Composing the Performance of Teaching

If teaching is to be understood as responding to students by sharing power and offering alternatives and criteria, a composer who would teach composition confronts three compositional problems: formulating alternatives and criteria, couching the offer and response, and creating the context of sharing power. Teaching must then be approached as composition, and the teaching situation is then a place where the function of teacher overlaps with the function of composer.

The composing teacher tries to get students to grapple with issues which the teaching composer does not outgrow: the current constitution of `I', the description of the current epoch, and the selection of strategies for I's confrontation with the epoch.

Composition of performance--composition, that is, taken to be the synthesis, according to socially conditioned and society-conditioning preferences, of the consequences of a premise established by human (anti-natural) fiat--is an attempt indispensable to the performance of compositions.

Environment of Discourse

A composition can assert its distinction, its provocation, its statement only if it is treated as though it wants to be distinguished, as though it aims to provoke, as though it wishes to make a statement. Listeners (students?) will distinguish, respond to provocation, and formulate statements only if they are treated as though they want to describe, as though they want to respond, as though they want to formulate.

Ideas are welcome, but they are not what a student of composition needs from a teacher. The contribution urgently needed from a teacher is increased sensitivity, and sensitivity increases when a distinction is introduced. Distinctions might be introduced with hints, gestures, examples, but not without formulations. The formulation of a distinction establishes a moment of increased freedom.

Waive the privilege of access to the absolute truth, and a kind of discussion is then possible which would not be possible without waiving the privilege of access to absolute truth.

The premise of teaching has been that better knowledge leads to better actions, that is, to actions chosen after consulting better knowledge as criterion. Teachers know better than to rely on this premise. Teachers could begin to look at the environmental conditions in which a person will consult better knowledge in choosing actions.

Teaching: when I bring about an environment of discourse in which those whom I claim to teach learn what I would have them know. I may not know afterwards whether I taught, or the environment of discourse taught.

In a social world which responds to the manifestation of desire with contempt, apathy, oblivion, preaching, and derision, a teacher not only asks for the manifestation of desire, but also asks for allies in the attack on contempt, apathy, oblivion, preaching, and derision.

If hierarchy is inherent in the teaching situation, then a project for the composing teacher would be to expose it, to undermine it, to jostle it.

If the concept of composition excludes imitation of models, and models are not to be done away with, then how else to treat a model? (Problem for a respondent) ``... the pupil would have to gather from them the fact that one must come to grips with all the problems--not how to.'' (Schönberg, Style and Idea)

I construct the consistency which connects the consistency of one composer with the consistency of another composer. In presenting a composer's work and views, I distinguish the consistency of the views investigated, written about, presented, from the consistency of my viewing the consistencies.

Two teachers:

1. ``I have to prepare!''
2. ``I have to prepare the first sentence of a class; the first sentence has to be composed. From there I have to provoke, respond, demonstrate the development of an idea.''

First statements apply leverage to the level of discourse.

Carefully chosen first statements can protect the discussion at the outset against the avalanche of agreement.

``The choice is gloomy: conscientious functionary or free artist, the teacher escapes neither the theater of speech nor the Law played out on its stage: the Law appears not in what is said but in the very fact of speech. In order to subvert the Law (and not simply get around it), the teacher would have to undermine voice delivery, word speed, and rhythm to the point of another intelligibility.''
(Barthes, ``Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers'')

``In the teaching situation, no one should anywhere be in his place.'' (Barthes) The fall-back phrases which oil the usual discourse with unreflected-upon agreement are to be made out of place. Teaching could change the state of knowledge by changing the state of language, such that phrases that once allowed one to ``get by'' no longer pass unchallenged. One of the performances that becomes available when phrases fall under suspicion is that of catching oneself. If, for example, I am one of the participants in a discussion in which we have decided to dispense with all phrases that imply faith in objectivity, and unwittingly I begin the next sentence with ``It seems to me...'', and stop, this performance shows the moment in which usage clashes with thought.

