Abstract

This study examined the opinions of the students and piano instructors in the Turkish Education Faculties' Fine Arts Instruction Departments’ music instruction programs about piano instruction. The study data were collected using a questionnaire administered to the piano instructors and the students who took lessons from them. The study results indicated that the piano lesson should be included in the whole undergraduate process to achieve the target behaviors. Regarding the content of piano lessons, the piano instructors emphasized that the lesson content should be increased to improve piano playing skills, develop deciphering, teach technical and musical skills, improve its usability in the teaching profession, impart a broader piano instruction, and teach students about the piano repertoire of all periods in history. The study found that the instructors and students also emphasized the importance of a piece's harmonic structure, tonality, and tonal context as well as its form, sentences, divisions, and musical language regarding the improvement of technique and musicality when studying musical works (for example, etudes, sonatinas and sonatas). Another study finding showed that the most difficult lessons, according to the instructors and students, were chord clusters with three and four consecutive notes, using two techniques with two hands (for example, legato with one hand and staccato with the other) and finger numbers. 

Key words: Music instruction, music instructor, piano instruction, piano instructor.