The one-man play “Muse of Fire,” performed last month at the Franco-American Heritage Center, deals with the teaching methods of Charles Bruck, who presided over the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors and Orchestral Musicians in Hancock, Maine, after the demise of its founder.

Bruck, at least in the play, seems to have been one of the teachers of the old school, now fortunately defunct, who believed in browbeating students to the point of a nervous breakdown, if not physically abusing them by rapping knuckles with a ruler. Some of the torture methods used to achieve “proper” technique are unbelievable today. One such machine, designed (I think) to improve the weak fourth finger, damaged Schumann’s hand irreparably 

Although some students brainwashed under methods similar to Bruck’s look back with fondness at their “teachers,” like athletes who suffered under an abusive coach, all that such folk heroes seem to have accomplished is to have discouraged those who didn’t have a fanatic drive to succeed. It’s a strange kind of teaching that has to be overcome for the student to  advance.

There’s a story by Somerset Maugham, made into a movie in the 1950s, about a young man who wants to be a concert pianist.  After a long period of intensive study, he is told by one of the teachers of the Romantic school (hired by his disapproving parents) that he doesn’t have the requisite talent, and commits suicide.

Paderewski, who was not a particularly good pianist, composer, or prime minister of Poland, used to claim that if one did not have the necessary finger curvature, one might as well give up the thought of playing well. There was probably a machine or method (marbles on the back of the hand?) to correct that defect too.

Recent studies have shown that “talent,” if not a liability, is a lesser indicator of success than desire.

The problem with this theory is that it leads to “practice, practice, practice,” which if done wrongly, as it usually is, only confirms bad habits.

What amateur pianist hasn’t gone on vacation to return home and find that he or she played much better, and discovered new aspects of a piece, after not practicing for a few weeks?

The Canadian pianist Glenn Gould claimed not to practice, except in his mind, and is famous for telling an audience of piano teachers that one could learn how to play in half an hour. I wish he had written a method. But if you can learn to knit in half an hour, why not? My encore-avoiding heroine, Martha Argerich, learned the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3 by hearing her roommate practice it.

What I objected to primarily in “Muse of Fire” was the harping on “feeling.” The fictional Bruck continually asked conducting students to describe what they were feeling, or accused them of feeling nothing at all. (How do you convey feeling in a work that you have performed a hundred times? “Fake it,” said the concert pianist.)

Of course music conveys feelings, but not of a kind that can be described in words, except in their most gross aspects, like the sensations of bitter, salty, sweet and sour that make up the palette of our taste buds. One of the beauties of music is that it speaks of emotions or images that there are no words for.

Such feelings or impressions are as ephemeral as the morning dew, subtle and shifting, even when they have a common denominator such as sadness, triumph or sarcasm (think Shostakovich).  Even to attempt to capture such essences in words is often to destroy them. Poetry can do it, but like a symphony, “a poem should not ‘mean’ but ‘be.’ “

 

Christopher Hyde is a writer and musician who lives in Pownal. He can be reached at:

classbeat@netscape.net

 

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