I also learned how to give up my power as a teacher (not delegate it but abrogate it) and how to help my pupils as well as become someone they could talk with. I learned to listen to them, to be led by their interests and needs. In turn I became involved in creating things in the classroom--in doing research on myths and numbers, in learning from the experience of the students. My students and I resembled a community much more than a class, and I enjoyed being with them. We worked together in an open environment which often spilled out of the school building into the streets, the neighborhood, the city itself.
(Kohl, 14)

As teaching situations necessarily involve impromptu moments, casual conversation, banter, ``ice-breaking'', one could let compositional thinking and playfulness reach into these preludes and postludes to getting down to business.

Witness

JZ ... I not only say `that's what I saw', but `given this context, that's what I saw', and would call that a witness. I'm checking. Is this what you wanted?

ME I was thinking of situations, for instance, a lecture in which some lecturer has given a presentation and then there's a question-answer period, and a young student raises a hand and asks a question of the lecturer that perhaps questions one of the premises of this person's lecture. Instead of addressing the question, the lecturer will find one of numerous ways of saying `Yeah yeah, that's very nice. I'm always glad to get a question like that. Now are there any other questions?' [laughter] and this happens so frequently that nobody even finds it funny anymore.

JG It's not funny. [laughter] I'm laughing but that doesn't mean it's funny. [laughter]

CW That's one of Lesley's tragedies.

SP So in that situation you're putting what?

ME In that situation what's missing is someone to witness the interaction between the lecturer and the student.

HB Witness would be a whole roomful of lecture attendants getting up and leaving upon that.

CW Mm hm.

ME Mm hm.

HB That would be a demonstration of witnesship. This is so ridiculous if such a thing happens everybody must leave. Just go. But it doesn't happen. Because witnessing does not seem to be an instruction to action. It seems to be an instruction to documentation. It is absorbed by research.

The concept of `witness', as distinguished from `observer', `spectator'; from `advocate', `judge', `recorder', and `reporter', indicates that a person sees, hears, and speaks publicly about what she sees and hears. A witness is called for when a doubt has been raised--publicly--whether an event has taken place, or not. The concept of witness admits of a variety of motivations, guided, however by the motivation to make public a socially functioning statement of what has taken place.

WB Not that anyone would care but that term has a long history that way going back at least to the ...

SP Which word has a long history to it? Witness?

WB To witness in that capacity. To witness as in to give, to bear testimony to, rather than to witness as in to passively observe. The witness to an accident does not bear testimony to it. That's what's becoming the law, in the eyes of the law. In the history of social protest to witness means indeed to bear testimony to that which occurred, but with the implication that the testimony which is born is an action rather than simply a relation, a report.

A listener
will not become a witness
without having had one.

The current state of listening--to music and to talk--suffers from lack of witness.

We in music seem to be the only ones who are living in that impossible world in which unjustified, false belief not only parades as but is published as knowledge. We have a very serious situation in that regard. Music has become the final resting place for all of those hoary psychophysical dualisms such as heart and brain, the cognitive and the sentient. Well, we're having a problem and that is part of our problem. The notion of serious discourse about music is a concern to me not because I have to be concerned essentially about the state and fate of discourse, but because I'm concerned about the state and fate of music.
(Milton Babbit, Words about Music, 175)

A teacher of composition must be two witnesses:
a witness to the student and a witness to what the student did.

I learn how to witness what that which I do, does. The fulfillment of a desire has consequences. This idea is expressed in several fairy tales, but there the moral of the story condemns desire--which it equates with over-reaching ambition and acquisitiveness. On the contrary, to favor desire and fulfillment while maintaining critical scrutiny is what a composer teaches--to support desire so that one may scrutinize the consequences of desires fulfilled rather than the consequences of obligations met.

Paraphrase is incorrectly assumed to be the most credible form of receipt that one has understood--or has been understood. Paraphrase is often accompanied by the phrase ``Do you mean ...?'', which shows the respondent to be overlooking the fact that a paraphrase is a transformation of the initial statement. Verbatim repeat is underestimated as a credible receipt. A respondent who checks by verbatim repeat gives a sign that this respondent considers the formulation to be of significance.

