When you learn music, just learn music

Continuing with one of my current obsessions, which is the teaching of improvisation and how that relates to meditation and other contemplative disciplines, here is a great quote from Ken Zuckerman, medieval lute and Indian sarod virtuoso who teaches medieval music and Indian music at the Schola Cantorum in Basel. In considering models for medieval improvisation, Zuckerman cites North Indian classical music as a model for “how an extensive unwritten repertoire can evolve.” That phrase and the following passage are quoted from Zuckerman’s article “Improvisation in medieval music” (full citation footnoted at the end of the post.) I can’t help but observe that one could substitute “Dharma” for “medieval music improvisation” as the subject being discussed here, and the same lesson would apply. In fact, Zuckerman quotes his Indian music teacher as saying “When you eat, you eat. When you sleep, you sleep. So – when you learn music, learn music! Why talk?” Sounds like Zen to me.

“…there is a general tendency for us in the western world to over-analyze and to attempt to understand aspects of music making with the intellect which must be first understood at other levels, such as the motor centers and emotions. It is a curious contradiction. On the one hand, we don’t seem to mind at all giving a child all the time he or she needs to learn to walk and run without any intellectual instructions, nor does the child ask for any. On the other hand, when it comes to a beginner in music, whatever his or her age, we insist on explaining many things which can only be understood and executed after much practice. Not only does this intellectual approach actually slow the more important process of intuitive and automatic learning, but it interferes with the students’ developing higher levels of listening and observation. Especially at more advanced levels of learning, it is precisely the moment of not understanding which should sharpen the students’ power of listening and observation – and not simply the impulse to formulate another question.” [italics mine]

Kenneth Zuckerman, “Improvisation in medieval music,” in Improvisation II. Internationale Tagung für Improvisation, edited by Walter Fähndrich (Lucerne: Amadeus, 1993),134-142.