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Team and collective training needs analysis defining
requirements and specifying training systems 1st Edition
John Huddlestone Digital Instant Download
Author(s): John Huddlestone, Jonathan Pike
ISBN(s): 9782012092150, 2012092152
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 3.22 MB
Year: 2016
Language: english
Team and Collective Training
Needs Analysis
To the memory of
Phillip Pike
and
Alan Huddlestone
Team and Collective Training
Needs Analysis
Defining Requirements and Specifying Training Systems

John Huddlestone
Coventry University, UK

&

Jonathan Pike
© John Huddlestone and Jonathan Pike 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

John Huddlestone and Jonathan Pike have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.

Published by
Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company
Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street
Union Road Suite 3-1
Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818
Surrey, GU9 7PT USA
England

www.ashgate.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data


A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:


Names: Huddlestone, John, Dr., author. | Pike, Jonathan, author.
Title: Team and collective training needs analysis : defining requirements
and specifying training systems / by John Huddlestone and Jonathan Pike.
Description: Burlington, VT : Ashgate, [2015] | Series: Human factors in
defence | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015025165| ISBN 9781409453864 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781409453871 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472405357 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Soldiers--Training of. | Sailors--Training of. |
Airmen--Training of. | Needs assessment. | Military education.
Classification: LCC U405 .H83 2015 | DDC 355.5--dc23

ISBN: 978-1-4094-5386-4 (hbk)


978-1-4094-5387-1 (ebk)
978-1-4724-0535-7 (ePub)

Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited,


at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD
Contents

List of Figures vii


List of Tables xi
About the Authors   xiii
Acknowledgements   xvii
Foreword   xix
Preface   xxi

Part I Underpinning Theory and Models

1 Introduction   3

2 Individual Tasks   23

3 Team Tasks   51

4 Team Task Analysis   91

5 The Training Environment   121

6 The Training Overlay   155

Part II The TCTNA Methodology

7 TCTNA Overview   201

8 Project Initiation   209

9 Team/Collective Task Analysis   215

10 Constraints, Assumptions, Risks and Opportunities Analysis   233

11 Training Environment Analysis   239

12 Training Overlay Analysis   251

13 Training Options Analysis   265

Appendix A   273


Appendix B   309
Index   329
This page has been left blank intentionally
List of Figures

Figure 1.1 Infantry company structure   6


Figure 1.2 Training system components   7
Figure 1.3 Generic SAT model   12
Figure 1.4 The mapping of TNA onto the generic SAT model   15
Figure 1.5 TCTNA analytical framework   16
Figure 1.6 Models underpinning TCTNA   17
Figure 1.7 The structure of the book   19

Figure 2.1 The task of boiling an egg   27


Figure 2.2 Tasks viewed as a transformation of the environment   28
Figure 2.3 Idealised task conducted under a range of conditions   30
Figure 2.4 An instance of task performance or assessment generating
a potential range of outcomes   31
Figure 2.5 The task environment   33
Figure 2.6 Phases of activity within a task   34
Figure 2.7 An individual performance model   35
Figure 2.8 Individual task processes: sensing, doing and
decision making   37
Figure 2.9 Perceived conditions, goals and plans   40
Figure 2.10 Goals and outcomes   42
Figure 2.11 Perceived conditions   44
Figure 2.12 Individual task model   47

Figure 3.1 Team task processes, two individuals in a team


communicating and interacting with the task environment  54
Figure 3.2 Coordination within an individual task   55
Figure 3.3 The Team Task Model   60
Figure 3.4 Contributing factors to team coordination   65
Figure 3.5 Team Performance Model   67
Figure 3.6 Team Performance Model – expanded   70

Figure 4.1 Scenarios and the training environment   95


Figure 4.2 Task analysis of procedural tasks and tasks
involving planning   98
Figure 4.3 Task ‘Fire Weapon at Target’   106
Figure 4.4 Alternative representation for the ‘Fire Weapon at
Target’ task   107
viii Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

Figure 4.5 Task ‘Fire Weapon at Target’ with resources and


information added   107
Figure 4.6 Task ‘Fire Weapon at Target’ with intermediate
outcomes indicated   108
Figure 4.7 Simultaneous activity notations   109
Figure 4.8 An illustrative example of a team task: extract casualty
from a Road Traffic Accident situation   110
Figure 4.9 Dynamic environment impact on plans   116

Figure 5.1 The task environment   124


Figure 5.2 Training and task environments   125
Figure 5.3 Task environment components   134
Figure 5.4 Training environment components   137
Figure 5.5 Fidelity dimensions mapped to the Training
Environment Model   141
Figure 5.6 Types of simulation mapped to the Training
Environment Model   150
Figure 5.7 The Training Environment Model   151

Figure 6.1 High-level Training Overlay Model   161


Figure 6.2 The high-level Team Training Model   162
Figure 6.3 Factors that influence the training strategy   163
Figure 6.4 Training strategy   168
Figure 6.5 Part-task/whole-task training in the collective context   171
Figure 6.6 Training analysis and design components   187
Figure 6.7 Training delivery and evaluation   191
Figure 6.8 The detailed Training Overlay Model   195
Figure 6.9 The Team Training Model   196

Figure 7.1 The TCTNA process model   202


Figure 7.2 The CADMID cycle   204
Figure 7.3 Iterative application of TCTNA in acquisition   205

Figure 8.1 TCTNA process sequence – Project Initiation   210

Figure 9.1 TCTNA process sequence – Team/Collective


Task Analysis   216
Figure 9.2 The Team Performance Model   217
Figure 9.3 Type 23 organisational chart for force protection against
an asymmetric threat for a Type 23 Frigate   220
Figure 9.4 Overview of Task Network Diagrams and the Task
Description Table   224
Figure 9.5 Top-level breakdown of the Surface Protection against an
Asymmetric Threat Task   227
List of Figures ix

Figure 9.6 Expansion of Evaluate Threat   229

Figure 10.1 TCTNA process sequence – CARO Analysis    234

Figure 11.1 TCTNA process sequence – Training


Environment Analysis    240
Figure 11.2 Training Environment Model   241
Figure 11.3 Example Training Environment Diagram   243

Figure 12.1 TCTNA process sequence – Training Overlay Analysis    252
Figure 12.2 Detailed training overlay model   253
Figure 12.3 High-level team training model   254
Figure 12.4 Sub-task training environment requirements   259
Figure 12.5 Additional role-player requirements for part task training  263

Figure 13.1 TCTNA process sequence – Training Options Analysis    266

Figure A1 GPMG (a, left) and Mk44 Minigun (b, right) mounted on
a Type 23 Frigate   274
Figure A2 Organisational chart   275
Figure A3 Top-level breakdown of the Surface Protection against an
Asymmetric Threat Task   278
Figure A4 Expansion of the Evaluate Threat task   279
Figure A5 Upper Deck Training Environment Diagram   288
Figure A6 Bridge Training Environment Diagram   289
Figure A7 Ops Room Training Environment Diagram   289

Figure B1 Maritime Power Projection and Sea Control   312


Figure B2 CEPP collective task boundary   313
Figure B3 CEPP actors and linkages, high-level view   316
Figure B4 Task network diagram for CEPP   317
Figure B5 CEPP Training Environment Diagram   320
Figure B6 CEPP represented as five interlocking collective
task domains   322
This page has been left blank intentionally
List of Tables

Table 2.1 Stimulus modalities and corresponding sense organs   38


Table 2.2 Environmental and individual task elements   46
Table 2.3 Task elements   48

Table 3.1 Team coordination enablers   58


Table 3.2 Twelve potential team process measurement areas   74
Table 3.3 Teamwork skill dimensions and behavioural examples
(Baker and Salas 1992, adapted from Morgan et al. 1986)   75
Table 3.4 Markers of team adaptability processes (Rosen et al. 2011)  76
Table 3.5 KSAs supporting teamwork (Stevens and Campion 1994)   83
Table 3.6 Essential team knowledge, skill and attitude competencies
(Cannon-Bowers and Salas 1997: 47)   84

Table 4.1 Crawl-walk-run   102

Table 5.1 Example of training environment substitution in


task practice   129

Table 6.1 UK, US and Australian capability dimensions   165

Table 9.1 Example team role table entries   221


Table 9.2 Task conditions categories   222
Table 9.3 Example scenario table for Maritime Force Protection of a
Type 23 Frigate against an asymmetric threat   223
Table 9.4 Task Network Diagram symbols   225
Table 9.5 Team action types and output types   226
Table 9.6 Example Task Description Table entries   230
Table 9.7 Team KSA requirements table   231

Table 10.1 Example Constraints Table format   236


Table 10.2 Example Opportunities Table format   236
Table 10.3 Example of a Risk Register 237

Table 11.1 Physical and information environment


element specifications   244
Table 11.2 Sensor, effector and information environment
interface specifications   247
Table 11.3 Non-team actor specifications   249
xii Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

Table 12.1 Training priority risk analysis table   255


Table 12.2 Objectives table   256
Table 12.3 Training overlay interface requirements table –
example entries   261
Table 12.4 Scenario specification   262

Table 13.1 Example option evaluation table for the suitability of


existing systems for Maritime Force Protection training   268
Table 13.2 Headings for option descriptions   270
Table 13.3 Potential sources of whole life costs   270
Table 13.4 Option evaluation table   271

Table A1 Team roles   276


Table A2 Scenario Table   277
Table A3 Task Description Table   280
Table A4 Team KSA Requirements Table   287
Table A5 Constraints   287
Table A6 Opportunities   288
Table A7 External Physical Environment Specifications   290
Table A8 Dynamic Natural Features Specifications   290
Table A9 Internal Physical Environment Specifications   291
Table A10 Information Environment Specifications   291
Table A11 Sensors and Effectors Specifications   292
Table A12 Information Environment Interface Specifications   293
Table A13 Non-Team Actor Specifications   294
Table A14 Training Priority Risk Analysis Table   294
Table A15 Training objectives   295
Table A16 Training overlay requirements for the training environment  297
Table A17 Scenario requirements   298
Table A18 Option evaluation table for existing systems   300
Table A19 Option evaluation table   307

Table B1 Constraints table   318


Table B2 Risks table   319
About the Authors

Dr John Huddlestone is a Senior Research Fellow in the Human Systems


Integration Group within the Engineering and Computing Faculty at Coventry
University in England. His research interests include team training, training
needs analysis, training methods and media, and aviation human factors. Current
research projects include the human factors of future flight-deck technologies
and single-pilot operations, and the team and collective training implications of
future maritime unmanned systems concepts. His research has also included the
specification and evaluation of multiplayer simulation systems and the evaluation
of novel training media. Before joining academia, he was a Royal Air Force Officer.
Working in the training specialisation, he was responsible for the analysis, design
and delivery of a wide variety of training solutions in the aviation and engineering
domains. He was a member of the Human Factors Integration Defence Technology
Centre team that was awarded the Ergonomics Society President’s Medal for their
outstanding contribution to Human Factors research. He holds a PhD in applied
psychology from Cranfield University, a Master’s degree in Computing Science
from Imperial College, London and a Batchelor’s degree in Education from
Nottingham Trent University.

