Related Resources

*Disclosure: I get commissions for purchases made through some of these links.

• Juilliard Must Modernize, Or It Will Disappear (Rolling Stone)

• The Art of Music Teaching & Learning: An 8-week course for music educators

• Five Creative Incentive Programs for Your Studio

• Ep. 026 - My Favorite Aural Skills Games & Activities

Last week, a controversial article written by a Juilliard graduate was published by Rolling Stone. The author argued that a more innovative approach to education at music conservatories could reverse the decline of classical music in the face of pop culture.

It generated a lot of conversation in the classical music world. Some people sided with the author that music conservatories need to change and integrate more popular music styles into their curriculum to stay relevant and others argued that orchestras aren’t dying and that taking a class on Taylor Swift won’t make you a more well-rounded musician and guarantee that you have a successful music career.

I read the article. Perhaps you did, too.

I’m not here to take a stand on one side or the other, per se. Instead, I thought I would share a bit of the conversation that I had with my husband, Steve over dinner one night last week after the article came out.

For those of you who don’t know, Steve is also a musician — a composer and saxophonist — and yes, these are things we talk about over dinner and while doing the dishes. Oh, to be a musician, right? Anyway, here's a bit of our conversation in response to the Rolling Stone article.

I started the conversation over dinner that night by sharing a few thoughts a friend of mine had posted on social media earlier that day. Essentially, she was agreeing that yes, conservatories need to change, but not necessarily in the ways the author suggested.

"When you think about it, we teach music the same way it was taught 100 years ago," Steve said. "We study the same music, we analyze the same Bach Chorales and Haydn String Quartets and Beethoven Piano Sonatas — I mean, it's great music, but it's not the only music. There's the master-apprentice relationship between teachers and students. The conservatory model hasn't really changed since the 19th century. But music has. And we haven't really embraced that in classical music-training."

We talked about elitism in classical music (as my friend mentioned in her post): how we study and learn the same canon of European music as has been taught for centuries, mostly written by white men, and yet, there's so much more music out there. I remember being an undergraduate student and learning about Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, Louise Farrenc, Ray Charles, and Sarah Vaughan. I researched them independently on my own time and listened to a few CDs I had borrowed from the library over and over again in the car.

“The problem is, that in the classes we take and the programs we study in, there’s so much separation between different styles of music; things are usually kind of siloed," I said, spearing a piece of broccoli on my plate.

“It would be great if there were some crossover classes, like ‘Jazz Skills for Classical Musicians,’ or ‘Classical Music Techniques for Jazz Musicians.’ I mean, I would have been interested in taking a Jazz class in grad school, but all the classes were geared toward Jazz majors, so they felt out of my league. I would have been totally lost in a class like that with all jazz majors. That’s why a hybrid course, something designed for those of us with little or no experience, would be useful because everyone would be in the same boat. We’d all be at the same level. That's why the Improv class I took was so great. It was really Improvisation for classical musicians, people who have never improvised before. And we started all the way back at the beginning and it was a safe place to learn and develop that skill.”

Steve listened and nodded.

"The problem is you can't teach everything there is to know about music in four years or six years — it's too much. The curriculum is already so full," Steve said. "You can't teach the classics from all the style periods, music history, music theory, performance practice, and also teach the music of Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Jack Johnson. There's just not enough time to do everything justice. But maybe we could integrate more popular music and other styles into our traditional classes, like in music theory: instead of analyzing two Bach Chorales, we analyze one Bach Chorale and a Billy Joel song."

"Yes," I agreed. "I mean, Bach wasn't the only one to use a ii-V-I progression. Conservatories prepare students to be really good at some things, namely high-level, very accurate performance."

"Right," Steve said. "Museum-quality performance — the faithful reproduction of music as an object, a piece of art. But then musicians aren't prepared for other things, like if you're in a more informal setting and someone asks you to improvise a counter-melody on the spot or play a I-vi-IV-V-I progression in A-flat major."

“And that’s what’s missing at the conservatory level," I said, setting down my fork. "The focus on comprehensive, transferable musicianship skills. It's a mindset shift, really. It's a different way to think about music teaching and learning: focusing on the actual musical skills vs. the history or repertoire or performance culture. Music is music. And musicianship skills cross genres. By focusing on the development of comprehensive musicianship skills, you're preparing musicians who are versatile, creative, and prepared to succeed in a variety of different settings."

It was a lightbulb moment.

Perhaps musicianship skills have been on my mind lately. I'm several weeks into my annual skills review with my piano students, so I've been thinking a lot about how to incorporate more skill-building activities into our lessons throughout the year. Right now, I'm focusing on one musicianship skill per week and doing an age- and level-appropriate activity and assessment in each lesson. This helps me evaluate where each student stands on things like interval recognition, major and minor differentiation, rhythm dictation, reading, and technique.

Here are the musicianship skills I assess in my studio:

• Aural Skills (intervals, major/minor chords, clapbacks, playbacks)

• Technique (scales, blocked and broken chords, rotation, coordination, articulation)

• Rhythm (reading in different meters, dictation)

• Sight-Reading (reading in different keys and tonalities)

• Creativity (improvising, composing, arranging, transposing)

Of course, there are other skills I could add to this list:

• Critical listening

• Harmonizing

• Playing by ear

• Reading lead sheets

• Vamping/cadencing

Some of these things fall under the categories I mentioned, so I do some of those activities with my students throughout the year; others I could admittedly spend more time on. The point is that these skills are transferrable. They are not tied to a certain piece or a certain genre of music.

• An understanding of intervals is helpful if you're learning a Clementi Sonatina or a Coldplay song.

• The ability to transpose at sight can be used when accompanying a choir or playing a hymn at church or playing with a band.

• The ability to vamp and cadence quickly can be a valuable skill if you're playing Bach's Prelude in C for a wedding processional or if you're playing with a jazz band.

Our goal as music educators — at all levels — should be to develop the whole musician, to focus on a core set of musicianship skills that will serve the student well in a variety of circumstances.

Piano pedagogue and author Frances Clark once said, "Teach the student first, the music second and the piano third." Sometimes, I think we get stuck on the music we're teaching or we focus too much on our specific instrument — the canon of repertoire, the iconic performers, and technique — that we miss the point. We miss teaching the student and preparing them for a future in music, whatever that might look like.

I know that not all of my students will grow up and become music majors and professional musicians. In fact, most of them probably won't. And that's okay! My goal in teaching is to equip my students with skills that they can use throughout their lives, as music-lovers, music-appreciators, and yes, music-makers.

It's impossible to teach everything there is to know about music, especially since that history is still being written. But it is possible to teach musicianship skills that function in different contexts, that cross genres, that inform performance practice in a variety of musical styles.

This is what it means to teach music.

Want to learn more about
music teaching & learning?

I’d love to have you join me inside my signature program.

Designed for music educators in all settings, The Art of Music Teaching & Learning is an 8-week course that will help you refine and cultivate your teaching skills by developing a deeper understanding of teaching and learning processes, learning goals and assessment, and creative curriculum design.

IT’S Kind of LIKE GETTING A MINI-MUSIC EDUCATION DEGREE IN ONLY 8 WEEKS.

I'd love to hear from you.

Did you read the Rolling Stone article? What were your thoughts or reactions? Leave a comment below or send me a DM on Instagram.

Also, if you enjoyed this episode and some of these ideas resonated with you, would you mind sharing about it on social media and tagging me? I'd love to connect with you there.