William Fitzpatrick - violin expert

Stephen Clapp

An interesting story about a great music teacher

In this short video, Prof. Fitzpatrick tells a story about how great teachers put themselves at the service of their students.

Released on March 19, 2025

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DISCLAIMER: The views and the opinions expressed in this video are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Virtual Sheet Music and its employees.

Video Transcription

So, I studied with Stephen Clapp at the Blair School of Music in Nashville, Tennessee, and he used to let me practice in his studio, his teaching studio.

And one day, I stopped practicing and started looking at some of the books that were around and I saw this book by Glamian.

So I took it down and sort of thumbed through it.

That's when I saw that the bow grip that Glamian was proposing was different from the one that I did, different from the one that I learned from Stephen.

And so, at this point, Stephen walks in and he sees me looking at the book, smiles, and I go, you know, was looking at this book and I decided I want to change my bow grip to this.

And Stephen looked at me and he goes, oh, okay.

And he proceeded to show me how to do it.

I was very happy.

You know, years later, I thought about what happened and I realized how lucky I was to have a teacher who was really putting himself at the service of his student, that he was really trying to help me, not protect or hold me on to the things that he might have said to me.

Really, really an incredible teacher.
Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com
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