The 5 things I HATE About Conservatories!

[@ShaneyElderberry]

I remember hearing Lang Lang butcher Rachmaninov’s 3rd Piano concerto about 10 years ago, by playing at a baffling tempo that removed all the nuances and turned the adagio movement into a march. The local conductor and orchestra did their best to keep up with his pace, but were partly lagging behind (I imagine with horror at the lack of sense). I knew immediately, that whatever he learned in a conservatory didn’t take.

[@openendedthinking4033]

One of the reasons I decided against doing my masters in music. I'll continue pursuing music as a highly coveted hobby.

[@TheIndependentPianist]

That makes you a true musician, since you follow this practice even though it is not for financial gain.

[@openendedthinking4033]

@@TheIndependentPianist Thank so much for your kind words. As a matter of fact, I thought I would've quit music all together but just this morning I find myself still composing my own works. I guess I love music more than I thought. Anyway appreciate your videos as always and wish I could support the Patreon now but will do so in the future.

[@grahamtwist]

Gosh - you do talk such a lot of sense, Cole! Your comments about the pressure to produce ‘blemish free’ performances really resonated with me. Uploading compositions to my KZbin channel is always extremely stressful for me as I know audiences - particularly when most of the audience is made of up musicians - expect perfection because we have become so accustomed to hearing blemish free recordings. I upload my own music because it is safe: no-one knows what it should sound like and ‘mistakes’ might be just the way the score has been written. I have not dared upload any Bach because I feel too vulnerable to criticism of my interpretation and playing of such music. I know my best performance of a Bach masterpiece will never be good enough as I fall far short of what virtuoso performers can achieve. We have sadly cursed ourselves with artificial standards and I have to confess my ego is too frail to withstand (justified!) criticism. I am old, so it does not matter . . . but I really feel for the aspiring, young musicians who have to live up to what you describe as ‘the perfection of recordings’. As someone who spent a lifetime working in education, I appreciate how important the teacher-student relationship is. A ‘good fit’ with a teacher is totally transforming; the opposite is incredibly wasteful of potential and can be damaging for life and certainly the well-being of the student. You are so enlightened, Cole. I am sure that the students you work with who are a ‘good fit’ will gain so much from you. I know I do . . . just from watching your channel! We have engineered a world where we are obsessed with the gold and silver and bronze medal winners; the rest just aren’t good enough to merit our attention! How that approach leaves us so impoverished. A change is long overdue!

[@darkenaxe]

As someone without any musical background, it feels like you are talking about an other world! That was very interesting, thank you for sharing :)

[@djtomt]

Playing at retirement communities is the one performance outlet I have at the moment, and I enjoy it very much! I really appreciate hearing your experiences in music school. I have been considering going to a university, but I am older and not sure I could keep up physically, but I would just love being surrounded by music and musicians. Being more mature, I would truly appreciate a classical education. Maybe I should have lessons with you! 😉

[@popadopalis4480]

Going through music school as a piano performance major too, I found myself resonating with every point you brought up. It is great to have a content creator bringing these points in a poignant way to the forefront.

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Thank you for the comment!

[@yoonchun6945]

Wonderful video ! Thank you ! You are a huge gift to this musical community ❤

[@donald-ericblanchette6603]

I am myself a pianist and I completely agree with your point of view, it is very stressful and it is not true that you have to play by memory to have an excellent rendition of a composition! I really suffered of that during all my musician’s career! Thank you for expressing what a lot of pianist thinks and can’t say it due to the context you describe!