Paraphrase has other functions besides conveying a falsely reassuring ``I know what you mean''. It can function as correction or refusal. It plays a role in brainstorming, in the attempt to develop an answer to an unanswered question, where the aspect of transformation is precisely what is wanted.

To respond with a paraphrase is different from responding with an analogy, so long as analogy is understood as the attempt to point at a structure applied in two distinct systems. The colloquial threat to analogy is ``It's like ...''; contrary to this usage, response by analogy emphasizes the difference between the two systems.

Criticism, Dismissal, Correction

Dismissal need not result from malice; casual remarks and attempts to compliment easily exhibit the features and serve the function of an effective put-down. The aim of the dismissal--intended or not--is to banish a problem, issue, or offer from public discourse, and so deny them a social function.

``All student input needs to be appreciated and responded to: `Nice question', `Good point', `Thanks for the clarification'.'' (Thomas Benjamin, ``The Learning Process and Teaching'')

Hear, hear!---All input needs to be appreciated and responded to!
Or: On the contrary---All input needs to be appreciated and responded to.

Speech is irreversible: a word cannot be retracted, except precisely by saying one retracts it. To cross out is here to add: if I want to erase what I have just said, I cannot do it without showing the eraser itself (I must say: `or rather ...' `I expressed myself badly ...'); paradoxically it is ephemeral speech which is indelible, not monumental writing.
(Barthes, ``Writers, Intellectuals, Teachers'')

Dismissal wishes to act as such an eraser for the responded-to.

When a composer has the reputation of being a bad teacher and yet is known as someone from whom one can learn, the conflict in reputations could be due to a failure to distinguish between criticism and dismissal, but also to the appearance of criticisms among the dismissals.

The word `correction' conceals, under the one notion of static hierarchy, a variety of behaviors: correction according to the consistency toward which the student was aiming; correction according to a criterion not yet consulted by the student; correction according to a set of rules to which the student tried to conform; correction according to a set of rules to which the work generally conforms, unbeknownst to the student; `correction' according to rules which are appropriate neither to the student nor to the work.

Implicit invitation by the student affects the gesture of correction:

1. invitation to regard and admire;
2. invitation to check for self-consistency (immanent critique);
3. invitation to check for consistency with a set of rules;
4. invitation to brainstorm on continuation of work in progress;
5. invitation to discuss the desirability of the consequences of desired choices.

A teacher can offer alternatives to the invitation assumed by the student. Uninvited correction, when not itself an invitation, dismisses an offer.

Instruction and Orientation

Within the power of the respondent, i.e., among the choices open to the respondent is the choice to respond by instruction or by orientation. Instruction tells you explicitly what to do. Orientation makes a change in the environment according to which you tell yourself what to do. An instruction would be when I say, ``Please, turn up the heat''; you obey or don't. Orientation would be when I hunch my shoulders, rub my arms, breathe on my hands, and shiver, and you, detecting that the temperature of the room makes me uncomfortable and acting on your sense of hospitality, decide to turn up the heat.

I could instruct a person who wishes to write for the trumpet to avoid the low range, especially in muted passages, to be sparing of the high range, to make sure that high notes are prepared, to take advantage of the trumpet's agility, incisive attack, large dynamic range, etc. Or: I could orient a person who wishes to write for the trumpet to the phenomenon of the trumpet and trumpet players. I could invite a trumpet player to meet with us, try out a few exercises, show mutes. The person who wishes to write for the trumpet could be asked to watch the player's neck while high and low notes are attempted, to see what a pianissimo attack looks like, to sit in on a rehearsal and watch what the players do when they have to change mutes, etc.

To give instructions when an orientation would suffice, and to persist with orientation when instruction is needed, both are condescending.
(Humberto Maturana visiting Brün's seminar)

To show an alternative orients a respondent to choose.

