Interpretation: Can it be Taught?

I am delighted to publish this guest post from Katrina Fox, a graduate of The Piano Teachers’ Course UK whom it was my pleasure to work with in my tutor group. More details about Katrina at the end of her article…

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Interpretation: can it be taught? Should it be taught? How can someone be taught how to feel and think about a work of art? Defined by Wiktionary as “an act of explaining what is obscure”, interpretation involves making meaningful music from a bunch of notes on the page.

My childhood teachers told me exactly how I should be playing, where I should express excitement or sadness, and as a good student I tried my best to meet their expectations. However, these efforts to force me to “play expressively” led to me expressing nothing at all – at least nothing personally authentic. I felt lost when approaching new music, unsure as to what I should think, or feel, or what I should be expressing. I often felt fraudulent as I saw “better” students playing with a seemingly deep connection to the music, and yet I couldn’t muster any. I began to wonder if I was just completely unmusical.

So, should teachers address the issue of interpretation, beyond an explanation of the various dots and dashes and symbols on the page? Whilst a few pupils come along that seem to connect with the music instinctively and naturally play with expression and emotion, in my experience the majority need a helping hand. However, rather than imposing one’s own interpretative ideas on a pupil, there is a need to provide gentle and open-ended guidance so that pupils can develop their own, authentic musical voice.

Notorious for its narrow, goal-oriented ethos, it is unsurprising that our current school system in the UK produces pupils that come to music lessons waiting to be spoon-fed the “right answers”. This presents piano teachers with both a challenge and an opportunity – getting pupils to invest the emotional capital required to think creatively and intuitively is hard; however, the opportunity for personal as well as musical growth is priceless.

How then does a teacher of a typical adolescent, who grows up immersed in the pounding bass beats of limitless 3-minute tracks and the facility to “Ask Alexa” to skip to the next, make music written 250 years ago by men in powdered wigs relevant and engaging? I have had a great deal of fun and success with using words, stories and images with pupils of all ages and stages to help them connect with the music on their own terms.

Bartók – No. 2 in For Children (volume 1)

A popular piece in the early stages, this has made a good starting point for facilitating interpretation with younger pupils. Simple folk melodies sung by children, perhaps in the playground, are familiar territory for many younger pupils, allowing them to engage their imaginations and make connections with their own lives. Writing simple words that echo the chant-like feel of the piece can help build a sense of style:

Come out and play!
Come out and Play!
Clouds have gone, the sun is out
And here to stay!

When listening to the piece, providing a selection of images from which the pupil can select to represent the different “feelings” in each of the three iterations of the melody, can help a pupil connect with the emotional quality of the different underlying harmonies.

So at this early stage, personal choice is present but the range is very limited, giving a sense of “safety” and collaboration. Rather like the training wheels on a bicycle, this stage of support will quickly be shed as the pupil gains confidence in their own interpretative decisions.

Shadows – Walter Carroll

Writing lyrics independently can be useful, especially when a melody is hidden amongst other parts, such as in Shadows by Walter Carroll. The following words were written by my ten-year old pupil:

The words reflect the ebb and flow of the music, the rising dynamic as the key changes and the diminished harmony at “shadows forming”. In this way, a sort of aural analysis has taken place through responding to the musical features present. More formal analysis can then be used to link theoretical concepts to their expressive function.

Ibert – A Giddy Girl (from Histoires)

Many of Ibert’s piano works lend themselves beautifully to an image-based approach. Producing a storyboard to help prepare myself for a performance of A Giddy Girl, helped me brings my performance to life. The imagery that intuitively sprung to mind for me was of siblings playing together. Browsing images on Unsplash.com gave me further stimuli that enabled me to build up a narrative framework for the piece.

As well as being a lot of fun, it was extremely useful in memorising the piece for performance, giving me a clear conceptual framework to focus on to calm performance nerves.

Ibert – Serenade sur l’eau

Using the above storyboard as an example, I worked with an adult pupil on an interpretation of Ibert’s gorgeous Sérénade sur l’eau. In order to select appropriate images, they had to engage an a more active kind of listening, really focusing on the character and emotional quality of the music and how it changes.

Schubert – Scherzo D593 no 1

Not all music, and not all pupils, will suit an approach that relies on images or words. Sometimes a slightly “smaller” situation may come to mind, perhaps a conversations involving different characters. A stimulus activity I have designed, called “Who’s in the Room?”, can help prompt a pupil to listen for the different “characters” they can hear in the music, the nature of each character’s “voice” and how the tone of the conversation changes.

The humorous and changeable character of Schubert’s Scherzo in B Flat prompted a pupil to recollect the day her twin sister came home with a facial piercing. She conceptualised the opening section as a conversation between her and her sister, with her mother’s calming influence appearing later on, followed by her father’s rage. This allowed her to perform with a real sense of conviction, humour and drama, as well as encouraging her to work on a complex piece with a sense of trying to communicate something personally meaningful. Her chosen narrative did not lend itself to images, so instead we used emojis to express the different feelings and characters as the piece progressed.

An older pupil was reluctant to use emojis for this piece, so instead we used weather symbols – not in their literal sense, but more as a metaphor for the emotional “weather” throughout the piece.

Cimarosa – Sonata in E flat

My “Who’s in the Room?” stimulus can be particularly useful for pieces where the emotion and character seem a little less obvious. When recently exploring Cimarosa’s Sonata in E flat with a teenage pupil, we made a connection with Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, which he was reading for school. Once the scenario of an old-fashioned dance had come to mind, he was able to hear different “voices” coming through and tune into the subtle harmonic and emotional changes.

None of these approaches should be used prescriptively – they are merely a means to an end, and it’s important for us and our pupils not to become slaves to any process. Some activities might not resonate with some pupils, or seem less useful for certain pieces. It is important at all times to remember that they are a tool for helping pupils connect, and it is their opinion that counts, not our own! It can be difficult not to jump in and rescue a pupil who is struggling to make effective suggestions, but gentle questioning to help them find their own way is better than imposing our own ideas. As pupils gain experience of working with these approaches, they tend to loosen up and become more independent.

Finally, it is important to help our pupils understand that an interpretation is living, breathing thing, constantly a work in progress. It will continue to change and evolve, and may be different one day to the next. This will help them to constantly think and feel as they play, making sure the music they play, no matter how old, is always relevant to them as individuals.

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Katrina Fox MA(Ed), (Hons), DipPTC teaches piano both in school and from her private studio in Bournemouth, Dorset. She created the Facebook Page
Piano Breakout initially to share her progress toward taking the dipABRSM Piano Teaching exam, and now continues to share ideas about piano teaching.

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