A Cello Teacher's Companion Guide: The Cello and My Life

By Charles Sugden

This volume comes as a very welcome addition to the Cello Teacher’s library of resources.  Cello teachers and advanced students especially, but also mature beginner students, will find plenty to experiment with from these pages. Inspired to some degree by William Pleeth’s classic, ‘Cello’, Charles Sugden has handed o

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rev Charles Sugden
• Release date: May 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781916387300

Charles Sugden

Rev Charles Sugden, MA, ATCL, the son and grandson of headteachers, was educated at Bilton Grange and Radley College, where he obtained a Music Scholarship. At Magdalene College Cambridge he read History BA Honours before embarking on a PGCE at the same university. His first teaching post was at Denstone College in Staffordshire where he taught History in the classroom and flute to individual pupils. His musical experiences have been many, from youth orchestras to city orchestras, always undergirded by the experience of his father's example of enjoying chamber music in the family home. His flute teachers included David Butt (principal of the BBC Symphony Orchestra) and his cello teachers have included Joan Dickson and Pamela Hind O'Malley (the latter a pupil of Pablo Casals). Of his own teaching ability, two past cello pupils have written : "We got on very well and he took me right back to the beginning, playing simple pieces along with scales and arpeggios and many exercises in fingering and bowing to improve my technique. He encouraged me to join an orchestra which helped to boost my confidence. He was a stern teacher but always made the lessons fun. In the three years that he was teaching me I progressed from playing simple tunes to Bach and Beethoven. Many years later I am still playing in the orchestra and will always be grateful to Charles for getting me started again." Jenny Manley "Charles gave me a good start when I had lessons with him as a complete beginner (fairly late in life!) The technical side of cello playing was taught with thoroughness which led to the ability to make musical sounds. Encouragement to achieve went alongside patience and understanding." Alison Francis In 1992 Charles was ordained priest in the Church of England, and he has combined music and ministry in every post he has served in. For 17 years he has been honorary chaplain to the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Charles is married to Kath and has 2 children. His current post is Rector of Frenchay and Stapleton parish churches in Bristol Diocese.

Book preview

Introduction

I am a semi-pro. So at times in my life I have earned my keep teaching the cello and flute. At times I have been performing in concerts where I have been paid. But usually, my music making has not been attached to earning a living, and for this I am very grateful. My chief means of making ends meet during my working life, has been as a stipendiary minster in the Church of England. But as in so many walks of life, it is great to have a strong, passionately followed hobby. Among my chief hobbies is music-making. Although, unlike my other passions, such as reading, walking the dog, playing cricket and golf, music is running through me continuously. It is part of my living and breathing.

In this cello teachers’ companion guide I have deliberately inserted some biographical detail, to help spice up what would otherwise be rather an impersonal ‘method’ book. If you are aged 16+, and term yourself a learner as well as teacher, like me (and all cellists are learners if we are honest), then I hope that at least some part of this manual will be of help. I hope the experience will be stimulating. At times the text will read as though the cello teacher is being offered advice for their own playing. That is because this cello teacher (the author) was teaching the cello a long time before all of these observations were properly understood by him. Furthermore, he has many further observations yet to make, and would be glad if you, the reader, adding to his collection of useful tips, descriptions and exercises, if you feel led to be in touch.

I give tribute to all those teachers who have played their part in either persevering with me when I have done a minimum of practice, or coped with me when I have not been able to shake off a bad habit quickly.

I dedicate this book to my wife Kath, who, though not a cellist, is my partner in life and most regular partner in musical collaboration too. From her I have been drawn along and upward on an exciting musical learning curve. With her I have been witness to some of those most rewarding experiences of musical performance.

I hope as a bi-product of so much musical help from my late father, orchestras, ensembles and piano duos of which I have had the privilege to be part, that any aspiring students or teachers reading my book will similarly derive great thankfulness from their pursuit of the art of cello playing,

Note : In the text there will be many references to musical works. I suggest using IMSLP (International Music Score Library Project), and finding the cello part of the work referred to. This can be viewed on screen, understanding that you have taken every necessary step to avoid infringing copyright.)

1. The motivation to teach

- The motivation to teach    - a young person    -an adult.

Who’s the real teacher here?

What happens when my pupil starts to display traits different from my own?

-The person you are -attitudes toward gifting

-Cultivating healthy confidence and rigorous criticism. –bad days

I remember when I was first presented with a cello. I must have been about 12, and I was told by my father to pick up the cello from time to time and see whether I liked it.

