, as an exercise. Another is to learn about a kind of repertoire or composer, or to learn something about the organ on which you are playing. Does an awareness of exactly why the student wants to work on a particular piece inform anything specific about how we teach that piece? Here’s an aspect of this that I think is delicate and interesting: if a piece is being prepared for performance, then we know that it should be prepared really well. That means several things—the notes are extremely reliable, the tempo is where the player really wants it to be (no fudging or pretending that a too-slow tempo is what is really desired, as in my own practice habits!), the interpretive elements are thought out and internalized enough to be reliable, and so on. 

Suppose that a piece is being played for a purpose other than performance? On the one hand, it might be questionable to insist on the same level of preparation. It is hard, often grueling work to get a piece into that sort of shape. Is it really necessary? On the other hand, is it patronizing (to the piece or to the student) to set a lower bar because there isn’t a concert in the offing? Would doing so encourage bad learning habits that might spill over? Does this imply lack of respect for whatever purpose the piece is actually being used for? Again, the answers might be different depending on whether the piece was being prepared for non-concert performance—informal playing for the student’s friends, parents, fellow students, church—or being worked on just to get some familiarity with that piece or a segment of the repertoire, or to get to know a particular organ, for example. 

I suspect that the answers to these questions may depend on the student’s state of mind. Is incomplete (or what might seem neglectful) playing the result of an attitude of neglectfulness, or is it the result of a decision about where effort should best be spent? If a piece of music is being used as fodder for studying something other than that piece, if it is being used as exercise material, for developing greater skill as a player, then arguably it doesn’t matter how well the student learns that piece. In other words, any given number of hours spent practicing can have the same result for the player’s development, regardless of whether those hours are spent practicing one piece enough to learn it, or practicing three pieces each for an amount of time that leaves them far from complete. 

Over the years I have had a few students say, right off the bat, that they don’t really care about fully learning their pieces. I remember one such student in particular. He was very talented and dedicated, yet preferred to work on a piece only up to a certain point—getting to know it pretty well, but not do all of the drilling necessary to get a piece performance-ready. It was of more interest to him, once he reached that stage with a piece, to go on to another piece. This was most decidedly not part of an attitude of neglectfulness. For one thing, he fingered every note very carefully and put as much time into that process as it needed. He was also analytical in his approach to the music, studying and becoming aware of all sorts of compositional features and thinking deeply about performance ideas. But at a certain point he preferred to do all of those things with the next piece, not to “finish” the existing piece. He had never given a public performance.

It was a challenge for me to accept this. For one thing, he was “so close”—he amply had the ability and had already done much of the work that it would have taken to get the pieces in shape for performance. What would be the harm in doing so? But this was my agenda, not his. Furthermore, it could have been influenced by our desire that we all must have at some level to have people out there hear our students play well—since that will reflect well on us as teachers. Again, this was my agenda, not his needs. Perhaps I was also influenced by the “if something is worth doing it is worth doing well” ideology, though at a conscious level I have long ago decided that that is at best an oversimplification. But even accepting the notion of doing something well, there’s still the question of what you are doing. 

Part of this student’s motivation was intellectual curiosity about the next piece, and the next, and then the next composer, and so on. Part of it was the desire to have fun playing. The fingering process he found to be fun because it was a set of interesting puzzles. The process of playing through a piece—with the well worked-out fingerings, slowly, tolerating some hesitations and wrong notes—he found to be fun because it sounded a lot like the piece: it felt like playing music. The process of drilling all of the difficult bits until they were really solid was not fun. He was doing—extremely well—what he wanted to be doing.

Of the students whom I remember who fit this description, most or perhaps all had not done any actual performing as of the time that they came to me for lessons and professed this attitude. This gives rise to a set of questions: how can they know that they don’t want to perform or wouldn’t get something out of working pieces up beyond a certain point if they have never tried it? What should the teacher do to offer at least a chance of exploring the logical next step in learning pieces without being coercive about it or acting according to the teacher’s own agenda rather than the students? Questions of this sort also apply to other areas in which I would most naturally want to suggest that we teachers should try to not push our students in pre-determined directions, most especially in choice of repertoire.

All this leads to the following question, which makes me uncomfortable enough to have to do some real thinking: what is the line between not imposing approaches or activities on our students that are driven by our needs rather than our students’ needs and making patronizing or even (subconsciously) dismissive assumptions about what a given student can or cannot do? In other words, if I decide not to coerce a student into framing his or her musical activities with reference to concert performance, am I respecting that student’s own wishes and giving him or her credit for being mature enough to know what is right, or am I somewhat type-casting the student as one who can’t perform or can’t be challenged beyond a certain point?

More questions, and perhaps more answers, next month.

Listening Carefully II 

As I wrote last month, I want to continue to muse about aspects of listening carefully to one’s own playing while actually playing. I say “muse” because this is not cut-and-dried. It is about the psychology of playing, of motivating one’s self, of being honest with one’s self, of trying to shape the playing beyond what can be planned for or expressed through specific ideas. At least that is what it is about in part—it is also about just plain knowing what is going on and keeping things together. 

At the end of last month’s column, I said specifically that I wanted to muse about “the project of listening for the overall impact of what you are doing.” This is, I would say, the most potentially fascinating part of listening closely while playing, the most philosophical or theoretical, and perhaps the most controversial or subject to being thought about very differently by different players, teachers, and students. I myself divide it into two components, clearly related to each other but somewhat distinct: first, listening to make sure that what you are trying to do interpretively (rhetorically, expressively: there are a number of ways to describe it) is coming across; second, listening in such a way that you yourself are actually moved or affected by the expressive/interpretive impact of what you are playing, in a way that is analogous to what you hope and expect that the (other) listeners are experiencing. 

It is the second of these that I think is actually potentially controversial. I should say that it is also something that greatly intrigues me, and that I try to do myself, when I think that I can. I believe that it is actually an integral part of my performance process, and that I would have trouble playing effectively without being—at least much of the time—open to experiencing directly the feelings, moods, thoughts, affects, etc., that I hope that my playing will create in other listeners.

Rhythmic inflection

Part of the reason for this is specific and concrete as a set of performance techniques. Some of the time—not at every instant during any piece, but recurrently and frequently—I try to create (or enhance) expressiveness through the use of rhythmic inflection. This happens on both a small scale—individual notes of small rhythmic grouping being made a little bit longer than other notes, for various sorts of emphasis—and on a longer scale—stretching the rhythm or timing of phrases or sections, slowing down the tempo, cranking it back up, and so on. (I should acknowledge that I didn’t create this idea. I think that I do more of it than many players, especially with Baroque keyboard music, where a tendency has existed for many years to deny or limit these sorts of interpretive possibilities. That is a large subject, and one for another day.) 