Jonathan Pike is a freelance training specialist currently living in Perth,


Western Australia. Between 2005 and 2014, while working in the Human Factors
Department of Cranfield University and the Human Systems Integration Group
of Coventry University, he conducted research for the Defence Science and
Technology Laboratory under the auspices of the Human Factors Integration
Defence Technology Centre and Defence Human Capability Science and
Technology Centre. He was a member of the Human Factors Integration Defence
Technology Centre team that was awarded the Ergonomics Society President’s
Medal for their outstanding contribution to Human Factors research. A visiting
researcher at Coventry University, and a past visiting research fellow at Cranfield
University at he holds a BSc in Biology from University College London and an
MSc in Applied Computing Technology from Middlesex University.
Human Factors in Defence
Series Editors:
Dr Don Harris, Professor of Human Factors, Coventry University, UK
Professor Neville Stanton, Chair in Human Factors at the
University of Southampton, UK
Dr Eduardo Salas, University of Central Florida, USA

Human factors is key to enabling today’s armed forces to implement their vision
to “produce battle-winning people and equipment that are fit for the challenge
of today, ready for the tasks of tomorrow and capable of building for the future”
(source: UK MoD). Modern armed forces fulfil a wider variety of roles than
ever before. In addition to defending sovereign territory and prosecuting armed
conflicts, military personnel are engaged in homeland defence and in undertaking
peacekeeping operations and delivering humanitarian aid right across the world.
This requires top-class personnel, trained to the highest standards in the use of
first class equipment. The military has long recognised that good human factors is
essential if these aims are to be achieved.
The defence sector is far and away the largest employer of human factors
personnel across the globe and is the largest funder of basic and applied research.
Much of this research is applicable to a wide audience, not just the military; this
series aims to give readers access to some of this high-quality work.
Ashgate’s Human Factors in Defence series comprises of specially commissioned
books from internationally recognised experts in the field. They provide in-depth,
authoritative accounts of key human factors issues being addressed by the defence
industry across the world.
Reviews of
Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis: Defining
Requirements and Specifying Training Systems

This in-depth analysis of team training challenges addresses a highly complex


and interactive issue which has long plagued program managers, operators, and
trainers in every service. The complexities of modern weapons systems, the ever
evolving threat and severe national budgetary constraints require that training
systems be optimized for efficiency and harmony of effort. In their excellent work
the authors have given the community of practice a methodology and framework
to accomplish the former. Their book should be part of the kit used by every
weapons system program manager and team training organization.
Rear Admiral Frederick L. Lewis, USN (Ret.), President Emeritus,
National Training and Simulation Association

This is an exceptionally comprehensive look at team and collective training.


It provides a rare insight into the methodology of training needs analysis and
how it can address the complexities beyond the individual level. The author’s
credentials are apparent and amply demonstrated in the worked examples and
case studies. This is a definitive guide not just to those responsible for training
and operational delivery but also those involved in R&D or procurement.
Lt Col (Retd) Guy Wallis, Principal Analyst,
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory

Training is expensive, but failing to train realistically is even more expensive. The
text provides a masterly, logical approach to understanding, decomposing and
integrating key variables involved in a complex world of weapons and training
systems. Moreover, it enables the individuals and teams who deploy them to work
together and build an accumulation of marginal edges sufficient to distinguish
effective professional military performance from that of the enthusiastic amateur.
Professor Victor Newman, Knowledge & Innovation Management,
The Business School, The University of Greenwich

In an age where organisations now have to justify spending on complex training


and exercising for teams and collective capabilities, this book is long overdue.
It provides processes on the elements of team and collective training analysis,
gives a toolkit for those involved with the acquisition of related training systems
and, more importantly, is an essential guide for those who want to make their
training better.
Commander Paul Pine, Royal Navy (Maritime Training Acquisition Organization)
This page has been left blank intentionally
Acknowledgements

The work presented in this book originates in part from work carried out under
the Human Factors Integration Defence Technology Centre (HFI DTC) and the
Defence Human Capability Science and Technology Centre (DHC STC) contracts,
conducted on behalf of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, as part of
the Chief Scientific Advisors Research Programme. Any views presented in this
book are those of the authors and do not constitute the official views of the UK
Ministry of Defence.
The development of Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis as a
methodology is the product of eight years of research, and encompassed numerous
projects and case studies. Any endeavour of that scale can only be successful with
the support of many others. Whilst it is impossible to name everyone that assisted
us, there are a number of people that deserve a particular mention. From BAE
Systems, Dr Karen Lane (as Director of the HFI DTC and latterly, the DHC STC)
did much work behind the scenes to ensure that our various research programmes
came into being, whilst Dr Carole Deighton, in her technical assurance role, was
an invaluable sounding board for our ideas. Dr Colin Corbridge from the Defence
Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) was an enthusiastic supporter of the
project, facilitating a number of case studies and challenges for us to overcome.
A number of military colleagues made a significant contribution to our work.
Firstly, Lieutenant Commanders Tom Harrison, Paul Pine and Paul Newall, all
Royal Navy Training Needs Analysis specialists, acted as sounding boards for our
ideas and gave much pragmatic and constructive feedback throughout the project.
Often cast as customers for our work, they gave generously of their time to support
our progress and critically review our outputs. Colonel Hugh Russell (British
Army) applied an early version of the methodology to a case study, and gave us
invaluable feedback about the experience both of using the methodology and of
interpreting our written guidance. Lt Rob Driscoll orchestrated and hosted our visit
to US Naval Station Norfolk to observe a Fleet Synthetic Training Exercise whilst
aboard USS Eisenhower. Lieutenant Colonel Bo Andersen (Danish Army) at the
NATO Joint Warfare Centre arranged for us to observe a major NATO exercise that
he was running. In some lively discussions, he shared many invaluable insights
into the process of planning and delivering multinational exercises in an Alliance
context. Finally, the staff of the Joint Training and Exercise Planning Staff at
Northwood put up with our endless questions with good humour during the weeks
that we spent under their feet whilst they developed and ran major exercises.
The production of the manuscript was a team effort in itself. Whilst any errors
that you might spot are entirely our own work, many perished at the hands of the
team that helped us through the process. Joseph Wallis brought his copywriting
xviii Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

skills to bear on the first half of the book and provided sound advice on writing
style. Kevin Bessel at BAE Systems tenaciously proofread the final manuscript.
Jessica Onslow from Dstl navigated the manuscript safely through the rapids of the
MOD Permission to Publish system and, along with colleagues Sarah Bowditch,
Claire Ford and Ian Greig, reviewed the work and provided an invaluable critique.
Mention must be made of Guy Loft, our Publishing Editor who encouraged us
to write the book in the first place, and has patiently waited for it to evolve from
urban myth into a tangible entity. Guy was ably assisted by Charlotte Edwards,
who led us gently through the publication process.
Finally, we must thank colleagues, friends and family who have supported/
put up with us whilst we have been on what feels like an epic writing journey. We
could not have done it without them.
Foreword

I have been variously involved with Collective Training throughout my Army


career. As a junior MOD staff Captain in the early 1990s I typed the first drafts
of the Army’s Compendium of Collective Training Tasks – a huge tome that
eventually begat the Mission Essential Tasks List (METL). I say ‘typed’ as at that
time there was not a lot of thinking involved, just lots of listing. I also had much
Collective Training done to me: on battlegroup, brigade and divisional exercises
we busily did things, waited in the rain, then did more things and then we were
considered to be ‘trained’. We had certainly had experiences, we had certainly
learned things but usually the connection between the two was obscure and perhaps
incidental. As the Armed Forces moved from the Cold War ‘training and waiting’
footing through to the need to sustain a continuous operational footing through
the Gulf War, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan so the design and development of
Collective Training developed, but not necessarily the way that we thought about
that design and development.
There is a very human tendency where if we are convinced that we are doing
the right thing and it doesn’t seem to be working then we continue to do the same
thing, but harder, in the conviction that it will eventually work. We operate the
ignition, spinning the starter motor and flattening the battery and still the car will
not start. Nor will it with no fuel. Armed with an otherwise perfectly good idea it
is difficult to perceive how or why it might not be the right idea for that particular
problem. And so it is for Collective Training.
General Martin Dempsey, now (2015) US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staffs, made much of the need to be imaginative and adaptive in order to face a
decentralized and networked enemy in his Campaign for Learning: Avoiding the
Failure of Imagination 2010 Kermit Roosevelt lecture tour and following papers.1
This means doing things differently. The established MOD Training Needs Analysis
methodology is a good tool in the right context but it was designed and developed
against individual training needs and methods. The Team and Collective Training
Need Analysis (TCTNA) methodology presented here gives us the right tool to do
things differently, to look at the problem through a different lens, thinking with
imagination and being adaptive. Critically, this TCTNA methodology allows us
to move away from thinking about individual skills in the collective space but
to thinking about collective actions and outcomes. The sum of the parts is less
than the whole. This is the key difference between individual ‘Taskwork’ and
collective ‘Teamwork’.

1 For example RUSI Journal, June 2010, vol. 155, no. 3.


xx Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

We cannot strategically or financially afford to continue to do what we have


always done before. In 25 years of military training design work I have been
looking for a spanner that fitted this particular collective training nut, aware that
the one I was using didn’t fit. Here is one.

