TEACHING IN ITALY (a woman alone with a new method!)

I guess I'm supposed to write a book by this time explaining my experiences and experiments in the matter of teaching children how to read musical notation and how to appreciate their own endeavors and those of others; the fact is teaching music is a very personal adventure and each teacher necessarily brings to his/her students a composite of personal knowledge and capabilities. I must admit that I have met certain people convinced to know things they don't, and frankly they make AWFUL teachers. So one must be honest and open to improvement, and basically always stay on the ball updating their knowledge. I still have friends that cannot work email! Now these are college professors and great musicians, I cannot accept their weak excuses. A little motivation here . . please! Look at me, all these new languages and doing everything on my own . . with a little organisation and faith in your own capabilities, anything can be done. Look at my daughter, she's a big wig now in a famous Opera Theater in Germany, she always studied and always worked hard, and though she made numerous mistakes through the years, I always helped her out (people often criticized me for this) but I knew that someday she would successfully come through the struggle of finding her place in the professional music world. So faith, constant work and motivation are very important aspects. One must stay OUT of depression, one must EAT well, sleep enough and always have a PROJECT in mind. Look at my friend Dr Ann Gravino! Lots of problems but always studied to become someone better and more knowledgeable and now she too has a new position that she enjoys. ENJOY life . . and earn money while you're at it, that's the secret - - even Larry King says this all the time on his tv show.

So, getting back to teaching music, first of all, those who wish to teach ANYTHING really, should be sure of what they know before explaining things to young minds; they must update their knowledge constantly and feel the urge personally to do so, not update because one gets points and the government obliges all teachers to do so. That's a lousy system and takes away all motivation. Updating personal knowledge doesn't imply taking a COURSE somewhere thinking this will do it as what happens often in Western cultures that feel the necessity to uniform teaching situations and the successes of the students, funding those schools that achieve better grades. This just utterly stinks, too easy.

In Europe for many years now, funding from the EU - centered in Brussels - goes to those schools and theaters that can prove (on paper) that everything is better organised, money is not wasted and new ideas were being taught and the students were making incredible progress. So NEW COURSES INVENTED & taught by the smart people in the know of the political situation have grabbed up a lot of EXTRA MONEY in the State Conservatories and Universities - - I of course had no idea of new courses and I teach children as a profession, and there are very few children in the State Conservatory that has now become "University" equivalent, Institutes of HIGHER EDUCATION - Instead, at the Fiesole Music School where I teach children, we believe that children are our future and the investment in a good education in music is essential for future humanity.

All teachers in Europe have had to fill out PROGESS FORMS (including reports on EVERY student with their personal name mentioned - so much for Privacy) as if those who were reading them in Brussels had some idea of what they were judging. So if these things needed to be done, fine, but they really DO NOT COUNT on a personal level, they count for political - financial needs, which are necessary of course, but personally what have any of us gotten out of this system - still in act? Are the students smarter? More motivated? N O O O O - - instead I caught one kid stealing my beloved colored plastified music cards to take home the other day - these excited him . . I offered to make him some for himself but I told him you don't steal MINE ! I needed them first of all, and stealing is a NO NO . . . I think, is that still in vogue?

I have noticed over the past 30 years or so especially in the USA, that there are state-wide or inter-state curriculums and exams, and BIG books to follow with classroom lessons all laid out. This is why it has never crossed my mind to introduce my methods on a large scale, anywhere. Basically most music teachers have the BIG books to follow, imposed upon them or are so entrenched in their own methods or lack of, that understanding something new becomes a great weight! Once Boosey and Hawkes NY editors asked me to develop a BIG BOOK with lessons laid out for the Italian market, I nearly died laughing, we don't anything like this in Italy because basically music is only taught in the Music Conservatories and private music schools and no one coordinates anything here much less teaching lessons!

Now we have new laws and new curriculums, Italy is beginning to have MUSIC PUBLIC SCHOOLS . . at all levels, the new graduates from the Conservatories will have a chance at occupation in the field that they love: music and kids. So many of my ex-students are living and working successfully in other countries. I think though that now in unified Europe, people from Euroland can work anywhere in any country without problems, they need to know the local language. My daughter now lives and works in Germany but she has learned the language basically, maybe not enough to write an essay, but she can teach and rehearse in German.

(I love writing in English because it goes so nice and fast, I can write in Italian too but sometimes I get blocked thinking of certain grammatical problems. There are words in Italian that combine together like this: "I gave it to him" - "Gliel'ho dato" Basically ending up in 2 words in Italian. That is tough, also in Southern Italy they use the Plural "you" to be polite, not so in Northern Italy. So many times I have been embarassed talking to southern Italians asking them who they are refering to when they talk to me because I hear a plural YOU when they are just being polite. In Northern Italy there is the polite singular form of YOU, and that makes more sense to me seeing as I am only ONE person). In Italian the parenthesis symbol comes after a final period, but I believe still in English it comes before. It's tough living in two languages, my daughter now lives in three languages, and when she lived in Miami she had a lot of Spanish to deal with too, of course with Italian as her mother tongue, Spanish sounded like some western dialect.

Well to get back to my teaching methods in Italy, seeing that the century-old strict, only spoken solfegge tradition is held up in the Music Conservatories, basically NOT interesting to children, I needed to develop my own system that would interest and teach young and older children. I am using the same system basically since 1980, and all my students learn to read music and interpret notation according to the epoch in which the music was written through Choral singing and basic piano playing - which often I do together.
Notation changes with the times, it once was on a staff of 4 lines and odd shaped diagonal notes, and there is not just one way of READING notes and rhythms. In the 18th century a ONE DOTTED NOTE was interpreted with a DOUBLE DOT. The accompanying keyboard artist had one note written for the left hand with NUMBERS underneath to indicate chords (really indicating the intervals that were formed over the bass note). This was called basso continuo and was a great art which included embellishments and unharmonic tones that needed resolution.

So my method basically leaves you free to invent your own system of notation, move the C clef where you wish, color notes, make designs and put the notes on the lines and circles, sing at first approximating the intervals and rhythms, give titles to your music as if you were analyzing your score. Freedom, liberty and new expression. When we sing music then you can really hear IT - inventiveness and judgement - this is beautiful - - that is ugly. When we have visiting choirs to our music school, my students are able to judge immediately, and they do so, sometimes to our embarassment! They are free to invent their interpretation, and in my MADRIGAL course, which includes a cappella singing in small groups and also SOLO singing, the young adolescents are FREE to interpret arias and early music, even songs from musicals and American/English composers. Many times things sound a little absurd, but the course is FULL of willing and interested students, to the point that they need to come to my house for single lessons - which are a joy to me - because each of the 12 students should be doing ONE solo, but at least 6 are doing duets too - Haendel - Vivaldi - Purcell - Pergolesi. And they study from YOUTUBE - - why not, we even get ideas on the embellishments for the baroque songs.
Yes - this topic is to be continued - it is very complex I believe, it goes far beyond just teaching music, it goes into forming minds and patterns of behavior.