These are all gestures that cannot, as far as I can tell, be completely defined or measured or completely planned out in advance. It is necessary to get them right at the very moment that you are performing them, on a quasi-improvised basis. (Or planned up to a point and refined on a quasi-improvised basis). Since the goal of these sorts of gestures is affective or emotional, at least one way to gauge the rightness of the gesture is to let yourself experience the emotion and to shape what you are doing accordingly. 

There are two other, less technical or concrete, reasons why I am interested in embracing the idea of trying to experience the emotional content of what I am playing while I am playing it. One of these is that I know that if I am getting something meaningful out of what I am playing, then it is possible for someone else to do so. If I am not, then I can’t be sure. I can try to know. I can rely on people telling me that they got something out of a performance. I can make predictions about what ought to work in performance and then try to do that in such a way that I can know that I did it. (Both of these are very real and important). There’s the faith in the music, the pieces: if I am playing a great piece, and playing it basically well, with appropriate sounds, and so on, then most likely something good is going to come across. I suppose that the desire to allow myself to be caught up in or swept up by what I am playing is in part a desire to go as far as possible towards making a performance as powerful and effective
as possible.

Motivation 

The second of these two other reasons is one of motivation. Of course I can be motivated by “professionalism,” by a sense of responsibility, by wanting to be seen to give good performances (“heard”, really), by finding it gratifying to get reports from listeners that they got something out of a piece or a concert, and so on. (Also to justify whatever I am being paid!) However, actually experiencing directly a version of what I think I can get out of the kind of music that I play is an important component of what keeps me wanting to do it, and what motivates me to work hard at it and to accept the inevitable tension that comes with public performance. This may be selfish or self-indulgent. It is powerful, however, and probably does no harm, even if selfish. (It does have pitfalls, however, which I will get to below.)

Here’s a very personal story about this—one that has an essential component or two missing because of the lapse of time, but that I still find important. One of my two graduate degree recitals consisted of The Art of the Fugue. I played the whole work on the organ (the Fisk organ at Westminster Choir College, just for the record). It was by far the hardest thing I had done up to that point. It is almost certain that I “shouldn’t” have done it. My level of skill and experience at that point was such that it would have been difficult to predict with any confidence that I could pull this off, even at a minimal level of success. However, I was highly motivated in advance by my existing very strong—and very emotional—relationship with that piece as a listener. Clearly my teacher, Eugene Roan, thought that I could do it or that it would be worth trying. I believe he had a lot of respect for the motivation factor, and in general believed in letting people do or try that which interests and excites them the most (as do I). 

The main moment that I remember from that performance is the very end. The Art of the Fugue is incomplete: Bach died before he could compose (or perhaps just before he could dictate) the final section. The piece actually breaks off in the middle of a line. Everything is unresolved. To me at the time (and still now) this moment when the counterpoint abruptly breaks off and there is silence where there should have been music is one of the most powerful moments in all of the arts. Of course it is a moment that the composer didn’t intend. It was created by a coming together of random things, not all of them good. And it is certainly possible to debate whether it is a good idea to finish the piece, as many people have done over the centuries. Clearly any such completion is not, cannot be, what the composer intended, but the abrupt breaking off that I find so powerful is not what the composer intended either. I recall being essentially overwhelmed by the effect of the premature end of the long piece that evening. I was in a state of collapse and had to spend quite a while collecting myself before I turned around to the audience. Now, amongst the things that I can’t re-capture from that day is whether my performance was in fact particularly effective—of the piece as a whole or of the moment that I found so powerful. I also don’t know whether I was in a similar state of enrapture with the emotional content of some or many earlier passages in the work: probably so, but I don’t have a vivid memory of it. I also don’t know how well I avoided the pitfalls of being that caught up in what I was playing: very possibly not very well. (I didn’t record that performance, or else I would know some of this.) 

So I am telling this somewhat unsatisfyingly incomplete story because of this: the memory of how I felt as that performance of The Art of the Fugue ended has been a significant and very specific motivating factor for my work as a player ever since, including through various moments of frustration or what seemed to me like loss of direction. Therefore, to return expressly to the world of teaching, I encourage students to allow themselves to create this same sort of motivation for their work. 

I often suggest to students the following practice tool. Once they have identified a spot where they want to make a rhythmic gesture (usually of the sort that might be described as “rubato”) they practice that gesture, in the privacy of the studio, in as exaggerated a manner as possible: take the risk of executing a gesture that is utterly tasteless, mannered, “schmaltzy.” This is to counter the fact that we usually only visit the gestures that we think we want to make “from below” (so to speak), that is, only compared to and judged in comparison to not making such a gesture, or to a modest version of the gesture. This stems from and then reinforces a philosophy that teaches a kind of reluctance about such gestures. If you hear a rhythmic inflection from both sides, you get a different sense of exactly how it might be effective. I mention this because the only way I know of to make that judgment as to when something is exaggerated, when it is too slight, and when it is just what you want is by experiencing the actual result. Only if a student is willing and able not just to listen, but to feel, to experience, can that student say “Yes, that was effective,” or “That was too exaggerated: the intensity burst and was lost,” or “That wasn’t enough to do anything for me.” The ability to do this is a step in moving away from too much reliance on other people’s reactions to your playing—not that those can’t then also be taken into account. 

Other opinions

So what are the drawbacks? Well, I have recently been asking fellow musicians, “What do you think about actually experiencing the emotional content of what you are playing, while you are playing it?” And when I have gotten concerned or skeptical responses, the reservations expressed have been mostly one of these: that if you are looking to experience the emotion behind the music directly yourself, you are likely to make that emotion come across too strongly, and this sort of listening and reacting can distract you from just plain accurate playing. In other words, if you get too caught up in what you are hearing, you will forget to stay on top of the notes, fingers, and pedalings. (I should say that it surprised me what a large percentage of the responses to this question were skeptical or negative. My own desire to embrace this sort of approach to the player as listener is by no means shared by everyone.) 

