During the summers, the Montgomery Philharmonic runs a free chamber music program for middle school and high school students: our Youth Leadership and Chamber Music Festival (YLCMF). A non-musician might very reasonably ask: What do chamber music and leadership skills have to do with one another?
As it turns out: A great deal. The skills it takes to play chamber music — playing in a small ensemble, such as a quartet, where there’s typically just one player to a part — are directly relevant to the capabilities needed to collaborate successfully in the modern academic and professional environments.
In YCLMF, we do assign multiple players to a part in order to reduce any anxiety that a student might have about doing things alone. But the core lessons of good chamber musicianship — and small-group collaboration more broadly — remain nevertheless.
A lot of the musical experiences that young people experience are fundamentally competitive. Kids worry about “chair tests” and how they rank against their peers; they often implicitly evaluate themselves against their peers even when an instructor isn’t explicitly ranking them. But chamber music is a collaborative conversation between equals. Everyone is important, and there’s nowhere to hide: Every player is responsible not only for themselves, but also for the harmonious union of the whole ensemble.
In chamber music, everyone is simultaneously a leader and a follower. The negotiation of that is sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit. We have to ask ourselves, “Whose part is the most important here? Who is next most important? Who do we always have to make sure we hear clearly?” That order of importance can change from phrase to phrase, and we both need to listen and to intellectualize what’s printed on the page. We also have to realize that who leads something is not necessarily the person with the most obviously prominent part.
And we won’t all agree! We can interpret music differently from each other, so we need to learn to advocate for our point of view, to decide when to compromise (recognizing that the “middle ground” might not actually be as musically desirable as one clear point of view further in one direction), and to decide when we want to stand our ground.
To work well in rehearsal, we need to establish psychological safety, so everyone feels comfortable bringing their ideas forward, acknowledging where they’re doing well and where they could be playing better, and making suggestions to other players. We have to be able to give each other diplomatic, constructive feedback so we can produce the best result as a group.
Anyone who has ever done a group project in an academic or business setting — especially one with a creative element — will recognize the value of these skills.
Plus, playing chamber music is a joy! Most such music was written to be played amidst friends or family who weren’t professional musicians — to make “house music” as an evening’s entertainment. It’s greatly rewarding as a player, with an intimate, intricate transparency that helps you to notice the clever detail, and the pleasure of really learning to play closely with other people. It’s a set of musical skills that also carry over well into solo and orchestral playing. Indeed, professional orchestras often require chamber music as part of an audition for section-leader positions. Send your student to us and we’ll make sure that they build the skills necessary to be an effective section leader in their school and youth orchestra!