Re: Tears

[Saul Davis Zlatkovski]

Well, I think I have to say that labeling the kind of teaching I described briefly as emotional violation is not justifiable as I did not present a complete “case study” for psychological determination. People have not changed, I think, only their expectations. Music has not changed, either. There is nothing robotic about what I described. There are different levels of emotions. For instance, I attended a vocal class where they were doing cabaret songs, and a singer sang a song like Why Did I Choose You, or a real torch song and she started crying. Well, the teacher did not indulge her in that. He rightly identified it as a selfish approach and a failure. Why? Because she was crying, not the audience. She made it too personal, and failed to communicate anything to the audience. Her proper goal is to make the audience cry, if that is what the song calls for. Music operates on deeper levels and more intellectual levels in that the ideas and emotional ideas are what need to be communicated, not how bad you feel that day.

This was not a sadistic or oppressive lesson. That being said, you will encounter conductors and teachers who may seem or actually be sadistic in a sense or reality. Especially if they were trained in Vienna. If you are a professional, you have to be able to deal with it, and perhaps the best way is to focus on the music and ignore everything else. That takes training to be able to do. It may seem wrong, but you can’t always do anything about it, and sometimes it may be the only way a conductor or director can get any worthwhile results. The performers may be lazy, uninvolved, shallow or cold. They have to do what it takes to get the needed performance, that is their job. So don’t be so quick to judge.

I think it is a bit different when you look at schoolteachers who have a class for a whole day and a whole year at a time, with children who are in formation. I was certainly not addressing dealing with children.

As for the idea of dwelling on emotional upsets in lessons, I think it may