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Of course it is possible to play music for years, with lessons, without ever learning to read. Your teacher plays everything for you and you copy it. You have a fast memory for such things and rely on it. After playing the piece a few weeks this way, and "passing" it in lessons, you never look at it again, so there is no way of testing whether it became a short memory thing.

A few days ago I wrote things pertaining to the actual teaching and remediation in such a situation. Part of it got quoted, out of context, turning more into a kind of general philosophy. The whole topic has gotten lost. There is no question that such difficulties can be created. The issue is how to solve them, and whether to solve them, given circumstances.

When you teach as many Transfer Wrecks as I have, you'll see how this is entirely possible.

However, there's another possibility: the student is defensive to the point of stubbornness. Obstinate stubbornness.

Any teen would be defensive when a glaring deficiency - after ten years of lessons - is pointed out to her, possibly for the first time. In fact, any adult would be.

She should never have got to this stage, and it's obvious her first teacher (- and subsequent teachers, if any) did not know how to teach and should never have been let loose on any student. When she was starting lessons at seven, she most certainly wasn't "defensive to the point of stubbornness" (as she had nothing to be defensive about).

Blaming a teenager for poor teaching which started ten years ago - and continued on - is like blaming a five-year-old for his inability to eat with chopsticks when he's never been taught how to use them.

I think for a composer-musician like George Winston, not knowing how to read music must be a special challenge. He's composed several hundred piano pieces. Can he possibly remember them all? If not. then when one of his compositions fades away, how can he bring it back? With Synthesia? LOL. (That's only partly a joke because I am thinking his only way of bringing a piece back is probably by listening to himself play it, or watching a video of himself playing it. Of course, this is all assuming he really doesn't read music and it's not a self-taught "persona" he adopted.)

Musical notation was invented in order to help young monks learn how to sing chants that they had never heard before. This was back in the year 1025. Before musical notation, the monks had to memorize all of the chants, a job that became more and more difficult over time. Before notation, they had neumes, little squiggles above the words that told them the contour of the melody but not the note values.

See:

https://www.wqxr.org/story/how-was-musical-notation-invented-brief-history/

Of course, today, we have the Youtube crowd who consider a "tutorial" to be a video of a pianist's hands playing the piece for which the tutorial was made, either with or without a Synthesia overlay. Perhaps Youtube tutorials are the new musical notation of this era?

Actually, no. I don't believe in broad-brushing teens, who are a much-maligned group in some circles. Some young people roll up their sleeves and work to remedy deficits when they realize that's what's needed.

I've got one such teenage student right now (and he's not the first) who never learned to read music during his six years of lessons before he came to me. Nonetheless, this young man has willingly set out to do what I ask of him to develop his reading ability. He's shown nothing close to defensiveness at any time since joining my studio last year.

There are teens out there with a good work ethic and great attitudes, even when they were the victims of poor teaching. Those kids are so cool, in my book. They rise above challenges. I've had the privilege of meeting some of them -- I hope you get to, too! -- and look forward to meeting more hardworking youth, whatever their backgrounds.

That is certainly the simplified version we tend to get told.

It's good to hear from someone who actually teaches and works with students, and goes by observation, rather than how things probably might be maybe and therefore they are.

Hmm, the article goes into more detail. What is the complex version?

I know there are teens who are that way inclined, but I'd say there is a huge difference between six years and ten years of poor teaching. I see - and help - a lot of young people in my work, and usually when they are aged over 16 (i.e. technically adults in most countries), they have a different attitude towards 'authority' and 'teachers'. Of course, it also depends on how aware they are of the problems they're encountering and how much they want the help - and how much they're willing to take several steps back in order to get it.

So, I'd say that the OP's student's attitude at 17 is pretty typical of someone who thought she'd reached a high level after ten years, only to find out that something very important had been missed. It doesn't surprise me that her younger sister is much more willing. How much time and effort is the elder one willing to devote to learning to read from scratch - bearing in mind she is behind her younger sibling (and she's lost the usual sibling rivalry), and likely soon moving on, or away from home? Time is not on her side.....

From what the OP has said, I think the best way forward is to teach her something different from her younger sister (i.e. play by ear), something in which she wouldn't be constantly reminded of her inadequacy in comparison, and can feel she is still progressing and making new inroads in her playing.

Sorry Larry, I meant to write more and also get back to you on this. I was quite under the weather, more than I realized, which also accounts for the grumpy terse tone.

I got the version that you told originally, and as a learner had also wanted to learn. It wasn't quite that way, and this miffed me. We get this simplified picture where a hero, Guido, rides along and does this magic with music. The real story is more interesting, and so is how music evolved. It also means something for how it is now.

So: Yes, the chants took a long time to learn. Various people invented devices to help; the C and F idea existed before Guido. The neumes, yes (as per the article). Above all, around Charlemagne, there was a goal of standardization, so that there would be one Christian world, one kingdom (also insert power, politics). The music was studied, patterns were found, and music that didn't fit was quietly changed or thrown out. It evolved, and Guido played a significant role. He happened at the right time - if not Guido, someone else experimenting in this area.

Mensuration: yes. Time before that was notated as rhythm patterns; "dee dada" might be shown through one symbol. Bar lines came later. You had "perfect" and "imperfect" modes - three, the trinity, being especially sacred so our 9/12 time (3X3) would have been especially perfect. This also suggests some things about "simple" and "compound time" - the music that is in triplets, or quarters and halves.

