[CAUT] CAUT credential vs. academic program?

[Leslie Bartlett]

Isn't it lovely how we can hold contrary opinions and yet the whole group
seems always so pleasant.   Interesting, by a strange series of
catastrophes, I ended up in an accredited Master of Music program after only
1.5 years of musical training.  My original intent was in the mechanical and
aviation.  I had no particular talent, and when I found myself up to my neck
in things about which I new nothing, I feared every day that they would
discover me and kick me out.  I ended up with a 3.5 gpa- so one cannot say I
was an academic failure, but I can say with some authority that I exactly
regurgitated a whole lot of stuff on exams, much of it being way beyond my
comprehension.  I can say Jeff is right........  The only thing that saved
me is that instead of the requisite 12 or so recitals required each
semester, I attended 40-50, and I leanred a great deal of music by osmosis.
I will further say, that I felt before taking RPT exams that one could pass
those and know virtually nothing about a piano, and having passed them with
high scores, felt the same way afterwards, and 15 years in the business has
not changed my mind a bit.   If I am a musician I am so because I spent
years and years afterwards attending everything I could to help me along, as
I do with PTG conventions, still studying fundamentals to shore up weak
places.  I have had a successful career in both church music and in piano
work.  Oh, I have a fairly long list of literal monotones, who I turned into
soloists- so one absolutely can take a nobody right off the street and make
said person musical.  I've proven it at least half a dozen times.   
 
Sorry, I have to speak up, because I am one of those "off the street" people
myself. When, a couple years ago i told my (now retired) major professor my
story, he, the quintessential southern aristocratic DMA, and a brilliant
one, said to me, "There is absolutely no way you should ever have been able
to complete that degree course. It seems totally impossible in every way."
I am perhaps one of the exceptions which proves the rule, but  I have indeed
done what couldn't be done, and did the same by completing a two year piano
tech program in one year because they were being closed down, having no more
intelligence about the innards of a piano than the local butcher.   Mr.
Sturm, check my website, please, and see if it "stacks up".
www.bartlettpianoservice.com ..........         Tuning for a highly reputed
school district, and having teachers with "music degrees" who have actually
told me they can't tell if a piano is in tune or not----------------   well,
certainly that speaks of little talent with a piece of paper to prove
it..........
les bartlett

  _____  

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Fred
Sturm
Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 9:08 PM
To: caut
Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT credential vs. academic program?


On 11/5/07 3:00 PM, "Jeff Tanner" <jtanner at mozart.sc.edu> wrote:



Someone who holds a music degree has merely demonstrated that they can
absorb material long enough to regurgitate it on an exam, and that they have
shown some degree of incremental improvement in musical ability over a 2 or
4 year period, that they have attended a certain number of performances per
term and have been present and accounted for in at least one performing
ensemble each term.  It has not made them musical if they were not already. 



Hi Jeff,
    I was planning to sit this discussion out and let it die a merciful
death, but your ever more outrageous and ludicrous claims have finally got
to me. The above statement is mostly pure and simple crap. I'll grant the
point that a person has to have a degree of innate "talent," or however you
want to put that, to become a musician. I would describe it as a combination
of a good sense of rhythm and melody, an emotional connection to musical
sounds and phrases, with a necessary admixture of physical dexterity
(ability to learn complex and subtle physical actions of a number of kinds)
and an ability to concentrate and focus. In addition to this "talent" mix, a
future musician needs "desire," which includes the obsessive wish to be able
to make music, and the persistence and self-discipline to pursue it.
"Talent" without "desire" doesn't get very far. And there is another equally
important element: training. You cannot become a classical musician (I'll
leave aside other genres, as most of our institutions concentrate on
"classical") without a very fine training background. Period.
    Now a music department can't take just anyone off the street and make
that person into a musician. Nor can a math department do the same and
create a mathematician. You have to have talent, desire, and training even
to get in the door. Once you are in the door, you are subjected to a
rigorous four years of very hard and tightly directed work (speaking only of
a bachelors degree). To give a small example, our basic two year theory
program (freshman and sophomore for all music majors) consists of five days
a week for the entire two years. Two days of written theory and analysis;
one day each of sight-singing/solfeggio, ear training/dictation, and piano
skills/harmony. Everyone goes through this. And let me tell you it is not a
walk in the park. You have to work your butt off to get through, and at the
end you have definitely learned a lot.
    That is one small element of our four year program, which includes a
fair amount of music history, additional theory and analysis, performance in
both solo and ensemble, etc. etc. Along the way, the student is repeatedly
tested and required to produce. Juries each semester. Degree recitals.
Ensemble performances. Papers. Quizzes and exams.
    As far as I am concerned, a bachelors degree in music from UNM means a
great, great deal more than your dismissive statement above implies. I'm
sure programs vary, but I believe there is enough similarity to make that
statement for any accredited program. Are all graduates fine musicians? That
is arguable, depending on taste and definitions. But they have done far more
than the "merely" you claim.

Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico 


     


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