{"id":13369,"date":"2019-07-16T13:51:48","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T20:51:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/?p=13369"},"modified":"2019-07-16T13:51:48","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T20:51:48","slug":"aaron-shearer-father-of-american-classical-guitar-education-a-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/classicalguitarmagazine.com\/aaron-shearer-father-of-american-classical-guitar-education-a-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Shearer: Father of American Classical Guitar Education; a Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"
BY KATHLEEN A. BERGERON | FROM THE SUMMER 2019 ISSUE OF CLASSICAL GUITAR<\/a><\/h6>\n

When I decided I wanted to learn classical guitar back in the late 1970s, my teacher had me purchase a textbook that had a cover with a highly-pixelated graphic image of a red guitar on a black background. Its title, spread across that cover in a thin script typeface, was Volume I: Classic Guitar Technique<\/i>. The author\u2019s name, positioned at the top left-hand corner, was Aaron Shearer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That music book, sitting amid a stack of others through the years, would catch my eye, and I would wonder, \u201cWho is this guy, Aaron Shearer?\u201d He wasn\u2019t anyone from the world of performers that I\u2019d ever heard of\u2014a Segovia or a Parkening or a Bream, all of whom had books of their own available. My teacher was deep into classical guitar, periodically traveling to Spain to purchase a new instrument, or attending a master class led by one of the Romeros. So why on Earth did he choose this man\u2019s book? Why was his particular approach any better than these others whose albums I played so often?<\/p>\n

I regret not knowing more about Aaron Shearer back then, for he became one of the most important figures in American classical guitar, and truly, his is an inspiring story of amazing accomplishment\u2014all the more relevant in this, the centenary of his birth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Consider: He was born in the backwoods of eastern Washington state and raised during the Great Depression on a subsistence farm in western Idaho. He never attended college, and his relatively short performing career had been focused on jazz, rather than classical guitar; his worksite was a nightclub, rather than a classroom. In fact, his decision to go full-time into teaching came only after a car crash in the 1940s left him with an injured arm in a totaled car, a miraculously undamaged guitar at his feet. The pristine state of the instrument so surprised him that he took it as a sign, and decided to focus totally on educating others, rather than returning to the stage. That, plus the tendinitis that resulted from the wreck.<\/p>\n

And it was the classical guitar (or \u201cclassic guitar\u201d as he preferred to call it) that was always his first love. Aaron would tell the story of how, because his family was very poor, he was only able to acquire a first guitar by trading three of the ten or so white geese he\u2019d raised in exchange for what would turn out to be a rather abused instrument.<\/p>\n

A little later, some neighbors invited the Shearers over to listen to the Bing Crosby show on the radio, since Aaron\u2019s family could not afford that \u201cluxury\u201d item. It was particularly exciting to Aaron, because Andr\u00e9s Segovia was going to be a guest performer. \u201cSo Segovia played . . . I don\u2019t know what he played,\u201d Shearer would later recall. \u201cI think he may have played the Sor Theme and Variations<\/i>. And then I think he played some Bach, maybe a little D minor Prelude<\/i>. I was blown away. . . .\u00a0 <\/span>I couldn\u2019t understand it. I couldn\u2019t understand how it was played. It was quite different. And I said, \u2018That\u2019s the guitar<\/i>?\u2019 I couldn\u2019t stop raving about the sound of the guitar. I stood up at the end of the evening and said, \u2018That\u2019s what I want to do. I want to learn to play the guitar like that.\u2019 And that\u2019s the end of the story. I never stopped trying to learn to play the guitar in that fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

After that, young Aaron sought out guitars and guitar music wherever he could\u2014not an easy task, given his rural location. \u201cWe lived 17 miles from the nearest little town that would have had a guitar,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThat was Hirzel\u2019s Music Store in Lewiston, Idaho.\u201d He became a frequent visitor to the store, looking at music books and instruments, and he practiced at home for hours on end, often until his arms and hands ached. His breakthrough came when the store owner let him teach there. \u201cI was 15 or 16 then. I had learned to play on my own, learned to read some music, and could teach a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

As he grew to maturity, Shearer became a jazz musician, playing a Fender Telecaster guitar with bands in clubs across the Northwest. Aaron was still teaching a bit, and then came the car crash that changed his career focus.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1953, Shearer and his family moved from Seattle to Washington, D.C. Sophocles Papas, a Greek immigrant, had established his Columbia School of Music there 30 years earlier. Papas was teaching virtually all instruments, but specializing in guitar, and the cross-country move was based on Aaron\u2019s desire to study with him. Papas had developed a business relationship with Andr\u00e9s Segovia, and the Columbia School was soon recognized as the only program in the country where one could obtain guitar instruction using Segovia\u2019s approved techniques.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Shearer quickly evolved from a session student to a teacher at the school. After a couple of years, however, he began to have serious questions about Papas\u2019 particular expertise in guitar instruction. Aaron approached Segovia about the situation, but the maestro insisted that Papas was his chosen one for teaching the Segovia techniques and musical approach. Shearer and Papas soon had a parting of the ways, but not before they collaborated on the first guitar degree program in the United States, at American University in Washington, D.C. Shearer would later institute a similar program at nearby Catholic University of America. He also periodically picked up local gigs in the area, backing up the likes of Harry Belafonte and Johnny Mathis.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On his own now, Shearer moved his family into a house previously owned by a dentist who saw patients in the basement office. That office space was soon converted into a warren of studios for teaching. According to Aaron\u2019s son Walter, one of the other teachers in the studio taught flamenco, and periodically the house would be filled with the sounds of robust flamenco performances, complete with dancers, castanets, the works.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1964, Aaron interviewed for a job at the Peabody Conservatory, the then-100-year-old institute of music training in Baltimore, Maryland, a little north of Washington, D.C. A decade later, Peabody would become a part of Johns Hopkins University. Peabody was well-known for its training in several instruments, but it had no guitar program. As Aaron would discover, the job, if it were to be offered to him, would require him to start one up from scratch. By this time, he had been teaching guitar in several different venues\u2014colleges, private schools, that music store back in Idaho, even in his own basement. He had published his first book on guitar five years earlier, and he knew the state-of-the-art for guitar education, especially when compared to that of other instruments.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI told [the selection committee at Peabody] that the guitar didn\u2019t deserve<\/i> a program at Peabody,\u201d he said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t have the same high standards of instruction that are found in other instruments. Well, they thanked me for offering my thoughts, and I thought that was the end of it. But instead, they called me back and offered me the job. They told me I was the only one who told it like it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shearer later elaborated on his comments to the Peabody committee: \u201cI questioned whether the guitar belonged in a conservatory at all, because it had not developed; the guitar had not been treated in a scholarly manner at all.\u201d He added, \u201cAll our great [guitar] artists active in concerts are self-taught. Just the idea they are self-taught indicates the level of the guitar. There is no such thing as a self-taught concert pianist. Three centuries of study have produced a teaching system that, if not perfect, leaves few unanswered questions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe potential performance level of, say, the violin and the piano has been realized. They have such very high standards that it\u2019s highly questionable whether they\u2019ll advance much. There\u2019s hardly anywhere to go with those instruments. All the instruments\u2014flute, cello, violin\u2014have traditions of the highest level of instruction. But sadly, not the guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n