Piano Inspires Podcast: Frances Clark

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To celebrate the latest episode of the Piano Inspires Podcast featuring Frances Clark, we are sharing an excerpted transcript of her conversation with Christopher Hepp. Want to learn more about Clark? Check out the latest installment of the Piano Inspires Podcast. To learn more, visit pianoinspires.com. Listen to our latest episode with Clark on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

Frances Clark: I do believe that music represents life, and if your life is maudlin or if it’s just doing one thing, doing page ten today and page eleven tomorrow, then there’s nothing very exciting about it. But if you have a sense of adventure, your students will have a sense of adventure. If you have a sense of drama, your students will have a sense of drama. I think the main thing really is in the children discovering for themselves that they can play beautifully. Discovering for themselves they can do anything. 

Christopher Hepp: So in Time to Begin, for example, in which its units of study are divided into discoveries and using what you’ve discovered, and the emphasis that I know you place on the sense of adventure—that all came out of the situation in the ’30s and ’40s in which you felt the materials were not providing that sense of discovery and adventure. Is that [right]?

FC: Well, I don’t think the materials do yet. I don’t think our materials do it. I think it’s the people who use them that do it. It’s the teachers. I have said many times that if I were on a far Island and the only books I had to teach were some books that I didn’t like at all, I could still teach. I could still use those books in some way. I can maneuver around. It’s the people. It’s what you’re thinking. What is your attitude? How do you feel about it? Is music an adventure for you? It’s the most contagious thing in the world, and to see children learn is the most thrilling thing to do.

CH: Can we call that a definition of teaching, perhaps? Is that who a teacher is—someone that brings a sense of adventure, a sense of discovery to a musical situation? To a piano lesson?

FC: Well, that’s certainly one of the ways. I would say a teacher creates the situation. Now, I don’t mean by the look of a room—or it’d be nice if it were pretty—and I don’t mean equipment. I mean the state of mind of that teacher. Does that teacher have time to teach? Is that student just the very student he wants to see at that moment? Is the new music he’s going to have this week going to be thrilling to both of you? You can’t teach a piece of music you don’t like. You’re undone the moment you do. It takes imagination. A piano lesson should be a happening. Something happens at a piano lesson so that when you walk out of the studio, you feel different from when you walked in. 

CH: And one’s life has changed.

FC: Definitely.

If you enjoyed this excerpt from Piano Inspires Podcast’s latest episode, listen to the entire episode with Frances Clark on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or our website!

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