I think that my own response to these concerns is something like this. As to the first one, I would suggest not worrying about it until there is a reason to. I think that most listeners want more expressive rather than less expressive playing, and that the dynamic that might lead some players to overdo emotion in performing if they are caught up in hearing that emotion themselves is perhaps in fact just a corrective to a common tendency for reticence and shyness about expressivity. If there is feedback from trusted listeners—or from your own experience listening to recordings, assuming that they are accurately engineered—telling you that what you are doing is overblown, then you can take that into account. It would be a shame to assume in advance that this will be the case.

As to the second concern, I think that preparation is the main key. If a piece or passage is solidly learned, then the need to think consciously about the next fingering or pedaling or note is limited, and the vulnerability to distraction is small. The particular kind of distraction that comes from the content of the music itself is also at least correlated with what is going on in the notes of the piece. It is always necessary to be ready to pull back and shift focus to just keeping it going, and an emotional or affective involvement in the content of the music is only one sort of thing from which a player might sometimes have to pull back. I don’t think that there is any particular reason to be afraid of being unable to do so when the need arises.

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey. He has been teaching organ and harpsichord since 1979. He can be reached by e-mail at <A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A&gt;

Repertoire, part 1
The issue about which I have gotten by far the most inquiries since I started writing this column is repertoire: that is (primarily) the question of what repertoire students should work on, or, to put it slightly differently, what repertoire teachers should ask or expect their students to work on. In this month’s column I will offer some general musings about that question, including some reminiscences and anecdotes that I think are relevant. Next month I will continue to muse, but also give more specific suggestions, including some guidance—as up to date as possible in a rapidly changing technological world—about the practical side of finding printed music, especially for students who do not have access to well-stocked music libraries.

Organ repertoire: size and scope
The first thing that stands out about the organ repertoire is its size and scope. The number of composers, the number of pieces, the number of centuries, the number of different types of instrument for which what we call “organ music” was written: it is all almost overwhelming. If you throw in hymns and various other sorts of accompaniment, and then remember that a substantial proportion of at least the pre-1750 keyboard repertoire not expressly written for the organ can be played perfectly well on the organ, the amount and diversity of music that an organist might be expected to master seems to spiral out of control.
There are several possible reactions to contemplating this overwhelming amount of music. One is panic over the seeming impossibility of learning all of it. This panic can set in when a student, perhaps because of something about the teacher’s real or perceived attitude or perhaps just from within the student, feels an obligation to know everything: a sense that one can’t be a real artist or a real “professional” without mastering everything. A lesser form of this—which I still sometimes feel myself—is sadness over the fact that it is impossible to learn all of the repertoire. This, of course, is just a part of life: it is also impossible to visit every town in the world, or to read every book, or to attend every baseball game. (Or at a deeper level, to spend enough time with all of one’s friends or loved ones, or to meet everyone who might have become a good friend.)
Another possibility, however, is to find the size and scope of the repertoire liberating. If the amount of music that exists is too great to make it possible to learn all of it, then we are all relieved of the obligation to learn all of it. In that case, each of us is perfectly free to work on the music that we really like or that we are really interested in, or that our experience shows us we can learn and play in a way that somehow makes a difference. This is what I have always done myself, and have always invited my students to do. There are other dimensions to this liberation. For example, within any style or type of music that happens to interest any one of us there is almost certain to be enough music to sustain that interest for a long time. Also, if anyone’s interests change or if a particular part of the repertoire loses its allure for a particular player (student or otherwise) there is an essentially infinite amount of other music to investigate. If I, as a performer who is mostly focused on Baroque music, feel a hankering to delve into the nineteenth century—as I have felt from time to time over the years—then I need not lament the fact that I am not a pianist or a player of an orchestral instrument. There is a whole panoply of organ music from that particular esthetic world for me to explore. If an organist who has mostly played nineteenth-century music develops an interest in late medieval music, then he or she can investigate the earliest known keyboard repertoire as an introduction to that musical world.

Personal responses
The relationship between all of this repertoire and people—people who might be organ students or organ teachers or organists or listeners to organ music—is complicated, multilayered, and interesting. Each person’s detailed experience, probably from before conscious memory on, colors his or her reaction to pieces of music and of course to all other experiences. I was remembering recently that whenever I hear the word “culpable” I get in my mind a flash of a strong image of a certain place: the gravel road at the back of the park in the shadow of East Rock in New Haven, where I grew up. (I know the source of this image, though I don’t know why I remember it so strongly: I was taking a walk there with my father when I was nine or ten, and he told me—joking, I assume—that the only sentence he knew or needed to know in French was “Ce n’est pas de ma faute.”) I mention this because it is essentially certain that I am, and will forever remain, the only person in the history of the universe who makes that particular connection. I believe that a vast number of connections like this color everyone’s reaction to all of music that they hear, as well as other experiences, and shape the course of one’s life with music, as an appreciator or as a player, professional or otherwise. Since everyone’s experiences, and the linkages that they form, are different from everyone else’s, it is quite impossible that any two people react to any music the same way, or, even at the most direct level, have the same experience as each other when hearing any given music. (After all, that scene in the park is part of my immediate, direct experience upon hearing the word “culpable,” and part of no one else’s.)
(Some more examples from my own experience, this time about music: I am a big fan of the rock group Jethro Tull. Although I honestly consider their music to be in every way as wonderful artistically as any other that I know of, including the organ repertoire and the rest of the “classical” repertoire, I also believe that I know why I became a fan of that music. During my freshman year of college, one of my roommates had a Jethro Tull record, and I, who at the time did not like any rock and roll, heard in a few passages in a few of the pieces, something that evoked very powerfully for me some of the feelings of the time I had recently [then] spent in England, and that music became part of my nostalgia for England, although I didn’t really get to know the whole Jethro Tull repertoire until about twenty years later. Also, when I hear or play older English music—Tallis or Gibbons, say—the feelings that come up in my mind are those of my experience at Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, where I first heard music of that sort when I was in the choir there in the late 1960s: the smell and appearance of that church, the vastness [as it seemed to me then] of the New Haven Green outside, the sounds of cars and buses muffled by the thick stone walls. When I hear mid-twentieth-century chamber music I get an image in my mind of the cover of a particular LP. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I think that it included a Poulenc trio. Along with this comes a memory of a certain kind of spring weather.)
I mention all of this in connection with the organ repertoire because it is important to remember that no two people experience, or can possibly experience, that repertoire in the same way: not even one piece, and certainly not any subset of or pathway through the whole repertoire. This is, to me, probably the most important thing to bear in mind when thinking about the vastness of the organ repertoire and when contemplating how to help students find their way through all of that music.
Practicing music is more fun when you really like the music. It is also, in my experience, better practicing: more efficient, more effective, much more likely to result in learning. It is also likely to lead to more practicing, to a real desire to work on more music, and even to a greater willingness to try new things. This observation is based on my own direct experience—practicing, learning music, trying to become a progressively better player—and also on my observation of many students (mostly my own) over many years.
Another anecdote to illustrate this point: my daughter took piano lessons for several years. She, coming from a home in which lots of unusual things went on musically, had unusual ideas about what music she wanted to play. For example, she brought to her lessons movements of Buxtehude harpsichord suites that I was in the middle of recording at the time, or, later, folk song melodies that she wanted to learn how to harmonize and then play. None of this was anything that any piano teacher would have expected to give to a beginning student. (This was in the second year or so of her studies, and she was nine or ten years old.) However, her teacher went along with this and let her work on whatever she was interested in at a given time. The result was that my daughter practiced a fair amount and looked forward to her lessons. She also cared about doing well and about pleasing her teacher. There was good give and take: an atmosphere was created in which it was also possible for the teacher to coax her into trying out various new things. Later on, when that teacher moved away, her new teacher, a very gifted and serious player and an experienced teacher, had a more traditional attitude about what was and what wasn’t OK for a student to work on. My daughter quit enjoying her lessons, quit practicing, and indeed quit the piano. Nowadays she can still play those Buxtehude movements: the way that she worked on them caused them to stay with her forever.
So, for me, the first thing to think about in choosing repertoire for students is to try to find music that the student will really like and want to practice. This is certainly not the only consideration, and it does not directly answer the question of how to find those pieces. After all, not every student comes with a list of pieces that he or she wants to work on. However, I think it is important to give this consideration first place, not to consider it a frill or a luxury or an afterthought.