When you expanded from everyone singing the same thing, to ever-complex polyphony, everybody had to sing the right thing at the right time, so you had to divide up time. Also, written notation made it possible to create more complex music: you can't invent that all in your head and as a group. They went nuts with what they could do, if you follow the story, until someone said "whoah there".

These things "aren't important", these details. But as an overall view of music, I think maybe it is. We have not arrived to some perfect version of music in a linear fashion, and what exists now is ideal. Instead, people were experimenting with time, harmony, whatnot, and are still experimenting. When I started to study music history, I found this more fascinating, and with more potential about music and where it can go, warts and all (and that there are warts) - and I felt I had almost been cheated by the initial simple story of Guido.

In the Middle Ages, people would learn church hymns from memory many years before standard notation was invented.

Anybody who have experience with Suzuki music would know the students are supposed to learn all the song in Book 1 by imitation starting from "Twinkle", "Lightly Row", "Honey Bee", etc. Learning to read is not introduced until the students get into Book 2. There is a lot of imitating hand gestures and finger sequences. The first year is to develop a good ear. According to Shinichi Suzuki who founded the music program, we learn our mother-tongue by listening before reading & writing. Why should music be any different?

The issue comes after the second year when a student is not learning to read. There are all sorts of complicated pieces that we have to learn off sheet music. Otherwise it would be too tedious and time consuming to learn pieces by watching people's hand positions.

2 decades ago a violin teacher in NYC Roberta Guaspari made headlines with her fundraising campaign to save her violin program in public schools. Her students were taught to read as well as play by ear. She used Suzuki violin repertoire books. In all her concerts she required that the students play by ear without the paper copies. Shouldn't matter to the audience whether a pianist performed all the pieces from memory as long as the sound is good. Of course students need to be able to read at a basic level. It doesn't make sense if someone claims to be able to play Chopin but he/she can't play something basic like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" or "Lightly Row" off a piece of paper.

In my school days when I was playing violin, I relied on memory very much. In group performances I can take my eyes off once in a while and look at the conductor waving the beats. When it comes to playing piano, I relied on memory just as much, I can sight-read the easier pieces without a lot of sharps & flats. The end of the day it's good to have reading and listening skills. Once I was at a birthday party. 3 kids were sitting in front of a DP with a piece of paper that has 4 lines of music. They spent at least an hour trying to decipher the piece and none of them came close to getting the song. Some people are better at reading while others are good listeners. The worst case scenario is that someone is not good at either. Their ears are not well trained to put a melody together by listening and can't read very well.

Just on this part.

This was Mr. Suzuki's idea about how language is learned. He based his music system (violin) on how he imagined children learn their first language, mostly due to what society does - this is not necessarily how language is actually learned. As long as one is clear on this point.

I think of all the money the parents wasted on lessons for 10 years if the child can't read music. I agree, after 10 years you should be able to do something. My mom wanted to know what my lesson was for the week and she would listen to me as I practiced. The child could have a learning disability and that would be another issue that the parents should have discussed with the teacher.

Here we have claims the students were playing for many years and reached a level of being able to play 1 difficult piece (Chopin Minute Waltz) but not the easier pieces? The story isn't very convincing. I'd go to the former teacher (assuming to be a parent with kids interested in piano) and ask to come to a lesson to observe. If a child had taken to conservatory exams, sight-reading would have been included as a requirement for passing. Over the years people who took piano lessons would have a few repertoire books in their collection starting from a beginner's book (Book 1). Unless a student is learning on his/her own by watching video demos, ask the student to bring the books he/she used previously and just pick pieces at random to assess the playing ability.

My former piano / violin teachers would assign new pieces and ask me to work on them during the week. The only thing I had were pages of sheet music. Even the repetitive hand exercises were on paper. A teacher wouldn't normally play through a whole piece and allow a student to imitate by ear without reading a single note. The music teachers I have over the years would be able spot my problem of not being able to read early on. Even in Suzuki music, a student would be learning to read by Book 2.

The teacher stated (not claimed) that the student played the MW, but was unable to read the easier piece. There were also problems with the more advanced piece, when it was played. There is nothing implausible of being able to play something if for example it's been copied and memorized, but not being able to read if, for example, reading was never taught or learned.

Are there really classical teachers who would play a piece repeatedly for a student often enough that the student could learn the whole piece simply by observing and copying? My own teacher only ever demonstrates phrases or small sections that I might be struggling with, and not repeatedly enough that I could learn it if I hadn’t done so already.

Isn’t it more plausible that the student in question learned the piece by reading notation slowly enough to memorise it, but cannot read well enough to read at tempo, and has to play by rote?

I find that hard to believe. I think most lessons feature the student playing and the teacher observing. My teacher will play through something once but certainly not repeatedly such that I could memorize it without reading the music. My teacher will play a piece four hands with me but I have to read the music.

We tend to know only what we have experienced ourselves, and cannot imagine something that is different. We associate, with a subject such as piano, our own experiences. Those who have been taught well, or those who teach well, often cannot imagine poor teaching. That is, teachers who get transfer students will get an idea, from what the kids don't have at a given grade level & years of study. They may get clues - for example, finger numbers written in perpetually; a single piece studied over an entire year.

The important thing in a case like this is to find out what a student can and can't do, knows and doesn't know, and then figure out which things you will actually fix (given the age & point in life), and which you circumvent.

Btw, students can find videos of pieces like the Minute Waltz on the Internet. One of the teachers here discovered that one of her students had been doing that for three years, under the parent's guidance - I suppose wanting the child do produce nice playing in the next lesson - and thus couldn't read music as the teacher had supposed. The proper playing of the right notes were not a sign of proper reading. These things can happen, for different reasons.