How do students choose where to study the organ? Do they seek out the teacher or the institution? Do they want to study with Dr. Popular or Professor Gottastudywithher, not being concerned that s/he teaches at Awful Regional University located in Armpit, Greatstate? Or do they choose to go to Can’tResist State University because it’s located near great outdoor life and a big city, and they don’t care who the teacher is? Someone ought to do a study of this.
Honestly, I think it’s possible for the student to win either way. When it comes to pursuing excellence and self-improvement, if a student wants to learn the organ, we teachers ought to oblige to the best of our ability. A great teacher offers great teaching. A great institution offers great learning. If the student has either, s/he’s in good shape. The student’s responsibility lies in claiming the good stuff and ditching the rest. And there’s always graduate school, if the student needs more.
Even professionals go one way or the other in their familiarity with the field: some might be able to rattle off teachers’ names but might stumble over the institution at which each one teaches. And some folks can rattle off the big schools but have to think a moment about all resident teachers’ names. And in some places, there is a University Organist who does the public playing, but there is another Professor of Organ who does the teaching. Either of those names might get more press than the other. I feel all this is significant, and I think it would make a nice dissertation topic – for someone else, of course. I just ask questions and then go hide.
Consider the fame and attraction of these teachers, and ponder what makes it so: Langlais, Dupré, Alain, Leonhardt, Hakim, Marchal, Litaize, Heiller, Wunderlich, Robilliard, Latry, Roth, Cauchefer-Choplin, Chaisemartin, Higgs, Holloway, Keiser, Murray, Jean, Labounsky, Davidsson, Eschbach, Fishell, Smith, Young, Jacobs, Weaver, Cowan, Belcher, Christie, Mitchener, Mueller, Jones, Mason, Coci, Andrews, Gleason, Crozier, Saunders, Craighead. Yes, familiar names. Now, where does/did each one teach?
Who might have been the first teacher to be sought out for WHO he was, regardless of WHERE he was? Paumann? Sweelinck? Virgil Fox? What brought the students to him? How did they get the word before email or telephone?
Most importantly, what attracted YOU to your teacher or school? What got you there? And has the teacher or the school bothered to ask you that, in the name of enhanced future recruiting? And did you get what you expected there? Perhaps that quick dialogue between students, teachers, and institutions might be informative for all. I have started the ball rolling at my university to find out what attracts a given student to us. Seems awfully important, wouldn't you say?