For me, art is a powerful teacher, and teaching is a delicate art.

Art teaches when it has something to say, or reveals new ways to see, hear, think, or feel. However, instruction without a degree of sensitivity to the audience can leave them feeling cold, or even work against the artist’s message. Great artists, like great teachers, show respect for their audience as free-thinking individuals by leaving them the space to contemplate the themes and arrive at their own conclusions, rather than imposing a viewpoint upon them.

Artists also take pains to perfect their style, creating something beautiful and alluring in service to both their audience and their message. Humanists such as Petrarch remind us that beauty is no mere ornament, but something ennobling and transcendental that speaks to the soul and draws us toward truth and virtue. So, by creating work that is beautiful, artists entice us to stay long enough to experience what they have to offer.

Or, as Horace advised in the Ars Poetica:

“He who joins the instructive with the agreeable, carries off every vote, by delighting and at the same time admonishing the reader.”

The art of teaching is, in part, the ability to make the hardships of learning both enjoyable and rewarding. At times this calls for bringing elements of play and humour into our lessons. At other times, we must break difficult truths to students, perhaps to reveal some issue before helping to resolve it — which calls for subtlety and a delicate touch.

Erasmus also advocated this approach in his Letter to Christian Northoff (1497):

“A constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford pleasure to the participant.”

This approach, I believe, is essential in the study of music, where a spirit of play and a desire to improve must be carefully balanced with one another. Otherwise, how can an audience take delight in our work if we, as musicians and artists, have not experienced the same delight in learning our craft? Or how can the audience experience what the work has to offer if the artist lacks the skill and craftsmanship to communicate its ideas with sufficient clarity?

Beyond this, I believe my aim as a teacher is not only to impart the art of learning, but also to share my lifelong love of it — and I hope my students may find a similar joy in their studies and in their approach to life.