Non-musicians or non-music-educators might find this one boring

After thinking about what I learned about the background of most German musicians, I went to orchestra rehearsal on Thursday with a totally new perspective. Rather than just focusing on what the group sounded like and how they played, I put it into context and thought about how their background affects how they play.

To shortly recap, German children learn instruments through private lessons and music schools, and the average children (not the ones who end up in conservatories) probably have very few opportunities to play in groups. American children learn instruments through band or orchestra class and are trained from the beginning to play as an ensemble member, but the average children often do very little solo playing.

The workshop orchestra I play with is comprised of college versions of these “average children” who major in other things but still like to play. And I’ll just say that the sound of the orchestra is comparable to the focus of its members. I realized that after my first listens and first impressions, I had been analyzing the orchestra by American standards. Concepts taught from the beginning in our schools, such as precision, watching the conductor, blending, and playing together are big struggles for this group. But after concentrating on their individual playing, I heard that they are all decent players by themselves – they just don’t know how to play in a group.

I will compare this orchestra to a concert band at UGA. The skill level is about the same, the groups exist for similar purposes, and the members are there for similar reasons. The problems that arise in UGA concert bands are playing confidence and individual ability - often an unwillingness or fear to be heard playing by yourself, and a much more limited technical ability on the instrument. As a group, however, people in concert bands know how to play in a band. In comparison to the workshop orchestra, the concert band as an ensemble is stronger but the individual musicianship is weaker.

For example: we rehearsed an excerpt that exchanges quarter notes between sections of the winds – in 3/4 time each instrument played quarter notes on beats 3-1-2 and the motive is passed around to every section. You American musicians are probably thinking “ok it’s just 3 beats of quarter notes, no big deal, we do that kind of thing in warm-ups all the time.” After close to 45 minutes of rehearsal on this one excerpt, my perspective totally changed. The notes weren’t a problem, the order of who plays when wasn’t a problem, but playing it all in time and with one another was a huge issue. The student conductors are trained as conductors, not necessarily educators, and don’t know all the “teacher tricks” we learn for how to address and fix ensemble problems like that.

I raised my hand and politely suggested we sing the passage instead of play, so we could focus on tempo and timing and take away the element of the instrument. I got funny looks from everyone because they had never heard of such a thing before. We learn, however, that “if you can sing in time you can eventually play it in time.” Sure enough, after a few repetitions of singing the passage, the ensemble precision improved as people could hear how their entrances fit with everyone else. I could tell they were still confused as to the outright purpose of such a silly exercise, and the conductor didn’t really know how to “teach” what we were doing instead of just leading the activity. When we picked up our instruments to play again a few players resorted to the pre-exercise late entrances and slower tempos because they didn’t make the connection.

In an American classroom, 45 minutes is an obscene amount of time to rehearse such a small passage and what we consider such a simple concept. However, the problems we would have faced would have been totally different, and maybe much harder to fix – people might miss entrances because they are too timid, or not play loud enough because they are scared to be so exposed or freaked out to hear themselves so well. These thoughts never cross the German musicians’ minds.

The results would be similar, but the causes are completely different. And the good educators focus on the cause, not the result, in order to bring the most success and improvement.

The most successful music education programs should perhaps equally incorporate the aspects of solo and ensemble playing to foster more well rounded players, so there are no extremes on either end of the spectrum. Because of time, money, and resources, is this goal in either system obtainable? I’ll get back to you in a few years when I have my own band program. J