Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

The Suzuki Method is called the mother tongue approach, because we learn music as a language, in the same manor that we learned our own language, by imitation. The baby hears her mommy and daddy talking in the language of her country and as she develops she starts with little syllables and then strings together words and eventually sentences. Of course when she has developed her vocabulary the child is no longer limited to copying the sentences of her parents and picture books: she has her own voice.

In my studio, around when the student is in book three, the level of Clementi sonatinas and Schumann's children's pieces, we start to listen to other artists besides the international Suzuki recordings. When the child starts to play Mozart and Beethoven the listening should branch out exponentially. Each teacher will have his favorite artists to recommend to the students. Now we listen more discerningly. To the phrase structure, the articulation, the nuances and overall spirit of the composition.

This is how we learn.

This is what I missed in my own development. I didn't have itunes. I didn't have classical radio. I didn't have youtube. I had the Columbia record club and they weren't offering a lot of Alicia de Larrocha Mozart to teenagers at that time. At least not in the rural Iowa zip code. Ten albums for a penny, some of you will remember this. I chose Led Zeppelin and Styx and John Denver, and burned two of the three when I got home from church camp. Later to re-buy. . .

When I arrived at Northern Illinois University as a French Horn major my fellow horn student (the roommate of my future husband) had been taking lessons from a member of the Chicago Symphony. His family had subscriptions to the CSO from the time he was in diapers. He knew every orchestral excerpt by heart. He had Beethoven and Mahler printed on his DNA. Fifteen years later Bill and I can't find him, even in this google age. We believe he may now be a Russian spy. . . it's probably a good thing I didn't stay a horn major.

My jazz piano teacher at UT did a couple experiments. He had two concerto performances during the time I was studying with him. Once he told me--he would try it the Suzuki way (I was already studying the method and talking about it with him). He got recordings of his concerto and listened non-stop. He was only going to listen--he told me, and not actually practice, until virtually the last minute. (Slight departure from "the Suzuki way". . . ) It wasn't my place to ever ask him how that performance went. Another time he told me he didn't want to listen to ANYONE play that piece because he wanted to only have his own ideas about it. He didn't want the artistic influence of anyone infringing on his own voice. Again, I don't know the results. Jazzers do have a funny way of being able to pull things off with very little preparation. . .

That's a joke. . . but it isn't completely true. Jazzers do their prep years ahead, listening to every historical genre and learning the language. What looks like improvising--winging it--is simply using the vocabulary they have internalized, just as I am typing words right now. How they string the words is their own business. (By the way, I'm writing this while my husband is sleeping. In fifty minutes he has a rehearsal for a jazz performance at church tomorrow and yes. . . he's still sleeping.)

I'm still learning my musical language. I'll be learning it the rest of my life. It's a joy and I'm okay with the journey. There is a the teaching journey and the performing journey. Bill and I watched a documentary on the pop icon Katy Perry the other night.  It seems like these artists always have some defining moment when they decide they are "going for it." Katy quit high school and took the GRE so she would have more time to write songs. The record company struggled to help her find her voice. They couldn't decide if she should sound like the next Madonna or Kelly Clarkson or whoever. She finally said, I don't want to be the next so and so. . . I want to be the first Katy Perry. Whether you like her or not, I think she found her voice.

Isn't that what we all struggle for. All the teachers I admire and imitate but yet. . . I can't be the next Doris Harrel, I have to be the first Sara Kotrba.

Still there is that vocabulary.

I'll close with a quote from Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit, I'm about half way through. This from page 66:

When I started out as a dancer in New York, I became obsessed with studying every great dancer who was working at the time and patterning myself after him or her. I would literally stand behind them in class, in copying mode, and fall right into their footsteps. Their technique, style, and timing imprinted themselves on my muscles.
That's one of the ways I learned to dance. I'm not sure how much impact it had on my choreography, because I didn't end up creating dances like anyone else. But, like a writer who writes more vividly because he has a huge vocabulary, or a painter who excels because of exquisite draftsmanship, I needed to hone my dancing skills in order to create. . . a path toward genuine creation through simple re-creation.
If there's a lesson here it's: get busy copying. That's not a popular notion today, not when we are all instructed to find our own way, admonished to be original and find our own voice at all costs! But it's sound advice. Traveling the paths of greatness, even in someone else's footprints, is a vital means to acquiring skill.

I guess what I'm adding is. . . as soon as I can play the Moonlight Sonata with the tone and nuances and power of Richard Goode or Alfred Brendel or Wilhelm Kempff  I'll check back with you about finding my own voice. . . until then, I'm content to imitate.  I'll leave the originality to the next generation.