Col (Ret’d) Hugh Russell


Preface

When you stand on the quayside and look up at the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, a
US Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, you cannot help but feel utterly dwarfed by it.
It is simply huge. We found ourselves doing just that, on a brisk February morning
in the US Navy base at Norfolk, Virginia, at the start of three days of observation of
a Fleet Synthetic Training-Joint Exercise. All of the ships in the Eisenhower’s task
group were alongside and connected into a large common simulation environment,
with numerous other US Navy and NATO assets and simulators participating.
As it was a synthetic training exercise, only the warfighting staff aboard each
of the ships would be participating with their associated command elements – a
training audience of approximately 2,500 people networked together across both
sides of the Atlantic. Of course, there were a few other bits and pieces: aircraft
simulators on various sites, a Combined Air Operations Centre in yet another
simulation facility, and a visiting Battlestaff from the UK who were roleplaying
the higher command during the exercise. Should you think that sounded complex,
you obviously haven’t tried finding your way around inside a Nimitz-class aircraft
carrier – that is an activity that needs a training course in its own right!
An event of such scale requires a correspondingly complex training and
exercising organisation, and a great deal of planning, testing and rehearsal. We
were about to meet the senior observer controller for the exercise who had a team
of 50 instructional staff to observe and evaluate the training. The previous day,
we had visited the training centre where we had met some of the 250 people who
would be running the simulation and controlling the flow of events within the
exercise. The point here is that team and collective training operates over a range
of scales and at the top end can get very large and complex. Such complexity
requires careful organisation. While team and collective training involves
individual performance, it is embedded within a higher-level construct involving
force integration, interoperability, coordination and communication.
To put this work into a little more context, when we started this work the
global economic situation was putting significant pressure on defence budgets,
global military operations were shining a spotlight on the need for effective team
and collective performance, and the Royal Navy was in the process of acquiring
a new class of aircraft carrier (the Queen Elizabeth class). At the same time,
acquisition processes, including the training acquisition component, were under
close scrutiny. The team and collective Training Needs Analysis (TNA) problem
simply had to be addressed.
Our task was to try to solve the puzzle of how you carry out the analysis and
design activities that constitute Training Needs Analysis for team and collective
training. While much has been written on instructional analysis and design we
xxii Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

found it difficult to articulate between the various theoretical approaches presented


by different authors, and apply these models to the various exercises and events
we observed as part of the research and analysis process. We characterised this
issue as the ‘archipelago of theories’ problem. The problem was that Training
Needs Analysis for team and collective training seemed to involve factors across a
broad scope such as individual and team tasks, teamwork, command and control,
task and training environments, team training approaches, instructional strategy
and wide-ranging organisational and procurement considerations.
To attempt to try to fit the disparate elements of the puzzle together we started
generating descriptions for the constructs we observed and read in the literature, in
a format that was inter-relatable. We have tried to generate a modular toolkit where
different aspects of the analysis can be inter-related within a unified framework.
These descriptions and models form the first half of the book and provide a basis
for the ‘how-to’ method of the second-half. We have deliberately put the theory
and models at the front of the book, as we feel it helps to ‘show our working’,
justify some of the synthesis of extant training research and provide a theoretical
basis for some of the tacit best practice we observed at various training events. The
models also provide some useful orientation for the experienced practitioner and
essential context for the newcomer.
While we would not claim to have authored the final words on the subject,
we hope at least to have provided some points of reference in the landscape. We
hope that you find it a thought-provoking read and that the models and techniques
that we put forward are of use to you. What we can say is that, when we have
applied the methodology in a variety of different contexts, the outputs have been
considered by the training and operational experts in the field to be sensible and
useful. That at least is a start.
If you would like to contribute to the ongoing discussion about this research,
please contact us as we would value feedback based around these models and
their application.
We hope you enjoy the book.

John Huddlestone Jonathan Pike


([email protected]) ([email protected])
Part I
Underpinning Theory and Models
This page has been left blank intentionally
Chapter 1
Introduction

Background

An organisation’s capability is delivered, almost without exception, by the team or


set of teams that make up its structure. Consequently, effective team performance
is critical to organisational success. A well-known incident highlighting the
significance of team performance occurred on 3rd July 1988 when a United States
Navy guided missile cruiser, the USS Vincennes, mistakenly shot down Iran
Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf. Two hundred and ninety lives were lost. It
was the air warfare team on board the Vincennes that had the responsibility for
monitoring the airspace in the area where the ship was operating. This tragic event
was attributed, in part, to failures in the interactions between members of the air
warfare team on the USS Vincennes (Collyer and Maleki 1998). In the context
of this book, the significant point about this incident was that the performance of
the team involved depended on more than having skilled individuals in place; the
critical issue was the way in which they worked together as a team. The United
States Office of Naval Research responded to the incident by funding a seven-
year research project, called Tactical Decision Making Under Stress (TADMUS),
to investigate team performance. Notably, the improvement of team training was
clearly identified in its objectives; such was the perceived significance of team
training in relationship to team performance (Johnston et al. 1998). The purpose
of this book is to provide a methodology for analysing team tasks to identify the
critical aspects of team performance that need to be trained and to determine
appropriate training solutions to enable teams to operate efficiently, effectively
and safely.
Whilst few of us will find ourselves in a team involved in the decision-making
process concerning firing a missile at an aircraft from a naval warship, most of us
work in teams and encounter other teams both at work and in our everyday lives. As
with the Vincennes incident, the issues that are involved in working successfully
as a team are often highlighted either when things go wrong or when they go
very well. Two such examples from everyday life came to light when the authors
walked to a favourite restaurant for a lunch break whilst planning this book.
The first incident was observed as we walked to the restaurant. On the way
we saw two bricklayers who were building a garden wall at the front of a house.
The first few courses of bricks had been laid in a nice straight line and they were
busy building the wall up to the required height. Since both could not work in the
same place at the same time, they had made a plan to work at opposite ends of
the wall and both work towards the middle. They had a piece of string stretched
4 Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

along the front of the wall as a guide so that the bricks could be laid level and in
a straight line. As we were passing, the bricklayers were engaged in a free and
frank exchange of views about how their task was progressing. The bricklayer at
one end of the wall said to his colleague near the other end ‘Your end of the wall
isn’t straight!’, to which his colleague replied rather tersely as he looked along
the wall, ‘Well if you stopped leaning on the string it might help!’ They had just
demonstrated the need for communication, mutual performance monitoring and
the provision of feedback between team members.
The second incident occurred at the restaurant itself. When we arrived our
hearts sank, as a large party from a local company had arrived for a celebratory
meal and had just ordered their meals. However, as we had always had good
service in the past we elected to stay, hoping that we would be fed in a timely
fashion despite there being a crowd ahead of us. Our dining experience was in the
hands of two teams, the kitchen team led by the head chef and the front of house
team led by the head waiter. In fact all went well. The large numbers of orders for
some menu items meant that some items were no longer available by the time we
were given menus. However, the kitchen team had communicated this to the front
of house team and we were advised accordingly. Whilst the large party absorbed
much of the teams’ efforts, we were served hot, well-prepared food in a timely
fashion, drinks were served promptly, and plates were cleared away soon after
we finished eating. The large party appeared to receive a similar service. This
suggested that both teams had a well-considered plan of action, that tasks were
allocated effectively, and that communication and coordination was occurring
both within each team and between the teams. The arrival of a large group dining
together created a challenging set of conditions for the teams to work under. Not
only did a large number of customers have to be served, everyone in the group
dining together required their meals to be served at the same time. Equally, other
diners expected to be served without delay. Therefore, the presence of a large
group dining together causes the restaurant staff to experience a ‘different sort of
busy’ to that of catering for a restaurant full of smaller groups of diners. The party
of diners presented a more demanding requirement for synchronisation of team
actions than that presented by simply having a restaurant full of smaller groups
dining independently from each other.
Whilst these two examples are relatively small in scale, they serve to
illustrate some of the complexities that are involved in carrying out team tasks.
As team sizes increase and multiple teams become involved, these complexities
amplify. Arguably, military organisations are faced with particularly demanding
performance requirements and associated training requirements compared to
those of civilian organisations. Whereas a civilian organisation tends to function
in a clearly defined area of business in which it operates continuously, military
organisations are required to be ready to undertake a wide variety of different
tasks, of which many are only carried out when deployed on operations. The rest
of the time they are in training. Furthermore, the exact configuration of the force
required for a given operation will vary considerably depending on the nature of
Introduction 5

the operation itself. This complexity can be illustrated by considering the example
of 1 Royal Irish Battlegroup as it prepared for and deployed to Iraq in 2003. The
detail for this example is drawn from Colonel Tim Collins’ account of his time in
command of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment (Collins 2005).
In 2001 the Battalion had been deployed on peacekeeping duties in East
Tyrone in Northern Ireland. On its return from Ireland in December 2001, the
Battalion underwent training in the air assault role. After 10 months of training,
the Battalion was deployed at short notice to an entirely different kind of task.
They were to take part in Operation Fresco, manning Green Goddess Fire Engines
to provide Fire and Rescue cover during the nationwide firefighters’ strike in
the UK during November and December of 2002. No sooner was this over, the
Battalion received orders that it was to deploy to Iraq on Operation Telic as part
of 16 Air Assault Brigade. At this point the Battalion was just over its established
strength of 690. It was to deploy as the 1 Royal Irish Battlegroup with a strength of
1,225. This significant increase in numbers was due to the need to add additional
units to the core Battalion to provide the required capability for the operation.
These additional units included an artillery battery, an engineer squadron and 25
Air Naval Gunnery Liaison Coordinators from the United States Marines. The
Battlegroup had less than a month to prepare for deployment. Colonel Collins was
presented with a significant training challenge. Preparations included training at
individual, team and collective (team of teams) levels. At the individual level, the
soldiers had to be able to carry in excess of 100 lbs of equipment, survive in harsh
conditions, and ‘shoot straight … at night, under pressure, and when exhausted
and even frightened’ (Collins 2005: 100). At a company level, Colonel Collins’
requirement was that the basic building blocks of the advance to contact with the
enemy, the set piece night attack and meeting the engagement had to be perfectly
understood and practised such that the troops knew the actions to be taken in any
situation. They had to be able to carry them out with minimum of instruction as
there would be no time to think in a battlefield environment (Collins 2005).
In the remainder of this chapter we first look at team and collective training
systems to get an understanding of their nature and complexity. This is followed
by a discussion about Training Needs Analysis as a construct and the need for
development of a methodology specifically focused on team and collective training.
The chapter concludes with a brief introduction to the Team and Collective Training
Needs Analysis Methodology and some suggestions for alternative strategies for
reading the rest of the book.

Team and Collective Training Systems

In this section we examine the nature of team and collective training and explore
the complexities of the training systems required to deliver it.
6 Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

Team and Collective Training

The structure of the training solution that Colonel Collins adopted in order to
prepare his core infantry companies for deployment in the Battlegroup reflected
the structure of the companies themselves. Figure 1.1 shows the generic structure
of the infantry companies in the Battlegroup.

Company

Platoon 1 Platoon 2 Platoon 3

Section 1 Section 2 Section 3

Figure 1.1 Infantry company structure

At the lowest level of aggregation are infantry sections. Each section is made
up of a section commander, a deputy section commander and seven riflemen.
The section commander and his deputy are responsible for the command
and control of the section. The significance of this structure is that an infantry
section can deliver significantly greater capability than can be delivered by nine
infantrymen operating individually. For example, in order to neutralize an enemy
gun emplacement the section can be split into two sub-teams: one team, led by
the deputy section commander, to provide covering fire, whilst the other, led
by the section commander, assaults the gun emplacement. At the next level of
aggregation, three sections are combined to form a platoon under the command
and control of a platoon commander and a platoon sergeant (the deputy). Platoon
tactics, exploiting the coordinated action of three sections, enable more complex
tasks to be undertaken. Similarly, at a company level, the employment of three
platoons enables tasks of even greater scale and complexity to be undertaken. As
the scale of aggregation increases, so does the command and control overhead. At
a company level there is the company commander, his second in command, and a
company sergeant major.
Introduction 7

Training for each company began with individual training, with weapons training
being a key component. This was followed by training at section level where section
tactics were rehearsed. Once section training was completed, platoon level training
was undertaken where the coordination of multiple sections undertaking platoon
level tactics was practised. Finally, company level tactics were practised. Exercises
took place both in the daytime and at night. This training sequence culminated in a
live firing exercise on Sennybridge Training Area in Wales, conducted at company
level. This exercise was supported by 105 mm light guns, 81 mm mortars and Milan
wire guided missiles. Each of the companies in the Battlegroup had to advance under
covering fire from medium machine guns and 0.5 inch heavy machine guns mounted
on stripped down Land-Rovers (Collins 2005) and attack a wide range of targets.
The training solution which Colonel Collins adopted is representative of many
collective training programmes in terms of the progression of training from individual
to team and then aggregating teams together to train at more complex levels. Generally
speaking the larger the team or collective organization then the greater the complexity
of the tasks which it is required to undertake. This level of complexity is reflected in
the complexity of the training system that is required to deliver suitable training.

