"Within each individual young person you meet, you have the same fields to plow. The trick is just to wake thmem up, to sharpen their ears for what's already there in the music"
About this Quote
He frames teaching as agriculture and listening as retrieval, not installation. “The same fields to plow” is a deliberately anti-genius metaphor: every young person arrives with comparable raw terrain, not a pre-labeled destiny. That’s a quietly radical claim in classical music, a world addicted to early-anointed prodigies and pedigree. Fischer-Dieskau, the great lieder baritone who made interpretive intelligence feel like electricity, is arguing that artistry is less about pouring knowledge into a student than cultivating what’s already latent.
The subtext is a rebuke to authoritarian pedagogy. “The trick is just to wake them up” positions the teacher as an alarm clock, not a sculptor. It also slips in a warning: the music is already there, but it’s sleeping under habits, nerves, social performance, maybe even the institutional noise of conservatory training. His misspelled “thmem” almost reads like an accidental proof of the point - attention matters, and waking up is messy.
“Sharpen their ears” is the key phrase. Not “train their voices,” not “fix their technique,” but refine perception. That tracks with Fischer-Dieskau’s legacy: he was famous for textual precision, for turning a Lied into a psychological scene rather than a pretty melody. In that context, “music” isn’t just sound; it’s meaning, rhythm, language, breath, impulse. He’s describing an education of sensitivity, the kind that makes a student stop imitating interpretations and start hearing choices. The intent is practical and humane: teach listening deeply enough that the student’s own musicianship becomes unavoidable.
The subtext is a rebuke to authoritarian pedagogy. “The trick is just to wake them up” positions the teacher as an alarm clock, not a sculptor. It also slips in a warning: the music is already there, but it’s sleeping under habits, nerves, social performance, maybe even the institutional noise of conservatory training. His misspelled “thmem” almost reads like an accidental proof of the point - attention matters, and waking up is messy.
“Sharpen their ears” is the key phrase. Not “train their voices,” not “fix their technique,” but refine perception. That tracks with Fischer-Dieskau’s legacy: he was famous for textual precision, for turning a Lied into a psychological scene rather than a pretty melody. In that context, “music” isn’t just sound; it’s meaning, rhythm, language, breath, impulse. He’s describing an education of sensitivity, the kind that makes a student stop imitating interpretations and start hearing choices. The intent is practical and humane: teach listening deeply enough that the student’s own musicianship becomes unavoidable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Teaching |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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