Hannah Ryan
Staff Writer
So said Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, the late American composer and jazz pianist generally acknowledged as one of the key figures in 20th century music. However, based on my personal experience – having been musically instructed since the age of four and consequently finding myself in an almost constant battle of wills with ABRSM until I completed my music exams at age seventeen – I am forced to disagree. It is my firm belief that “mastery” of an instrument is not necessary, and not always favourable, to the enjoyment of it; and if music is not enjoyed, then I ask you, where is the wisdom in practising it?
These days, having a few musical instruments under your belt is seen as a highly estimable asset; prospective employers will almost certainly be biased in your favour if you can display this badge of sophistication and culture. Once you’ve achieved your goals you can always price your musical instrument and sell it to places like pawn brokers to make a quick buck; it doesn’t have to be a lifetime commitment. Parents, with this in mind, often strive to inspire in their children a spark of musical curiosity; however, in many cases, forcing children into music classes achieves only their alienation from it. I have heard countless stories of people who, having eventually “escaped” their dreaded piano lessons as a child, never turned back, eternally associating the instrument with negative sentiments. My own parents discovered that I did possess a genuine interest in learning music from a young age, and over the next thirteen years of cello and piano lessons there were tantrums – there were definitely tears – but I have the feeling that I knew not to cross the line where they would be forced to give up on my musical career for good. Perhaps, deep down, I acknowledged the truth in my mother’s saying, gravely, that I would always regret it if I gave it up.
However, after struggling towards and eventually succeeding in the all-consuming Grade 8 exam, and terminating my cello lessons on coming to college, I was at a complete loss as to what I should be doing. Where was my teacher to tell me what pieces to learn, or when I was holding the bow wrong? (A permanent Achilles’s heel of mine). Faced with a future of depending solely on my own taste, my own technique, I balked. Of course, this is only my experience, and I have heard tell of beloved music teachers who always took the back seat apart from where their guidance was strictly necessary. The fact is, my musical education in the cello rarely allowed for much actual musicianship on my part. Sure, I would be offered the choice between two or three exam pieces, but beyond that, my personal taste rarely entered the equation. However, I will say this much: the epitome of my cello career was the much-awaited day when I was offered the opportunity to play Bach’s Prelude, from the first Cello Suite. Not an overly-challenging piece, but so profoundly enjoyable and rewarding to play that even now, as my cello sits forlornly in the corner of the study back home, gathering dust on its once-polished mahogany surface, I will occasionally pick it up to revive this old favourite. Whether ironically or not, I’m not sure – but this is one piece that I never subjected to exam scrutiny.
The journey through the music grades, I have found, teaches and rewards a technical knowledge which is undoubtedly a necessity for anyone intending to take an instrument seriously. However, this is less a nurtured understanding than a strict discipline taught through archaic methods. Asking a child to remember, simultaneously, the Italian for “at ease”, “walking pace”, “moderately”, and “lively”, seems difficult enough, let alone expecting them to actually perceive the subtle nuances between these terms, and alter their tempo accordingly. I remember traipsing miserably into my Music Theory class once a week, staring blankly at the blackboard where I was expected to apply one of the hundred-or-so meaningless Italian words floating abstractly around my ten-year-old brain to five non-descript bars of music. I could delve further into the countless other (in my opinion) useless and ridiculous exercises inflicted on my young Theory group – such as being forced to sing, in front of the class, several bars played by the teacher on the piano: for me, this was a mercifully less torturous task than for the odd unfortunate child, whose natural tonelessness – through no fault of their own – was only made more perceptible when accompanying the piano. However, let’s just say that as soon as I reached the requisite Grade 5, I left the wretched class and never looked back (woe betide the poor unfortunates whose parents perceived some value in their continuing through the final three grades).
It is my personal belief that achieving Grade 8 on the cello came at the steep price of my enjoyment of the instrument. I would never regret learning the cello; only the manner in which I did so, constantly hindered by the inescapably dehumanising aspect of the music exams. I never learned to nurture any spontaneity in my playing, and improvisation was a complete unfeasibility; thus, to me, the cello never offered a challenge beyond mastery of bow technique and fourth position. This conviction is reinforced by the fact that, having passed my Grade 5 piano exam and thereby voluntarily terminating my relationship with the Associated Board for good, I still continued to play. I distinctly remember tentatively enquiring of a piano teacher as to the difficulty of Debussy’s Clair de Lune. Of course, if it was anything above the level which I had achieved, I would never dare to attempt it; one does not simply disregard the omnipotent Grade system. But imagine my shocked delight when I was told, quite frankly, to forget about the grade of the piece and if I wanted to learn it, to do so. I seized upon on the challenge gleefully, and was amply rewarded for my sacrilege.
I am ever in awe of those who disregard the grades and the music exams, endeavouring instead to self-teach musical instruments. I’m not talking about people who, like me, sit back proudly when they’ve managed to make a chord diagram correspond with a physical guitar. I mean people who dedicate themselves to learning an instrument without any “professional” guidance, without shelling out thousands on half-hour music lessons, fuelled solely by their own perseverance coupled with a profound love of music. This is an unfeasible concept to me; for much of last year, I entertained the vague notion of casually conquering the ukulele, armed with only – yes – my trusty chord diagrams and a few Youtube videos of Jake Shimabukuro. It got to the point where I could play a handful of songs without stopping for every chord change, when I realised that the few people who came into my apartment and picked up the instrument could play it ten times better than I could. This was disheartening, to say the least.
I guess you could say that I’ve been institutionalised: I cannot satisfactorily learn an instrument that does not involve half an hour a day of scales, arpeggios and broken chords, and for a long time this was a source of disappointment for me. However I did eventually realise that, as much as I would love to be the type of person who can sit down for the first time with a musical instrument and immediately make it sound like one, I’m not. But I still, knowing what I do now, wouldn’t turn to music exams to learn. Playing music should be about the love of playing music – nothing more, nothing less – and definitely not about some tangible number that might look impressive on your CV. Thus, to return to the advice of Mr Ellington, I have to say, that in my view the wise musician – possessing the slightest regard for his own sanity and well-being – plays that which he can enjoy, disregarding completely any notions of mastery and, for God’s sake, sophistication.
