For Bernhard, Chang, on approach and the point??

[mound]

I read something Bernhard wrote above, it's something he has said in other ways in other threads, but I really want to ask about this. I was going to write this as a response in that thread, but it deserves another thread I believe.

Bernhard wrote in the above mentioned thread:This is not unreasonable: with the right approach any one can master 20 pieces in a year (that’s less than two pieces a month), and will give you 3 - 4 hours of uninterrupted playing: enough for 3 or 4 recitals!

I've spent alot of time over the past several months reading about the practice and learning techniques that folks like Bernhard and Chang have documented so well. While I am only recently beginning to implement these methods in my own study, I am by all accounts considered by my teacher, friends and family to be somebody who is labeled "talented", and is progressing and excelling in my study very quickly. This is not magic, but my sheer dedication. I certainly am quickly gaining belief in the methods presented by Bernhard and Chang as I learn to implement them on my own, and am seeing how they can allow me to learn new pieces faster.

But, I have to seriously take issue with the concept of "mastering 20 pieces in a year." Even pieces on the level of the Chopin preludes and waltzes, some material like Schumann's Album for the Young, Bach 2 and 3 part inventions etc.. Not even advanced virtuosic repertory, but certainly those type works as well. Any repertory really, but even easier stuff. 2 pieces a month??

Maybe I am completely missing something here.. Maybe, just maybe, if I had a daily half hour lesson with Bernhard, along with my daily 2-3 hours of individual practice and really followed these methods to the letter, I could in fact come close to memorizing 20 pieces in a year. Maybe.. But master? If the definition of master is strictly "be able to play the notes with no score or flubs" then, well, perhaps. But the one thing I'm finding that isn't mentioned (at least not at length, unless I've somehow missed it) in any of what I've read from Bernhard or Chang (and please do correct me if I'm wrong), the thing which in my mind is more important than any of this, is the issue of musicality and expression. I had the Bach 2pt Invention in C memorized and playable hands together with no flubs in just a couple weeks. But with my teacher, week after week, month after month we put enormous thought and effort still into this one piece. Into the notes? No. The fingering? No. Memorization? No. Harmonic analysis? No, I can work that stuff on my own time to whatever level of detail I should care to take it.  On what then? On articulation and expression. The potentially endless depth of detail for the performance of this piece to the most subtle details of how to articulate the phrases from one to the other is where the focus, the "study" lies.  (As a quick aside, I know, it can be argued that Bach inventions aren't to be performed.. This is just an example, having been recently discussed on this forum when Bernhard outlined his process for teaching it. But the same applies to any piece I learn.) For me at least, memorizing the piece and having all the notes in my head and under my fingers, playable, for the most part w/o any flubs and doing harmonic analysis etc., is, and always has been, the easiest part of learning repertory. When that "homework" is done though, is a piece "mastered"? Of course not. That's when the real study begins.

With my teacher, we deal with expression and performance. Dynamics, articulation, INTENT. Bringing the piece alive through the subtle  details that only come once the stuff that Chang and Bernhard describe is out of the way. This study takes a LOT LONGER than half a month for any given piece because maturity can't be rushed.  As another example, I learned Chopins Waltz in Aminor (op. posth) over a year ago and do still work on it at times. Pretty simple piece.. Of course I have it memorized, to the smallest detail, but each time I decide to play it, it's the details of expression that grow and mature.  I wouldn't call any piece I "know" mastered even though in the past I have gone for a few months w/o thinking about that Chopin Waltz but could still sit down on command at a family holiday with cold hands and play it without flubs.

Perhaps my issue (if it is in fact an issue) is with semantics. What exactly is your definition of "master" and does it extend at all beyond having the notes permenantly ingrained in ones mind and fingers?  And what then is more important, developing a massive repertory of pieces that one "can execute" or, more slowly, building a repertory of pieces that one can really bring alive and inject a sense of their own being into?

Am I making any sense? I would love to hear some recordings of these students who are mastering two pieces a month. Sure the notes might be there, but how beautiful does it sound? I had all the notes of the Bach invention there after 2 weeks. My parents thought it was lovely when I played it for them, and in fact it may just have been. After months of study and work on the details that aren't on the score, now the piece is starting to sound closer to what I might call "mastered".

