STUDYING WITH A MUSICAL MAESTRO - A CASE-STUDY OF COMMONSENSE TEACHING IN ARTISTIC TRAINING

This article reports an exploratory and descriptive study of the train ing of musical performers at an undergraduate level. The investigation was staged as a case study of a well-known professor of organ perform ance and 6 of his students. The data were gathered through participant observation, informal interviews, and questionnaires. The focus of th e study is on the maestro role in an educational setting and the commo nsense teaching strategy applied by such a musical maestro with no for mal teacher training. The tentative findings suggest that inherent in a context of Western art music are strong expectations about how a mas ter performance teacher should behave; this causes students to reconst rue harsh and insensitive treatment as something positive and necessar y. The maestro role appears product oriented rather than person orient ed, suggesting that students lacking in self-assurance and independenc e may fare badly under such tutelage. The article concludes by suggest ing that the maestro role's potentially negative impact could be avoid ed if teacher training in musical performance at a higher level was gi ven a higher priority.