[@lolahu6028]

2 years ago I've been to the biggest music school in my country but dropped out after the first semester because of the insane pressure I felt. I always knew I was not the best violinist, even far from it but I liked playing and so tried the entrance selection. To my surprise, I got in but after the first month I already felt that the environment was extremely competitive and hostile. I always had the impression that my teacher had no time for her students. I had one hour a week with her, I just had to play through the piece, she didn't give much explanation and would get annoyed when I didn't get something right away. I felt the pressure getting worse and my teacher clearly didn't feel interested in teaching me. The more I practiced, the worse I played because I was getting overwhelmed with anxiety and my brain just didn't work anymore. Eventually, my teacher said that they let me pass because they didn't have enough students in the first year. At that moment I decided to quit. I was not going to be in that school to fill their quota and be treated like a "low class student". I was damaging my self-esteem and losing interest in playing. Quiting was the best choice for me, but I've lost a big portion of my interest in music because I still think that I'm not good enough to sound even decent.

[@johnschlesinger2009]

Lizst started the solo pianist concert, playing from memory. This strikes me as ironical, given his phenomenal sight reading ability. I recall particularly Chopin saying that "Liszt is showing me how to play my own studies". You say that you, and Hammelin, need a year to memorize: this is crazy. Claudio Arrau performed all Bach's preludes and fugues in Berlin in a series of recitals, when he was in his twenties. Richter did the same, later on. Horowitz, in his youth, played more than twenty recitals in one season, without repeating a single piece. Josef Hofmann did much the same. Anton Rubinstein, whose only student was Josef Hofmann, told the boy on a Saturday that he was to play Rubinstein's piano concerto on the following Monday. Hofmann protested, to which Rubinstein retorted: "For us, there are no difficulties."

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Hmmm, there are a few things to clear up in your comment. First of all, I don't believe there is a record of Liszt ever playing a complete recital by memory. In fact it is estimated that of his (actually rather small) performing repertoire, he played only about half of it without the score. Clara Schumann did in fact start the practice of playing entire recitals by memory-and was roundly criticized at the time for it. She ended up going back to using the score in her old age, for whatever reasons. You are also misquoting me. Stephen Hough is the one who said that he leaves about a year from starting a major work or concerto before venturing to play it in public by memory. Andras Schiff said something similar in a lecture that he gave. If I recall he said he didn't perform the Goldberg Variations in public until he had been studying it for about 3 years. Note, this is not about exactly how long it takes to memorize. I am sure Stephen Hough probably has that "major work" memorized pretty quickly. But it's one thing to have a piece memorized, it's another to feel comfortable performing it flawlessly day in and day out on a concert platform. That requires time. Of course people exhibit feats of memory all the time, either in regards to memorizing quickly, or to playing large selections of music by memory. It is interesting that you mentioned Arrau. His major memory feat was to play the complete Bach keyboard works (I think it was in Mexico City) in a series of recitals. He also said he practically had a nervous breakdown from the strain and exhaustion, and that he suffered some small memory lapses here and there. He also did not say how long he prepared to do this. I don't doubt many of those works he had been playing for years before that. It's tempting to put artists on a pedestal and imagine that they can accomplish the impossible without effort. The reality is quite different. Although the talented can of course memorize rapidly and put themselves to the test frequently if they wish, that takes a toll on the nervous system, and can lead to various neuroses. If what we really care about is the music, then memory is not going to be our major concern. We memorize because we study the music very well and know it well, and we want to have freedom from the printed page. That is fine, but not everyone is going to feel comfortable with that at all times, and I think that is OK!

[@mickizurcher8450]

Yuja says she never practices.

[@thomasg321]

@@mickizurcher8450 No she didn't.

[@johnrock2173]

Thankyou for addressing such important subjects. It's so hard for people nowadays to be allowed to find their own individual voices artistically, and I think the perpetuation of music competitions has really helped re-enforce that along with a lot of the issues you addressed.

[@petermccutcheon6261]

Excellent observations, Cole. I am an uneducated music lover, but can relate to many of your criticisms as they apply to my own profession during my university education. As a layman I have read about the lives of great musicians and composers in the past and noted how many were supported by patrons. Wouldn’t it be great if some of the oligarchs and billionaires we read about daily would contribute a small fraction of their wealth to the sustenance of artists who don’t quite make the top tier. It’s a fine line.