Again, I've been very intriqued by everything I've read from Bernhard and Chang and am asking this question with the utmost respect to both of them, but it seems that in a sense, if the end goal is simply to accumulate a body of memorized notes, it is entirely missing the point?

Or is it I who has missed the point??

thanks!

-Paul

[Egghead]

Hi Mound,

I second your question.

One remark re: Chang (and Bernhard by implication - do we have conclusive proof they are actually two people? ):
As far as I remember he emphasises in his book that the learning methods he describes should enable you to spend 10% of your time "practicing" and 90% "playing" music.

In some ways, the interpretation side of a piece seems to never end. The way I think of Chang's statement is: in 10% of your piano-time you learn how to execute a piece (using your terminology). Then you spend 90% playing it, i.e. playing around with it, discovering musical intent, possibilities, interpretative alternatives etc etc.
This is of course grossly simplified, as you cannot practice meaningfully without some musical feel. I think of it as more of a "first" interpretation.

The whole point of having a repertoire is that you have a stock of musical material you can rediscover (musically) and express differently for the rest of your life. Fascinating things might happen as your technique improves playing other pieces and you come back to some old piece and can now play it completely differently... Or you use a different tempo and it is suddenly a different piece...

I also think it is conceivable that someone already knows a piece very well and has a very clear musical imagination about it, before starting to practice it.

Hope I didn't misunderstand your question completely.

Curious what CC and Bernhard will say,
Egghead
p.s. I am neither talented nor diligent and despite many interruptions average about a piece a month. They are the kind of "easy" pieces you describe, except they are difficult for me (i.e. impossible at first).
p.p.s. Have you actually read CCs book?

[mosis]

Bernhard's method is good.

Chang should stick with physics.

20 pieces a year is bullshit.

[Spatula]

So what does Bernie advocate and what does CC go for?

[ThEmUsIcMaNBJ]

2 pieces a month is NOT realistic.  That's a piece every two weeks.  I didn't read much so I might be speaking out of context of what I read, however if someone can learn a piece to performance level in two weeks that is just ridiculous.  For example in Chopin...  Does that mean you could learn all the ballades AND scherzi in 4 months?  That would mean you could learn Chopin's scherzi, ballades, and 16 of his etudes thats over HALF in one year.  That's absolutely ridiculous.

I hope I am taking this incredibly out of context and maybe your talking about 2-part invention level.  If that is the case for an advanced player, 2-part inventions are more like sight-reading practice.  To say that an advanced pianist could learn 20 pieces of that level in a year, I think would be an understatement.

Either way they are both extremes  

I would read everything and give a more intelligent post, but I don't have time to right now.  So ignore this if it's totally off topic  

[mound]

Just to jump in quickly with a response, I do eagerly await a response from Bernhard and or Dr. Chang.

First, I have every reason to believe they are in fact two people, who share common insights.  I have had offline email conversations with Dr. Chang, he is a real person.

Anyway, I do agree that the interpretation side will never end. And in that sense, "mastery" can "never" be achieved.. Which is why I am confused by the notion of "mastering" 20 pieces per year. What would be the point?  Surely they wouldn't be beautiful or otherwise "worthwhile" performances of those pieces (of course that is a blanket and entirely subjective statement, purely for illustrative purposes). But, I can't claim to know if there is truth to my statement as such or not, which is why I asked!

p.p.s. Have you actually read CCs book?

Yes, I have. I have a few times over. And, I'm applying the methods he's documented to the best of my abilities to a piece which is a bit outside my range right now, with good results. I have as well had some offline email conversations with him. I do hold the utmost respect for both Dr. Chang and Bernhard, for they have provided me great food for thought. I am forced nonetheless to pose this question, as it is the only real point that has alluded me.

I hope I am taking this incredibly out of context and maybe your talking about 2-part invention level

Well yes and no. the 2pt inventions are "simple" on the outside.. two single note melodies. They have immense depth though when studied on a theoretical level as well as a "performance" level (even if said "performance" is only for studied peers).  Any repertory will apply though. I used that example specifically because Bernhard recently posted an extensive dialog as to how he would teach it, and it is a piece that I have spent considerable time on. Again, my question relates to any repertory, virtuosic or not.

Thanks! And again, I look forward, with utmost respect, to responses from Bernhard and Chang.

edit:

Bernhard's method is good.