I myself found this large piece of wood, stained and chipped in places, a dark beast. It was unwieldy and quite out of my range. My experience of musical instruments up to the age of ten had consisted of the upright piano – which I had dutifully sought to practise for the first 6 years from Reception class – and recorder and melodica. The melodica is a plastic mega-sized Christmas cracker item. You simply blow through the end, and then as you engage the ‘press-down’ keys, lo and behold, the different notes in the scale came out. Since my hands refused to go in two different directions when playing the piano, I knew that my brain was geared to a single line instrument. With both hands engaged on the melodica, yet producing a single scale, I was at last able to co-ordinate two hands to produce something musical.

It was then, at the age of 10 that my parents gave me another chance. I had ‘blown it’ with my piano teacher at school. After weeks of watching me grapple with a contrapuntal piece which went off the rails or ground to a halt, his practice of filing guitarist nails during the lesson had reached a state of perfection, that no further fine study on his part, could better. He asked me off hand, ‘Well what do you really think of me?’ Being the cheeky late headmaster’s grandson, I replied, ‘I think you’re potty!’ So ended an increasingly tiresome unmusical relationship, and my last piano lesson came as a relief to both of us, I imagine.

My new opportunity came with a Mr Tonks, who provided me with the mouthpiece of a flute and demonstrated how I was to achieve a steady sound by pursing my lips and blowing across the elliptical hole. I do believe that was the entire first term’s challenge, only fleetingly achieved towards the end of the term. How did we ever both survive? Aged 10 or 11, something else was happening to me though. A TV advert had shown Beethoven walking through beautiful woods as the first release in a series called ‘The Great Musicians’. This fantasy-wanderer combined music from the Pastoral Symphony, which swept me off my feet. I ran into the kitchen, saying to my mother, ’That’s what I’d like for Christmas!’ All I could think of was being caught up in that world of the great Beethoven, and striding out with the same music filling my heart.

Within a year, what actually came my way was the weekly Great Musicians booklet with a 10 inch record enclosed, each time collected from the newsagents. I possessed 52 of these specimens, always with Charles Groves and Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony as the one most played, and most conducted. My bedroom at home was now furnished with my very own portable stereo record deck and integrated speakers - like a little travelling case, where the turntable could be screwed down to the base when it travelled with us on holiday.

By and by, as the ‘Tune a Day’ for Flute, Book 1, yielded challenges for the uninitiated in rhythm and notation, another route to musical expression one afternoon ‘clicked’ into place. I had been for some time a reluctant member of the school chapel choir. My voice had always been like a secret part of me. While ‘Mary Poppins’ and the Sound of Music’ welled up inside me and in a private garden came through and up and out into the trees to join the birds in their song, this was for no other ears but nature and my own. However, in the music school one afternoon, I happened upon a school hymn book, with the melody line of the hymn clear as anything on the top line of the treble stave. Looking at the words, all I needed to know was what note to start on, and I was off! Suddenly I was putting expression into a tune which I knew and loved. Rhythms and intervals all fell into place, because my ear told my fingers where to go after a while. My eyes were now obeying my ear, and the little blobs and scratches in the key signature only confirmed what I already knew must be the case. A few weeks later, and the Great Musicians booklets were in turn sitting on my music stand. The editor had kindly thought to include each main theme of each work in a short sketch of notation. They were only a few bars long, but once you had got started… The Director of Music, who had been the unfortunate ex-piano teacher of this palpable musical failure, came in to declare that surely he had been hearing a recording. Was Grieg’s ‘Morning’ from Peer Gynt really coming from my very instrument? Over the coming days, there would of course resound the Pastoral Symphony, then the New World Symphony, then the violin concerti of Brahms and Mendelssohn…

As Grade III had been achieved from nowhere as it seemed, and now Grade 5 beckoned in my 12th year, I had discovered in the flute, that expression of my musical voice which up to that point had been too private and personal to reveal to anybody. And it was at this point, early in my instrumental journey, that I was presented with the dark beast. It came in two parts. One, the main piece with metal strings and a metal rod at the end – otherwise predominately black and cold to the touch. The other, unwieldy, impossible to handle, consisting of horse-hair strewn tightly along a span of lighter wood. The contact of one upon the other was deep, uncontrollable, out of my sphere. The tone was husky, the register far below that which I could ever