Training System Components

The key components of a training system are shown in Figure 1.2.

Training Environment(s)

Training Audience Training Audience Tasks

Training System

Training Staff Training Staff Tasks

Training Strategy Supporting Systems

Resources

Training Overlay

Figure 1.2 Training system components


8 Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

Within a training system, the training audience undertakes a range of tasks in


a training environment. This process is facilitated by the training staff undertaking
their tasks in accordance with the training strategy and underlying methods, using
a variety of training materials and assisted by supporting systems. In this book the
term ‘training overlay’ is used to refer to the combination of the training staff, the
tasks that they perform, the systems that they use to support the execution of their
tasks, and the strategy and methods that they employ.
The complexities associated with each of the training system components for
team and collective training include:

Training audience
The training audience may range from two to many thousands of people in
number. As the size of the training audience increases, the range of ranks,
trades and branches is likely to become more diverse. The natural processes that
result in staff turnover (such as promotions, retirements, new people joining the
organisation and personnel being allocated to new roles) mean that the experience
levels within a team are dynamic. As a result, it can be difficult to characterise the
input standard of a team or collective organisation prior to the start of training.
Another confounding factor for team and particularly collective organisations is
the availability of the training audience for training especially where different
elements are drawn from different parts of the organisation and may have quite
different demands on their time.

Training tasks
As the size of the team/collective organisation increases, so the complexity of the
tasks which they undertake increases. Successful team/collective task execution
depends on more than the cumulative effect of each team member executing their
individual tasks; interactions between team members and between teams play
a critical role. Integration of teams becomes a focus of training. In the military
context, the team and collective training challenge is exacerbated by the ever-
increasing complexity of contemporary warfare (particularly with the ever-
increasing presence of asymmetric threats). This was characterised by Lt Gen
Newton (Commander Force Development and Training, British Army) in his
opening address to the International Training and Education Conference 2010 as
a ‘wicked problem’.

Training environments
The training environments for team and collective training are necessarily more
complex and of greater scale than those required for individual training, because the
task environment for each individual in the team/collective organisation has to be
replicated. This is not to suggest that training environments for individual training
cannot be complicated. A flight simulator for a single seat military aircraft such
as the Lightning II (F-35 Joint Strike Fighter) would be a case in point. However,
training Lightning II pilots to operate in a four-ship formation would require four
Introduction 9

aircraft or four such simulators connected together. On a similar theme, the British
Army Combined Arms Tactical Training system, which enables the vehicle crews
of an armoured battlegroup to train together in a synthetic environment, is made
up of over 100 vehicle simulators networked together. The equivalent live training
requires a large training area (typically of many tens or hundreds of square miles in
size) and appropriate numbers of armoured vehicles, both for the training audience
and the enemy forces.
The provision of suitable live training environments can be particularly
problematic. As an example, the Royal Air Force has a requirement for aircrew to
train in high altitude, hot environments. Such conditions do not exist in the UK so
formations of aircraft have to travel to where such conditions can be accessed, such
as in the United States. The provision of training areas to support joint exercises
where land, air and maritime forces are exercising together can be challenging. In
the UK there few places where land, air and maritime training areas are co-located.
The representation of weapons effects can be particularly challenging for
military training. Live firing exercises, such as that undertaken by 1 Royal Irish
before their deployment to Iraq, can only take place on specialist ranges and require
a significant number of safety staff to oversee. However, such live firing can
only take place against unmanned targets. A typical solution to this problem is to
simulate the effects of weapons by such means as attaching lasers to weapons and
having sensors attached to the equipment and vehicles of the participants which
give an audible or visual indication of a hit. Such systems can also be enhanced by
having data links from the components in the system so that position and event data
(such as shots fired and hits) can be recorded for subsequent analysis and replay.

Training staff
The delivery of team and collective training requires a team of training staff,
with a range of different skill sets. The number of staff supporting a large-scale,
collective exercise may run into many hundreds of people with a wide variety of
skills and backgrounds. As an example, the United States Navy Training Group
Atlantic run large-scale synthetic training exercises for aircraft carrier task groups.
These entail all of the ships in such a task group moored in the naval base in
Norfolk, Virginia being connected into a synthetic training environment which
provides synthetic inputs into all of the sensors on the ships and collecting data
from all of the weapons systems. The training audience is comprised of all of the
ships’ warfare teams and the task force headquarters staff. Running the exercise
requires in excess of 250 staff. Of these, approximately 50 are observer controllers
who spend their time on board the ships, monitoring the training audience. These
are drawn from an appropriate mix of specialisations which match the members
of the training audience that they are monitoring (such as intelligence specialists,
warfare officers and engineers). A similarly sized team is required ashore to actually
run the exercise and control the synthetic environment to deliver an appropriate
scenario. They are supported by a large team of role players who manoeuvre the
synthesised opposing force ships and aircraft.
10 Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

Training staff tasks


Training delivery typically necessitates the execution of instructional functions such
as briefing, monitoring, evaluation and After Action Review (AAR) of a complex
team undertaking a complex task in a complex environment. Significant effort is
required to manage the training environment to ensure that events are controlled
and timed to maximise the training effect. Furthermore, whilst individual training
is typically analysed and designed once and then delivered many times, team and
collective training events are often bespoke events with scenarios developed or
adapted to meet the specific requirements of each team/collective organisation
requiring training. Therefore, training staff are often involved in analysis and
design as well as delivery and evaluation.

Supporting systems
Complex supporting systems are often required to support training staff tasks, such
as systems for managing the training environment and for AAR. For example,
the briefing, monitoring and debriefing of an armoured battlegroup exercise
conducted at the British Army Training Unit Suffield in Canada requires a team of
20 to 30 training staff on the ground. They communicate via radio, both with each
other and the team in Exercise Control who have a god’s eye picture of what is
happening on the exercise, generated from data collected from the weapons effects
simulation systems. They are also equipped with laptops which have a feed from
the same system, giving them a view of what is happening across the exercise.
When a significant event occurs, such as when a noteworthy tactical engagement
or manoeuvre takes place, they can also communicate with a team of analysts in
Exercise Control who can record data for use in the subsequent AARs. Once the
exercise is over, AARs can be delivered at different locations in the field with
presentations which include replays of the tactical engagements downloaded from
Exercise Control to mobile AAR theatres mounted on the trailers of large trucks.
This saves the whole battlegroup having to recover to a central point for AAR then
redeploy into the field for the next phase of the exercise.

Training resources
The conduct of team and collective training exercises can require a wide variety
of resources, particularly when conducted in the live environment. For example,
following an armoured battlegroup across a training area is not something that
can be done on foot, so training staff travel in four-wheel drive vehicles. In
addition, such exercises typically require the production of a significant amount
of supporting training material. For the training audience this can include
information about the scenario which they are going to experience in the form
of background information and formal orders from which they may be required
to produce plans of action. For the training staff this may include detailed
information about the scenario including events described in a master scenario
events list and assessment information.
Introduction 11

Training strategy and methods


At a very high level the development of a training strategy and the selection
of training methods for team and collective training may seem to be relatively
simple, in so far as it will generally involve putting the team into a representative
environment and getting them to carry out the task for which they are being
trained. However, given the complexities of all of the elements of the training
system described in the paragraphs above, there are typically a significant range
of constraints, assumptions, risks and opportunities that have to be identified and
taken into account when developing the training strategy and methods. Identifying
all of the requirements in terms of the detail of what exactly has to be trained,
determining how training should be decomposed (especially where multiple teams
are involved), identifying all of the resource requirements, both for the training
environment and the training overlay, and producing a solution that meets all of the
constraints and exploits all available resources represents a significant undertaking.

Training Needs Analysis

Training Needs Analysis (TNA) is the name given to the systematic process
of analysing training requirements, identifying possible training solutions to
meet these requirements, and identifying the most appropriate solution for the
organisation. In the United States in particular it is also referred to as Front End
Analysis. TNA can be viewed as a subset of the processes in the Systems Approach
to Training (SAT) model, from which it is derived.

The Systems Approach to Training

SAT, also referred to as Instructional Systems Development, has an established


tradition in industry, government and educational settings for providing a
framework to guide the systematic design, development and management of
training and education courses. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
Training Group (1983) characterised the systems approach as a logical approach
to problem solving with the following components:

a. defining the problem to be solved in the clearest possible terms;


b. considering every available method by which the problem could be solved,
selecting and implementing the preferred method;
c. monitoring the effectiveness of the method adopted and incorporating
modifications as required.

These components have been incorporated into a wide variety of SAT models over
the last 40 years or more across the academic, commercial and military domains.
Neil (1970) describes the development of a SAT model during the formation of the
12 Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

Open University in the UK in the late 1960s. In the same era, Budget et al. (1970)
describe the application of SAT in the Royal Navy. By 1980 over 60 different
SAT models had been identified (Andrews and Goodson 1980) and the growth
continues, including the development of contemporary models such as those
proposed by Gagne et al. (2005) and Dick et al. (2005). Whilst the various models
in existence vary in their degree of process decomposition and in the sequencing of
process sub-components, the key SAT constructs can be illustrated by the generic
model shown in Figure 1.3. Within SAT there are four main phases of activity or
processes: analysis, design, delivery and evaluation. These are linked sequentially,
starting with analysis.

