There are a lot of articles written on repertoire-rich teaching over on the elissamilne.com site, and if you haven’t seen them then these posts might fill in some gaps and answer some questions.

The first published post in that blog was titled The Surprising Power of Quantity, which explores the idea of more actually being more. Right near the end of the article there’s a sentence that touches on a profound (possibly unexpected, and even counterintuitive) reality…

I have observed a direct correlation between number of pieces learned and student happiness.

And while it makes sense, it goes against a lot we think we believe in in many parts of the world – that ‘more’ is a luxury, a greediness, a character flaw even; that ‘less’ is something with which we should content ourselves, that it builds character and reflects humility. It’s so easy to convince ourselves that ‘less’ really is ‘more’ even though it actually always literally is ‘less’.

Whenever you feel yourself going to tread an ascetic line in regard to repertoire assignments, just hum a chorus or tag line from Sondheim:

https://youtu.be/Ddd4Ea9j-cQ?t=2s

 

More really is more for our students, and what’s more for our students can end up being less for us: less tedium, less impatience, less need to try to ‘motivate’, less frustration with lack of practice and progress – and in my book, that’s a whole lot of the right kind of more.