The Arms Race

You might have noticed that I haven’t been posting updates lately. I was stuck in the depths of an academic job search which has since proven successful. I spent a couple of weeks cramming preparation for interview visits, and a couple of weeks going on interview visits. I think that lessons were somewhat irregular while I was gone. With the combination of kids being sick, Hildr’s babysitter and family being sick, and other interruptions, the scheduling didn’t work out.

The job that I was offered is only a few hours away from The Maestro’s cousins. They are slightly older, and are also taking strings lessons. He is excited to be able to go Play with them. When I was there a few weeks ago, they each gave me a concert. Both could play several songs in the First year repertoire, and so far, the Maestro has yet to play more than the proper rhythm for the Twinkle variations. It is interesting to see how his progress is different from theirs. My sister says that different teachers stress different aspects of playing, and theirs is not one who stresses technique. That may not be the word she used; maybe it was precision. The point is, the Maestro is constantly working on holding the bow the right way, sitting the right way, fingering the right way. Sometimes I think that he will never be able to play a full version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but then I think that when he plays something he calls “Schniggle cumba liiiingo znok flok”, he will play it with precision.

The Maestro has been making progress this whole time, in spite of my lack of posting. He has regularly been making up songs to play, incorporating various things he has learned. Hildegard provided me with a partial list the other day: Flower Dance, Cabbage Dance, Rhody Accompaniment, Grieg rhythm, See the Pretty Flowers, I Love my Cello, the B song, Dinosaur, Earthquake, and the Schubert accompaniment.

He has given me a couple of lessons, or more precisely, he has spent time correcting my technique when I try to play his cello. As discussed previously, he loves to play the Teacher role.

One of the tough things with the Maestro is that things he has to be the one with the ideas. He is a free spirit who would rather Jam than play what you tell him. He often wants to play the Double Bass instead of the Cello because he sees Jazz musicians doing things that you aren’t allowed to do on the Cello. Riley reports that he is starting to put the “Tucka Tucka Stop Stop” rhythm into some of his composed songs, now that it has been long enough since we were on him to pass his rhythms off. Now that it can be his idea, his is interested.

Hildegard is doing a good job of fitting some structure around his impromptus. I really liked today’s lesson in which he brought a suggestion of a song that could be part of the warm-up, and later when she taught him a scale that was connected to another song he liked with “Funny bowing.” The real trick with him is to find what he wants to do anyway, and add something that he needs to learn into it. Whenever we find something that works with that, it works for a while, until he wants to move on to something else. Sometimes it feels like an arms race, trying to match the pedagogy with his interests.