Author Description

Dust Jacket Notes: "'Bad teachers...are partly the cause of the decline of music. It is almost incredible how long their influence - based on guidance and cultivation - may endure.' So wrote Schumann, while over a century later Stravinsky, with characteristic tartness, remarked that 'I learned more through my mistakes and pursuit of false assumptions than from my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.' How are the problems of musical education to be solved? How are we to teach pupils to read, to sing, to play, to compose? Dr Lawrence, in this controversial study, shows us that these questions have remained constant for four centuries, and that we must turn to composers themselves for the answer. From Morley and Dowland to Schoenberg and Webern, they have come up with consistent and practical answers. He argues with wit and force that while composers have talked good sense, some orthodox music teachers have been, and continue to be, more of a hindrance than a help to their pupils."