An Interview With Louise Goss
Craig Sale is Director of the Preparatory and Community Piano Program at Concordia University/Chicago in River Forest, IL, where he also teaches courses in piano pedagogy. He holds degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as a Professional Teaching Certificate from The New School for Music Study where he received his pedagogical training from Frances Clark.
Louise Goss is a living legend in the field of piano pedagogy. The team of Frances Clark and Louise Goss founded The New School for Music Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and revolutionized the world of piano teaching with countless workshops and seminars dedicated to excellence in pedagogy. Furthermore, Louise worked as an editor of every publication of the groundbreaking Frances Clark Library for Piano Students. Celebrating its fiftieth anniversary in 2010, The New School has directly trained and influenced the lives of hundreds of teachers, myself included.
I feel fortunate that Louise has served many roles in my life; she has been my teacher, mentor, editor, colleague, administrator, and friend. I hope this interview will illuminate the amazing scope of Louise’s talents and experiences. Not only is she a living link to our pedagogical past, she remains one of our preeminent living pedagogues.
Born in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on May 21, 1926, Louise was the second of two children born to Lindsey and Agnes Goss. Both of Louise’s parents were intensely interested in education. Her father took over the family furniture business after his own father’s early death, not only supporting his mother and six siblings, but making sure that any of his siblings who wanted to attend college was able to do so. He was finally able to put himself through college, and at age 29 he graduated from Kalamazoo College.
Louise’s mother served as Dean of Women and Professor of German at Kalamazoo College. After her children were born, she left the college and became a homemaker, Sunday school teacher, and civic leader. In addition, she was a founder of the Kalamazoo Fine Arts Club, which provided women with an opportunity to research and present papers on many aspects of the arts.
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Excerpts From The Interview
It seems that education was valued highly in your home.
Yes. Education and the church were the areas of greatest interest and concern to my parents in raising their children. It was taken for granted that we would get A's– it wasn't discussed, just expected. My sister was a more dutiful scholar than I, but I had a wider diversity of interests. She left a record that was hard to duplicate, and I think I always fell a little short of our teachers' expectations.
Was it a musical family?
Yes, in interest, but not in skill or training. Both Mother and Dad had lovely singing voices, and we sang constantly as a family. Both parents sang in church and college choirs, and we always had season tickets to the local orchestra and took in every musical program that came our way.
What musical instruction did you receive as a child?
When I was 7 and my sister 9, we were enrolled jointly as students of a young teacher who, to our good fortune, had had some pedagogy training and used the Robyn materials in his teaching. This should have been a good first year for us, but neither of us remembers it with any fondness. Our teacher was a little pedantic and a bit delicate. At the end of the year, he moved away, so who knows what might have become of that introduction to piano study.
After that, my sister stopped taking lessons, but I continued to study with an assortment of mother's church friends, each worse qualified than the one before. I have no idea why I kept on except that I felt compelled to. Without any real training, by the time I reached middle school I was the accompanist of choice for soloists and choirs.
In fourth grade, the band director paid a visit to our class and showed us the various instruments we might study if we wished. I selected the clarinet and here at last I got serious. I loved the clarinet, I loved both band and orchestra, and I practiced diligently. As a result, I made progress, eventually ending up in first chair of both band and orchestra. By high school I was viewed as a "talent," and I was honored to be chosen as student director of both organizations.
In middle school I discovered singing. I had a trainable mezzo-soprano voice, and began to be used as a soloist. In high school I studied voice privately with an elegant, sophisticated musical matron who really knew how to teach and showed great interest in my progress and prospects. She was as wise as she was wealthy, and she gave me instruction not only in music but also in the ways of the world.
I believe you had several other musical opportunities as you were growing up that served you well in later years.
My high school years basically paralleled the years of the Second World War. As a result of the "brain drain" during the war, I had some extraordinary experiences I couldn't have had any other way.
The music critic of the Kalamazoo Gazette was drafted while I was a freshman, and somehow the editor of the paper learned that I had quite a lot of writing experience. He invited me to become the new music critic for the Gazette, and throughout my high school and college years I reviewed everything from the Kalamazoo Mother Singers to Dorothy Manor. I believe my pay was about $8 a review, but the real reward was a big collection of reviews with my byline.