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Well, I certainly wouldn't have a problem with the kind of situation you are describing! If we can just get some billionaires watching this channel.... :-) Thank you for your comments Peter, as always!

[@markgoode4109]

I must admit, so much of what you said in this video resonated with my experiences. For me, music college was a beneficial experience, but not without it's down sides, downsides which you enunciate with clarity. I look forward to hearing what you have to say in future videos. Thanks for sharing and best wishes.

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Thanks for your comment Mark, very glad to hear from you.

[@markgoode4109]

My pleasure.

[@mickizurcher8450]

Excellent video, very thoughtful. Enjoying your remarks about conservatories, and what you say about teachers is so right on I am not a conservatory student, never got that far but currently in the last year I took about a dozen lessons from a teacher whose words I cannot get out of my head whenever I play certain composers or certain passages, and while some of the information I got was good and valuable, the whole experience had such a negative affect on me that I quit studying with this person…. because of the insidious double messages I kept getting but couldn’t figure out and I fight this at every practice session, even though I haven’t seen this person for over six months. I am no longer interested in studying with anybody because I’ve had such bad experiences. I live in a huge metropolitan city in the United States and have had six horrible experiences. I’m just going teach myself, and that’s gonna be the end of it.

[@LTD-Limited]

Wow, this is so helpful. I just turned 17 in May this year and just recently got a really good piano teacher (very far family connection). I'm essentially self taught and he said If he had only 1 year with me he's confident I could get into Conservatoire (I live in England and want to go to Royal college of London) but said when I first met him "I'll be honest with you, you won't get in this year, because there are too many Japanese and Chinese pianists who have trained for over a decade who are applying and taking all the places". He said my musicality, talent and immense repertoire is impressive (like you said in the video my memory is very good and I can just pick up and memorise pieces in days), but its built on nothing, so what he's doing with me is reconstructing my technique from the ground up, with Bach and Czerny, and preparing me for conservatoire. and what was interesting to hear from him is he said conservatoire teachers can teach notes, but they don't teach you the soul of music. But yeah I am excited and want to take music on in life, and certainly this is helpful. sorry for the word spill

[@quadricode]

I'm definitely interested in hearing more thoughts about the process of memorizing a piece, and the role (or lack thereof) of memorization in music.

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Great! I will be talking about that soon.

[@jackdolphy8965]

Commenting on the absolute imperative to arrange studying with the right teacher for you. I’m a saxophone player. Once upon long ago … Just out of high school, I missed studying with my teacher of first choice when he left the conservatory I had been accepted into to go somewhere else. I then scurried to get accepted to go somewhere else (following him at that time was not possible). After a month or two with the new prof, who I had never worked with prior…. it didn’t work out and I had to quit the studio. And leave that school at year’s end because that prof was the only saxophone. Later, I did subsequently find a terrific teacher at another institution. But getting on board with the right teacher from the git go would’ve made things shall I say much different… ☮️

[@gspianoguitar4369]

Mmm.. this video brings back so many memories regarding my own experience at music school. I can relate to every single point you make Cole. There's not enough space here to communicate it all but fascinating nonetheless.

[@lorrainelager852]

The push to learn quickly and cram repertoire is definitely a thing! It seemed like EVERY week my teacher was telling me to learn new pieces, thinking I didn't have enough, even though I had PLENTY. He did this even when telling him I was quite fatigued, and I eventually pushed back. Learning new pieces quickly is a skill, I know, but this constant cramming and having to blunder through a half-baked product is really demoralizing. Another thing I noticed is that they seem to suggest a lot of the same specific pieces to everyone, like hired salesmen, even when at the beginning when they don't even really know you yet.

[@ornleifs]

About your talks about how quickly graduate student may have to memorize new pieces they are asked to play I was reminded of a story from the violinist Maxim Vengerov. His teacher said to him early on that "You have a great talent, but that means you must work much harder than anyone cause if you will be a professional you will have to know so many pieces".

