Piano teacher Faye Lake with student, Poppy Millar. Photo: Claire Edwardes
Music teachers are vital and often unsung threads in the fabric of our music community. Ironically, during the COVID-19 crisis, when government regulations have banned lessons and rehearsals of certain instruments in schools (ie: wind and brass), we all need music now more than ever! So, to celebrate this, I spoke with Faye Lake, a piano teacher in Sydney’s Inner West, with decades of experience. Faye shares her thoughts on her profession, teaching by zoom, and why we are drawn to master a musical instrument.
Why the piano?
The piano was chosen for me by my parents both of whom enjoyed the piano, but as I progressed it became my own instrument of choice. It’s an instrument capable of being both percussive and also of producing a beautiful singing tone. It is possible to convey a wide range of musical ideas and emotions, and the piano has an incredible repertoire, more than four centuries of musical composition by the greatest composers in our western musical heritage.
First piano teacher and important piano teachers?
My first piano teacher was a local teacher from the area of Sydney in which I lived. I did not remain with her for very long however. After a couple of years I had the great good fortune to become a pupil of Winifred Burston, a very fine pianist who before the first world war had studied in Europe under Ferruccio Busoni and Egon Petri. At the outbreak of war she returned to Australia to join the staff of the newly established NSW Conservatorium. She was a very accomplished pianist and a cultured woman of wide-ranging interests, particularly new music. Her pupils included Larry Sitsky and Richard Meale. She took a personal interest in her students and her method of teaching was non-didactic. A fellow student described her as sitting beside one and breathing the music. I received from her a fine musical education and experienced much joy in the process.
As an adult it was again my good fortune to meet the concert pianist Tessa Birnie who had studied with Karl Ulrich Schnabel, the son of the great Artur Schnabel. After taking some lessons from her she became a strong musical influence on me and a close friend. She encouraged me to not just teach piano but also to continue to play and learn for myself, and to perform with other amateur pianists in a number of concerts she organised. Her technical and musical ideas have strongly influenced my musical thinking and teaching.
Do you enjoy performing as well as teaching?
Do I enjoy performing? I don’t know that I would use the word “enjoy”. I find performing quite daunting as do many performers, both amateur and professional. But I think that it is important for both teachers and students to perform, to one another, in small groups or in concerts. Music is a language and when we spend many hours and long years learning it, it becomes our voice and we need to use that voice to communicate. Performance nerves may always be there, but the more often we perform the more we get used to them and find ways of making them work for us rather than against us.
As well as younger students I have had for many years a small group of adult students who regard playing piano as their hobby. Three times a year we have a small concert in which we play for each other (including myself) and afterwards we sit around with a glass of wine and nibbles and talk together. I think we have all found it an enriching experience and an important part of our musical journey.
With younger students, at the end of each term I ask the students to perform for each other at the changeover of lessons, and at the end of the year we have a concert where everyone performs in front of parents and friends.
So performance is central to the way I teach piano.
How have piano lessons and students changed over the years?
I don’t think that students themselves have changed much over the years, with the exception that it is now much more common for adults to want to learn to play piano, sometimes at the same time as their children and sometimes as seniors. The change that I do notice is how much busier we have all become. In many families both parents work, limiting the time available for lessons. As well, many more students now learn a second instrument than was the case when I first began teaching. This, combined with many more after-school activities, limits available practice time and affects the rate at which students progress.
Another change that has occurred over the years has been in choice of repertoire. Many more contemporary pieces are now being taught, especially those that use a pop or jazz idiom, alongside the traditional repertoire. I think this is very beneficial for students and helps to retain their interest in the face of many other distractions - especially electronic devices.
Why do we learn an instrument?
I think the need to make music either by singing or playing an instrument is hard-wired into human beings. All cultures have some means of musical expression. Think of our own indigenous people with their songlines, their clap sticks and their didgeridoos stretching back over 65.000 years. Music is in us, perhaps even pre-dating human speech, learning an instrument is an expression of who we are.
Zoom piano lessons: love or loathe?
I do zoom lessons when there is no other alternative. But they are a particularly poor substitute for face-to-face lessons. The sound quality is only as good as the medium so it is not possible to hear the actual sound the student is producing. It is possible to deal with technical issues regarding note and rhythm accuracy, but it's difficult to deal with musical issues when the student’s playing is mediated by the technology.
I’ve heard the music of Bartok is a favourite teaching tool?
With the six volumes of the Mikrokosmos Bela Bartok wrote a carefully sequenced method of teaching piano, beginning with the absolute basics and progressing to very advanced music of some difficulty. I frequently like to use the first volume, in conjunction with a contemporary piano method, with those students whom I think will not reject Bartok's modal sounds. Some students enjoy these sounds - I think these have become more familiar because of contemporary pop and world music. A few students enjoy the music enough to continue on to the later volumes usually choosing to play selected pieces rather than following through sequentially.
The value of the early volumes, especially the first, is that Bartok incorporates technical issues such as the independence of the hands, the use of the short fingers on the black notes, syncopation and changing time signatures, in a very simple and straightforward way in little pieces of a few lines which are easy to learn.
Favourite piano repertoire?
My favourite piano repertoire keeps changing. What I choose at any particular time tends to be reflection of what I am doing and thinking about in my life in general. Currently I’m enjoying exploring the piano music of lesser known women composers from previous centuries. The composer I’m interested in at the moment is Dora Pejacsevich, a Croatian composer of the late 19th/early 20th century who deserves to be much better known and more performed than she currently is. I am playing several small pieces of hers and very much enjoying them.
Best lesson learnt from a student?
What I have been taught by my students is to LISTEN. To listen to what is played, to what is said, to what is not played and to what is not said. To listen as an active experience with the whole of oneself and with energy. To listen in this way is not something passive but in itself is a communication.
Will we still be learning instruments in 2050?
Yes, I think that in 2050 we will still be making music and still be learning instruments. Technology may change those instruments a little. With the piano I think electronic keyboards will be greatly improved and might well replace poor quality traditional pianos. However I think many pianists will continue to want to play on a traditional piano of fine quality and beautiful tone whenever that is possible.
Photo Credits: Claire Edwardes (main pic), Anthony Browell (social)