Chang should stick with physics.

I wouldn't write it off that quickly. If you really read what they both have had to say, the parallels are astounding. I myself am a software engineer by trade,  a scientist as it were. This perhaps is what draws me to the "scientific method" of learning piano. Learning that is, not playing.  Playing piano is my escape from all things scientific. I'm all for scientifically based methods for "getting it in my fingers" but that's really just homework, which has to then be discarded when it comes time to "play" (or should I say, "express").

I have drawn parallels between what I've read from Chang and Bernhard.. And, it's not "Bernhard's method" he'll say as much.. Both of them are merely presenting what they have learned.


Take care
-Paul

[mosis]

I know it's not a method invented by Bernhard, but most people around here call it Bernhard's Method because they've never heard of it prior to Bernhard preaching it.

Some of Chang's methods don't jive with me, and some of his claims are outrageous and bias. Bernhard's approach is more feasible and I have seen immediate results with it.

[CC]

Sorry it took me a while to find this thread because this forum is not well organized and takes time to surf around.

In my book, my intention is to convey the idea that from finish to recital, you use (ideally, as a goal) 10% of time to "get the notes under your fingers" and 90% to music mastery.  My book is intended mostly for the first 10% and a slight excursion into the remaining 90%, which I do not deal with to any great extent -- that is where a good teacher is necessary, difficult to write in a book, I don't have the experience or material, and is not the main thrust of my book. Although I do emphasize musicality and talk about it in general terms in my book, the  detailed music lessons must be learned with each specific lesson piece. See my post about learning musicality from the great composers.

My only descriptions of repertoires refer to something like 5-10 hrs in 5-10 yrs, and even then I do not intend to convey the idea that you can play all of them at performance level without preparation.

Your post is a good one, since people need some kind of benchmark to say what is "mastered", but more importantly how to acquire a repertoire and what that repertoire might look like (how much is performable on demand?).  Obviously, the result if a function of how much time you have.  We have pianists that can barely practice an hour a day, 4 days/wk to those who can devote over 5 hrs a day, 6 days/wk. I have not yet put such numbers into my book. The closest I came to doing that is the section on learning the 3 Bach Inventions. The main reason I did not put a timeline for "mastery" is that I do not go into that aspect of piano practice sufficiently.

I can answer your basic questions off the top of my head, but usually, my first drafts are full of errors, so don't hold me to every detail.  But if I were to write a section in my book on this topic, it might go like the following.

It will take an "average student", with  a good teacher, about 1 year to learn a piece at his level to performance level. It will take 2-3 months to get all the technical stuff down (this is larger than the objective of 10%= 1.2 months, but most students try to reach above their level).  This "technical stuff" is what my book is all about. It will then take another 6-7 months of "musicality" study to get it up to level of 1st auditions (let's say this is a piano competition). One year after starting, they are ready for finals. If they win the finals, they can perform in Carnegie Recital Hall (the small one, not the main hall), as our daughters did for many years, usually 3-6 months after finals. Our daughters' program was pretty demanding and by the time they played in NYC, they usually had performed the piece at least 10 times with audiences of over 50 people each time. So these are actual numbers with real students and teachers experienced over many years. My book might do a little better than those teachers for the technical part because of my added research and help and suggestions from other teachers.

Note that you are always working on about 4 pieces at the same time, and the recital pieces tend to be the largest compositions, so during the year of lessons, you can learn something like 4-8 pieces.

Within 5-10 yrs, most people can acquire a repertoire of 5-10 hrs, completely memorized and "performable".  However, only a few of them can be performed at performance level at any one time. The main reason for this for students is that they are constantly learning new pieces and (1) have no time to maintain their old pieces and (2) learning new pieces has a nasty habit of destroying your old pieces.  Of course, your technical ability to play your old pieces INCREASES every time you learn something new; however, it takes  time to transfer that new skill to the old pieces -- this transfer doesn't always occur automatically, and in fact often interferes with old habits.  If students didn't have to constantly learn new pieces, it is conceivable (but not likely) that they can perform their entire repertoire on demand.

That's about the level of my understanding of the subject matter.  What do you think?

