Anna Marta Burve

Q: What are the most fulfilling and most challenging aspects of your job?

The school takes in children from ages 5 to 19 and I myself was a student there for 14 years. At the moment I teach students that are around 11-16 years old and my main specialty is music history, but I also teach music theory, form and the basics of musicology.

I'd say the most fulfilling aspect of the job is to see the young people grow up right in front of my eyes. I'm not just talking about physical maturity. The most wonderful moments are the ones where you see the young person develop emotionally and intellectually. As for a lot of schools in the world, we have 3 months of summer break. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the young people develop their understanding of culture and all the different processes of the world in general. The younger students of mine (usually ages 11-13) are very eager to learn new things and whenever we talk about music in the classroom, they mostly use the same words and ideas that I've taught them - there's not a lot of initiation from the students themselves. But when they come back for the next semester this young person suddenly has so many new ideas and observations about music! Those are the best moments and to realize that I play a small part in this development is the most wonderful feeling. I wouldn't change it for the world.

As for the most challenging aspect, I have to say it's definitely the magnitude of the programme. The range of music history topics we have to cover every year is so huge that it's impossible to fully delve into each one of them. Presenting music history facts is easy, but listening to the music itself and helping young people to develop their understanding of it is very, very hard. It takes time and, as a lot of people will probably relate to, there's never enough time.

In addition I feel that it's very important for every teacher to take into consideration the workload of the students (the studies at Emīls Dārziņš Secondary School of Music are very intense). I've heard about a lot of wonderful teachers who give everything to their students, but in wanting to teach them as much as possible, they sometimes forget that students have other subjects to learn and their instrument to practice. On top of that, and I couldn't stress this enough, it's important not to forget that students need free time. I really do believe they need to experience life to be able to come back to you and talk about music from inner and outer experience. So teaching is not just about giving assignments. It's about giving space when needed so the students can reach their full potential.

Q: Please describe some examples (things you have personally witnessed) that show how music can contribute to civic engagement among young people. For instance, how through music do young people become more involved in improving their community, or more socially engaged and politically active, or concerned about global challenges?

One example that comes distinctly to mind is when me and my students were learning about and analyzing Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. I remember when I learned about it in school, nothing other than music mattered. We didn't really pay attention to the meaning of the storyline, it never even occurred to us that the opera was centered around a very problematic main character. When we started discussing the plot with my students, so many of them caught on to Don Giovanni's unhealthy and destructive patterns of living life. My students were all talking about the feminism aspect of the opera, how many women he hurt, mistreated and how unfair and utterly disgusting his actions were. They also asked the question, what was the reason for his actions? Was it something that happened to him in childhood, a trauma of sorts? They were around 15 years old at that time. It pleasantly surprised me how observant they were. I don't think that people who are not conscious and well informed on social issues today would be able to talk about a classical opera this way. I feel this example greatly proves how interested young people are in today's challenges of the world. And I'm glad that a discussion of this magnitude was caused by a composition that was written in time when these issues weren't brought up, let alone thought about.

Q: Please describe examples from conversations among young people (things you have personally observed) that show some of the different ways they discuss music.

I've observed two types of discussion part-takers, generally. One of them is a person who's so immersed in their love for a specific composer in a specific time in their lives that it's really hard for them to look at other music questions differently (for example, a person believes Beethoven is the absolute best composer in the world. So all the other composers from the 19th and especially 20th and 21st centuries are negatively compared to him). The other type is the cognitive one, the one that is able to look at the same question from different angles, even if they themselves only believe in one answer (yes, they absolutely love Beethoven and believe he's a genius, but at the same time they realize that every new age of music comes with different musical language and it's no worse than the previous one).

I feel it's important to note that neither one of these types is better than the other one. The first type are bound to immerse themselves in music very deeply and so with every new discovery they tend to understand the processes of that one composer and the age he lived in better. They fangirl for years over specific composers, one at a time. When combined, this huge amount of information and comprehension helps them greatly in the long run, because they have a great foundation that they can spring off of in any kind of situation that has something to do with music. And it's actually very similar to the other, cognitive type. In the end, the result is alike, but the processes are different. And that is absolutely fantastic!

Q: Based on your experience, have discussions of music and society among young people generally changed across years due to different historical conditions? If so, how and why?

I'm fairly certain that a lot of people in these interviews will mention the USSR effect on Latvian people. I can't speak from experience, because I myself come from a generation that grew up in a free world. The conditions I grew up in are very similar to that of my students' rather than my colleagues, so I'd like to refrain from this question.

Q: Do you sense that a shared knowledge of traditional (folk) songs and dances is changing among young people, and if so, how and why?

In my experience, working with young people who are studying academic music, they're not that interested in it and I think it's simply because learning about folk music takes time, because it's oh so specific. Just like classical music. A lot of the time young people become immersed in it later in life when a sense of patriotism and a need of understanding their own heritage comes into play.

Q: What is the most interesting story you can share about how music impacts young people?

I really want to talk about how important it is the way that music is taught in schools. It's no secret that a lot of the time the teacher is the one that opens the doors to new and exciting music that might mean the world to the young person. But if the way the teacher opens that door is uninspiring, even the most amazing piece of music might not get a single reaction from the young person, because they simply don't relate to it or understand it. I think that this combined with music itself can impact young people greatly. There have been times when I see a young person sitting in class or walking around the school and they look completely lost. Nothing about them makes you believe they want to be here. But with the right attitude and music the young person can find their purpose in life (and most of the time they do). These are the moments that I personally cherish the most.

Q: In what ways do you see social media impacting how young people use and communicate about music?

I think social media humanizes music, especially classical music and that is a very important aspect. A relief of sorts takes over me whenever I see a Facebook page that's called Art Music Memes For Wagner Hating Teens or a meme in which a photograph of screaming fans in an arena is photoshopped to show posters like I love Xenakis, IX♥, etc. It might feel absurd at first, because people from a very young age have been taught to bow down to every single academic composer, because they are viewed as a God. When we view something as God-like it automatically becomes unrelatable, untouchable. How can we ask young people to be excited about classical music if it comes from a different time, a time that's completely foreign to them? That's why it's important to take these historical artifacts and adapt them to today's way of thinking and social media does it brilliantly.

Another aspect is that through social media young people can find out about so many different kinds of music that other people around them might not even be aware of. So social media in and of itself is a great aid to education.

I haven't observed that the young people I work with are very active in communicating about music on social media, but they definitely gain a great knowledge from it.

Q: What kinds of discussions have you witnessed stimulated through instrumental music? Can you imagine some new ways this could be achieved?

All kinds, from main questions being “what is the meaning behind this?” to “how does this correlate with the political situation today?”. Young people are very perceptive, they see the world differently, they see it with more color, their minds are broader. Music without text doesn't stop them, it only encourages them.

Q: What kind of new methods in work with young people would be helpful in your work? What should be the purpose of these methods?

An idea I've always had is that the perfect way of learning about music would be by going to concerts (as well as other culture-related performances) together with the students, giving them some questions to think about beforehand and discussing those questions after the concert as well as sharing all the thoughts and feelings all of us had during that concert. A round table discussion of sorts. It's possible to do that, but it's impossible to do that regularly within the school system as it is at the moment.

Another greatly appreciated method would be an interactive Latvian website that has all sorts of facts, assignments, games etc. for classical music history.

July 2021