Brain training

By Peter Somerford

Learning an instrument can be beneficial for students at all levels

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Much has been written about how learning an instrument such as the violin can benefit children in areas such as mathematical ability, literacy, memory and spatial reasoning. But what about their mental health? In the wake of a major mental health awareness campaign, launched by Public Health England in the same week as World Mental Health Day, it is a good moment to consider how the potential mental health benefits of learning an instrument can add to the powerful arguments for making musical training more widely available for children.

A scientific basis for the idea that instrument learning might help children control their emotions and lessen their anxiety was evidenced in a 2014 study by a team at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine. In what was billed at the time as ‘the largest investigation of the association between playing a musical instrument and brain development’, the team of researchers studied brain scans of 232 healthy children aged between 6 and 18. As children age, the outer layer of the brain – the cortex – thickens, and the researchers wanted to see if music training correlated with the rate of cortical thickness development in specific areas of the brain. They were not surprised to find that playing a musical instrument affects the motor areas of the brain, but they found that music training was also associated with cortical thickness in ‘brain areas that play a critical role in inhibitory control, as well as aspects of emotion processing’.

As for practical evidence of the benefits of music training for young people’s mental health, string teachers point to the experience of seeing how learning an instrument can build resilience, impulse control and self-discipline in children and increase their self-esteem and confidence; how regular lessons and practising can provide stability and structure; how music can be a refuge for children who are experiencing a mental health issue; and how orchestras and ensembles give students the opportunity to make social connections. But there is also acknowledgement of the complexity of mental health, and external factors such as a child’s environment, parents and peers. Teachers recognise that studying a stringed instrument to a high level can also bring its own pressures, and that this is an area that requires sensitive handling.

Violin teacher Deborah Harris, who founded and heads the North London Conservatoire, a Colourstrings programme with around 1,200 students, says that music training can be a refuge and a centring or stabilising activity for children who are experiencing mental health issues or personal trauma. ‘Some of the children who have had mental health problems use music as a refuge – from other people, or even from their own negative thoughts. Some children might be too anxious to go to any other group at school or outside school, but are happy to come to lessons and orchestra. Music can also provide enormous stability to children who are experiencing problems at home, for example a divorce, or the illness or death of a parent.’

Violinist and teacher David Scott Binanay, who is based in Durham, NC, US, founded an organisation called Music Over Mind which helps people with mental health and other health problems experience live music performance as therapy. Binanay has had his own mental health challenges, associated with the trauma of having four open-heart surgeries, and credits violin playing and songwriting with helping his recoveries. ‘When I had a mental health episode, the pathways in my brain were severed,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t speak or communicate normally. But playing music creates new pathways and thought patterns, and I learnt to speak again through my violin and my music. I found that as I began to play, the anxiety and fear I had would dissipate.’

With string players at a physical advantage over other instrumentalists in being able to start their training at an early age, there is arguably more time for them to build resilience and self-discipline, and for them to enjoy the social benefits of ensemble and group playing. But can playing an instrument also help teenagers cope with the pressures of academic exams and the unrealistic expectations often associated with social media exposure? Harris says that music can be especially useful in helping to address the feeling that you have to be perfect in schoolwork and everything you do: ‘It’s impossible to be perfect at an instrument all the time, if ever. So playing an instrument is a good way of establishing the idea that mistakes are OK, and that’s how we learn. You build resilience in children by allowing them to make mistakes, but then you help them become more resilient by showing them how to solve those mistakes.’

Violinist and teacher Alex Laing, who is a former professor at the Royal College of Music in Manchester and is now artistic director at the King’s High School in Warwick, warns that ‘studying a stringed instrument can add to the pressure on children, unless it’s handled carefully by a very good teacher’. He explains: ‘Many students, under the pressure of achieving excellent exam results, are conditioned to getting the correct answers to everything, and that’s the complete opposite to what a healthy musical education should be about. We should be developing a culture where students are using their music and instruments in a therapeutic way, rather than constantly worrying about whether the notes are right or wrong.’

Harris sees student orchestras and ensembles as not only an environment where focus is deflected from the individual to the collective endeavour of a team, but also as a place where children can release tension. ‘Social media pressures have encouraged the projection of another self, instead of the inside self,’ she says. ‘I see young teenagers come into orchestra practice still very much in their school personas, wanting to project a strong, even belligerent, image. But within 10 or 15 minutes of playing, all of that falls away. Music lets them release a lot of tension and anger.’

NEWS IN BRIEF

Lisa-Marie Mazzucco

Renaud Capucon raises €100,000 for Notre-Damebit.ly/32P27vC

Violinist Renaud Capucon raised more than €100,000 towards the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris, during a tour of six French cathedrals in September. He performed the string trio version of the Goldberg Variations alongside colleagues including violists Gerard Causse and Adrien La Marca. A portion of the money raised also went towards the maintenance funds of each host cathedral: Chartres, Reims, Lyon, Amiens and Bordeaux, plus the church of Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris.