[CC]

PS:  I am not Bernhard -- he is just my role model.  One thing that helped me write my book is my practical engineering training as a problem solver as well as fairly advanced science education (my employer spent well over $1M [not corrected for inflation] just for my  education AFTER I started working for them). Publishing over 100 papers in peer reviewed science journals also helped. I also had to operate probably one of the most complex instruments in the world because my main job was to measure less than 1% change in the orbit of a single electron in zillions of materials to solve industrial problems. In fact, my machine appeared on the cover of Scientific American in 1965.

I am amazed at the wide range of subjects that Bernhard is familiar with -- Bernhard: what is your background that gives you such knowledge?

[CC]

PPS: by the way, our daughters averaged about 45 min practice/day, 6 d/wk. If they had 2-3 hrs/d, they could conceivably more than double their production of 4-8 pieces/yr.


What is the Bernhard method?  Is it available anywhere, in one place?

[Spatula]

Bernhard is very knowlegible about life, like where to get the cheapest bananas on sale.  

[mosis]

Chang,

I find your 5-10 hours in 5-10 years MUCH more realistic than 100 pieces in a year.

There is no Bernhard method, per se. Look around the forum for posts made by Bernhard and try to compile them. There is one topic called "How big are your hands?" that contains many detailed posts on Bernhard's practice method.

[CC]

The timeline I had described was for students with some technical skills still to learn -- the usual situation for students.  Each new piece is supposed to teach a new skill they don't already have.  However, for those who already possess the necessary skills, there are apparently very fast ways of mastering even quite difficult material in couple weeks.  This is demonstrated routinely  in international music competitions in which contestants are given music they had never seen or heard before and asked to perform in couple weeks.  Apparently most contestants succeed, and the judgement is not on whether they mastered it, but on the musical presentation because "mastery" is apparently a given. Although I seems to me that some of Barnhard's claims are a stretch, there are plenty of documented achievements that come reasonably close.  It is clear, therefore, that my book is just a beginning.  There will certainly be a lot more improvements that will be added in the future.

[xvimbi]

It is clear, therefore, that my book is just a beginning.  There will certainly be a lot more improvements that will be added in the future.

Dear Mr. Chang,

I am sure your are aware that your ponderings as written down in your excellent book are often presented in this forum as guidlines for aspiring pianists. They are also often evaluated critically with many posts supporting your notions and some not supporting them. You are a scientist, therefore you will most certainly welcome these discussions, as your statement above indicates. I am sure you have many sources of input for future editions of your book. I hope the discussions in this forum, which is dear to many of us, will be able to contribute to your work in a constructive way.

You wouldn't, by any chance, have anything to do with Auger electron spectroscopy or transmission electron microscopy, would you?

[bernhard]

Mound wrote:

But, I have to seriously take issue with the concept of "mastering 20 pieces in a year." Even pieces on the level of the Chopin preludes and waltzes, some material like Schumann's Album for the Young, Bach 2 and 3 part inventions etc.. Not even advanced virtuosic repertory, but certainly those type works as well. Any repertory really, but even easier stuff. 2 pieces a month??  

Maybe I am completely missing something here.. Maybe, just maybe, if I had a daily half hour lesson with Bernhard, along with my daily 2-3 hours of individual practice and really followed these methods to the letter, I could in fact come close to memorizing 20 pieces in a year. Maybe.. But master? If the definition of master is strictly "be able to play the notes with no score or flubs" then, well, perhaps. But the one thing I'm finding that isn't mentioned

Yes, you are missing a few things. First, I have described in another post three different levels a student can be in regards to a piece:

1.      The piece has been learned. This means that the student finally succeeded in playing the piece in its entirety, all the right notes in the right places, and hopefully has been able to bring the music to life even if in a rudimentary way. (If music was a martial art, this would be the “black belt” level. It is also the level where you finally are ready to start really learning the piece). However, the next day, the whole piece may fall apart, and the student may have to go back to learning methods to bring the piece back to its previous state of “learned”.

2.      The piece has been mastered. Now the student can always play the piece (some days better than others) and there is no need anymore to go back to the learning stages. To keep the piece at this stage all the student needs to do is to perform it more or less regularly. However if the piece is neglected for a couple of months (or years), it is as if the student never learned the piece. In order to master it again, he will need to go back to the learning stage – except that his time it will take a fraction of the time it took originally.

