In the past I have taught at Cambridge, York University, the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music, the Guildhall School, Dartington Summer School, Tanglewood in the USA, Berlin and Stuttgart Hochschulen, and the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki.

Some of the work has been technical: scores, hands, eyes, rehearsal technique. But more usually I’ve concentrated on the historical, evidence-based, “Early Music” aspects.

In my retirement this has continued with regular Zoom sessions for institutions in London, Berlin, Weimar, Helsinki, and Indiana USA.

Typically I host a series of six 2-hour sessions on Baroque, Classical, Revolutionary, Early Romantic, and Late Romantic periods, starting each session with a statement, and continuing with plenty of student questions, either general, or about particular scores they want to discuss.

With each score we apply the “6S’s” matrix: Sources, Size, Seating, Sound, Speed, and Style, to find suitable, historically relevant performance parameters, rather than the sometimes irrelevant modern “traditions”.

One or two students in each group are a bit silent. Mystified? Unconvinced? But I have been pleased by the growing enthusiasm   for the historical approach from the greater number. They often express that it is now their duty, as musicians, to take the past seriously. And in any case there are usually some who are completely involved already. I encourage these to keep in touch with me on-line with future questions and discussions.

Receptivity to these ideas has changed quite a bit over the years.  At the Royal College understanding came along slowly. I well remember one session several years ago when I was set upon by a whole pack of  students with recent degrees from Cambridge. For them History was simply not on the menu. They took pity on me for suggesting we examine speed, sound, size, seating, and the rest They complained that Mozart, Beethoven, even Brahms, had been taken over by ‘specialists”. Only Mahler and modern music was free of these awful rules and ideologies.

After all, they said, I would never read Mahler’s letters to find out about his music, would I? I replied that of course I would, and indeed had read every one. “But no, they exclaimed, the only evidence is the score; anything else is irrelevant”. “Oh, except for recordings” they added. “Recordings must be regarded as a part of the evidence now.”

I was so shocked by this extraordinary statement that I soon drew the session to a close. Having refused all the mass of historical evidence available to them  they were going to rely on the subjective personal foibles of a handful their favourite wand-wavers. Extraordinary, and deeply depressing.

Perhaps it was rather good for me. I arrived as a rebel, but left as a dinosaur.  But meeting the Principal in the corridor, I told her the lads were unteachable.

Things are getting better there now I hope. They certainly are on Zoom.