To offer several instructions can function as orientation. (Alternative instructions, or a compound or constellation of instructions)

Gesture

Gestures of scolding,
warning,
holding
forth,
reminding,
teasing, indicting, bantering,
looking askance,
confiding,
confessing,
prescribing,
pleading,

Gesture: not to `do', but to `perform'. Sullivan's description of gesture as a hybrid medium wherein one medium borrows distinctions from another, could be applied to the performance of teaching.

To be able to imagine and perform, with attention to voice, vocabulary, and gesture, the most insidious of slanderers and flatterers.

If all teaching is also a performance (and not the other way around), then when does a performance teach? For a performance to succeed in entertaining is not sufficient--most successful entertainments confirm only the already believed, and stave off reflection. Neither will an unentertaining performance suffice. One requirement most likely is that the performance include an element of self-reference.

Gestures of being astonished,
calling a bluff,
conceding a point,
bragging, boasting,
burlesquing ...

Giving advice grates for want of variety of gesture.

To be able to imagine and perform, with attention to voice, vocabulary, and gesture, the most insidious of slanderers and flatterers could help to remove hope from its favored status as criterion for making decisions.

It is in the power of the respondent to disregard the gesture with which a remark is made, by taking it at its word--that is, responding to the sentence as though it were spoken within another gesture. In this way an attempt at dismissal by sarcasm, taken as a proposal, can become unexpectedly a contribution.

``Showing a painting of a white area [I said] `Master Kandinsky, I have finally succeeded in painting an absolute picture of absolutely nothing.' Kandinsky took my picture completely seriously. He set it up right in front of us and said: `The dimensions of the picture are right. You are aiming for earthliness. The earthly color is red. Why did you choose white?' I replied `because the white plane represents nothingness.' `Nothingness is a great ideal,' Kandinsky said. `God created the world from nothingness.' He took brush and paint, set down on the white plane a red, a yellow, and a blue spot and glazed on a bright green shadow by the side. Suddenly a picture was there, a proper picture, a magnificent picture.''
(A student of Kandinsky, quoted in Frank Whitford, Bauhaus, 98)

... disputing,
bemoaning,
mocking,
exhorting,
venturing a suggestion, harping on something,
applauding,
shutting up,
commiserating ...

Suggestion for a director--also appropriate for a teacher?--create a distinct style of address for each actor, for each student: speed, humor, level of friction, in-joke, goal, vocabulary, tones of voice, gestures.

The Performance of Being a Student

``Lessons, then, where advanced students of composition are concerned, should be in the nature of friendly discussions illustrated if necessary by master and pupil with relevant quotations from the works of composers of excellence of all periods, and the pupil should state clearly what his difficulties and problems are ... A pupil who puts his work in front of his master and then sits like an oyster, mum and dull, is really more of a cross than one who is too talkative, severe trial though the latter can be.''
(Jacob, The Composer and his Art, 6)

And if a pupil does not, or can not, or will not state clearly what the difficulties and problems are?

Five initial poses of a student meeting a teacher:

1. tolerant (knowing it all)
2. reveling in contrariness
3. unable to begin, not knowing how to choose, stuck
4. secure, but interested, that is, not completely secure
5. playing by the rules rather than playing along: obedient

Two contemporary performances of being a student: (1) the student knows it already, and therefore it is of little interest; (2) the student is not interested in it, and therefore knows it already. How to perform facing such a performance?

``In an open situation the teacher tries ... to deal with each situation as a communal problem.''
(Kohl, 16)

Question

Sometimes an offered question is sufficient impetus for those who have learned the question to supply the insights necessary to invent answers. Sometimes an offered question conveys the sufficient insight for those who know the question to invent answers.

If the teacher poses legitimate questions (that is, questions to which the answers are not known by the teacher), then the teacher and student are, or become--vis-a-vis the question--colleagues.

1. The teacher addresses problems of the student which the teacher has already mastered (`Illegitimate questions').
2. The teacher's mastery of approach emerges while offering the student a problem which the teacher has not mastered (`Legitimate questions'). In this instance the teacher shares power, but not directly with the student; rather indirectly through the problem.