Analysis

feedback

feedback

Evaluation Design
feedback

Delivery

Figure 1.3 Generic SAT model

The analysis phase is concerned with the identification of the capabilities which
the training audience should have on completion of training and the capabilities
that they have on arrival. The gap between the two determines the instructional
requirement and is typically expressed in terms of objectives which specify: the
performance required, the conditions or environment in which the performance
should be executed, and the level or standard of performance required (which
informs assessment). For example, if a pilot wishes to gain an instrument rating,
then one of the tasks that he or she has to be able to carry out is to fly an Instrument
Landing System approach. In order to pass the instrument rating test this approach
has to be flown to the required standards, which include flying within a specified
Introduction 13

speed tolerance and an angular deviation tolerance from the required flightpath.
Such analysis also needs to identify constraints which must be considered during
subsequent design and delivery such as cost, time, resource availability and the
numbers and geographical distribution of the training audience.
The design phase follows on from the analysis phase and is concerned with
the development of a course of instruction and assessment to meet the objectives
identified in the analysis phase, taking account of the constraints that were also
identified. Design can occur at a number of levels. At a high level, design is
concerned with the determination of the overall strategy for instruction, which
would typically include consideration of training methods and media, course
structure and sequencing, and assessment strategies. The selection of appropriate
training media is a critical step. For example, if an individual is to be trained to
fry an egg, most of us would probably expect an egg, a frying pan and a stove to
be involved. The related training method would most likely be a demonstration,
followed by the opportunity for the student to practise. In this light it is interesting
to reflect on the popularity of cooking programmes on television and reflect on
whether the viewers ensconced on their couches watching the programmes turn
into better cooks as a consequence of watching them. Certainly they get to see
accomplished chefs demonstrating the appropriate procedures for preparing a dish
with a high degree of skill, and they can see what the dish looks like at the end
of the process. If they record the programme they can replay it to get step by step
guidance as they try to produce the dish themselves. The one weakness in this is
that when the final dish is presented, if they lick the television screen they get no
impression of what the dish should taste like! At a lower level, design is focused
on the development of the instructional and assessment materials for each lesson
or instructional event. Consideration also needs to be given to instructor training
requirements to ensure that the instructional team are capable of delivering the
instruction as designed. Once design has been completed, training delivery can
take place.
The final phase is evaluation. Evaluation can encompass both evaluation of the
course outputs and the evaluation of the execution of the SAT processes themselves
(Gagne et al. 2005). The evaluation of course outputs can include student
performance assessments during the course, student feedback about the course,
evidence of the skills taught being applied in the workplace following training,
and evidence of the impact of the deployment of these skills on organisational
outputs (Kirkpatrick 1998). The results of evaluation provide feedback into the
analysis, design and delivery processes as shown by the feedback arrows in Figure
1.3. This closing of the loop should ensure that the system is self-correcting.
The benefits of applying such a systems approach to the development of
instruction are commonly acknowledged to be: it focuses attention at the outset
on the capabilities that students should have at the completion of the instructional
process; the linkages between the stages ensure that the instruction that is
developed is targeted specifically at delivering the required outcomes; and the
14 Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

systematic process is repeatable and auditable (Dick et al. 2005; Gagne et al. 2005;
and Patrick 1992). Dick et al. (2005) note that whilst the approach has been widely
adopted amongst educators, the greatest take up may be found in industry and
military organisations. They attribute this to the premium that is placed in these
environments on efficiency of instruction (which may be both in terms of cost and
time) and the quality of student performance.

The Requirement for Training Needs Analysis

Having established that SAT provides a sound and widely accepted approach for
the development and management of training, it begs the question as to why a
subset of the analytical techniques should be extracted and separately identified as
TNA? The answer to this question lies in the requirement for critical decisions that
have to be made during the design phase of the SAT cycle related to expenditure
and resource allocation.
Within commercial and military settings, the costs and resource requirements
associated with development of training to support new systems that are
being introduced or to support changes in business needs can be substantial.
Typically these can include the acquisition of simulators and part-task training
devices, infrastructure development (such as the construction of facilities to
accommodate simulators, and associated briefing and AAR systems) and staff
training. Consequently, it is essential that the ranges of options for delivering
the required training effect are critically evaluated in terms of their capability
to deliver the required output and their costs (both financial and logistic). Costs
have to be determined for both the initial acquisition of the training system
and its operation and updating throughout the lifetime of the system that it is
supporting. It is this need to identify and critically evaluate training system
options before significant training investment decisions are made that has led to
the development of TNA as a defined subset of SAT processes, to support this
critical decision point in training system acquisition. The mapping of TNA onto
the SAT cycle is shown in Figure 1.4.
TNA embraces all of the elements of analysis, plus the higher level components
of design sufficient to specify the requirements for a training system and evaluate
putative options against these requirements. The importance of TNA is such that
the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (UK MOD) has mandated that a TNA
should be conducted whenever the requirement for a training intervention has
been identified to address a change in operational or business needs (UK Ministry
of Defence 2014).
There is another practical aspect to the definition of TNA as a self-contained
process in its own right. It is not uncommon for this analytical activity to be
contracted out either to a main contractor that is supplying a new system to the
organisation or to an independent company specialising in this type of analysis.
For this purpose it is helpful to have a clearly defined procedure with distinct
outputs against which a contract can be placed, and the outputs evaluated.
Introduction 15

Training
Analysis Needs
Analysis
feedback Critical decision point
in this phase regarding
expenditure and
resource allocation
Evaluation Design

Delivery

Figure 1.4 The mapping of TNA onto the generic SAT model

The Requirement for a TNA Method Targeted at Team and Collective Training

TNA as a construct has been exploited to great effect by organisations such as the
UK MOD for over 20 years, particularly in the context of training to be provided
for new equipment. The analytical methods that make up TNA are those that are
employed in the SAT implementations from which they are derived. The main issue
from the team and collective training perspective is that the analytical techniques
that underpin contemporary SAT models, such as those detailed by Gagne et al.
(2005) and Dick et al. (2005), and military equivalents such as the UK MOD
Defence Systems Approach to Training Model (UK Ministry of Defence 2007),
are aimed at individual training. They do not cater for the complexities of team
and collective training systems as described above. Furthermore, whilst there is a
significant body of research on team performance, including notably the outputs
of the TADMUS programme funded by the US Navy (Johnston et al. 1998), few
analytical techniques have been developed that could be exploited in the conduct
of TNA for team and collective training.
The main developments have been in the area of team task analysis. Examples
of new methods include Hierarchical Task Analysis for Teams (Annett et al. 2000)
and Team Cognitive Task Analysis (Klein 2000). Hierarchical Task Analysis for
Teams extends conventional Hierarchical Task Analysis with the inclusion of
narrative descriptions of the communication and coordination required between
team members to achieve each of the goals in the hierarchical description of
the task. Team Cognitive Task Analysis extends the Critical Decision Method
to include the capture of information about shared mental models and shared
situational awareness. There has also been limited development of approaches
16 Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

to identify gaps in the capability of extant training environments. Examples


include the Task and Training Requirements Methodology (Swezey et al. 1998)
and Mission Essential Competencies (Alliger et al. 2003). These methods rely on
ratings of the utility of the extant training environments by subject matter experts
and do not address the specification of training environments for new systems with
potentially new concepts of operation, such as the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft
carriers being acquired for the Royal Navy. The analysis of training overlay
requirements does not appear to have been addressed at all.

Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis

The Team and Collective Training Needs Analysis (TCTNA) methodology


described in this book has been developed to provide a TNA methodology that
addresses the complexities of team and collective training. The overarching
analytical framework is shown in Figure 1.5. The key points to note are:

• There are separate but interlinked stages which focus on the analysis of the
team and collective task, the training environment and the training overlay.
Each of these stages yields a comprehensive set of requirements for the
training system.

Project Initiation

Team / Collective
Task Analysis

Constraints,
Assumptions,
Risks &
Opportunities
Analysis
Training Training
Environment Overlay
Analysis Analysis

Training
Options
Analysis

Figure 1.5 TCTNA analytical framework


Introduction 17

• Constraints, Assumptions, Risks and Opportunities (CARO) Analysis


captures all of the factors which impact on the development of a
suitable training strategy and the viability and suitability of alternative
training options.
• Training Options Analysis is concerned with identifying training options
which can meet the requirements identified in the previous analytical stages
and determining the optimal training solution for the organisation.
• The undertaking of a TCTNA is likely to be a complex task and needs
to be set up correctly from a project management perspective, hence the
project initiation stage which has to be completed before the analytical
work commences.

In order to develop analytical tools to support each of these process steps, it has
been necessary to develop a number of models to underpin the analysis process.
Figure 1.6 shows the five models that underpin the TCTNA method and their
relationship to each other.

Team Training Model

Team Performance Model

Team Task
Model
Training Overlay Model

Training
Environment
Model

Figure 1.6 Models underpinning TCTNA

The purposes of these models are as follows:

• Team Task Model – captures the types of activities which a team engages
in to undertake a task and the critical links with environmental conditions.
This model provides the analyst with a ‘shopping list’ of activities and
categories of environmental conditions to search for when analysing a task.
This supports Team/Collective Task Analysis.
• Team Performance Model – shows that team task activity is linked to the
environment and also captures the team member and team attributes that
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Hagenström, who had opposed him, became almost a laughing-
stock.
CHAPTER V
Was it forgetfulness, or was it intention, which would have made
Senator Buddenbrook pass over in silence a certain fact, had not his
sister Tony, the devotee of the family papers, announced it to all the
world: the fact, namely, that in those documents the founding of the
firm of Johann Buddenbrook was ascribed to the date of the 7th of
July, 1768, the hundredth anniversary of which was now at hand?
Thomas seemed almost disturbed when Tony, in a moving voice,
called his attention to the fact. His good mood had not lasted. All too
soon he had fallen silent again, more silent than before. He would
leave the office in the midst of work, seized with unrest, and roam
about the garden, sometimes pausing as if he felt confined in his
movements, sighing, and covering his eyes with his hand. He said
nothing, gave his feelings no vent—to whom should he speak, then?
When he told his partner of the Pöppenrade matter, Herr Marcus had
for the first time in his life been angry with him, and had washed his
hands of the whole affair. But Thomas betrayed himself to his sister
Tony, when they said good-bye on the street one Thursday evening,
and she alluded to the Pöppenrade harvest. He gave her hand a
single quick squeeze, and added passionately “Oh, Tony, if I had
only sold it already!” He broke off abruptly, and they parted, leaving
Frau Permaneder dismayed and anxious. The sudden hand-pressure
had something despairing, the low words betrayed pent-up feeling.
But when Tony, as chance offered, tried to come back to the subject,
he wrapped himself in silence, the more forbidding because of his
inward mortification over having given way—his inward bitterness at
being, as he felt, feeble and inadequate to the situation in hand.
He said now, slowly and fretfully: “Oh, my dear child, I wish we
might ignore the whole affair!”
“Ignore it, Tom? Impossible! Unthinkable! Do you think you could
suppress the fact? Do you imagine the whole town would forget the
meaning of the day?”
“I don’t say it is possible—I only say I wish it were. It is pleasant to
celebrate the past, when one is gratified with the present and the
future. It is agreeable to think of one’s forefathers when one feels at
one with them and conscious of having acted as they would have
done. If the jubilee came at a better time—but just now, I feel small
inclination to celebrate it.”
“You must not talk like that, Tom. You don’t mean it; you know
perfectly that it would be a shame to let the hundredth anniversary
of the firm of Johann Buddenbrook go by without a sign or a sound
of rejoicing. You are a little nervous now, and I know why, though
there is really no reason for it. But when the day comes, you will be
as moved as all the rest of us.”
She was right; the day could not be passed over in silence. It was
not long before a notice appeared in the papers, calling attention to
the coming anniversary and giving a detailed history of the old and
estimable firm—but it was really hardly necessary. In the family,
Justus Kröger was the first to mention the approaching event, on the
Thursday afternoon; and Frau Permaneder saw to it that the
venerable leather portfolio was solemnly brought out after dessert
was cleared away, and the whole family, by way of foretaste,
perused the dates and events in the life of the first Johann
Buddenbrook, Hanno’s great-great-grandfather: when he had
varioloid and when genuine smallpox, when he fell out of the third-
storey window on to the floor of the drying-house, and when he had
fever and delirium—she read all that aloud with pious fervour. Not
content with that, she must go back into the 16th century, to the
oldest Buddenbrook of whom there was knowledge, to the one who
was Councillor in Grabau, and the Rostock tailor who had been “very
well off” and had so many children, living and dead. “What a
splendid man!” she cried; and began to rummage through yellow
papers and read letters and poems aloud.
On the morning of the seventh of July, Herr Wenzel was naturally
the first with his congratulations.
“Well, Herr Sen’ter, many happy returns!” he said, gesturing freely
with razor and strop in his red hands. “A hundred years! And nearly
half of it, I may say, I have been shaving in the respected family—
oh, yes, one goes through a deal with the family, when one sees the
head of it the first thing in the morning! The deceased Herr Consul
was always the most talkative in the morning, too: ‘Wenzel,’ he
would ask me, ‘Wenzel, what do you think about the rye? Should I
sell or do you think it will go up again?’”
“Yes, Wenzel, and I cannot think of these years without you, either.
Your calling, as I’ve often said to you, has a certain charm about it.
When you have made your rounds, you are wiser than anybody: you
have had the heads of nearly all the great houses under your hand,
and know the mood of each one. All the others can envy you that,
for it is really valuable information.”
“’s a good bit of truth in that, Herr Sen’ter. But what about the Herr
Sen’ter’s own mood, if I may be so bold to ask? Herr Sen’ter’s
looking a trifle pale again this morning.”
“Am I? Well, I have a headache—and so far as I can see, it will get
worse before it gets better, for I suspect they’ll put a good deal of
strain on it to-day.”
“I’m afraid so, Herr Sen’ter. The interest is great—the interest is very
great. Just look out o’ window when I’ve done with you. Hosts of
flags! And down at the bottom of the Street the ‘Wullenwewer’ and
the ‘Friederike Överdieck’ with all their pennons flying.”
“Well, lets be quick, then, Wenzel; there’s no time to lose, evidently.”
The Senator did not don his office jacket, as he usually did of a
morning, but put on at once a black cutaway coat with a white
waistcoat and light-coloured trousers. There would certainly be
visits. He gave a last glance in the mirror, a last pressure of the
tongs to his moustache, and turned with a little sigh to go. The
dance was beginning. If only the day were well over! Would he have
a single minute to himself, a single minute to relax the muscles of
his face? All day long he should certainly have to receive, with tact
and dignity, the congratulations of a host of people, find just the
right word and just the right tone for everybody, be serious, hearty,
ironic, jocose, and respectful by turns; and from afternoon late into
the night there would be the dinner at the Ratskeller.
It was not true that his head ached. He was only tired. Already,
though he had just risen, with his nerves refreshed by sleep, he felt
his old, indefinable burden upon him. Why had he said his head
ached—as though he always had a bad conscience where his own
health was concerned? Why? Why? However, there was no time now
to brood over the question.
He went into the dining-room, where Gerda met him gaily. She too
was already arrayed to meet their guests, in a plaid skirt, a white
blouse, and a thin silk zouave jacket over it, the colour of her heavy
hair. She smiled and showed her white teeth, so large and regular,
whiter than her white face; her eyes, those close-set, enigmatic
brown eyes, were smiling too, to-day.
“I’ve been up for hours—you can tell from that how excited I am,”
she said, “and how hearty my congratulations are.”
“Well, well! So the hundred years make an impression on you too?”
“Tremendous. But perhaps it is only the excitement of the
celebration. What a day! Look at that, for instance.” She pointed to
the breakfast-table, all garlanded with garden flowers. “That is
Fräulein Jungmann’s work. But you are mistaken if you think you can
drink tea now. The family is in the drawing-room already, waiting to
make a presentation—something in which I too have had a share.
Listen, Thomas. This is, of course, only the beginning of a stream of
callers. At first I can stand it, but at about midday I shall have to
withdraw, I am sure. The barometer has fallen a little, but the sky is
still the most staring blue. It makes the flags look lovely, of course,
and the whole town is flagged—but it will be frightfully hot. Come
into the salon. Breakfast must wait. You should have been up before.
Now the first excitement will have to come on an empty stomach.”
The Frau Consul, Christian, Clothilde, Ida Jungmann, Frau
Permaneder, and Hanno were assembled in the salon, the last two
supporting, not without difficulty, the family present, a great
commemorative tablet. The Frau Consul, deeply moved, embraced
her eldest-born.
“This is a wonderful day, my dear son—a wonderful day,” she
repeated. “We must thank God unceasingly, with all our hearts, for
His mercies—for all His mercies.” She wept.
The Senator was attacked by weakness in her embrace. He felt as
though something within him freed itself and flew away. His lips
trembled. An overwhelming need possessed him to lay his head
upon his mother’s breast, to close his eyes in her arms, to breathe in
the delicate perfume that rose from the soft silk of her gown, to lie
there at rest, seeing nothing more, saying nothing more. He kissed
her and stood erect, putting out his hand to his brother, who greeted
him with the absent-minded embarrassment which was his usual
bearing on such occasions. Clothilde drawled out something kindly.
Ida Jungmann confined herself to making a deep bow, while she
played with the silver watch-chain on her flat bosom.
“Come here, Tom,” said Frau Permaneder uncertainly. “We can’t hold
it any longer, can we, Hanno?” She was holding it almost alone, for
Hanno’s little arms were not much help; and she looked, what with
her enthusiasm and her effort, like an enraptured martyr. Her eyes
were moist, her cheeks burned, and her tongue played, with a
mixture of mischief and nervousness, on her upper lip.
“Here I am,” said the Senator. “What in the world is this? Come, let
me have it; we’ll lean it against the wall.” He propped it up next to
the piano and stood looking at it, surrounded by the family.
In a large, heavy frame of carved nut-wood were the portraits of the
four owners of the firm, under glass. There was the founder, Johann
Buddenbrook, taken from an old oil painting—a tall, grave old
gentleman, with his lips firmly closed, looking severe and determined
above his lace jabot. There was the broad and jovial countenance of
Johann Buddenbrook, the friend of Jean Jacques Hoffstede. There
was Consul Johann Buddenbrook, in a stiff choker collar, with his
wide, wrinkled mouth and large aquiline nose, his eyes full of
religious fervour. And finally there was Thomas Buddenbrook himself,
as a somewhat younger man. The four portraits were divided by
conventionalized blades of wheat, heavily gilded, and beneath,
likewise in figures of brilliant gilt, the dates 1768-1868. Above the
whole, in the tall, Gothic hand of him who had left it to his
descendants, was the quotation: “My son, attend with zeal, to thy
business by day; but do none that hinders thee from thy sleep at
night.”
The Senator, his hands behind his back gazed for a long time at the
tablet.
“Yes, yes,” he said abruptly, and his tone was rather mocking, “an
undisturbed night’s rest is a very good thing.” Then, seriously, if
perhaps a little perfunctorily, “Thank you very much, my dear family.
It is indeed a most thoughtful and beautiful gift. What do you think
—where shall we put it? Shall we hang it in my private office?”
“Yes, Tom, over the desk in your office,” answered Frau Permaneder,
and embraced her brother. Then she drew him into the bow-window
and pointed.
Under a deep blue sky, the two-coloured flag floated above all the
houses, right down Fishers’ Lane, from Broad Street to the wharf,
where the “Wullenwewer” and the “Friederike Överdieck” lay under
full flag, in their owner’s honour.
“The whole town is the same,” said Frau Permaneder, and her voice
trembled. “I’ve been out and about already. Even the Hagenströms
have a flag. They couldn’t do otherwise.—I’d smash in their
window!” He smiled, and they went back to the table together. “And
here are the telegrams, Tom, the first ones to come—the personal
ones, of course; the others have been sent to the office.” They
opened a few of the dispatches: from the family in Hamburg, from
the Frankfort Buddenbrooks, from Herr Arnoldsen in Amsterdam,
from Jürgen Kröger in Wismar. Suddenly Frau Permaneder flushed
deeply.
“He is a good man, in his way,” she said, and pushed across to her
brother the telegram she had just opened: it was signed
Permaneder.
“But time is passing,” said the Senator, and looked at his watch. “I’d
like my tea. Will you come in with me? The house will be like a bee-
hive after a while.”
His wife, who had given a sign to Ida Jungmann, held him back.
“Just a moment, Thomas. You know Hanno has to go to his lessons.
He wants to say a poem to you first. Come here, Hanno. And now,