[@stefanhaffner]

Very interesting perspective. I did a music degree but the performance side was handled by a top music school (guildhall London). So i got the tuition from there but without being in the sphere. Probably because i was at a much lower standard to the normal students, my teacher barely focused on the technical side or memorisation at all, and it was purely about musicianship. I wonder if I ended up getting better tuition by slipping in the backdoor since i wasn't on the production line. I improved from a terrible pianist, to a somewhat competent pianist under my teacher's guidance and did very well in the performance side of my degree. I was always curious how it worked in the top music schools, was it a nurturing environment or more cut throat etc. Re: memorisation I am playing about 80 mins of music in upcoming recitals and probably will play from smaller photocopies of the score as a security measure, basically having memorised it all, but i can't help wondering if just not bothering to memorise more than is natural might be more beneficial since all the time you put into active memorisation could be put into new repertoire. Often you have basically memorised a good 75% of the piece just automatically but the remaining 25% can be quite time consuming as well as boring. I do think that process can help one understand the music more since to memorise properly you have to get stuck deep into analysing the music in lots of ways, but would you be better off having learned like close to double the repertoire each year if you just skip that whole process.

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Your perspective is very interesting, and it sounds like you certainly got a great deal out of your studies! And about memorization-everything you say is quite true. There are tradeoffs either way, and no doubt it also has to do with the music you are playing. It can feel irritating and somewhat pointless to memorize repetitive accompaniments and very dense atonal music. On the other hand, music that follows a clear tonal plan and has clear physical cues is much more natural to memorize. Any passage beyond a certain difficulty has to usually be in memory to be played at all. Certainly some feel greater inspiration when they don't have the score in front of them-for me I'm so used to both, that I don't feel much of a difference-only there is far greater comfort and ease if you have the music there. Also preparation is more thoughtful and connected to the material, if you don't have to worry so much about the kind of memory "training" necessary to feel confident under pressure. I'll talk about it more in a video on memorization. Thank you for your interesting comment!

[@stefanhaffner]

@@TheIndependentPianist I look forward to the video. You are right for sure about how easy it is to memorise more difficult/technical works. I had basically auto memorised winterwind and op25 no 6 while I learned them but am trying to memorise op 25 no 7 now and it's much trickier.

[@BlurredTrees]

Seems like you’d be quite a good teacher. Reflective.

[@Nathan_Delannoy]

How exactly would you recommend we pick out a suitable piano teacher? How would you set your sights on a particular teacher at a university or conservatory when many don't have any online presence for you to get a sense of their playing/personality?

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Yes, this is very hard. Unfortunately the best that can usually be accomplished if there is no way of ascertaining what their playing/personality is like, is to go and meet them in person and have at least one lesson. This incurs an unfortunate expense, but alas, it is usually the only way. Nowadays you might be able to arrange something over Zoom as well that might help, but this is never for sure. When you go for a lesson, its usually best to try to see if they are able to communicate in a way that seems compelling to you, and also if they are able to make a concrete difference that immediately improves your playing or gives you a new insight. Many teachers do make an effort to travel, perform and give classes in many different cities for precisely this reason: they want to make themselves available to students who might not otherwise find them. So being as active as possible in attending events like these when they are in your area gives you a definite leg up in being able to find artists who will be a good fit for you as a teacher. Even then, there is always the danger that a relationship with a teacher won't pan out for whatever reason. I think we should be open to the idea of changing teachers, or even transferring to a different school if this happens-don't just accept the status quo! Of course this should be done with tact, but it is too important an issue to be ignored, even if you do end up ruffling some feathers.

[@Nathan_Delannoy]

@@TheIndependentPianist Thank you so much for your thorough and helpful reply! I've got a much better sense of what to do now

[@jakeshmake8188]

For me, it's not the memory that's the issue, but the technical problems when performing a new piece of music. I just performed a newly learned etude in front of people for performance class and, well, yikes, even though I'm playing in a "learning setting".

