In the Autumn 2002 issue, Phyllis Lehrer in the Music Reading Department addressed the question, "What does the latest research tell us about sight-reading?" In her essay, she made reference to a very thought-provoking article written in 1997 for the Home Practice Department by Richard Chronister (founder and original publisher of Keyboard Companion magazine) on the subject of sightplaying. In case you don't have your back issue readily available, here is that article as it appeared in the Spring 1997 issue.
Article by
Richard
Chronister
orkshops and articles about the importance of sightplaying are
fairly commonplace. And, they often begin and end with a simple
declaration that students learn to sightplay only through the
experience of a lot of sightplaying. The rest of the lecture can
be generally classified under one of two categories. The first
category is helpful hints about particular ways of looking at
the music that help a student sightplay. For example, seeing notes
in groups rather than reading note by note. Or, reading chords
from the bottom up. The second category has to do with the physical
requirements of sightplaying such as looking ahead as you play,
remembering the measure you are playing while your are looking
at the measure you are about to play. And, of course, the eternal
admonition, "Keep your eyes on the music"
When we've tried to do all these things and still some students can't sightplay fluently, someone will say, "Some children just seem to be born sightplayers, don't they?" We're right back where we started. It's like going to hear a lecture on technique and then, at the end, hearing, "Some children just seem to have a natural piano hand," suggesting that those who don't will just have to settle for second best and there is little a teacher can do about it.
We know that virtually all children have the mental and physical capabilities required to lead useful and productive lives. While we believe that few of them will become English literature scholars, we believe they all have the ability to learn to read English fluently enough to read the daily newspaper without stumbling and without having to stop at every other word and look it up. Few of them will become Olympic athletes, but they all have the ability to walk fluently from the front of the house to the back of the house without knocking over all the furniture in between. They were not born with the skills to do either of these things, but they were born with the ability to acquire these skills through daily practice. And they are just as able to acquire sightplaying skills at the piano if the piano teacher is willing to create situations in which these skills are practiced.
If a child reads English only a few minutes a week, no fluent reading skills follow. A child who is allowed to walk only a few minutes once a week will not develop the physical grace required to walk with ease. The child who sightplays only a few minutes a week at the piano lesson will not learn to sightplay fluently. It is the teacher's job to create a situation in which the child practices sightplaying skills on a daily basis in home practice.
Sightplaying pieces assigned to be played over and over at home will not develop a student's sightplaying skills. Once played, the sightplaying experience is over. Sightplaying pieces can only provide the teacher with the raw material for teaching sightplaying skills. Since pieces written with sightplaying in mind often use easy-to-see and easy-to-play sequences, they are tailor-made to help the teacher teach sightplaying skills, but the pieces themselves will not do the job. When students first play these pieces, their reading is tentative, and teachers often direct students to play them slowly and carefully. Tentative, slow, and careful reading is not sightplaying nor does it develop sightplaying skills. It is only after the student can play a piece up to tempo and with some musical sense that the same piece can then be used for teaching sightplaying skills. Take, for example, the piece marked "Cheerily".
It is only after a student can really play this piece accurately and cheerily that it is ready to become useful for teaching sightplaying skills. It is not unusual for this piece to take some serious workout and several play-throughs, beginning with slow, careful playing before it becomes accurate and cheery. But then, if the teacher will take the time to find some staff paper and write out the two-measure flashes you see below, we can move on to developing some real sightplaying skills.
Sometimes we hear it said that sightplaying is playing something you've never seen before. This misrepresentation of what sightplaying really is, is at the root of our problem in teaching sightplaying. In reality, sightplaying is playing something (some things) that we have seen many, many times, so many times, in fact, that we are able to read and play them instantly. The difference in sightplaying is that we have never played these already familiar things in this particular context, in this combination, in this order. The task of sightplaying is not knowledge or understanding, it is coping with a new context.
The four 2-measure flashes you see here, given to students after they can play the short, nine-measure piece marked "Cheerily", can be used to create a new context, a new order. If students play these four phrases in different orders (12 3 4, 13 2 4, 4 3 2 1, 1 4 3 2, etc.), they will be playing something they know very well. But always in a new context, in a new order. Playing a tempo and with the same cheeriness required in the original piece will provide the experience of playing a new piece every time and will practice all the sightplaying skills required in playing a new piece. A different order provides an element of surprise about what comes next. The next phrase can never be taken for granted. I often ask the student to decide, at home, which order makes the best new piece and to be ready to play it for me at the next lesson.
There is an extra benefit to this practice. As students try these phrases in different orders, they become aware that some of the phrases make a better ending than others. I ask them to be ready to show me, by playing them, which combinations make no musical sense at all. This can lead to a discussion about why this is so, giving students a lesson in practical theory.
It is not always necessary to create new music out of a piece. Sometimes it is possible to simply use phrases as they exist in the piece. But, the teacher will still need to write them out so that it is easier to see them and play them in different orders. Consider the piece you see below marked "Glowing brilliantly", also from The Music Tree, Part C, Page 49 (Summy Birchard/Warner Bros.).
Once this piece can be played with glowing brilliance and a smooth crescendo to the end, it is ready to be used for practicing sightplaying skills. But, the teacher doesn't have to make up anything. Just write out each two measures.
Now, played in any order, always beginning with pianissimo
and gradually getting louder to the end, new pieces are born.
But because the student knows the whole piece very well, it can
be played up to tempo with as much brilliance as the original
piece. Students may turn up their noses at the sound, but that
just gives us a chance to show how the original piece is made
and why it makes the most sense the way the composer arranged
the measures. Students often decide that any order can make some
sense if we always add on the "ending section" at the
end, no matter in what order we play the other sections.
While playing these two-measure sections in different orders, the student is practicing playing one thing while looking ahead to see what is next. But it will only take a glance because each section has already been learned. The ability to keep on playing in tempo, keeping dynamics in mind, and having to cope with what comes next, whatever it may be, is being practiced every time this exercise is played. And, who knows, maybe a different order will bring about a fantastic new piece that the student will insist on playing at the next recital. If this happens, you can bet that it will be played with an extra measure of glowing brilliance - it's the student's own invention!
RICHARD CHRONISTER is
editor of Keyboard Companion.