just as if no one else were here—you remember? Don’t be excited.”
It was the summer holidays, of course, but little Hanno had private
lessons in arithmetic, in order to keep up with his class. Somewhere
out in the suburb of St. Gertrude, in a little ill-smelling room, a man
in a red beard, with dirty fingernails, was waiting to discipline him in
the detested “tables.” But first he was to recite to Papa a poem
painfully learned by heart, with Ida Jungmann’s help, in the little
balcony on the second floor.
He leaned against the piano, in his blue sailor suit with the white V
front and the wide linen collar with a big sailor’s knot coming out
beneath. His thin legs were crossed, his body and head a little
inclined in an attitude of shy, unconscious grace. Two or three weeks
before, his hair had been cut, as not only his fellow-pupils, but the
master as well, had laughed at it; but his head was still covered with
soft abundant ringlets, growing down over the forehead and
temples. His eyelids drooped, so that the long brown lashes lay over
the deep blue shadows; and his closed lips were a little wry.
He knew well what would happen. He would begin to cry, would not
be able to finish for crying; and his heart would contract, as it did on
Sundays in St. Mary’s, when Herr Pfühl played on the organ in a
certain piercingly solemn way. It always turned out that he wept
when they wanted him to do something—when they examined him
and tried to find out what he knew, as Papa so loved to do. If only
Mamma had not spoken of getting excited! She meant to be
encouraging, but he felt it was a mistake. There they stood, and
looked at him. They expected, and feared, that he would break
down—so how was it possible not to? He lifted his lashes and sought
Ida’s eyes. She was playing with her watch-chain, and nodded to
him in her usual honest, crabbed way. He would have liked to cling
to her and have her take him away; to hear nothing but her low,
soothing voice, saying “There, little Hanno, be quiet, you need not
say it.”
“Well, my son, let us hear it,” said the Senator, shortly. He had sat
down in an easy-chair by the table and was waiting. He did not smile
—he seldom did on such occasions. Very serious, with one eyebrow
lifted, he measured little Hanno with cold and scrutinizing glance.
Hanno straightened up. He rubbed one hand over the piano’s
polished surface, gave a shy look at the company, and, somewhat
emboldened by the gentle looks of Grandmamma and Aunt Tony,
brought out, in a low, almost a hard voice: “‘The Shepherd’s Sunday
Hymn,’ by Uhland.”
“Oh, my dear child, not like that,” called out the Senator. “Don’t stick
there by the piano and cross your hands on your tummy like that!
Stand up! Speak out! That’s the first thing. Here, stand here
between the curtains. Now, hold your head up—let your arms hang
down quietly at your sides.”
Hanno took up his position on the threshold of the living-room and
let his arms hang down. Obediently he raised his head, but his eyes
—the lashes drooped so low that they were invisible. They were
probably already swimming in tears.
“‘This is the day of our—’”
he began, very low. His father’s voice sounded loud by contrast
when he interrupted: “One begins with a bow, my son. And then,
much louder. Begin again, please: ‘Shepherd’s Sunday Hymn’—”
It was cruel. The Senator was probably aware that he was robbing
the child of the last remnant of his self-control. But the boy should
not let himself be robbed. He should have more manliness by now.
“‘Shepherd’s Sunday Hymn,’” he repeated encouragingly,
remorselessly.
But it was all up with Hanno. His head sank on his breast, and the
small, blue-veined right hand tugged spasmodically at the brocaded
portière.
“‘I stand alone on the vacant plain,’”
he said, but could get no further. The mood of the verse possessed
him. An overmastering self-pity took away his voice, and the tears
could not be kept back: they rolled out from beneath his lashes.
Suddenly the thought came into his mind: if he were only ill, a little
ill, as on those nights when he lay in bed with a slight fever and sore
throat, and Ida came and gave him a drink, and put a compress on
his head, and was kind— He put his head down on the arm with
which he clung to the portière, and sobbed.
“Well,” said the Senator, harshly, “there is no pleasure in that.” He
stood up, irritated. “What are you crying about? Though it is
certainly a good enough reason for tears, that you haven’t the
courage to do anything, even for the sake of giving me a little
pleasure! Are you a little girl? What will become of you if you go on
like that? Will you always be drowning yourself in tears, every time
you have to speak to people?”
“I never will speak to people, never!” thought Hanno in despair.
“Think it over till this afternoon,” finished the Senator, and went into
the dining-room. Ida Jungmann knelt by her fledgling and dried his
eyes, and spoke to him, half consoling, half reproachful.
The Senator breakfasted hurriedly, and the Frau Consul, Tony,
Clothilde, and Christian meanwhile took their leave. They were to
dine with Gerda, as likewise were the Krögers, the Weinschenks, and
the three Misses Buddenbrook from Broad Street, while the Senator,
willy-nilly, must be present at the dinner in the Ratskeller. He hoped
to leave in time to see his family again at his own house.
Sitting at the be-garlanded table, he drank his hot tea out of a
saucer, hurriedly ate an egg, and on the steps took two or three
puffs of a cigarette. Grobleben, wearing his woollen scarf in defiance
of the July heat, with a boot over his left forearm and the polish-
brush in his right, a long drop pendent from his nose, came from the
garden into the front entry and accosted his master at the foot of
the stairs, where the brown bear stood with his tray.
“Many happy returns, Herr Sen’ter, many happy—’n’ one is rich ’n’
great, ’n’ t’other’s pore—”
“Yes, yes, Grobleben, you’re right, that’s just how it is!” And the
Senator slipped a piece of money into the hand with the brush, and
crossed the entry into the anteroom of the office. In the office the
cashier came up to him, a tall man with honest, faithful eyes, to
convey, in carefully selected phrases, the good wishes of the staff.
The Senator thanked him in a few words, and went on to his place
by the window. He had hardly opened his letters and glanced into
the morning paper lying there ready for him, when a knock came on
the door leading into the front entry, and the first visitors appeared
with their congratulations.
It was a delegation of granary labourers, who came straddling in like
bears, the corners of their mouths drawn down with befitting
solemnity and their caps in their hands. Their spokesman spat
tobacco-juice on the floor, pulled up his trousers, and talked in great
excitement about “a hun’erd year” and “many more hun’erd year.”
The Senator proposed to them a considerable increase in their pay
for the week, and dismissed them. The office staff of the revenue
department came in a body to congratulate their chief. As they left,
they met in the doorway a number of sailors, with two pilots at the
head, from the “Wullenwewer” and the “Friederike Överdieck,” the
two ships belonging to the firm which happened at the time to be in
port. Then there was a deputation of grain-porters, in black blouses,
knee-breeches, and top-hats. And single citizens, too, were
announced from time to time: Herr Stuht from Bell-Founders’ Street
came, with a black coat over his flannel shirt, and Iwersen the
florist, and sundry other neighbours. There was an old postman,
with watery eyes, earrings, and a white beard—an ancient oddity
whom the Senator used to salute on the street and call him Herr
Postmaster: he came, stood in the doorway, and cried out “Ah bain’t
come fer that, Herr Sen’ter! Ah knows as iverybody gits summat as
comes here to-day, but ah bain’t come fer that, an’ so ah tells ye!”
He received his piece of money with gratitude, none the less. There
was simply no end to it. At half-past ten the servant came from the
house to announce that the Frau Senator was receiving guests in the
salon.
Thomas Buddenbrook left his office and hurried upstairs. At the door
of the salon he paused a moment for a glance into the mirror to
order his cravat, and to refresh himself with a whiff of the eau-de-
cologne on his handkerchief. His body was wet with perspiration, but
his face was pale, his hands and feet cold. The reception in the
office had nearly used him up already. He drew a long breath and
entered the sunlit room, to be greeted at once by Consul Huneus,
the lumber dealer and multi-millionaire, his wife, their daughter, and
the latter’s husband, Senator Dr. Gieseke. These had all driven in
from Travemünde, like many others of the first families of the town,
who were spending July in a cure which they interrupted only for the
Buddenbrook jubilee.
They had not been sitting for three minutes in the elegant arm-
chairs of the salon when Consul Överdieck, son of the deceased
Burgomaster, and his wife, who was a Kistenmaker, were
announced. When Consul Huneus made his adieux, his place was
taken by his brother, who had a million less money than he, but
made up for it by being a senator.
Now the ball was open. The tall white door, with the relief of the
singing cupids above it, was scarcely closed for a moment; there
was a constant view from within of the great staircase, upon which
the light streamed down from the skylight far above, and of the
stairs themselves, full of guests either entering or taking their leave.
But the salon was spacious, the guests lingered in groups to talk,
and the number of those who came was for some time far greater
than the number of those who went away. Soon the maid-servant
gave up opening and shutting the door that led into the salon and
left it wide open, so that the guests stood in the corridor as well.
There was the drone and buzz of conversation in masculine and
feminine voices, there were handshakings, bows, jests, and loud,
jolly laughter, which reverberated among the columns of the
staircase and echoed from the great glass panes of the skylight.
Senator Buddenbrook stood by turns at the top of the stairs and in
the bow-window, receiving the congratulations, which were
sometimes mere formal murmurs and sometimes loud and hearty
expressions of good will. Burgomaster Dr. Langhals, a heavily built
man of elegant appearance, with a shaven chin nestling in a white
neck-cloth, short grey mutton-chops, and a languid diplomatic air,
was received with general marks of respect. Consul Eduard
Kistenmaker, the wine-merchant, his wife, who was a Möllendorpf,
and his brother and partner Stephan, Senator Buddenbrook’s loyal
friend and supporter, with his wife, the rudely healthy daughter of a
landed proprietor, arrive and pay their respects. The widowed Frau
Senator Möllendorpf sits throned in the centre of the sofa in the
salon, while her children, Consul August Möllendorpf and his wife
Julchen, born Hagenström, mingle with the crowd. Consul Hermann
Hagenström supports his considerable weight on the balustrade,
breathes heavily into his red beard, and talks with Senator Dr.
Cremer, the Chief of Police, whose brown beard, mixed with grey,
frames a smiling face expressive of a sort of gentle slyness. State
Attorney Moritz Hagenström, smiling and showing his defective
teeth, is there with his beautiful wife, the former Fräulein Puttfarken
of Hamburg. Good old Dr. Grabow may be seen pressing Senator
Buddenbrook’s hand for a moment in both of his, to be displaced
next moment by Contractor Voigt. Pastor Pringsheim, in secular
garb, only betraying his dignity by the length of his frock-coat,
comes up the steps with outstretched arms and a beaming face. And
Herr Friedrich Wilhelm Marcus is present, of course. Those
gentlemen who come as delegates from any body such as the
Senate, the Board of Trade, or the Assembly of Burgesses, appear in
frock-coats. It is half-past eleven. The heat is intense. The lady of
the house withdrew a quarter of an hour ago.
Suddenly there is a hubbub below the vestibule door, a stamping
and shuffling of feet, as of many people entering together; and a
ringing, noisy voice echoes through the whole house. Everybody
rushes to the landing, blocks up the doors to the salon, the dining-
room, and the smoking-room, and peers down. Below is a group of
fifteen or twenty men with musical instruments, headed by a
gentleman in a brown wig, with a grey nautical beard and yellow
artificial teeth, which he shows when he talks. What is happening? It
is Consul Peter Döhlmann, of course: he is bringing the band from
the theatre, and mounts the stairs in triumph, swinging a packet of
programmes in his hand!
The serenade in honour of the hundredth anniversary of the firm of
Johann Buddenbrook begins: in these impossible conditions, with the
notes all running together, the chords drowning each other, the loud
grunting and snarling of the big bass trumpet heard above
everything else. It begins with “Now let us all thank God,” goes over
into the adaptation of Offenbach’s “La Belle Hélène,” and winds up
with a pot-pourri of folk-songs—quite an extensive programme! And
a pretty idea of Döhlmann’s! They congratulate him on it; and
nobody feels inclined to break up until the concert is finished. They
stand or sit in the salon and the corridor; they listen and talk.