Also during high school, and again because of the war, the music department of the public schools found themselves without a director for five junior high orchestras. I was excused from morning classes in my senior year and rode around town on my bicycle, directing orchestras in our five junior high schools. It goes without saying that I had no idea what I was doing, but somehow I managed to keep discipline, polish some repertoire, and present spring recitals. I'm only glad I can't hear them now!
With these experiences, you must have realized that your life would be centered on music.
Yes. From middle school on, I believe that I knew my life and work would be in music. From high school on, I assumed I would be a singer and teacher of singing. And this is how I met Frances Clark. My musical mentors advised me as I was entering college that to be a singer and teacher of singing, I needed to be a better pianist. They shared the exciting news that Frances Clark was coming back to Kalamazoo College (her alma mater), and that they would intercede with her to take me as her student.
So, you enrolled with Frances Clark in order to improve your piano skills as a singer. But you ended up discovering a new professional calling. What was it about your study with her that caused such a change?
I had had some very good teaching to that point, but I had never experienced anything like this. Since teaching was what I planned to do, it just seemed natural to jump on the bandwagon and go! As part of our sophomore pedagogy course, we had a good many opportunities to watch Frances teach–beginning classes and lessons, intermediate lessons, repertoire classes, adults, the works. Her teaching was a revelation: more organized than any I had ever seen, every lesson meticulously prepared, inspiring, firm, fun, relentless.
It was eye-opening to see the students' response to all these qualities–they were excited, they were uninhibited, and they threw themselves into the lessons with amazing energy, determination, and joy. I saw at last what music really could be, and I longed to make it beautifully.
In your opinion, are good teachers born or made?
I think that great teachers are almost always born. But new or inexperienced teachers can be taught to become excellent ones if their training includes:
- Detailed lesson planning, so that each lesson grows out of the one before and prepares for the ones to come. The lesson must not only be planned but thoroughly practiced, so that not a minute of precious lesson time is wasted.
- Thorough knowledge of the repertoire. This includes being able to play the piece so beautifully and convincingly that the student is immediately excited or captivated by it. It also means being able to present it to students efficiently and effectively.
- Having a comprehensive curriculum of skills and drills for every level so that each lesson contains work on every aspect of musicianship.
- Beyond musicianship itself, I believe that the most important skill the successful teacher needs is communication. Do we form a respectful yet playful relationship with them? Is there a lot of laughter in our lessons? Do we show interest in their life outside of music? Do we use lots of questions in our teaching, being careful to ask questions they can answer? In short, will our students remember us ten years from now as a wise, compassionate, affectionate, skillful teacher who made music and piano lessons appealing, alluring, lively, and fun?
In the last decade, your work has focused on The Frances Clark Center for Keyboard Pedagogy. What is the mission of the Center and what is your role?
Frances Clark believed passionately in the transformative power of music in the life of every person–not just the young, not just the gifted. What set her apart from her predecessors was her recognition that the quality of musical experience is directly related to the teachinglearning experience. Thus she placed singular importance on the preparation of teachers.
The mission of the Center is to extend the influence of this philosophy by conducting research, developing and codifying successful methodologies, and disseminating its work through publications, seminars, and conferences specifically focused on improving the quality of teaching music at the keyboard.
My role is to chair the Board of Trustees and to work on the development of the broadest of our goals, materials and projects. And, of course, try to raise money.
What are your thoughts on the quality of teaching today? Has it improved?
Of course not all teaching has improved. There are still pockets of mediocrity all across the country. But in general, I think the quality of keyboard teaching has improved greatly over the years, and that it has carried upward with it the quality of music making for a large majority of students.
What challenges still face us? What do we have yet to learn?
I think perhaps the primary challenge that faces us is to help educational and governmental agencies see and accept the overriding importance of the arts to a balanced educational curriculum. Within the schools of the arts it is increasingly important to try to emphasize the teaching- learning process as much as performance. With such a frenzy of excitement over "new" instruments, media, styles, and compositional techniques, it is important to stay open to the new without ever losing our need for the "old" or our respect, honor, and dependence on the greatness that has preceded our own time.
Finally, I think we have yet to learn more fully that:
- only when both teacher and student are learning does real growth take place.
- for great art to survive, we must remember that in beauty is the salvation of the world.
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