Josephine Symons...
has been a musician and painter for many years. She was born and educated in New Zealand and studied piano with Janetta McStay at Auckland University. Since coming to Western Australia in 1967 Jo has become a much sought after pianist and teacher, and has recently extended her creative activity to include musical composition. In writing music for children she aims to provide interesting material to stimulate aural imagination and develop greater awareness of keyboard colour.
...On Teaching Piano
I have been teaching for just on 35 years and still cannot claim
to have devised a 'method', because each student is an individual
parcel of qualities and presents a fresh challenge. My approach has
always been to seek ways to awaken, stimulate and develop their
musicality.
One of the most important skills for students to develop---perhaps
THE most important---is to be able to listen critically to themselves
as they play. To this end I believe in training them to assess their
tone quality constantly from a very early age, and also to listen for
colour changes according to the modulations and textures. These
aspects of study cannot be taught too soon, as they develop a
sensitivity which encourages more musicianly playing and a more
mature understanding of musical language as a whole.
Music must be understood as a language of the emotions and an
expression of atmosphere and mood. There is a danger of restricting
the repertoire to a safe and familiar range; there can never be
enough choice for teachers in providing challenges and imaginative
material for their students. Young students must learn to feel at
home with music as a natural expression of their feelings and they
need to understand the syntax of a musical phrase as easily as they
understand a spoken sentence.
Building up confidence in keyboard geography needs to begin quite
early on. There is a need to explore the extreme registers of the
piano more---music for younger players tends to stay around the
middle, and the colour and excitement of these outer registers is
neglected. Discovering the colours in the varying registers is very
stimulating for aural imagination.
Humour is also a quality which is somewhat lacking in student
repertoire. Learning a musical instrument is necessarily a fairly
serious business but the music need not always be 'heavy'. There is
room for plenty of fun and imagination and, in fact, these two
qualities have positive effects on the students' relating to the
language. It is also beneficial to the student/teacher relationship
if they can enjoy a humorous scene together. For instance, Ambling
Along was originally written with a C in the left hand throughout
instead of the now B natural. When my student first started to play
this she kept on catching the B key by mistake, so we had a good old
chuckle together and decided that it was far more zany and
appropriate. (Thanks, Connie!)
© Jo Symons 1995
Sample of the score: Ambling Along
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