How to Develop Musicality

In my last post about Art vs. Craft, I got this comment:

To learn the craftsmanship you need a teacher for sure. But what is the teacher’s role in developing the artist within a violinist?

Never mind that the comment came from my wife (hi honey!) and that we talked about it later that night. And never mind that she’s a scientist, not a musician. It’s still a great question, deserving of its own post.

Learning vs. Being Taught

To start with, I think that artistry is learned. I don’t think it can exactly be taught. Yet I’ve had several teachers along the way help me grow as an artist. And in turn, I’ve helped several young musicians play more musically.

So why don’t I think it’s directly teachable? To answer this, I’d like to bring up the case of a violinist I knew in college. Let’s call her Susan to protect the innocent.

Susan always played the right notes and rhythms. Dynamics were there, too. Yet every time she performed in studio class, I deflated a bit. She wasn’t a bad violinist. But she played as if she was completely detached from the music. As if she were reading us a story, written out phonetically in a language she didn’t understand. I never got the sense that she meant what she played. I was bored out of my mind.

How was this possible? She had the same teacher as many wonderful musicians. She even had a bachelor’s degree and was going for her master’s. She had taken courses in harmonic analysis, ear training, music history… the whole works. So what was the problem?

One day she played in a masterclass for a visiting professor. After she played, he asked her, “Do you listen to classical music?” She said no; she listened to pop music, but no classical music. Bingo! The puzzle pieces fell into place for me.

Despite all the teachers that two different universities could provide, Susan hadn’t developed as an artist. She did her assigned homework and passed her classes. But she had never immersed herself in classical music wholeheartedly.

Observation

Every great artist starts from the same square one. Observing and absorbing. If you want to become a great writer, you have to read a lot of good writing. If you want to become a great stage actor, you have to go see a lot of live theater. And if you want to become a great classical musician, you have to listen to a lot of classical music.

This is where the teacher comes in. There’s a lot of classical music out there. How is a student supposed to know what to listen to? Classical music radio stations help. But in Milwaukee, where I grew up, the local station went out of business. To this day, there is no classical music station in Milwaukee.

If you are a violin teacher wanting to help your students become artists, you absolutely have to expose them to a lot of great music. There’s a lot to know if you want to be a great musician. Eventually, you’ll be asked to play everything from Vivaldi to Mahler, Mozart to Philip Glass. How can you convincingly perform any of this if you’ve never listened to it? So it takes a ton of listening to get the lay of the land.

I recommend having a “listening list” for your students. I used to give this to students as a handout in our first lesson. But a YouTube or Spotify playlist would be even better. (I should take my own advice and get to work on that.)

Next Steps

As I said, listening is the first step. Without it, there’s no hope of becoming a good musician. After that comes a whole list of ways to help a music student grow as an artist. I mentioned some ideas in the 3 Layers of a Musician. But they could stand to be repeated again here:

• Create stories to go with the music
• Have them listen to recordings of themselves
• Teach them to analyze harmony and form
• Teach them about the lives of great composers

Do you have anything to add to this list? Leave a comment below!