Pablo Casals — Character Analysis

Quick Facts

• Role: World-renowned cellist and master teacher; exemplar of a coaching method analyzed by Donald Schön
• First appearance: Chapter 8, “A Master Class in Musical Performance”
• Pedagogical model: A rigorous “Follow me!” approach within Learning by Doing and Coaching
• Key relationship: Bernard Greenhouse (student)
• Physical description: None given; the text focuses on his actions, words, and pedagogy

Who They Are

As presented by Schön, Pablo Casals is less a fictional character than the embodiment of mastery as pedagogy. His teaching dramatizes a paradox: he begins with absolute imitation—demanding that the student become an “absolute copy”—only to reveal that imitation is the doorway to authentic improvisation. The effect is not merely technical but existential: he orchestrates a learning experience that requires trust and a temporary surrender of ego so that artistry can later emerge on independent terms.

Casals’s method makes artistry tangible. Instead of abstract maxims, he offers the student a live grammar of performance: bowings, fingerings, phrasing, and emphasis all become a language the student first speaks fluently in another’s accent before developing a voice of their own.

Personality & Traits

Pablo Casals commands the room with exacting authority and a flair for dramatic teaching. His power comes from an unusual blend of uncompromising discipline and benevolent misdirection—the “setup” that turns imitation into revelation.

• Authoritative and demanding: He halts Greenhouse repeatedly—“No, no. Do it this way” (p. 177)—to enforce total fidelity to his bowings, fingerings, and phrasing. The insistence creates a controlled laboratory where micro-decisions become learnable.
• Meticulous: He is “extremely meticulous about my following all the details of his performance” (p. 177). The exactness shows he treats technique as articulated meaning, not mere mechanics.
• Insightful and paradoxical: He knows that freedom requires form. By first constraining every variable, he equips the student with an embodied template for later variation.
• Playful and dramatic: With “a broad grin on his face” (p. 177), he stages the reveal, turning pedagogy into performance. The humor softens the authoritarian setup and reframes it as an act of care.
• Confident and reassuring: When Greenhouse fears becoming a “poor copy,” Casals replies that the world will hear the student’s playing, not his (p. 177). His assurance releases anxiety and keeps the experiment intact.

Character Journey

Though static as a figure, Pablo Casals orchestrates a dynamic transformation in his student. The journey he designs begins with weeks of strict duplication: Greenhouse learns every bowing, fingering, phrase, and emphasis until the two produce “stereophonic” sameness (p. 177). At the apex of mimicry, Casals suddenly changes everything—bowings, fingerings, phrasing—and delivers a second performance that is “heavenly, absolutely beautiful,” yet wholly different. Only then does he name the lesson: “Now you’ve learned how to improvise in Bach” (p. 177). The arc enacts a deeper theme: genuine creativity arises from internalized form, bridging the gap between technique and artistry that Professional Artistry vs. Technical Skill explores. Casals’s genius is to make that bridge felt in the body, not just understood in the mind.

Key Relationships

• Bernard Greenhouse: With Greenhouse, Casals models the master–apprentice bond at its most demanding and most liberating. The relationship begins with deference and strict obedience, creating the conditions for a shared musical grammar; it culminates in a trust-soaked revelation that empowers Greenhouse to craft his own interpretation. Casals’s authority does not eclipse the student’s voice—it carefully midwives it.

Defining Moments

Casals’s pedagogy unfolds as a two-act drama, each act revealing a different logic of learning.

• Act I — The Imitation Phase

  • What happens: For weeks, Casals requires Greenhouse to become his “absolute copy,” until they produce identical bowings, fingerings, phrasing—“a stereophonic sound” (p. 177).
  • Why it matters: By collapsing the distance between model and learner, Casals installs an embodied map of choices. Imitation here is not servility; it is cognitive scaffolding.

• Act II — The Revelation Phase

  • What happens: Immediately after perfect mimicry, Casals plays the same Bach suite again, changing “every bowing and every fingering and every phrasing” (p. 177), and then names the lesson: “Now you’ve learned how to improvise in Bach.”
  • Why it matters: The sudden variance proves that freedom is principled, not arbitrary. Variation becomes legible because the student already possesses the form’s internal structure.

Essential Quotes

“No, no. Do it this way.” (p. 177)
This command captures Casals’s uncompromising standard and the micro-level precision he demands. It frames imitation as the central engine of early learning, where correctness is not personal taste but the temporary adoption of a master’s system.

“Don’t worry about that. Because I’m seventy years old and I will be gone soon, and people won’t remember my playing but they will hear yours.” (p. 177)
Casals neutralizes the fear of becoming a “poor copy” by reframing the exercise as a gift of lineage. His reassurance reveals the ethical core of his severity: authority used to seed the student’s future autonomy.

“And at that point, when I had been able to accomplish this, he said to me, ‘Fine. Now just sit. Put your cello down and listen to the D-Minor Suite.’ And he played through the piece and changed every bowing and every fingering and every phrasing and all the emphasis within the phrase.” (p. 177)
The staging—put the cello down and listen—turns the studio into a theater of insight. By altering every variable, Casals exposes the underlying grammar of the piece and demonstrates how mastery licenses principled variation.

“Now you’ve learned how to improvise in Bach. From now on, you study Bach this way.” (p. 177)
This line makes explicit the method’s aim: not replication, but informed freedom. It converts a copying exercise into a durable practice—study the structure until it lives in you, then vary it with intention.