Socrates' every response is a question. Most of the questions are placed as open moments within a chain of argumentation, wherein he seeks assent to those components of the argument which he thinks unlikely to be contested. Since the initial assertion of his conversation partner is contradicted by the culmination of conceded points, Socrates' process of questioning appears not to `make an argument of his own' but to dismantle the argument of his partner in conversation.

Socrates satirizes his conversation-partners' assumption of reductionist logic: that the whole argument (to which Socrates' addressees disagree) is the sum of its parts (to each of which his addressees almost cannot but agree). Since they agreed to the parts, they swallow the whole.

A question and the way it is asked lead a respondent by pointing at a range of answers it considers admissible.
The respondent need not remain in thrall to the question's range of admissible answers.

Assignment

ME ... You said you would want to find out a lot of different things about this student, where this person had been, what they were thinking of, and what they wanted to do. What would you do with that description of the student?

JG Make an assignment.

ME Hm.

SP Hm.

HB That's what it's for.

Josephus comes up with ideas for fulfillments of assignments not given by Aloysius; that is, both Aloysius and Josephus are busy generating assignments.
(Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum, 29ff, for example)

Formulate an assignment such that it creates a context in which a student wants you to teach. Let the assignment create the context.

Face to Face

A composer is most likely to consult another when feeling stuck on a problem, at an impasse (thus the disparagement of composition teaching as `therapy'). Since the compositional problem is concocted by the composer, an outsider might be puzzled that the composer doesn't decide to drop it and move to some other. The puzzled outsider would be missing several points: that a stuck moment might be a sign of potential breakthrough; that it is the difficulty of the posed problem that is seductive; that the posed problem is likely of interest for its links to a problem not posed by the composer; and that the impasse might derive from a lack of problem: the composer might be mistakenly inspecting the ideas that are there in the posed problem instead of looking for an additional idea which is not there.

Vocabulary

Artists use and hear jargon terms of which understanding is assumed precisely because the terms are jargon. Upon examination, often the assumption is seen to be unfounded, if not also the confidence in the usefulness of the terms.

Some terms which have acquired a precise technical meaning serve the development of thinking about composing (and thus also of composing) when these terms are temporarily uncoupled from their technical meaning.

In the performance of teaching, a decision is to be made regarding vocabulary: whether to renew the vocabulary of discourse frequently, rapidly changing the images referred to in discussing a problem or to introduce and explore a few terms so that a shared vocabulary can become the means for generating new ideas--from which a usage develops.

``After three or four years of working together, we have developed a shared vocabulary which allows explorations, conjectures, and formulations to be discussed on a high level. Then new people come in and don't know what we're talking about.''
(Gaburo in a conversation)

The generation of an enclave affords one the luxury of such problems.

Sharing Power

Those who contemplate pedagogy assume a dichotomy: either encouragement through `being nice', positive statements, rewards, etc., or encouragement through being `tough', enforcing discipline, administering punishment. If contemplation of pedagogy were coupled with critical observation of the (discouraging) social environment against which teaching labors, then both policies would be seen as standing among the generators of discouragement.

``One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one man's choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the man prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber's consciousness. Thus, the behavior of the oppressed is a prescribed behavior, following as it does the guidelines of the oppressor ... pedagogy of the oppressed, a pedagogy which must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether peoples or individuals) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity ... How can the oppressed, as divided, inauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation¿`
(Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 31)

``I learn by teaching.'' (Thomas Benjamin, On Teaching Composition) Lacking committed stress, this sentence would convey the unintended message that you (and everyone but I) don't learn by teaching. Use of the third-person I (Brün)--`I learns by teaching'--could ferret out an insight about learning: that everyone who says `I' learns by teaching, including students.

``In order to elicit the current self-description of a system I wish to understand, I have to grant it the power of the respondent.''
(Brün, My Words and Where I Want Them, 111)

The teacher is a respondent; the student is a respondent; the phenomenology of these two respondents depends, in part, on whether the teaching situation is treated as a one-way medium, a two-way medium, or a more-than-two-way medium.