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 Teaching AwardEach year a panel of faculty and administrators meets to decide upon three excellent teachers who are given Lindback Awards for teaching. The committee then selects one person from the 260-member faculty whose work exemplifies "inspirational teaching." The prize is the university's highest award, the Class of '56 Lectureship. The faculty member is expected to present a lecture to the campus and community on the nature of the person's scholarly work as a part of accepting the award. I was honored to be the 1990 recipient of the Class of '56 Lectureship. My project was a record of the process of learning Brahms's Piano Pieces, Op.119. I recorded the piece once a week, every week, from the first rough sightreading to the final stages of memory and interpretation, culminating with a performance at the lecture. The lecture consisted of a discussion of the ways in which a piece is learned--from memory problems to interpretive choices. Taped examples of each stage were played to demonstrate how the piece changed during the process. |