3.      Omniscience – As result of either performing the piece regularly or of relearning it several times, the piece is now so ingrained in the student;s subconscious that even if he stops playing it for 30 years, he will still be able to play it “perfectly”. This stage is the piano equivalent of riding a bicycle: once you learn it, you never forget it.

Someone who got to the level where they can play the Chopin etudes should be able to master (in the sense above) the easier preludes (no. 4, no. 7, no. 20) in about twenty minutes. A complete beginner should be able to master them in two weeks.

Likewise someone who can play the WTC should be able to master a 2 voice invention in 2 – 3 days (practising them for 40 – 60 minutes a day), while a beginner may take a month. (Just shows you how much more difficult Bach is).

the thing which in my mind is more important than any of this, is the issue of musicality and expression. I had the Bach 2pt Invention in C memorized and playable hands together with no flubs in just a couple weeks. But with my teacher, week after week, month after month we put enormous thought and effort still into this one piece. Into the notes? No. The fingering? No. Memorization? No. Harmonic analysis? No, I can work that stuff on my own time to whatever level of detail I should care to take it.  On what then? On articulation and expression. The potentially endless depth of detail for the performance of this piece to the most subtle details of how to articulate the phrases from one to the other is where the focus, the "study" lies.

I agree with you.

No piece is ever mastered in the sense you describe. In fact it is one of the beauties of the really superlative repertory that a lifetime will not be enough to explore all of its possibilities even for ridiculously easy pieces (Schumann’s “The Poet speaks” from Kinderscenen comes to mind).

Yet to even start this particular path it is necessary to “master” a piece in other ways – specifically in the ways I described above.

At the same time I do not really like to divorce technique from musicality because I believe they are both two sides of the same coin. So although superficially the methods of practice I use and suggest people to try, would seem to address mostly technique, I actually strongly pressure my students to start working on musicality as soon as the passage they are working on is large enough to allow it – that is, I do not believe that you should learn all the right notes at the right time and only then start working on musicality – quite the contrary, from the very beginning we should have a musical concept that guides one’s practice. We spend a lot of time working on the score, listening to CDs of several pianists and getting thoroughly acquainted with the piece before practising it, in short, I believe in delaying the actual practice at the piano until you have some sort of musical concept (even though you may change it later).

For me at least, memorizing the piece and having all the notes in my head and under my fingers, playable, for the most part w/o any flubs and doing harmonic analysis etc., is, and always has been, the easiest part of learning repertory. When that "homework" is done though, is a piece "mastered"? Of course not. That's when the real study begins.  

Yes, as I said I agree with you. However in my experience, the majority of students (at least the majority of my students) difficulty does not lie in the musical aspect, but in exactly those areas that you find easy: memorising (not such a big problem there); sight-reading (a major problem); motor co-ordination (major problem), truly understanding harmony and what “meaning of music” actually means (again the problem is not understanding but simply knowing all the chords and their voicings and different functions). So, to me a piece is indeed “mastered” once all that homework has been done. And of course you are completely right, this is where the real work begins. But you would perhaps be surprised how difficult it is to get to this stage of “homework done” for the majority of students.

With my teacher, we deal with expression and performance. Dynamics, articulation, INTENT. Bringing the piece alive through the subtle  details that only come once the stuff that Chang and Bernhard describe is out of the way. This study takes a LOT LONGER than half a month for any given piece because maturity can't be rushed.  As another example, I learned Chopins Waltz in Aminor (op. posth) over a year ago and do still work on it at times. Pretty simple piece.. Of course I have it memorized, to the smallest detail, but each time I decide to play it, it's the details of expression that grow and mature.  I wouldn't call any piece I "know" mastered even though in the past I have gone for a few months w/o thinking about that Chopin Waltz but could still sit down on command at a family holiday with cold hands and play it without flubs.

Then as far as I am concerned you have mastered the waltz (you may even be at the omniscient stage!).

Your teacher is absolutely correct in spending so much time on the 2-voice invention (I do the same). As we shall see there is a good reason for it. However he is not spending all that time teaching you to play the right notes at the right time. If after one year you were still struggling with the first four bars, I would venture that there is something very wrong with the way you are learning/practising this piece.

Now once you spend one (or two) years exploring all the angles of the first inventions and you proceed to learn the second, do you think it is going to take as long? I doubt very much. And when you move to the WTC again it will take a fraction of the time it would have taken had your teacher not spent so much time on the first invention.

