Insatiable Curiosity
Curiouser and curiouser!
Have you ever “gone down the rabbit hole” about a particular subject? It could be anything—trains, history, knitting, movies, travel, gardening, writing, sports. It’s a unique feeling. You find yourself in a state of mild obsession. You can’t wait to learn more, you will talk about it with anyone, and you get so happy whenever you peel back another layer of knowledge.
If you can remember having these feelings, then you have experienced insatiable curiosity. It is a total fascination with a subject that has caught both your heart and your mind. It’s an internal motivation, a drive that doesn’t ever end; it’s insatiable.
So why do I say that this is the type of curiosity that music teachers should be cultivating in their students? Why isn’t simple curiosity enough? Why is “insatiable” important?
Simple curiosity is having a desire to know about something. The drive of that kind of curiosity terminates the moment a person has acquired the knowledge they seek. For example, when a friend and I are trying to figure out the name of an actor in a movie, I’m only curious about it until I google the answer. Then, my curiosity ends.
When I use the compound term “insatiable curiosity,” I am describing something with far more staying power. I am attempting to capture what it means to want to know more, and more, and more, forever. Insatiable curiosity is the compelling desire to know something deeply, a willingness to get in the weeds of a particular subject, to not stop digging in until you really, thoroughly know it.
Musicians need this kind of drive when they are learning to play an instrument.
Without this kind of curiosity, a musician won’t stay motivated to keep going when things get hard. Insatiable curiosity presses the student to keep asking questions:
“What’s the best strategy for learning this new piece?”
“Can I get this down without mistakes this time? Okay, what about this time?
“What will this piece sound like if I go faster? Play softer? Try it smoother, or more staccato?”
“Can I make what I’m playing sound more beautiful?”
“Why did this composer write this song this way? Why did they make it loud here and soft there?”
“Why am I finding it difficult to connect to this music?”
“What in this composer’s history made them write this piece?”
Musicians have to be curious about themselves, about their instruments, and about their music. Insatiable curiosity is the root of great musicianship.
Insatiable Curiosity in Action
“Why didn’t Mozart end this phrase like this?” I ask an advanced student sitting in my studio. I play the first four bars of “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” but instead of playing it as written, I end it by resolving it to the tonic. My student (who is very familiar with this piece) pulls his head backward on his shoulders. I’ve done something he wasn’t expecting, making a phrase he was familiar with feel decidedly ended rather than pulling forward towards the rest of the piece.
He tilts his head to the side, and says, “Can I try something?”
“Sure,” I say, and give him the bench.
He starts to play around with the piece, changing notes and chord progressions as he goes. He gets so lost in curiosity (and so do I), that it’s a surprise when we realize we blew twenty minutes past the end of his lesson. He tells me later that he spent so much time at the piano that week, tweaking familiar pieces, that his parents had to tell him to go to bed and make sure he remembered to eat his dinner every night.
This is a common way that I try to stoke musical curiosity in my students. “What would happen if I played it like this?” I’ll ask my students, and I play “Claire de Lune” staccato, “Für Elise” in a major key, and “Weigenlied” in a fast, loud, jazzy way. I’m looking to spark their intellectual hunger. I want my students to imagine the world as moldable, changeable, a place where they can creatively explore. I want to make them feel like there is a world behind the notes.
Over the years, I have piled up different tools that I use to light the fire of curiosity in my students. Like those experiments with syllables you did in the prior chapter, a musician who wants to communicate effectively will need to be able to play around with sounds. My students practice asking themselves questions like, “Why is it this way? Why not that way?” And, “What if this were different?”
Insatiable curiosity can bring a student to the next, crucial, part of musicianship—wonderment. They start with, “I wonder what will happen if I try this,” or “I wonder why this piece of music is making me feel this way,” or “I wonder how an audience would react if I played it like this,” and then end with, “Wow, this is amazing!”
What ways do you teach your students to be insatiably curious?
If we don’t create insatiably curious musicians, we could end up:
Training people to accept what they are told, without feeling empowered to question the “why.”
Conditioning people with the idea that the final product is the most important or most enjoyable part of a process.
What we gain from creating insatiably curious musicians
When a music student learns insatiable curiosity, they can:
See their world not as static and preformed, but as changeable and formable—by them.
Feel their power to shape the world around them.
Experience the fun of diving deep into something they are interested in—and reaching the stage of wonder.