Is there a standard repertoire?
Another consideration that normally comes up in talking about repertoire for teaching is what the “standard” repertoire is, what music students should know. To me, this is a complicated question, or a question with several different answers. In principle, I believe that there should be no assumption that every student will, even to a small extent, involve him- or herself with the same repertoire as other students or with a “standard” repertoire. This is for several reasons: because there is so much wonderful music out there, because everyone’s experience of that music is different, and because no one can work extremely effectively on music that they don’t like. Also because, for the benefit of the musical world at large, it is a more interesting situation if many performers perform as diverse a repertoire as possible. If there is music that somehow deserves to be more widely played than other music, that will take care of itself: more people will want to play it if it is indeed in some meaningful sense better or more interesting. It may seem to me, or to anyone in the field, that an organ student would be crazy not to want to play at least some Bach (to use the most obvious example). However if a student doesn’t want to, then, perhaps, there is no point in any way forcing them to. There will, presumably, be plenty of others who do want to play Bach.
On the other hand, there is a tremendous disadvantage to anyone in not even knowing what is out there (in any field or endeavor). If a student is not interested in playing something utterly standard, like Bach or Franck, only because he or she has essentially never encountered it in an engaging and interesting way, then that student is being impoverished unnecessarily. This is also true, however, if a student fails to become interested in non-standard repertoire (Cavazzoni, Ernst Koehler, Moondog, Lefébure-Wely, anyone) for the same reason. It is certainly important for a teacher to encourage a student to know about a lot of music, and to make choices based on that knowledge. That does not mean that those choices must settle to any very large extent on standard repertoire.
(Next month I will include some thoughts about ways of exposing students to lots of music and giving them the best chance of figuring out what might most interest them.)
Of course, there are real practical considerations to think about when considering “standard” repertoire. The first is really part practical and part psychological. If an organ student or organist bravely carves out a whole career without ever working on the music that is considered to define the organ repertoire, then that person will be called upon over and over again to explain, and will in fact not be thought well of by at least some people. “You can’t be a real organist if you’ve never worked on any Bach” would be a common refrain. Withstanding this in a happy frame of mind would require a lot of fortitude.
The other problem is more purely practical. It is the problem of auditions and other organized occasions for jumping through hoops. Obviously an organ student who might want to go on for advanced study or who might want to apply for a scholarship or fellowship, or who might want to enter a competition or, for that matter, apply for a job, might well have to produce some pieces that conform to certain rules. Many of these situations have an audition requirement that is more or less “something before Bach, something by Bach, something after Bach” or “something by Bach, something nineteenth century, something twentieth century.” Of course there is often flexibility, but almost always in the context of some such specificity. (I myself, if I were in charge of shaping an audition, would use the following prompt: “Play us about 25 minutes of whatever music you believe would best show us your recent work as an organist, and be prepared to talk to us about that music and the other music that you have studied over the last few years.”) It seems to me that the best approach in dealing with this is to consider it a practical problem with practical solutions. If the right pieces for such needs can be found among the repertoire that a student and his or her teacher are working on in any case, that is wonderful. If not, then the student might have to venture into the territory of playing pieces that he or she is not really interested in. However, this should be recognized as a simple practical task, and not given any more ethical, moral, artistic, or pedagogic weight than that.
Next month I will write more about how to incorporate this and other outside constraints into the teaching process as fruitfully as possible. I will also discuss the “two-way street” relationship between learning to play and repertoire as such (that is, that we learn to play in order to play repertoire and at the same time we work on repertoire in order to learn to play). And I will also consider how to help students explore the repertoire and make choices that are honestly their own, but also impeccably well informed.

.

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of The Diapason.

Paul Jacobs is no stranger to anyone who knows the organ world, and of late he is gaining exposure to a broader audience through the mass media. The subject of numerous newspaper, professional journal, and public radio interviews (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Choir and Organ, National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, to name just a few), Jacobs is a musician of passionate and devoted intensity. One of the first mentions of him in these pages was as the college division prize winner of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Competition (see The Diapason, November 1998); his Messiaen Marathon performance in Chicago was chronicled by Frank Ferko in The Diapason in May 2002, and his numerous achievements and honors have often been reported here. Jacobs’ current high media profile is due in part to his position as head of the organ department at Juilliard—at age 26 he became the school’s youngest department chair ever. He has also garnered attention for his Bach and Messiaen marathons, though these certainly are serious and concentrated encounters with the music of these composers and not to be considered stunts.
A native of Washington, Pennsylvania, Paul Jacobs studied organ with George Rau, John Weaver, and Thomas Murray. His teachers attest to his intelligence, great capacity for learning, and hardy work ethic; these were noticeable even as he began his organ studies. George Rau, Jacobs’ first organ teacher, remembers that even at his first lesson, his talent was obvious; he learned very quickly, and worked very hard.
I knew that his was an extraordinary talent, and also not only that, he works harder than any musician that I know; and having the two—not only this great talent, but also this great work ethic—really, you just knew that he was going to go far.1
By age 15—when he took his first church position—he had learned much of the standard repertoire and was working on larger Bach works. Jacobs studied with John Weaver at the Curtis Institute of Music; Weaver’s first impression noted the “security of his playing and the musicianship.” Weaver also commented that