The truth is that music is pretty limited in a certain sense. It is not for nothing that composers have “style”. Ralph Kirkpatrick – the guy who wrote the seminal work on Scarlatti sonatas  - once wrote that after studying in depth 555 sonatas he could not come up with a “model sonata”: they were all different and immensely varied in their musical inventiveness. Yet, the same Kirkpatrick also wrote that anyone who had thoroughly mastered all aspects of five or six of Scarlatti’s sonatas would find that the remaining ones would come easily ( I can attest to that).

The same has been said about Bach fugues: you cannot really come up with a “model fugue” unless you invent one. Again learn three or four thoroughly and the rest will come easily.

When I say that anyone can learn two pieces a month, I do not mean by that all the possible aspects of a piece. I mean that the piece is at a stage where you can perform it with confidence: all the right notes in the right times, everything memorised, and a reasonable interpretation. Certain pieces (Schumann comes to mind) will never be ready. Andras Schiff recently issued a new CD of the Goldberg variations since he was dissatisfied with his previous CD of them issued some 20 years earlier (if I’m not mistaken). Glenn Gould did the same. Yet I bet with you that it didn’t took him 20 years to learn the Goldberg.

So I see no contradiction in my claim and yours. What I am saying is that one should try to learn a piece in the least amount of time using the most efficient methods, so that one can start playing it and exploring its musicality as soon as possible.

And what then is more important, developing a massive repertory of pieces that one "can execute" or, more slowly, building a repertory of pieces that one can really bring alive and inject a sense of their own being into?  

Both are equally important. Especially in the beginning you want to have as much repertory as you can manage for several reasons:

1.      I do not believe in technical exercises. I teach technique from pieces. This means that in order to tackle a diverse number of technical problems you need a diversity of repertory.

2.      Beginners and intermediates would never survive the boredom of working on a single piece for one year. Most beginners and intermediates have not yet developed the necessary understanding required for this sort of intensive work. All they want is to play something different from what they did last week (this is really a cultural problem – it stems from a society that encourages limitless consumption and who demands new things all the time).

3.      It motivates the student if he is able to play several pieces, instead of just one. If he performs for friends and family, it relieves the boredom of the friends and family who otherwise would have to listen to the same piece over and over again.

4.      Different pieces require different learning strategies. Since I emphasise “learning how to learn” in the beginning a number of different pieces will allow me to cover most of the different strategies straight away.

Am I making any sense? I would love to hear some recordings of these students who are mastering two pieces a month. Sure the notes might be there, but how beautiful does it sound? I had all the notes of the Bach invention there after 2 weeks. My parents thought it was lovely when I played it for them, and in fact it may just have been. After months of study and work on the details that aren't on the score, now the piece is starting to sound closer to what I might call "mastered".  

Yes, you are making perfect sense. However your arguments refer to a more advanced student. Also, if you had all the notes of the 2 voice invention after 2 weeks, you are doing very well. The typical student having one lesson per week and not practising in between lessons could well spend one year to learn (badly) just a few bars of the same invention.

You are talking from your perspective: a talented student who practises hard (perhaps too hard). I am talking from the perspective of someone who observes several students of different levels of talent and commitment and trying to figure out what to do with them.

it seems that in a sense, if the end goal is simply to accumulate a body of memorized notes, it is entirely missing the point?

This is of course not the end goal. That is the first step on a very long journey, without which you will never arrive at your destination. So, the end goal is not to accumulate a body of memorised notes. But without an accumulated  body of memorised notes, no final destination.

Best wishes,

[bernhard]

Bernhard's method is good.

Thank you.

Actually, I would not call it a “method”, and I am sure I picked it from someone (several someones) somewhere.

Chang should stick with physics.

I am very happy (and grateful) that he didn’t. And in a sense he did stick with physics.

20 pieces a year is bulls**t.

Yes, you can “master” 20 pieces a year if they are within your level and if they are arranged in a progressive order of difficulty so that mastering one provides the resources for mastering the next one. Mastering here means simply good enough for you to be able to perform the piece.

