Saturday, February 26, 2011

Food for thought...

So I was just thinking the other day about my musical instructors.  All of my piano teachers (4) have been women. All of my organ teachers (2) have been men.  All of my composition teachers (4) have been men.  But from what we've gathered in this class, it seems this is very common...we've certainly seen that it was acceptable for women to study, perform and teach piano, BUT NOTHING ELSE (except sing). I guess it would seem that those restrictions/influences (for lack of better wording) have really set the standard for today.  What about you? Any thoughts??

2 comments:

  1. I've had more of a combination between male and female teachers I think but understand the thinking related to our recent class discussions! :-)

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  2. With voice teachers there is more of a significance in having a man or a woman due to the actual mechanism we are dealing with. Anatomy is a key factor when we start dealing with things like passaggio shifts and vowel modification in demonstration. It is important for a teacher to understand both their own and the opposite gender's mechanism when then go into any lesson.
    For me I have had teacher of both genders, 3 men and 2 women, 2 tenors, one baritone, one soprano, and one mezzo. It has become clear to me that, with my own baritone voice, hearing demonstrations from the baritone and mezzo teachers was more easily translated to my own voice because they had the same points of register change (the mezzo transposed up an octave of course). The tenor and soprano teachers needed to transpose up a bit to match these register changes.
    I guess what I'm saying the gender of your teacher is not as important as their voice part.

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