Isabel Keleti 黎蓓樂 (陈庚嶷 译)
“我们不能奢望能给那些从未听过肖邦演奏的人们描绘出肖邦音乐中那种难以言喻的诗歌性所能带来的魅力…” ---弗朗茨·李斯特评价弗里德里克·肖邦
即便当代的观众无法享受到肖邦本人的演奏，他音乐中蕴含的那种“难以言喻的诗歌性”依旧让全世界的倾听者浮想联翩。可是肖邦不仅仅是卓越的钢琴家和理想主义者，他同时也是一位著名且受人爱戴的老师。直至今日，他的教学方式依旧能给钢琴教师和音乐爱好者带来启迪。
我们现在对于肖邦钢琴教学的了解主要是来源于Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger编著的《肖邦：学生眼中的钢琴家与老师》。这本书中涵盖了肖邦未完成的手稿，书信，批注过的曲谱以及学生和友人的评价。这些文献资料让我们了解到肖邦的教学方式是非常个性化且不同于传统教学的。肖邦认为虽然传统的教学模式可以让我们更好的了解钢琴演奏，但拘泥于刻板的教学是无法让老师因材施教的。
从肖邦学生的评价中，我们得知他会针对专业水平不同的学生改变自己的教学方式。肖邦虽有几位学生钢琴造诣颇深，但其他的学生也多为业余爱好者。肖邦的一位学生曾感叹道：“他截然不同的教学方式打开的不仅是钢琴演奏的大门，而是整个音乐世界的大门。”除了能给予学生对音乐更加深刻的理解，肖邦同时也很注重培养学生的个性、创造力和自信心；他希望这样能够让学生弹奏的自然且打动人。肖邦教课时曾说过：“当你在坐在钢琴前的时候，一定要追寻自己内心所想去演奏；要对自己的能力和优势有信心，相信自己的音乐表现力。”肖邦常常会给学生做示范，但他总会展示多种不同的处理方式以免学生只是单纯的模仿自己。肖邦也曾告诉过自己的学生： “即使我们对这段音乐的理解虽然有所不同，你也应该坚持你的方式去表达出自己所想。那样的演奏是没有问题的。”肖邦常常会夸奖学生个性化的诠释并鼓励他们演奏出自己独特的感受和目的。
肖邦对于个性的强调不仅是音乐上的 - 他认为每个学生独特的肢体语言也会对其演奏出的音乐产生影响。他鼓励学生们把音乐表达想象成语言表达并认为“音乐演奏正如单词组成语言一般”。肖邦觉得音乐和语言都是用来表达人的思想和情感的，而这种情绪正是通过身体动作来传达的。他也认为肌肉的控制和放松，自然的手型，和手臂的运用都能使音乐更有歌唱性。这些想法和他的前辈们所强调的手指独立性大相径庭。肖邦认为练习一首曲子的第一步是先找对合适的指法，这样才能有放松舒适的手型从而弹奏出柔和、连贯、有歌唱性（bel canto）的连奏。肖邦认为这种练习方式甚至也适用于最注重技巧的手指练习。肖邦让他所有的学生从B大调，降D大调和升F大调音阶开始练起，因为这几个调更符合手指自然的位置：短的手指弹更长的白键而长的手指弹较短的黑键。他同时也让学生慢练音阶，要先弹出优美的旋律才加速度。肖邦这样的教学方式让我们了解到他希望能激发学生本身的潜能而不是把一个刻板的标准强加在他们身上。
在帮助他的学生们达到各自的艺术追求的同时，肖邦也拓宽了古典音乐的表达力和诗歌性。他的教学特色反映出他的一个信念：音乐是有无穷的诠释方式的。肖邦也曾写下过这样一段文字：音乐是丰富且充满情感的，它不是没有灵魂的。音乐就像一只阳光下的水晶杯，在太阳的照射下折射出一道道彩虹。水晶杯虽然美丽，但每个人欣赏它的原因却是大有不同；有人喜欢它精湛的工艺，而有人偏爱它折射出的色彩。但把酒倒入杯中的人才是真正赋予它灵魂的人。
原文：
Educating the Soul: Chopin as Teacher
“We could not hope to convey to those who have never heard him, any just conception of that fascination so ineffably poetic….” – Franz Liszt on Frederic Chopin[1]
Though modern audiences do not have the privilege of hearing Chopin play, the ‘ineffable poetry’ of his compositions continues to capture the imaginations of listeners all over the world. Yet Chopin was not merely a dreamy, transcendent idealist. He was also a famous and beloved teacher. Chopin’s pedagogy continues to hold lessons for all teachers and lovers of music today.
