I’ve known Matthew for several years now, at the secondary school where I teach cello and piano (name changed here); when Matthew entered Year 7 he was a talented and compliant child, happy to follow his music teachers’ advice and follow in the footsteps of his parents, who were in the classical music business themselves. By Year 9, however, Matthew’s interest seriously began to wane; he gave up instrumental tuition altogether, and, a year on, has formed a band with his mates; they’re modelling themselves on Coldplay, apparently. Matthew has also taken up rugby – and no doubt the incentive for both activities are to gain popularity – especially with the opposite sex.  

Matthew’s progression through secondary school has not been unusual; getting teenagers to persevere with learning a stringed instrument is a major problem. Is learning the violin or cello ‘cool’? Most peripatetic teachers would say, sadly not. Unlike many bands’ reputations it isn’t ‘edgy’, ‘subversive’, or ‘rebellious’ enough, they kind of stuff that gives teenagers kicks. Is it a way of making friends? Well, there are youth orchestras, but again, many would probably say that learning an instrument is all too often a solitary experience. Does it encourage direct imitation of existing figures in the performance arena? Not really, only an obedience to an inculcated model of ‘correct’ playing.

Asked what is the point in learning a classical instrument, most people would probably give answers like ‘to play great music well’, ‘to achieve technical mastery’, ‘to learn self-discipline’, ‘to achieve command over instrument and body’. Concert reviews regularly commend ‘polished’, ‘refined’, ‘tasteful’, ‘elegant’, or ‘stylish’ performances. These are laudable traits, but if we look at how string players have presented themselves in Western culture they are not necessarily the qualities that have attracted the greatest amount of interest. The reason why Jacqueline du Pre caused such a sensation in the sixties was because she was a woman who dared to play in a ‘masculine’ way, and the critics lost their critical faculties when she came stomping on stage in those leather boots, thrusting her spike into the stage floor. Carl Flesch is known to many string players as that sadist who wrote books on scales practice, but in his memoirs he praised Fritz Kreisler’s ‘sinfully seductive’ playing of the 1890s for its ‘greatness and originality’. There are far racier testimonies, which I won’t go into here, but suffice it to say that subversion, controversy, shaking up the status quo, qualities normally preserved for the jazz, rock and pop genres, have also propelled and enlivened classical performance throughout the twentieth century; the spectre of the bedevilled violinist dies hard.

There are certainly parallels between music making and solving a complex mathematical problem, or perfecting one’s tennis serve, and the desire for organisation, discipline and perseverance is a fundamental human trait. In classical performance pedagogy, what we need to be aware of, however, is thwarting the element of imagination, the thrilling uncertainty and the messiness of creativity, the shock of the new, the refreshing, unexpected musical act. There will always be the temptation to denounce these qualities, to condemn them to the realms of X-Factor series, while preserving the high church of classical music – but we need to empower students of the violin and cello (and any instrument for that matter)– expose them to recordings and YouTube clips of exciting and colourful performers (I was always taught that copying other performers was amateur). While providing them with clear advice and goals, we should let them know that they are in the driving seat – that they have a say in the meaning of their music, and who gets to hear it, and we should encourage them to develop their own musical ethos, and form innovative collaborations, perhaps with public speakers, installation artists or documentary makers -  rather than maintain a stranglehold over them with grade exam expectations and the like.

So yes, keep the asceticism, we certainly need it in our crazed society – but let’s be open to the possibility for change - the power of shifting role models, attractive self-constructs, social movements and political events to motivate people, not least students of the classical tradition.