Certainly one of his strengths was a great seriousness, which is still a hallmark of his playing, and of his personality. He really is deeply devoted to excellence in performance. What did he need to work on? Well, he was not at the top of his form in the social graces. Not that he was inappropriate, but I think he was a little nervous about conversing with people; and interacting with people was a skill that he had not developed terribly well at that point, but that he now has more than compensated for.2
At Rau’s suggestion, Jacobs began mastering early on the skill of memorization.

I would always tell him that it’s a skill that if developed now, you’ll have it for the rest of your life, and it’s a skill that you want to develop young, so that it becomes a natural part of your playing.3

Rau’s nudging to memorize was taken to heart; John Weaver elaborates:

The tradition at the Curtis Institute that goes back to the days of Lynwood Farnam and was maintained for many years by Alexander McCurdy, and I inherited and maintained, [was] that each student shall play a new piece from memory in organ class each week. And nothing like this exists any place else in the world, as far as I know. Paul wasn’t fazed by this at all. But after he’d been at Curtis, oh, perhaps six weeks or so into his first year, he came to me and said, “well, would it be all right”—he was very timid about this—“do you think it would matter, would people be upset, would it be all right if I were to play TWO pieces each week?” (laughter) And so I thought that would be just fine, and told him so, and so he did. From that time on, for the rest of his four years at Curtis, he played at least one new piece each week, plus another piece and sometimes repeating a piece from another time. Well the interesting thing is, it wasn’t very many weeks after that, one of his fellow students who’d become equally notorious in the organ world, Ken Cowan, wasn’t about to be upstaged. He started memorizing two pieces each week too! (laughter) It was quite a class—to have Paul Jacobs and Ken Cowan both studying at the same time.4

Following Curtis, Jacobs went on to study at Yale. His teacher at Yale, Thomas Murray, found Jacobs to be “a genuinely modest and seriously committed artist.” 5

Perhaps the greatest strength a musician can have is to be truly individual, and that surely describes Paul and the way he approaches everything. He identifies the music of specific composers as being the most enduring and ennobling, and then devotes himself to that music without reservation. In Paul’s case, that has meant Bach and Messiaen especially. By the time he left Yale with his Artist Diploma and Master of Music degree in 2003, he was adding Brahms and Reger to his agenda. With this as his core repertoire, he is fastidious about what he adds for “lighter music.” He knows how to popularize the organ in other ways. In fact, he was a very effective “pied piper” while at Yale, intentionally drawing large numbers of undergraduates and non-concert-going people to his programs. Much of that he does with a personal, one-to-one, friendly rapport. When he played his E. Power Biggs Memorial Recital at Harvard, for example, he calmly greeted members of the audience as they arrived! So in large measure, his approach has not been on the well-trod path of competitions or with showy music.6

Phillip Truckenbrod, whose agency manages Jacobs’ engagements, first heard of Paul Jacobs via his playing at an AGO convention and subsequently when Jacobs won the college division award of the Albert Schweitzer competition. Truckenbrod has mentioned how Jacobs has been noticed by the broader musical community, remarking that

A lot of the kudos which have come his way are not from organ sources, they’re from critics who don’t usually do much with organ, and people who have simply recognized a real talent—a talent comparable to some of the best talents in other fields of classical music. Resonating is one of the favorite words today—but he’s sort of resonating on that level.7

We wished to discover for ourselves a bit of what makes this fervent musician tick, and also to explore some of his views on the role of the organ and its music in the face of the popular culture juggernaut that challenges us all.

JR: In your very full life you have teaching at Juilliard, and recitals to play, which involve a good deal of travel. How do you balance these many demands?
PJ: I look to the life of George Frederick Handel for inspiration. Handel was not a man of leisure—he was very much married to his art. There are not enough hours in the day, and I feel obligated to my work, which is so fulfilling. Actually this ties in with my not owning a television, too. Who has the time? While I’m home visiting my mother and family in Pennsylvania, of course I do occasionally watch television. And you know, the more stations there are, the less that’s worthwhile. I actually have encouraged people to get rid of their television and get out there and live. Live deliberately!

JR: I’ve read that you first heard organ music when you were young, at church—a nun was playing and it inspired you. Prior to that, were you already listening to serious music? What sort of family culture do you come from?
PJ: Surprisingly, I do not come from a musical family, nor from a musical community, for that matter. As you know, I’m from Washington, Pennsylvania. My father is deceased; my mother is a nurse, and, while not musical herself, she did all that she could to support my fascination with music. She recognized early on that I possessed a very strong attraction to music. Even when I was three, she noticed that I would listen to classical music, or if there was a conductor on television, an orchestra concert, I was entranced. And I expressed interest at age five to study the piano. All of that led way to more serious study of music.

JR: And you began piano study when you were about six?
PJ: Yes, at six, and continued that through my first year at Curtis. Thirteen was when I began playing the organ. And I was fortunate in a relatively small town to have both a first-rate piano teacher and an organ teacher who nurtured my zeal for music and my musical education.

JR: Is that how your practice habits got a good start?
PJ: Yes, I would say so. For a young person to have strong feelings for classical music in the United States is generally not held in high regard by the young person’s peers.

JR: Indeed! I take it that you were not on three or four sports teams?
PJ: Not only that—I’m as unathletic as one could be. But you know, I didn’t really have any friends, growing up. I had difficulty, even through most of my time at Curtis, because I was an intense introvert. I’ve lightened my personality a bit over the last several years. And I don’t regret any of this, by the way—but I had no time for taking part in the banalities of life; and partying, or drinking, or just idle talk—it was of no interest to me. I would much prefer to be playing and studying beautiful music. Friday nights, even through Curtis, were spent practicing, late into the night, not out with friends. One has to become the music. You have to want it to become part of you, you have to go through an incredibly intense, rigorous lifestyle to get to this point, to earn the right to confidently express yourself.