Much of our information about Chopin as a teacher comes from Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger’s book, Chopin: Pianist and Teacher: As Seen by His Pupils, which compiles information gathered from Chopin’s unfinished “Projet de méthode,” letters, annotated scores, and statements from students and friends. These documents describe Chopin’s teaching as too personal to fit a definite tradition.[2] While following principles of a school or method can influence our understanding of piano-playing, Chopin felt, it cannot provide the key for understanding each student’s personal experience with the instrument.
Chopin’s students provide insight into a teacher who constantly shaped his approach to nurture a diverse array of individuals. He had a few highly-skilled professional piano students, but most were amateur “dilettantes.” One student described of Chopin: “His absolute novelty opened wide… the doors of all music, not just of piano playing.”[3] While contributing to their understanding of music, he also cultivated their individuality, creativity, and self-confidence at the instrument. Chopin’s intent was for his students to play in a natural and convincing way. Another student recalled a lesson in which Chopin instructed: “When you’re at the piano, I give you full authority to do whatever you want; follow freely the ideal you’ve set for yourself and which you must feel within you; be bold and confident in your own powers and strength, and whatever you say will always be good.”[4] Chopin would frequently demonstrate for his students in his lessons, but with varying interpretations, as he was wary of students imitating his ideas. Another pupil recalled Chopin saying to him in a lesson: “We each understand this differently, but go your own way, do as you feel, it can also be played like that.”[5] He praised students for creating their own interpretations and encouraged them to play with their own unique feeling and sense of purpose.
Chopin’s insistence on individuality extended to a consideration of how students’ unique voices and physical bodies might shape the production of music. He encouraged his students to think of music as analogous to verbal expression. “We use sounds to make music just as we use words to make a language,” he said.[6] Chopin felt that sounds, whether through music or language, express human thought and feeling. That feeling could also be communicated through the natural movements of the body. He brought out a singing quality of musical tone through muscle control and relaxation, natural hand positioning, and allowing the whole arm to help the fingers play. These ideas broke from his predecessors, who stressed high individual finger motion, independent from the larger muscles of the arm. He believed the first step to learning a piece was to find an appropriate fingering that fits the hand, in order to play with a relaxed and comfortable hand position, making it possible to play the smooth legatos of the bel canto (“beautiful singing”) style Chopin loved. He communicated this emphasis on the natural movements of the hand through even the most technical exercises. He had all his students start by learning the B, D-flat, and F-sharp major scales. These scales more comfortably fit the natural finger position of the hand, with short fingers playing white (longer) keys, and long fingers playing black (shorter) keys. He first instructed students to practice scales slowly to focus on producing a beautiful sound before practicing them to attain speed. Throughout his pedagogical technique, we can see an emphasis on bringing out each student’s natural abilities rather than enforcing an ideal upon them.
By giving pianists the freedom to achieve their unique artistic goals, Chopin expanded the expressive and poetic power of classical music. His pedagogical tactics reflect his sense of the endless variety to be found in music itself. “Music, rich, full of feeling, not soulless, is like a crystal on which the sun falls and brings forth from it a whole rainbow,” he wrote. “And everyone may admire it for a different reason; one will enjoy the fact that the crystal has been artfully carved, another will like the red color, still another the green, while the fourth will admire the purple. And he who puts his soul into the crystal is like one who has poured wine into it.” [7]
Further listening:
Chopin: Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat Major, Op. 51 (Performed by Isabel Keleti) https://youtu.be/CXK4oyMl6QQ
[1] Liszt (1863) 82.
[2] Eigeldinger (2010) 10.
[3] Eigeldinger (2010) 13.
[4] Eigeldinger (2010) 12.
[5] Eigeldinger (2010) 142.
[6] Eigeldinger (2010) 195.
[7]Quoted in MacCabe (1984) 214.
Citations
Casarotti, J. (n.d.). Chopin the Teacher. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.forte-piano-pianissimo.com/Chopin-the-Teacher.html
Eigeldinger, J. (2010). Chopin: Pianist and teacher: As seen by his pupils. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.
Liszt, F. (1863). Life of Chopin. Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co.
MacCabe, Patricia Chu-Li. The Piano Pedagogy of Frederic Chopin. M.A Thesis, San José State University, 1984.
Isabel Keleti is a Kansas native and NYC-based pianist. She completed a Masters of Music degree in Piano Performance at Mannes School of Music – The New School in New York City under the direction of Dr. Vladimir Valjarević. She received her Bachelors of Music in Piano Performance from KU School of Music studying with former department chair Dr. Jack Winerock. In 2019, she won two international competitions in China: the ROXE MTSY International Music Competition in Xi’an and BIMFA Solo Piano Competition in Beijing. She is also a dedicated teacher, having been awarded a Mannes Teaching Fellowship, and was one of the founding teachers for Pianos Without Borders. You can read more about Isabel on her website.