[@dominicjurkiewicz9047]

In my experience some teachers deserve the full trust of the schools and some deserve very little. So a committee to decide on admissions is a good idea in my opinion. The teachers' opinions are taken into account anyway if they vouch for a student. Unfortunately politics in music institutions seems to be ubiquitous. I also really disliked the growing rift between administrators , music academic types and the instrumental teachers who were often the only actually trained performing and working musicians. At least where I studied in Sydney this seemed an increasingly conflict riveted nexus. In Germany where I did my masters and currently work there seemed to be no such problem. But some politics still existed and will probably always be the case.

[@WaltzTime]

Fascinating. My experience in a music school environment felt like putting a very important part of myself out there, to weather the types of things you mention. I think these occur in almost every school organization, although I once hoped that music school would be different. I felt that some core part must be protected or all would be lost. Having said that though, I did gain a great deal from the experience and it was worth it. It helps to emphasize one's humanity over one's striving. Re performing with the score, I find it distracting...

[@Nick-qs9ux]

To play with freedom and personality, isn't it necessary to play from memory? I mean learning by heart naturally over time, and not with the goal of learning by heart from the first moment you face the scores.

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Yes, certainly, but maybe not forcing yourself to put your memory to the test again and again, especially when it is fresh! And some artists are quite capable of playing with freedom and personality when the score is in front of them-it does take practice, and you need to hold yourself to the same standard of preparation as if you were going to perform from memory.

[@gspianoguitar4369]

I'll also be very intested in your take upon memorisation. For me it was the norm you were expected to memorise almost everything. Not exactly good for one's sightreading! I noticed the pianists tended to be in the reading camp or the memory camp. For myself I tried both because as you mention, you can end up moving away from the score if all you do is memorise. But, I tend to feel at the very highest levels memory really 'frees up' the musical mind and if the notes are at your complete technical control / disposal you can impose almost anything musically on them thereafter. I'm not a believer in the 'unless you can play with musicality you will acquire the technical resources to progress. At high levels if you cannot get your fingers around the notes at fast speeds you'll never be in any place to interprete the music with any real creativity. That's often a contentious point but in my opinion that's the case. Which leads me on to students of my own (in UK) who are at a high level but not concert concerto standards. They often feel they can use ONLY the score to perform high technical works. This has their habit and for me leads often to a technical shortfall in their abilities. I'd be interested in your thoughts on this? At our diploma levels (3 of them) you are approaching the professional levels. All the sonatas/partitas big works of the great composers are on the curriculum and students often feel they can 'read' through these works for exams performances etc. I personally, would never approach these works outside of memory but maybe that's just me. I really don't feel you can get your technique around say a Chopin Ballade /Scherzo/Sonata whilst reading it from the score and hope to get a top level performance. I know you 'kind of' can but not at a consistant high level. Of course this is only in my opinion. What are you thoughts on these matters Cole?

[@TheIndependentPianist]

I'm so sorry I didn't reply to your very interesting comment before. I saw your comment back when the video came out, and was going to reply, but got distracted. My apologies! You raise very interesting points-most of which I am going to be addressing in my video tomorrow on memorization. I do totally agree with you about the importance of technical foundation leading to musical freedom-although sometimes the correct musical approach will also show the correct technical solution. My thoughts on the rest of your post I believe will be sufficiently explicated by my next video... I would love to hear your thoughts if you get a chance to see it!

[@gspianoguitar4369]

@@TheIndependentPianist No worries, outside of the internet / youtube we all have 'mad/real' lives! Look forward to more of the chanel. By the way love the Clementi sonatas - they were always favourites of mine. I tend to feel that the likes of Clementi and other, what I describe as 'peripheral' composers, with respect, add to our understanding of the 'greater' ones but that does of course not diminish their place historically.

[@MalindaRichmal]

Violin teachers at the conservatory are the worst, they drain your love for your instrument.

[@rogercarroll2551]

Forced memorization in music is the best way to suddenly forget where you are !

[@TheIndependentPianist]

Agreed!