JR: That’s a very interesting idea—that as an introvert you would bypass social opportunities, so that you could dig in deeper and express yourself publicly through music.
PJ: Oh, I think that’s absolutely the case. I think keyboardists tend to lead the most insular existences—pianists, organists, because our instruments are so complete. But the nature of being a serious musician demands a lifestyle that is centered around not only musical analysis but also self-analysis, and self-reflection—all of these things are intertwined. If one is to have a love affair, shall we say, with music, one must become as intimate with it as possible, and that demands many hours of the day—hours that could be spent doing other things with other people. I suppose it’s an abstract point, but it’s a very important point—musicians need that solitude. My solitude has always been very important to me, because it has allowed me to become very close with the art. It’s not necessarily loneliness—it can be, at times, but solitude doesn’t necessarily equal loneliness.

JR: Yes—alone is not equal to lonely. But I think of you as quite gracious. At the 2004 AGO convention you were at the door greeting people as they entered the church for your recital. That seemed very open and confident, not what I would associate with someone who was an introvert.
PJ: Yes, I feel genuinely obliged to thank people and to be gracious to them because they’re giving of themselves. Good musicians want to become vulnerable to an audience. You get out there and pour your heart and soul out, and you hope an audience will do the same: that they will allow the barriers to come down—emotional barriers, spiritual barriers, intellectual barriers, and just be there in the moment. It has to be this mutual vulnerability; everyone must be very giving and human and sensitive to what’s going on. So it’s important that the performer be approachable and not aloof. Again, I don’t think I’m contradicting myself. One can still have the solitude and not be aloof—you can still relate to people.

JR: Yes! Do you routinely greet people before a performance?
PJ: It varies, depending on how I feel. I like to, but not always. Quite frankly, oftentimes I like to take a walk—depending on where the venue is. One time, last season, the church was located in a wonderful neighborhood—it was very scenic. And I wanted to take a walk about an hour before. And—I got lost! I didn’t get back into the church until about two minutes before the concert. People were concerned!

JR: During your training years, what would be a typical amount of practice in a given day? I know you emphasize not merely the quantity but also the quality of it, but quantity needs to be there too.
PJ: Sure, absolutely, it does, and that’s an important point—you do have to have the quantity as well. I would like to get in between six to eight hours a day if I could.

JR: And I would imagine now that’s not as possible as it used to be?
PJ: It sometimes is not, that’s right, especially during the school year. However, this relates to organists, because we as organists often have to wear many hats—I should say those of us who are church musicians. One sometimes has to work with choirs, prepare music, and be an administrator, all of these sorts of things—and practice is neglected. And practice needs to be a crucial part. I might even say that practice needs to be THE crucial part of an artist’s life—a significant priority—every day, just as eating, sleeping, breathing.

JR: Prior to Curtis, were you musically active in your church or at that point were you focused on being an organist? Were you in your church choir?
PJ: Well, I actually became the organist of my home church when I was 15, and that was a very large church. The position was quite demanding; I had to play for six Masses a weekend, over 60 weddings a year—this was a parish of over 3500 families. And I had to accompany the choir; I was not the choir director, but I was there for all choir rehearsals, interacting with people much older than I was. But I loved it! I was in my element.

JR: Did you also have a church job in New York?
PJ: I did. And I still do. I was organist and choirmaster at Christ and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church for two years; however, I became artist in residence beginning in the fall, mainly because I’m seldom there due to my performance schedule. I’m very fond of the people there, though, and I very much enjoy playing for services; it just is something I’m unable to do regularly. Being artist in residence and playing a few times a year seems to work well.

JR: You have done Bach and Messiaen marathons. What made you want to play their entire works for organ?
PJ: I see Bach and Messiaen as perhaps two incomparable composers for the organ. They also happen to be perhaps two of the most overtly religious composers in Western history, if you think about it. That has always been an enormous source of stimulation, and that element alone has attracted me to their music. Then on a purely compositional level they are two of the greatest composers to have lived—every note of Bach and Messiaen is in its proper place. They never waste a note; it’s music that is perfectly crafted. It is music that is as close to God as we could possibly experience in this life, and I wanted to become intimate with as much of it as I could—and that meant the entire canons of these composers.

JR: You have said that you like to just enjoy nature. That makes me think of Messiaen—what an amazing mind there, so far-reaching: Greek music, Indian modes, birdsong, other sounds in nature, that play into his concept of music. Do you incorporate any of this into your approach to Messiaen’s music?

PJ: Very much! Messiaen had the soul of a poet, there’s no question about that. And we as musicians need to have this insatiable desire, to be drawn to beauty. It’s not enough to sit down and play the organ well—and then go about life. Playing music should be an end in itself, not a means to an end. When I sit at the organ and play the Book of the Blessed Sacrament of Messiaen, the Livre du Saint Sacrement, it’s the end of the world, in the most glorious sense. One forgets about time, one forgets about all of these things—and there’s a purity of nature, a reality. As much as I adore the culture of the city, it’s artificial, on one level, because it’s all man-made. But nature is made directly by God.
You know, I did recently take one day off to go to Valley Forge Park, which I adore, and just walk and hike up the mountains and through the fields and into the woods. And it was balmy and humid and hot and quite cloudy as well. About halfway along my walk, the heavens opened up, and it started to pour. I didn’t have an umbrella, and I got soaked; but it wasn’t long before I realized that this is something to relish! It wasn’t a thunderstorm, I wasn’t in any danger of being struck by lightning; but just being showered upon, it was actually very wonderful; it was a beautiful experience. I always have a deep yearning to spend time in nature; that never ends.
Recently I was in Australia. I encountered some glorious birds and birdsong—in particular, on one SPECTACULAR occasion, I confronted a lyre-bird. My first introduction to the lyre-bird was through Messiaen’s symphonic work, Illuminations of the Beyond, the Éclairs sur l’au-delà. It’s the third movement that’s called “The Superb Lyre-Bird.” I was taking a walk with two of my hosts in a wooded area outside of Sydney; to encounter this lyre-bird, that inspired Messiaen, was an immensely moving experience.

