Conclusions
In 1984, the 2nd International Brass Congress was held at Indiana University at which Arnold Jacobs, the tubist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, was the honored guest. He was regarded as a master performer and pedagogue. During the event M. Dee Stewart, Professor of Trombone at Indiana University, held a series of interviews and a panel discussion with Arnold Jacobs and some of his most successful students. These students have since become representative of the most prominent figures in the world of brass playing. They independently testified about the effect Mr. Jacobs' teaching had on their performing and teaching. Many said it was a turning point in their lives, and had become a new standard for their own performing and teaching.
During a private lesson with Arnold Jacobs, he said to me, “Don’t do it right, just sound better than anybody else. Then the next generation will want to do it your way.” The world of music has seen this pattern emerge time and again. Countless musicians have sought and often struggled to meet the standard of excellence set forth by those masters who came before them. As they labored toward the goal of sounding like the masters, generations of musicians naturally followed their human inquisitiveness and asked the question, “How do I do what they do to sound how they sound?”
While some brass players experienced high levels of success in their playing and teaching, this question drove many to experimental applications based only on personal experience or observation. While some had extensive knowledge of the physical responses of the body, this knowledge was overshadowed by their misdirected focus and became a stumbling block rather than a stepping stone. Rumors, opinions, and erroneous information become rampant. As a result, Arnold Jacobs began an in-depth study of human physiology and functionality. In turn, he became a well-respected expert on the matter. In contrast to the inclination of many to focus on how to play (physically), Jacobs’ approach was to focus on how to sound. His philosophy was to view music as an art form. He believed that we work most efficiently by the stimulus of the product and not the process. (Stewart, 1988, 14-17). This project was an attempt to qualify the effect of Arnold Jacobs' philosophies of brass performance and pedagogy based upon the testimonies of his private students over more than 30 years, taken from the interviews and a panel discussion conducted by M. Dee Stewart in1984.
In 2015-2016, the same group of participants were interviewed again.
These participants, interviewed more than 30 years ago by M. Dee Stewart, have held some of the most prominent positions in the field. The follow-up interviews were constructed as closely to the originals as possible. To maintain validity and establish reliability, the questions from the original interviews were revisited, retaining their integrity by focusing on the participants’ current opinions and observations and not reminding them of their past responses. The participants were also be presented with a list of new questions that focused on Jacob’s principles and their application to brass playing today.
A thorough review of the interview data, in comparison with the interviews from 1984 has confirmed the original supposition that the current generation, the third generation, is without doubt or question being shaped by Jacobs' ideas and teaching philosophies. His teaching has withstood more than three decades of challenge and change in the world of brass playing. Evolution has been unnecessary as his methods were already rooted in learning theories that we now know as differentiation and the theory of multiple intelligences. Jacobs' was modeling these methods decades before they were identified, specified, and labeled.
No aspects of his ideology was proven to be extraneous or detrimental to great brass playing. The current opinions of these experts in the field, matched with their statements made in 1984, have demonstrated this not to be the case.
Jacobs’ teaching has withstood more than 80 years of challenge and change in the world of brass playing. In addition to the effectiveness of Jacobs’ philosophies initially demonstrated by the preliminary interviews, it is now clear from the testimony of the same participants that Arnold Jacobs' teaching methods are continuing to influence brass players young and old, all over the world.
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