Authors: Marienne Uszler, Stewart Gordon, and Scott McBride Smith

Publisher: Schirmer Books, 2000.

The Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher is a comprehensive textbook and reference for keyboard teachers that works well as an undergraduate-level textbook for pedagogy classes. It is also an excellent resource for new or experienced teachers who want to have a ready source of information about a broad range of pedagogy-related topics.

Organization

The book is organized into three broad categories that focus on the student, the teacher, and a historical overview of pedagogy and methods. These categories are broken down further into six main parts, with several chapters in each part.

The Beginning Student includes chapters on early-childhood, elementary, and adult students.

The Intermediate Student includes chapters on teaching methodology, repertoire, technique & musicianship, and the transfer student.

The Advanced Student includes chapters on teaching methodology, repertoire, and technique & practicing.

The Professional Keyboard Teacher includes chapters on career choices, business, independent teaching, and technology.

The Well-Informed Keyboard Teacher includes chapters on learning theories, and putting theory into practice.

Historical Overview of Keyboard Pedagogy includes chapters covering keyboard teaching from Diruta (late 16th century) to present day methods and teachers.

Approach

The approach taken by the authors is eclectic, broad, and comprehensive.

The orientation seems to be toward the independent, private teacher, though most information is broad enough to apply to either private or group instruction.

Each author focuses on different aspects of piano teaching. Marienne Uszler covers the beginning student and learning theories; Scott McBride Smith covers intermediate and advanced students, and the business aspects of teaching; Stewart Gordon covers the historical aspects of teaching. Elyse Mach and Rena Upitis make additional contributions to the book.

The book's strength lies in the breadth and depth of coverage, from summaries of early childhood musical training, to technology and method book reviews, to reviews of books, videotapes, and software related to keyboard teaching.

Layout

This second edition of the Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher is very nicely laid out. Generous use of sidebars, charts, and illustrations make the text and layout attractive and easy to read. An excellent new feature is the use of "Stop and Think" sidebars that encourage the reader to apply material to real-life situations through questions and suggested projects.

Strengths

While this is an excellent resource in many areas, the following features stand out in my mind as being the most valuable:

Marienne Uszler's overview of beginning students and their unique characteristics is outstanding. The explanations of various approaches to teaching reading, rhythm, technique, and musicianship, with charts showing strengths and weaknesses of each approach, is very helpful. The reviews of method books and the check list for evaluating method books are very detailed and insightful, showing differences in approach without being judgmental.

Scott McBride Smith's introduction to the intermediate student is also a valuable part of the book. His reviews of intermediate repertoire (including concertos), technique, and musicianship materials contains valuable information that many teachers will find very practical and useful in their teaching.

Stewart Gordon's historical overview provides a panoramic view of all the complex strands of keyboard teaching without getting bogged down in too much detail. Particularly enlightening is the chapter on Ortmann and Schultz. The explanation of C. P. E. Bach's ideas and summary of his Essay... provide just enough information to encourage further study of that important work. The history is not just biographical; important ideas and concepts are explained in an easy-to-read, concise manner which convey sometimes complicated thoughts in a very clear style. Studying these chapters results in a new appreciation and understanding of the piano teacher's heritage.

Minor Quibbles

Two observations:

1. A nice feature would be to place the excellent reviews of methods, software, books, and videos in an appendix (or appendices) in the back of the book, where they can be found easily and in one place. While it seems logical to place them within or at the end of the relevant chapters, they become scattered throughout the book, and someone searching for a review of a particular item has to search through the relevant chapters to get to them.

2. Some of the reviews of books in the technology chapter seem to be more related to learning theory than technology. Again, the sprawling nature of the reviews can be a little confusing, especially for a casual browser.

Conclusion

I highly recommend The Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher to new and experienced teachers alike. It is a very useful and comprehensive resource.

The Well-Tempered Keyboard Teacher is available from amazon.com.