Baroque Adventures

I arrived yesterday at Oberlin, where I will be for the next two weeks for the Baroque Performance Institute. Besides Carl Smith's "Historical Traditions in Performance Practice and Composition," which was a fantastic class I took last fall (playing in class on modern oboe), I have absolutely no experience in Historically Informed Performance. Oh, and that paper I wrote for Lowe, but I got an A- on that. I'm still a little bitter. :P

It sure feels right now as if I am the only person here with NO experience. Of course, I think a lot of people only have minimal background, but still - let's just say the total notes I had ever played on a Baroque oboe before today was approximately 3. And there's a huge group of people here who have been doing it for decades and are totally involved. So the bad news is, I know nothing. But the good news is, I know nothing!

That starting from scratch feeling is so different. After a certain age, we don't start from scratch anymore; sure, I'll learn a new sonata or a nifty beveling knife technique for reed making, but I don't learn through the child's perspective anymore. Not like learning how to talk or learning how to walk. And of course, I'm not starting from scratch with Baroque oboe, either. About half the fingerings are the same as the modern oboe, I know how to read music, I know how to make modern oboe reeds. But Baroque oboe is an entirely different animal than modern oboe. Additionally, I'll be taking beginning viol and Baroque dance classes. Particularly with the viol, these are things that are way far out of my comfort zone. And I love it!

I'm very interested in how exactly people - and me, in particular - handle such a 180 degree turn, especially in a situation such as this where I will be totally immersed in a new skill set. I don't plan on playing my modern oboe at all for two weeks. It's mind boggling. So I decided to keep a blog where I will make observations about how I learn, what obstacles I face, and how I overcome them. I hope to understand better how adults might regain that magical easy feeling of creativity and learning that comes with childhood. I think of this as a situation where I can clearly observe the learning phenomenon, easier to be cognizant of in this immersion than in the more general and subtle learning of the every day, and even college. But I'd like to apply my discoveries to my every day learning, and to my teaching, when that happens some day. I also hope to explore how my training in the Ploger method works with learning new skills on my own - there will be a lot of that spattered throughout, but I won't get too technical.

So, I plan on updating at least once a day. The posts will include an outline of my activities for the day, and an introspective analysis of my mental states and learning processes. I'll try to keep it interesting, just in case anyone else wants to read (my mom probably will, at least).