Essays - Portrait

OPUS - Faculty of Music Student Journal

PORTRAIT: Dr. Damiana Bratuz. Interview by Keith Kinder
(Vol. VI No. 5, 1972)

… I have noticed that you are interested in the ideas of people who have been shaped by cultures different from your own. Since being in North America I have found more promising, better equipped centers of musical radiation, which are part of a university's world - that is, a self contained cultural oasis. One cannot make comparisons between European and North American musical training. The first is based on the concept of forming, from the earliest possible age, exclusively professional musicians, while the second allows the forging of amateurs as well. Once the shortcomings are eliminated - things here will change and quickly improve - this will open the way for music schools over here to boast, as the old European schools do of their training of a Puccini or a Debussy … North America is blessed with a tremendous amount of talent.
What concerns me and puzzles me most is what happens to talented young people in high school. Why does an institution of higher learning have to deal later with rudiments, fundamentals, and simple facts? Should not time be devoted to reflection upon those facts, to learning by association, and not to the belated acquisition of habits? It disturbs me to see the term "education" used as a "subject" to be imparted. Is it not an attainment? My favorite definition of education is by William James: to be educated, he said, is "Knowing a good man when you see him." If we apply this definition to music, an "educated" student is one who knows what makes a good composition, a good performance, and why, and can also recognize styles and periods. Education is a lifelong discipline which is a man's "own doing."
About teaching, here is another of my favourite definitions, this one by Hindermith: "it is the united effort of two equals in the search for perfection, in which the one participant is mostly but not always leading, for his is the greater experience." A teacher's purpose is to show the student how to find out things for himself. This process takes time and like a flower, you can't pull it to make it grow faster. Very few students come out of high school equipped with the proper habits of technique, thought and procedure. The university situation, has so much crammed into four years, and as a result ignores the nature and the conditions for the intellectual life. Music is a way of life; One is colled to be a musician. It is not a job with a series of tests. Where is the time for the necessary assimilation? For listening without it being an assignment? Where is the continuity of work? Cramming becomes a substitute for real work (speaking of tests, J. Barzun says what most students feel is that at least for a week, they knew a lot…) There should be time for thinking because thinking, again, is something that is developed, not imparted. Yet there should be habits already so ingrained that one does not have to think about them. For many, the awareness of all this comes too late, when a past of spoon-feeding has already done irreparable damage. How many wasted hours are spent practicing by repetition, without gaining the ability to analyze and overcome the problem! How many excuses are there for not sowing the daily seed?… If I had a motto, it would be one borrowed from the late football coach of Notre Dame invincible team, Knute Rockne: "Never have an alibi." Sometimes the self-realization by a student of having talent, but late in starting, can itself became an "alibi" for not accomplishing more. The pressure, unfortunately is real and corrosive. Only those who have received in high school, proper training of mind and disciplined working habits, can withstand it.
When I first came to North America I was delighted to discover that young children here were exposed to schooling that was made attractive by having an element of "fun" to it. It was so refreshingly different from the dogmatic, old-fashioned system I had been brought up in. When I started teaching in the Midwest, I discovered the consequences of the too much "fun" philosophy: many college students were unprepared to consider fun the conquering of a difficulty, but they were inclined to become discouraged if things were not "easy".
My saddest day as a teacher in North America was when in a class I discussed Rembrandt in connection with Monteverdi and Frescobaldi and a student protested: "Do I have to know that?" Also, when as a newcomer to this country I asked a class of twenty whom were their favorite Canadian poets and whose works should I read? One said Leacock - and that was all. When I mentioned Emerson, only some had heard of the name… It is still a mystery to me that a high school "education" could leave young people so under nourished by the thoughts and works of the great minds of this continent, when students are in their most plastic and receptive stage; They were not only unacquainted with their names; but "resisted" learning about them… The greatest reward a teacher can have is seeing the joy of discovery on the face of his student.
New to me was also the competitive element of the North American system. We had been brought up with "ideals". I see the consequence of negative competitive spirit in this constant need of the students to be reassured; a stronger need in them than the urge to learn - the thirst for knowledge. The goal seems to be the tests, good marks, a god job, rather than the attempt to develop one's gifts to the utmost. Why should a violet "compete" with a rose? Let it discover and love its own perfume!...
There is an old European tale of three stone cutters each of whom was asked in turn by a passer-by "What are you doing?" The first answered: "Don't you see, I am cutting a stone!" The second answered: "I am earning my bread!" The third said: "Don't you see, I am building a cathedral!" I am sure if the same question were put to our students in the practice rooms the answers would go like this: "Don't you hear, I'm practicing my Hanon!" or, "I am preparing for my lesson!" How many would say?... "Don't you hear, I am making music…?"