I also believe on working on several pieces in parallel. You could spend a whole year just working on a Bach 2 voice invention, and at the end of that year you would have just that piece to show for your efforts. But would it be considerably better than if you had learned another 19 pieces concurrently? In my experience not only it would not be any better as it may have been worse – since the learning of one piece always informs (both technically and conceptually) the learning of another.

Let us look around, shall we? Richter had repertory of over 1500 pieces. Arrau had a similar one. Most professional pianists have a repertory of over 500 pieces. Brendel is possibly the one with the smallest repertory: he has said in interview that his concertrepertory is around 150 pieces. I assume that he has a much larger repertory, 150 are just the pieces he plays publicly.

John Browning once said in interview that he expected his students to bring him a sonata ready and memorised every weekly lesson. He said that most were shocked at his request, but they soon realised he was serious and they just somehow had to manage. He also said that although they complained bitterly of the work load, at the end of the year they were always grateful since not only they had 52 sonatas in their repertory, as in the process of learning them at such a pace, they had figured out ways to learn and memorise them so quickly.

So you say that 20 pieces a year is b***t. Well I say: wake up and smell the coffee.  

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

2 pieces a month is NOT realistic. 

2 pieces a month is NOT realistic.

Er… realistic for whom?

That's a piece every two weeks.  I didn't read much so I might be speaking out of context of what I read, however if someone can learn a piece to performance level in two weeks that is just ridiculous.  For example in Chopin...  Does that mean you could learn all the ballades AND scherzi in 4 months?  That would mean you could learn Chopin's scherzi, ballades, and 16 of his etudes thats over HALF in one year.  That's absolutely ridiculous.

I myself learn around 30 pieces per month (just as a consequence of teaching). This does not mean that at the end of the year I have learned 360 pieces (although it may happen). What I mean is that at any month I am working on 30 pieces. Some take more than a month to get ready, others take far less. As a piece gets ready it is replaced by a new one (or an old one that needs relearning).

These 30 pieces are not all of them the most advanced pieces in the repertory. Some are beginner’s pieces, some are intermediate, and a very few are advanced (again this is a consequence of teaching: I learn the pieces I teach).

My point is: there is some wonderful repertory out there that is very easy. Why should you only want to play Liszt transcendental studies, Rach 3 and Chopin Ballades. There is nothing wrong with them of course, but there is also nothing wrong with MacDowells “To a Wild Rose”, which someone who is working on a Liszt transcendental study can master in about 20 minutes. (A beginner may take a couple of weeks).

Take Scarlatti’s sonata k32. Just one page long and presenting no technical difficulty of any sort. I often give it as a first piece to adult beginners. It is a stunningly beautiful piece, contemplative and lyrical. It took me 15 minutes to master. It takes a complete beginner about a week. Yet, Even though I have now played (and taught) it for many years, I keep discovering new aspects to it. So in this sense it may never be fully “explored” or “mastered”. But it was learned and memorised in 15 minutes, and that very same night I played it for my family, beautifully and without mistakes. Of course, if I was to play it now many things would be different from that first performance (hopefully for the better).

In my opinion the only reason people do not learn 2 pieces a month (really a bare minimum) is either because of laziness, or because they squander their time not being organised and systematic. Pianists are artists, so they are always waxing lyrical about inspiration and expressing emotions. This is good as far as it goes. But I am more interested in piano playing as a craft. Many of my students – if left to their own devices - will only play and practise when they “feel like it”. This is one of the most destructive attitudes one can have. I myself used to be like that in my teenager years, so I know exactly what I am talking about, and one of the advantages of age is that you realise the folly of your own youth. The disadvantage is that you cannot do anything about it. Discipline is very important: you plan your work and you work your plan.

But how many pianists actually have a plan? How many sit down and decide what is it that they are going to learn for the next five years, and organise their learning on a daily basis, setting short, middle and long term goals? Most pianists will break down in a rash if so much is suggested. Piano playing should be “free” and follow the pianist’s whims – and all the rubbish that comes with this package. In my experience people can be physically very industrious and yet mentally utterly lazy. I met in my life many students (and teachers who approved of such idiocy) who would spend 3 or 4 hours in the morning just practising the C major scale (or some other scale) up and down the piano over four octaves. Some would even read the newspapers or watch TV while doing that.