Paris street inaugurated as Promenade Yehudi Menuhinbit.ly/31CXinY

A street in Paris has been inaugurated as the Promenade Yehudi Menuhin, in honour of the legendary violinist. The inauguration took place on 1 October at the Place de Fontenoy in front of the Paris headquarters of Unesco, overseen by Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo. The date marked the 44th anniversary of International Music Day, first held on 1 October 1975 and instituted by Menuhin during his tenure as president of the International Music Council. The Promenade Yehudi Menuhin runs parallel to the Avenue de Lowendal from the Place de Fontenoy to the Avenue de Suffren. Shanghai Quartet appointed to Tianjin Juilliard Schoolbit.ly/2BC1Cte

The members of the Shanghai Quartet have been appointed as resident faculty at the Tianjin Juilliard School – the New York institution’s new Chinese enterprise – effective from autumn 2020. The players ( left ) will coach chamber music students and give individual lessons to graduate students in Tianjin, as well as perform with students majoring in chamber music and other resident faculty members from the school.

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Obituaries

RENATO SCROLLAVEZZA

Renato Scrollavezza, who died aged 92 on 14 October, was one of the leading figures of Italian violin making in the 20th century.

He was born in 1927 to a family of farmhands and grew up in Noceto near Parma. The rural community was plunged into poverty and famine during World War II and he recalled that when he presented himself for conscription at the age of 18, he weighed 110 pounds and had lost all his teeth.

He had apprenticed as a furniture maker and continued the trade following the end of the war, as well as experimenting with making musical instruments.

In 1950 he applied to the Cremona International Violin Making School with a self-made violin and was admitted.

He studied in Cremona for four years and on graduation came second in the city’s National Violin Making Competition. This early recognition and a succession of national and international prizes throughout the late 1950s and 60s guaranteed Scrollavezza a steady income, and also caught the attention of the head of the Arrigo Boito Conservatorio di Musica in Parma.

In 1975 Scrollavezza was invited to form a lutherie school as part of the music college, where he taught from 1975 to 2014, and which still operates today following a move to the Castello della Musica in Noceto.

‘Once I began to teach, a whole new world opened up for me,’ Scrollavezza said in an interview in 2017. ‘I would have never believed it because I’m so shy, but I simply fell in love with giving something to others.’

He stopped making instruments for sale in the early 1980s, preferring to concentrate on teaching and research.

He was also contracted by the City of Genoa to act as curator of Paganini’s ‘Il Cannone’ Guarneri ‘del Gesu’ violin.

As well as mentoring generations of young violin makers in Parma and Noceto, Scrollavezza passed on the lutherie bug to his daughter Elisa, who maintainsthe Scrollavezza & Zanre workshop, research and publishing house with her husband Andrea Zanre in Parma.

Andrea Zanre writes: Most of the students who attended the Parma school from 1975 to 2014, the year Renato Scrollavezza stopped teaching, would agree that in his classes Renato was brilliant at delivering his knowledge of Italian violin making with taste and style. Even more than that, we all remember how he would stop the lesson to convey his ideals of beauty, intellectual integrity and professional ethics. He was able to make the moment a violin was finished in the school very special, so that the students could fully appreciate the magic that is always connected to creation. In spite of that he was never a tedious person: he would end the testing of the new violin with a few notes from his preferred tango piece played on the G string - La Cumparsita - and his irreverent spirit, full of irony, would help us as we went back to our everyday work.

MICHAEL FLAKSMAN

The American cellist and pedagogue Michael Flaksman has died at the age of 73. Born on 3 May 1946 in Akron, OH, he made his debut as a soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra at the age of 17. He studied the cello in Paris with Paul Tortelier where he was also taught composition under Nadia Boulanger. He continued studying at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Doorf under Antonio Janigro, later becoming his teaching assistant at the Stuttgart Musikhochschule, and at the Mozarteum University Salzburg. He won the first prize at the 1974 International Cello Competition in Bologna, a year later receiving the Casals Centenary Award.

In 1978 Flaksman founded the Carl Flesch Courses in Baden-Baden, Germany. He performed with several international orchestras including the National Arts Centre Orchestra in Canada, Bern Symphony and Opera,

Basel Symphony and Camerata Academica, Salzburg. He also conducted masterclasses in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Poland and Croatia.

In 1987 Flaksman succeeded Janigro at Stuttgart, and four years later became a professor at the Musikhochschule in Mannheim. He was elected its vice president four times, between September 1999 and August 2010, having already served several years as head of strings.

He frequently appeared on juries at international music competitions

Flaksman also worked as artistic director of two Italian music festivals: the Ascoli Piceno Festival, and the Carl Orff Festival in Apulia.

VAGRAM SARADJIAN

The Armenian-born US cellist Vagram Saradjian has died aged 71. Born in Yerevan in 1948, Saradjian studied for eight years with Mstislav Rostropovich at the Moscow Conservatory, where he earned a masters and a doctorate. Aged 18 he won a prize at the Russian National Competition, following it up with fourth prize at the 1970 International Tchaikovsky Competition and second at the 1975 Geneva International Cello Competition. Also in 1970 he made his concerto debut with the Kiev Philharmonic, where he performed Dvorak’s Cello Concerto under Rostropovich’s baton. On moving to the US, Saradjian taught at institutions including the Oberlin Conservatory, Connecticut College and Purchase Conservatory (SUNY) before becoming professor of cello at the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.

Saradjian premiered works by Alexander Tchaikovsky, Giya Kancheli, Karen Khachaturian, Arno Babadjanian, and Myroslav Skoryk. He made several recordings with the Moscow Philharmonic under conductors such as Valery Gergiev and Yuri Bashmet. He played a 1791 cello made by Milanese luthier Pietro Giovanni Mantegazza.