David Conte Nadia Boulanger lecture

Dr. David Conte, Professor of Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Excerpts from "The Teaching Methods of Nadia Boulanger" lecture, Nadia Boulanger Symposium, University of Colorado, 2004
In this lecture David Conte explains in detail what studying with Nadia Boulanger was like, and also outlines his own philosophy of teaching.
To read a transcription of the entire 90-minute lecture, and other articles by and about David Conte, please go to:
davidconte.net/articles.html

[@ericastier1646]

To branch on his point about the lost importance of memorizing as much music as possible, i believe this is closely linked to classical improvisation no longer being a normal tenant of the corpus of a pianist and that in turn being the consequence of extreme rigidity being imposed on how a written piece from the repertoire should be executed with zero tolerance to any deviation. This rigidity is what limits the ability to expand memorization of pieces. Here is why. Let's take the analogy of a complex nature trail that has a lot of turns and crosses many other trails that a trekker is trying to memorize. First without the improvisation method, he will always stay strictly on the trail he wants memorized, stop and repeat various sections of it until he has memorized it. Fine. Then take the improvisation approach. He will deviate from the trail to explore its close vincinities, he will find that here the trail comes a few yards close from a river, there from a splendid vista, and nearby he discovers a owl's nest or there an abandoned house. He never stray too far away from the trail to memorize. When he has memorized it, he will be able to see it in more dimensions because he knows how is lays in its natural setting. Whereas the rigid contemporary learner will have learned much less. It is the same with learning music using improvisation or not. It may seem more work but it actually makes it easier to learn new pieces in the long run. As harmonic intuition and the ability to see music is much improved. Also when i say improvisation, it does not mean a whole fantasy but only having fun with the written piece and experimenting with it while learning it (not when performing) giving oneself leeway to change entire phrasing rythms, melody and sometimes exploring its chordal progression this sort of things. Not making a performed improvisation, but to someone who does not know the piece should not be able to tell that this is not on paper.

[@joannac4560]

Really helpful and interesting comment. Thank you.

[@F7ikav8x]

알고리즘이 왔다

[@19Edurne]

Real subtitles would help because auto-generated ones are pretty useless.

[@stratovation1474]

Mozart Beethoven Bach were improvisers. What happened to that tradition? Jeez.

[@sophelet]

Jazz musicians are still expected to be able to do this. In what we might call classical (or art, or high art) music there are rules and examples available for what improvised embellishments may be added to the printed score. For example, we know from scholarship and original sources (like pedagogical treatises from the time period) how to embellish a tune from the 16th century in England or from other countries, but the suggestions and rules will also depend on the region where the composer wrote (e.g., what did performers do in London?) and the time period of the piece (e.g., what kind of embellishment is typical and allowed in music by William Byrd?). Also, classical performers can provide cadenzas that would be expected and weren't already written by the composer. For example, many of Mozart's piano concerti give free choice to the pianist for what to play for a cadenza. Robert Levin is a pianist and scholar who improvises his cadenzas. He might even write them down ahead of time as a help during the live performance. Improvisation is an important skill, but you're right that it doesn't get taught much now.