What is so much harder about learning piano now than in 1910?

When it comes to studying Mrs. Curwen’s Method, I’ve spent the most time studying her beginner Preliminary Lessons. Most of my students are beginner students. Mrs. Curwen also mentions rather often that piano teachers make their greatest mistakes in their beginner lessons. I’m included in that group of piano teachers who made mistakes for so long. I’ve learned a lot of great things to change. I continue studying her Preliminary Courses because I glean a new understand every time I read them.

As I continue morphing my teaching methods to better reflect those of Mrs. Curwen, what is the most difficult aspect of teaching my students?

There are two things I’ve noticed as a common thread in most of my students.

1. Mrs. Curwen sets up the expectation that students have a one hour lesson each week or they have a half hour lesson every day with their mother or governess.

Feel free to challenge me on my following perspective! I’m not sure our culture allows for that much time to be dedicated to piano lessons. Or, maybe another way to say it: Do we value piano playing enough to spend thirty minutes a day learning and studying it?

I love piano and have never regretted that I learned to play fluently. I haven’t started any of my own children with lessons yet. I haven’t decided if I’m going to set the expectation that we spend thirty minutes a day learning piano.

I’m not setting up a challenge for you. I’m understanding what is the reality of living in our current day and age.

Because of this gap I see between our culture and when Mrs. Curwen penned her method, I’m not sure students today can keep pace with her method. I’ve had to slow her method down immensely and re-route my expectations of students. Let me remind you that Mrs. Curwen repeatedly tells teachers to move at the student’s pace.

Now I’m contradicting myself. I see that. Here’s an example:

Mrs. Curwen lays out her Preliminary Courses to be completed in five lessons by some students. She mentions that those lessons may take an entire term to be completed by some students. If you are a teacher following her method closely, expect it to take a year for a seven year old student to really excel beyond her Preliminary Course.

2. I don’t think we have nearly as much musical exposure as the children did in the early 1900s in London.

I think it’s safe to say today’s culture is saturated in music.  We have never had so much access to music and it’s everywhere.  So you might say, “What do you mean? We are exposed to music!  All the time!”

But we aren’t the ones creating it anymore.  In the early 1900’s, homes were only just beginning to have record players.  Before this, all music was self created: families singing together, the older sister playing at the piano in the evenings, congregational singing at church. a father playing the fiddle, house parties included dancing in time to the music of different time signatures.  Today’s culture is surrounded by music, but we are no longer active participants in it.

Mrs. Curwen lays out a very nice plan of allowing a student to feel the pulse in music. She doesn’t teach what a beat is. She doesn’t even talk about quarter notes until after the child is reading music.

It’s kind of like the tip of the iceberg analogy. Mrs. Curwen’s method is like the glacier under the water. Only after that glacier is formed do we begin to see the fruits of the knowledge the child has gained.

Part of that foundation is allowing the child to hear music in 2 pulse, 3 pulse, and 4 pulse measure. Then she expects the child to be able to decipher the difference.

This whole concept of a 3 pulse verses 2 pulse versus 4 pulse feel in music has been VERY hard for me to teach to children. It’s such a non-concrete thing to learn in the first place and teaching the accented pulse, I believe, is very foreign to us.

Any others out there with an opinion? I’d enjoy hearing your experience of teaching children to feel the accented pulse in music.