I walked out of my lesson smiling, despite the small meltdown I'd had in my lesson tonight. We had been working on the Elgar (again) for a good chunk of my lesson, and in the last six bars, there are a TON of shifts. And I mean a lot of them. In two bars, you shift four times. Did I mention there are a lot of shifts? In two weeks, thanks to this one piece, I've learned five total positions: first, second, third, fourth, and sixth. You cover them ALL in the Elgar Enigma Variations. So I've learned more positions than the number of months I've been playing. Yikes.
When I took on this piece, I took it on with the idea that it would either help me learn the positions, or it would make me quit. I've thrown the piece off my stand and put my cello down numerous times, mind you... BUT I always pick it up the next day, with the recording at hand and taking my time to listen and try to learn what I can. It doesn't always end well, but I try...
So now you're sitting there wondering why I had a meltdown, but still managed to leave my lesson smiling. It's happened on a few occasions with both teachers I've had, because I've had two good teachers. But tonight was a big one. Tonight, after digging my way through the Sevcik variations, my teacher asked if I wanted to work on the Elgar. Of course! So after a major minor correction in the first two bars (my thumb didn't make the shift to 2nd position with the rest of my hand, causing numerous intonation and hand-shaping issues), I played through the first half of the Elgar, all the way up to the tenor clef Soli section, and stopped, put my bow down, and looked at my teacher. He was smiling! He said he could tell that I'd done a ton of work on the piece and it showed. Naturally, I did my little happy dance inside!
Onto the tenor clef section! We worked feverishly on the remaining half of the piece, and he even went over my allotted hour to make sure I got to work on the whole thing. As part of shifting, I had to be aware of where each position met the one before, and how they were related. I'd find the position, and he'd ask me what note I'd end up having a certain finger on. We did this at certain times over the course of the piece, and I did great until the end. At the end of my hour, I was tired, and had gone from bass, to treble, to tenor clef. My brain finally decided it had had enough, and despite my constant grasping, I could not think of what note my fourth finger would be on in 4th position on the A-string. It just wasn't coming. I finally gave up and fell apart. I was mortified and embarrassed.
This is where the teacher makes the difference! He didn't keep hammering. He didn't keep pressuring me for the right answer. He said "It's okay. You'll get it. You've learned five positions in two weeks. You have to remember that cello is hard, and you're moving extremely fast. Be patient with yourself." I have never appreciated him as much as I did tonight! It takes a special teacher to know where it hurts the most, and why you're being so hard on yourself. We moved on, with him focusing more on learning the positions as they relate to each other, more than how the notes on the fingerboard relate to them, and I know that we'll get to it as we work. But he understood that my brain had hit its limit of what it could handle tonight, and he cheered me for what I HAD done, and what I had accomplished over my time with him, not just tonight, but for the whole time I've taken lessons.
It's important to recognize when you need to work on something, and, as a teacher, it's also important to ensure that your students aren't missing something that needs to be learned, honed, and perfected. But it's also important to support, connect, and enable your student to feel like they're accomplishing something, and to feel like they can learn something, even if they haven't gotten a grasp yet, or if it seems to be taking longer than it should. It takes effort from both sides, and having been on both sides of the equation, I have nothing but the utmost respect for what teachers have to endure. If I had to listen to me play, I'd probably quit teaching.
All I can say is that I've been blessed to have two teachers to give me a good, solid foundation not only in the realm of playing cello, but in the realm of playing through the tears, the fears, not allowing my mistakes to define me, and helping me to see that even though I have 30 years of musicianship in my past, I'm still a beginner on cello... one of the most difficult instruments to learn. I can't imagine how different things would have been if I'd ended up with someone who just said, "I'm sorry... I can't help you because you don't have enough talent."
Good teachers make great students. And great students... make great CELLISTS!
Happy Cello'ing! #celloislife