JR: What are you working on now in terms of adding to your repertoire? What would you like to focus on in the future?
PJ: Even though I haven’t programmed much German Romantic repertoire—Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann—in the last few months, it’s music of the highest quality. I have become quite attracted to Reger’s music. I think that it is sorely underestimated, because it is difficult, not only for the player, but sometimes for the audience, and even music historians. It’s difficult to comprehend technically and musically, and it’s often played in a heavy-handed way that can make it unattractive, and this need not be the case.
I have broad interests in music—I play contemporary art music. I do have an interest in 20th-century music, not just with Messiaen, but also Hindemith, Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and others. It is also important to support the creative spirit of contemporary times and I intend to commission works from several modern composers. I also delight in music earlier than Bach—Buxtehude, Couperin, De Grigny—exquisite music! I rejoice in playing the whole canon of the organ repertory. I would never want to be labeled a specialist; my interests are too extensive for that. I savor the ability to play a vast array of music.

JR: Do you read about the composers whose music you play? What do you do besides study scores?
PJ: Absolutely. Attempting to understand the personality behind the music is fascinating and illuminating. You want to understand everything you can about what you’re pursuing, not just sit down and crank out notes.

JR: Yes, and if you can understand the person and their time, it really helps shed light on the music, or the music shed light on the time.
PJ: That’s right! And not necessarily in a stylistic sense, although it can sometimes. I’m revisiting some older repertoire now, and I think I’m going to program some Franck this season or next. One of the first pieces I learned was the Prelude, Fugue and Variation—it’s a gorgeous work. And I might do some different things; I’m conceiving of the piece in a different way, perhaps with some different articulations, colors and sounds. If one were playing a Cavaillé-Coll, one could follow exactly what Franck indicated, and it’s wonderful. But there’s nothing wrong, too, with developing a different, even unorthodox concept of a piece, as long as the playing is expressive and compelling. That’s really the ultimate goal—it’s not about right and wrong, or what one should or shouldn’t do. Rule No. 1 is to MOVE the listener, and if the subsequent rules need to be broken to serve this first rule, so be it.

JR: How do you prepare a piece? Do you have any specific practice techniques? Transferring your knowledge of how to play on one instrument to another, in a very short span of time—is there anything specific you do?
PJ: Well, one needs to sleep with the score. That is to say, you need to study it away from the keyboard. Know it inside and out—live with the music. Understand what the music means on spiritual levels, philosophical levels, aesthetic levels—one needs to be able to look at music in so many ways. I do a lot of work at the piano, particularly much of the preliminary work—phrasing, or learning notes, things such as that. And sometimes one can discover new ideas about how to interpret a piece on a different instrument, then transfer those concepts to the other instrument. And one isn’t distracted, too, by all of the gadgets on the organ. When sitting at a piano or harpsichord, any instrument is sparse compared to the pipe organ. I think it is easier to focus with the piano or the harpsichord than it is with the organ, because there’s so much to consider: not only notes, but also registration, and all the other technical and mechanical aspects.

JR: But at some point, the organ’s gadgets will require your attention. How do you memorize registrational changes on an unfamiliar instrument, when you have very little time? How do you remember that on this instrument “I need to hit the Great to Pedal toe stud” and on the next instrument there is none? How do you remember all the mechanics, since you don’t use a registrant?
PJ: Well, that’s a bit of an enigma to me. Obviously, I become familiar with the instrument before the concert—then I associate the sound with my muscles—I don’t really know!
It MIGHT BE a little bit psychological, particularly if you can memorize notes. I find that students can usually do far more than they think they can. There are teachers who unintentionally beat students down, even intimidate, and have them frightened to take risks or challenges, or be creative, but I try to pull out the potential of students. Nothing is more rewarding than when they’re surprised about what they CAN do—for instance, memorization. I have some students who say, “Oh, I just can’t memorize,” and some students that it comes easy to. Well, there are ways to work at this—there aren’t short cuts, it’s difficult—but there are ways that one can improve.

JR: I remember being told that you have to practice the button-pushing as much as the key-pressing.
PJ: I focus with students on playing the organ beautifully. Not only the music, but the instrument, the console. You watch pianists or violinists—the grace with which they play! And many organists sit up there looking rather rigid and stiff. Particularly with consoles that are more visible these days, we have to physically be confident when we play. We don’t want to be overwhelmed by the organ, we want to be in perfect alignment with it. And you’re right—the idea of practicing pushing pistons, and pushing them at the right time—these technical things have to be practiced. But when you actually play them, you want the timing to be musical. You want to push them gracefully. All of these things have to serve the music; they can’t just be technical exercises.

JR: You spoke of people who are stiff sitting at the organ. Have you ever had a problem with muscle tension?
PJ: Well, I haven’t, other than maybe practicing. When one does a lot of practicing, fatigue can set in, muscles can become a little sore. There are organists who think that you have to sit completely still, that you have to be able to balance a glass of milk on your hand, you don’t want any unnecessary movements. Well, some people are naturally quieter at the console, and some people are a little freer, they move more. And that’s ok! You have to do what is comfortable.
Certainly with beginners you have to be very careful about extraneous motion and movement. At a more advanced stage, you develop your own musical personality, and your physical personality when you’re playing, and it’s ok to move. Just move the body! Just as long as you’re relaxed. And if being relaxed means being still, so be it. If it means moving, that’s fine too. But there are many organists that sit almost as if they’re frightened to move, they’re intimidated by pushing buttons, making sure everything’s right on. If you don’t revel in what you’re doing, if the technical demands of playing the organ are overwhelming you, you won’t enjoy it. And you need to enjoy! It seems so obvious and logical—you need to not only musically and mentally enjoy the music, but you need to physically enjoy the music while you’re playing. There’s nothing wrong with that.

JR: Our culture trivializes music—for the most part, it’s considered background noise, playing while one does something else. People prefer music that is short, simply constructed, and any melody must be very simple and accessible. Given this, how can we as organists reach people? Schools are eliminating music instruction; serious organ music is scarcer in churches—there are a lot of organists who can’t play it, or won’t; and fewer people are going to church. So the opportunities for exposure to things like Bach and Messiaen are fewer and fewer. How do we react to that? What can we do?
PJ: Anyone who says that he or she cares about music or values it has an obligation to take action. And what I have found is that many people do acknowledge these problems—at least those of us who play music and listen to music. So what is the next step? I see most of popular culture as extremely corrosive to what we try to accomplish as musicians. And I think we organists first need to put ourselves in a larger context, and start thinking in broader terms. I do find that our profession is far too isolated. We organists need to get out of the loft and listen to operas, listen to chamber music, go to hear the symphony—we need music, in all of its manifestations. It is, however, possible to really like music and to be intrigued by it at a high level, without being passionate about it. Those of us who are passionate about music need to challenge those who are merely intrigued by it, to make them even more sensitive. This is what we have to do: build an army of individuals who possess an unwavering commitment to the creation of a musically literate society.
Popular culture is extremely destructive to beauty because it serves the opposite purpose of what true music and art serve—and that is, it numbs us. Because music is in the background and not the foreground, one is not expected to listen to it with this full spirit, being, mind—whatever term you wish to use. And that essentially desensitizes. Art music is supposed to make one more sensitive to beauty and life. That is to say, we learn how to listen carefully and deliberately—for there are so many alluring details in the music that desire our full undivided attention.