I also came across many students who had passed their grade 7 exam and yet could not play anything: They had forgotten their grade 7 exam pieces, and were still learning their grade 8 pieces. I think it is disgraceful to spend 9 or 10 years learning the piano and not be able to play anything.

In my youth, I would have reacted to 20 pieces a year with the same sort of incredulity. My fellow students were not managing it. If anyone mentioned Arrau or Richter I would have discounted them as “genius”. However, as I became more and more aware that people were actually doing far more than 20 pieces a year, it started to daunt on me that either everyone was a genius and I was mentally challenged, or I had some seriously wrong preconceptions - which happened to be the case.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

Bernhard is very knowlegible about life, like where to get the cheapest bananas on sale.  

You better make a stockpile of bananas. They may be extinct in ten years time (by which time you may have no bananas but you may well have 200 pieces in your repertory ).

Have a look here:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-02/aps-ppu021403.php



Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

Anyway, I do agree that the interpretation side will never end. And in that sense, "mastery" can "never" be achieved.. Which is why I am confused by the notion of "mastering" 20 pieces per year. What would be the point?  Surely they wouldn't be beautiful or otherwise "worthwhile" performances of those pieces (of course that is a blanket and entirely subjective statement, purely for illustrative purposes).

The point(s) are several (see my original answer above). But the mains point is to have a varied enough pool of pieces to work on. Imagine that after one year of learning the piano all you could play was the Chopin Waltz in Am you mentioned before. I don’t know about you, but if I was a beginner I would feel pretty disheartened. Besides there is only so much work on “musicality” you can do on a single piece for a year. The fact is that your “musicality” will be informed by working on other pieces of different eras/composers/styles. In fact – as I have suggested elsewhere – one of the best methods to truly get to grips with a piece is to regularly neglect it and relearn it. Working on several pieces is a great way to use the time you are neglecting other pieces. Also consider that the first two pieces you learned in the first month you will continue perfecting throughout the whole year, so that by the end of the year you will have twenty pieces at different stages of development. This variety is a great motivator. Just consider the alternative.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

Chang,

I find your 5-10 hours in 5-10 years MUCH more realistic than 100 pieces in a year.

Er... I said 100 pieces in five years (20 in a year), which amounts to pretty much the same as 5 - 10 hours in 5 - 10 years. Since most pieces average 3 minutes, 5 - 10 hours means 100 - 200 pieces in 5 - 10 years.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[bernhard]

PS:  I am not Bernhard -- he is just my role model.  

And I am not Chang, he is just my role model

By the way,

I agree with Chang. (5-10 hrs in 5 – 10 years is about 200 pieces). I would only add (and he probably knows this) that the first 2 years are the slowest ones in terms of learning, You may not be able to do 20 pieces a year. But after that, the speed of learning increases – mostly because music is heavily patterned. By the end of two years of serious study, many skills that were baffling and completley elusive at the beginning will have become subconscious.


Best wishes,
Bernhard.

[Spatula]

I love analogies and poetry (the poetry sometimes)

How about this one Bernie?

Learning and mastering a piece is like aging a red or white wine.  It takes patience and "endurance" by the wine manufacturer as well as the fermentation process to produce some of the worlds most richest wines.

How it tastes on your pallet? Oh so delicious.

I'm just wondering by your judgment of how well I seem to be learning a piece (I know I'm excluding a lot of variables here but anyways)  
I’ve been working on the Rachmaninoff Prelude Nr 5 Op 23 for almost 6 months now and I seem to be able to work around it and play at about MM = 60 – 70.  
I’m still working on the 2nd page as it’s terribly difficult to get all the chords in the right progression.  Please note that the last repertoire I managed to learn for an exam was Beethoven’s Sonata Op 49 Nr 1 – youth’s sonata. So that’s a pretty big jump.

So umm how fast (or slow) am I progressing?

[mosis]

Good lord, Bernhard, I'm starting to get the impression that you are a machine. :p

You type huge posts at a time, and you've answered the same questions at least 3 times, yet you continue to inform us all. Thanks for that.

I still don't understand how I can learn my six pieces in 5 months, never mind about 3 months. I don't necessarily know exactly how to practice what, aside from the few bars for 20 minutes. I made a post in another thread that you detailed learning Satie's Gymnopedie. I pointed out that you were contradicting yourself about a point (or I was just confused). It'd be cool if you checked it out.