JR: If we say we care, then we have an obligation to take action.
PJ: And that is to say, to challenge the culture. I see my obligation as an artist—I should say, one facet—is to challenge aggressively this corrosive popular culture. What does that mean? Write letters to newspapers and other organizations, make noise about what you do. If you care, do you care enough to share what you profess to care about? Do you want to share it with someone else? If we value something, and we see the good in something, isn’t it logical to want to share it? I’ve become dismayed because I see quite clearly the enormous potential of a society which truly values music—the potential is there, and we see it on an individual level; we see what happens when a young person discovers the power of music in a very real and profound way. It’s something to celebrate. I have NO faith in the popular culture, but I have boundless faith at the individual level. I think that keeps me going, keeps me inspired, and wanting to continue living.

JR: Well, all right. If an audience member heard a serious program, and wasn’t used to that, how would you respond if they said they wanted to hear something that was easier to listen to?
PJ: Well, I would have a conversation with that person, first of all. I would be very patient initially. If the person said “I don’t understand that,” or “I don’t appreciate that,” that’s a fair statement, and it’s not making a judgment. It’s even fair to say “I don’t care for that.” But judging something that you don’t understand isn’t fair, and I guess I would attempt to help the person see this.
I remember having an interview for NPR’s Morning Edition, last year before my Messiaen program. And it was very clear to me that the person who interviewed me did very little preparation for the interview. I think she knew practically nothing about the organ, knew even less about the composer. And she said to me, “There are those who don’t like the organ. I’m wondering what you might say to that.” And my feeling was, you know, we live in a culture that sits back and says, “Prove to me that this is worthwhile”—that X is worthwhile, or that this has value, or that I should do this. Prove to me, show me—and they don’t take any initiative. And my feeling is, pick up a book yourself and read. Or take an organ or piano lesson. YOU have to take some initiative. You’re right, we’re so used to diluting everything these days. I find it troubling that many organists don’t seem to possess this zeal, this call to action. They possess it at some level, there’s some awareness of it, but it doesn’t determine their behavior, or their actions, or their everyday conversations with people, I don’t know how else to say it. There’s no fire in the belly—there has to be.

JR: You mentioned that we organists need to get out and listen to other musical forms, such as the symphony. What other music do you listen to?
PJ: We could be here all night! I will say quite clearly, I do not listen to popular entertainment. I have no interest in that sort of thing. I see that as corrosive, and as an artist and a musician, I feel obligated to challenge what our culture accepts as music. What do I listen to? I listen to six centuries of music—from plainchant and Ockeghem through Dallapiccola and Debussy. Recently, I’ve been listening a great deal to Mozart, perhaps more than I ever have in my life—specifically to the piano concerti and the sonatas. This summer I’ve rediscovered this music—specifically Ashkenazy playing the piano concerti, DeLarrocha the sonatas. And I’m very fond of the great Romantic repertoire—Mahler’s symphonies, Verdi’s operas, and Brahms’s chamber music. In the twentieth century, I find Alban Berg’s music quite voluptuous. But yes, I have very broad tastes, with the exception that I’m not fond of most popular music. I maintain that Western art music is the pinnacle. But of course, that would be challenged by more and more people today.

JR: During your time at Yale and at Curtis, what were you able to learn? I have the feeling that you were already technically skilled by the time you got to Curtis, so you didn’t need to work on technique. Is that correct?
PJ: No, not really. Certainly I would consider registration part of technique. That was something that I learned a great deal from both John Weaver and Thomas Murray—with regards to console control, and how to bring out the best from an instrument. Both John Weaver and Thomas Murray allowed me to be my own musical voice; they didn’t try to impose their own style upon me. And that is something that I have taken from them, and applied to my own style of teaching. I’m very grateful to both of them.

JR: How are you enjoying teaching at Juilliard?
PJ: Very much. And I should add that with the current situations of schools—such as Northwestern and of course the New England Conservatory—the situation at Juilliard could not be any better. The president of Juilliard, Joseph Polisi, has been extremely supportive of my vision for the department. And the talent that exists in the department is formidable. During a visit last year to organ class, Michael Barone referred to the department as a “hot shop!”

JR: You have indicated that the department would not really be growing in numbers, that it would be limited to a certain size. Is that correct?
PJ: It fits in with the school, because the school itself is small. Juilliard prides itself on being a small school, and our department is the size of some of the wind departments—flute, oboe—relatively similar in size. Ten organ majors is generally a good number for the Juilliard community. It could be bumped up a little, I suppose, and it might be, but not much.

JR: Do you find any difference either in outlook or ability or approaches between your students and those that you work with in master classes?
PJ: With master classes, one can be all over the map; there’s such variety. One thing that I insist on with each of my students is that they develop their own musical signature, right from the start. We don’t want any clones in the department—and there are none. I think if one visits the school and hears the department play, one will encounter rich variety and imagination in playing and in styles. And I encourage this—I insist upon it. I believe that a teacher at Juilliard needs to be quite demanding with the students, but the students are highly motivated and always rise to the occasion. I’m very proud of them.

JR: Do you have any big projects planned? Any more marathons, any more things of that nature?
PJ: I performed the Messiaen cycle again in Los Angeles, at the end of October, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Angels. But with regards to something different, I look forward to pursuing new repertoire. Actually I am considering offering a Reger marathon, a Reger cycle—but not in the immediate future!

JR: Will you be making any more recordings?
PJ: Oh, yes, yes! I’ve neglected recording, simply because of other projects and such. But I am very keen on recording Messiaen and Reger in the near future.
I want to concentrate on other things right now, these being performing and certainly learning other repertoire. The snowball keeps growing larger, but I love it. This work provides such joy and fulfillment in my life, and meaning.

JR: Well, Paul, I will let you go get a cup of tea! Thank you so much for your time.
PJ: It’s been a pleasure talking with you.