Thomas Buddenbrook stood with Stephan Kistenmaker, Senator Dr.
Gieseke, and Contractor Voigt, beyond the staircase, near the open
door of the smoking-room and the flight of stairs up to the second
storey. He leaned against the wall, now and then contributing a word
to the conversation, and for the rest looking out into space across
the balustrade. It was hotter than ever, and more oppressive; but it
would probably rain. To judge from the shadows that drove across
the skylight there must be clouds in the sky. They were so many and
moved so rapidly that the changeful, flickering light on the staircase
came in time to hurt the eyes. Every other minute the brilliance of
the gilt chandelier and the brass instruments below was quenched,
to blaze out the next minute as before. Once the shadows lasted a
little longer, and six or seven times something fell with a slight
crackling sound upon the panes of the skylight—hail-stones, no
doubt. Then the sunlight streamed down again.
There is a mood of depression in which everything that would
ordinarily irritate us and call up a healthy reaction, merely weighs us
down with a nameless, heavy burden of dull chagrin. Thus Thomas
brooded over the break-down of little Johann, over the feelings
which the whole celebration aroused in him, and still more over
those which he would have liked to feel but could not. He sought
again and again to pull himself together, to clear his countenance, to
tell himself that this was a great day which was bound to heighten
and exhilarate his mood. And indeed the noise which the band was
making, the buzz of voices, the sight of all these people gathered in
his honour, did shake his nerves; did, together with his memories of
the past and of his father, give rise in him to a sort of weak
emotionalism. But a sense of the ridiculous, of the disagreeable,
hung over it all—the trumpery music, spoiled by the bad acoustics,
the banal company chattering about dinners and the stock market—
and this very mingling of emotion and disgust heightened his inward
sense of exhaustion and despair.
At a quarter after twelve, when the musical program was drawing to
a close, an incident occurred which in no wise interfered with the
prevailing good feeling, but which obliged the master of the house to
leave his guests for a short time. It was of a business nature. At a
pause in the music the youngest apprentice in the firm appeared,
coming up the great staircase, overcome with embarrassment at
sight of so many people. He was a little, stunted fellow; and he drew
his red face down as far as possible between his shoulders and
swung one long, thin arm violently back and forth to show that he
was perfectly at his ease. In the other hand he had a telegram. He
mounted the steps, looking everywhere for his master, and when he
had discovered him he passed with blushes and murmured excuses
through the crowds that blocked his way.
His blushes were superfluous—nobody saw him. Without looking at
him or breaking off their talk, they slightly made way, and they
hardly noticed when he gave his telegram to the Senator, with a
scrape, and the latter turned a little away from Kistenmaker, Voigt,
and Gieseke to read it. Nearly all the telegrams that came to-day
were messages of congratulation; still, during business hours, they
had to be delivered at once.
The corridor made a bend at the point where the stairs mounted to
the second storey, and then went on to the back stairs, where there
was another, a side entrance into the dining-room. Opposite the
stairs was the shaft of the dumbwaiter, and at this point there was a
sizable table, where the maids usually polished the silver. The
Senator paused here, turned his back to the apprentice, and opened
the dispatch.
Suddenly his eyes opened so wide that any one seeing him would
have started in astonishment, and he gave a deep, gasping intake of
breath which dried his throat and made him cough.
He tried to say “Very well,” but his voice was inaudible in the
clamour behind him. “Very well,” he repeated; but the second word
was only a whisper.
As his master did not move or turn round or make any sign, the
hump-backed apprentice shifted from one foot to the other, then
made his outlandish scrape again and went down the back stairs.
Senator Buddenbrook still stood at the table. His hands, holding the
dispatch, hung weakly down in front of him; he breathed in difficult,
short breaths through his mouth; his body swayed back and forth,
and he shook his head meaninglessly, as if stunned. “That little bit of
hail,” he said, “that little bit of hail.” He repeated it stupidly. But
gradually his breathing grew longer and quieter, the movement of
his body less; his half-shut eyes clouded over with a weary, broken
expression, and he turned around, slowly nodding his head, opened
the door into the dining-room, and went in. With bent head he
crossed the wide polished floor and sat down on one of the dark-red
sofas by the window. Here it was quiet and cool. The sound of the
fountain came up from the garden, and a fly buzzed on the pane.
There was only a dull murmur from the front of the house.
He laid his weary head on the cushion and closed his eyes. “That’s
good, that’s good,” he muttered, half aloud, drawing a deep breath
of relief and satisfaction; “Oh, that is good!”
He lay five minutes thus, with limbs relaxed and a look of peace
upon his face. Then he sat up, folded the telegram, put it in his
breast pocket, and rose to rejoin his guests.
But in the same minute he sank back with a disgusted groan upon
the sofa. The music—it was beginning again; an idiotic racket, meant
to be a galop, with the drum and cymbals marking a rhythm in
which the other instruments all joined either ahead of or behind
time; a naïve, insistent, intolerable hullabaloo of snarling, crashing,
and feebly piping noises, punctuated by the silly tootling of the
piccolo.
CHAPTER VI
“Oh, Bach, Sebastian Bach, dear lady!” cried Edmund Pfühl, Herr
Edmund Pfühl, the organist of St. Mary’s, as he strode up and down
the salon with great activity, while Gerda, smiling, her head on her
hand, sat at the piano; and Hanno listened from a big chair, his
hands clasped round his knees. “Certainly, as you say, it was he
through whom the victory was achieved by harmony over
counterpoint. He invented modern harmony, assuredly. But how?
Need I tell you how? By progressive development of the
contrapuntal style—you know it as well as I do. Harmony? Ah, no!
By no means. Counterpoint, my dear lady, counterpoint! Whither, I
ask you, would experiments in harmony have led? While I have
breath to speak, I will warn you against mere experiments in
harmony!”
His zeal as he spoke was great, and he gave it free rein, for he felt
at home in the house. Every Wednesday afternoon there appeared
on the threshold his bulky, square, high-shouldered figure, in a
coffee-coloured coat, whereof the skirts hung down over his knees.
While awaiting his partner, he would open lovingly the Bechstein
grand piano, arrange the violin parts on the stand, and then prelude
a little, softly and artistically, with his head sunk, in high
contentment, on one shoulder.
An astonishing growth of hair, a wilderness of tight little curls, red-
brown mixed with grey, made his head look big and heavy, though it
was poised easily upon a long neck with an extremely large Adam’s
apple that showed above his low collar. The straight, bunchy
moustaches, of the same colour as the hair, were more prominent
than the small snub nose. His eyes were brown and bright, with
puffs of flesh beneath them; when he played they looked as though
their gaze passed through whatever was in their way and rested on
the other side. His face was not striking, but it had at least the
stamp of a strong and lively intelligence. His eyelids were usually
half drooped, and he had a way of relaxing his lower jaw without
opening his mouth, which gave him a flabby, resigned expression
like that sometimes seen on the face of a sleeping person.
The softness of his outward seeming, however, contrasted strongly
with the actual strength and self-respect of his character. Edmund
Pfühl was an organist of no small repute, whose reputation for
contrapuntal learning was not confined within the walls of his native
town. His little book on Church Music was recommended for private
study in several conservatories, and his fugues and chorals were
played now and then where an organ sounded to the glory of God.
These compositions, as well as the voluntaries he played on Sundays
at Saint Mary’s, were flawless, impeccable, full of the relentless,
severe logicality of the Strenge Satz. Such beauty as they had was
not of this earth, and made no appeal to the ordinary layman’s
human feeling. What spoke in them, what gloriously triumphed in
them, was a technique amounting to an ascetic religion, a technique
elevated to a lofty sacrament, to an absolute end in itself. Edmund
Pfühl had small use for the pleasant and the agreeable, and spoke of
melody, it must be confessed, in slighting terms. But he was no dry
pedant, notwithstanding. He would utter the name of Palestrina in
the most dogmatic, awe-inspiring tone. But even while he made his
instrument give out a succession of archaistic virtuosities, his face
would be all aglow with feeling, with rapt enthusiasm, and his gaze
would rest upon the distance as though he saw there the ultimate
logicality of all events, issuing in reality. This was the musician’s
look; vague and vacant precisely because it abode in the kingdom of
a purer, profounder, more absolute logic than that which shapes our
verbal conceptions and thoughts.
His hands were large and soft, apparently boneless, and covered
with freckles. His voice, when he greeted Gerda Buddenbrook, was
low and hollow, as though a bite were stuck in his throat: “Good
morning, honoured lady!”
He rose a little from his seat, bowed, and respectfully took the hand
she offered, while with his own left he struck the fifths on the piano,
so firmly and clear that she seized her Stradivarius and began to
tune the strings with practised ear.
“The G minor concerto of Bach, Herr Pfühl. The whole adagio still
goes badly, I think.”
And the organist began to play. But hardly were the first chords
struck, when it invariably happened that the corridor door would
open gently, and without a sound little Johann would steal across
the carpet to an easy-chair, where he would sit, his hands clasped
round his knees, motionless, and listen to the music and the
conversation.
“Well, Hanno, so you want a little taste of music, do you?” said
Gerda in a pause, and looked at her son with her shadowy eyes, in
which the music had kindled a soft radiance.
Then he would stand up and put out his hand to Herr Pfühl with a
silent bow, and Herr Pfühl would stroke with gentle affection the soft
light-brown hair that hung gracefully about brow and temples.
“Listen, now, my child,” he would say, with mild impressiveness; and
the boy would look at the Adam’s apple that went up and down as
the organist spoke, and then go back to his place with his quick,
light steps, as though he could hardly wait for the music to begin
again.
They played a movement of Haydn, some pages of Mozart, a sonata
of Beethoven. Then, while Gerda was picking out some music, with
her violin under her arm, a surprising thing happened: Herr Pfühl,
Edmund Pfühl, organist at St. Mary’s, glided over from his easy
interlude into music of an extraordinary style; while a sort of shame-
faced enjoyment showed upon his absent countenance. A
burgeoning and blooming, a weaving and singing rose beneath his
fingers; then, softly and dreamily at first, but ever clearer and
clearer, there emerged in artistic counterpoint the ancestral,
grandiose, magnificent march motif—a mounting to a climax, a
complication, a transition; and at the resolution of the dominant the
violin chimed in, fortissimo. It was the overture to Die Meistersinger.
Gerda Buddenbrook was an impassioned Wagnerite. But Herr Pfühl
was an equally impassioned opponent—so much so that in the
beginning she had despaired of winning him over.
On the day when she first laid some piano arrangements from
Tristan on the music-rack, he played some twenty-five beats and
then sprung up from the music-stool to stride up and down the room
with disgust painted upon his face.
“I cannot play that, my dear lady! I am your most devoted servant—
but I cannot. That is not music—believe me! I have always flattered
myself I knew something about music—but this is chaos! This is
demagogy, blasphemy, insanity, madness! It is a perfumed-fog, shot
through with lightning! It is the end of all honesty in art. I will not
play it!” And with the words he had thrown himself again on the
stool, and with his Adam’s apple working furiously up and down,
with coughs and sighs, had accomplished another twenty-five beats.
But then he shut the piano and cried out:
“Oh, fie, fie! No, this is going too far. Forgive me, dear lady, if I
speak frankly what I feel. You have honoured me for years, and paid
me for my services; and I am a man of modest means. But I must
lay down my office, I assure you, if you drive me to it by asking me
to play these atrocities! Look, the child sits there listening—would
you then utterly corrupt his soul?”
But let him gesture as furiously as he would, she brought him over—
slowly, by easy stages, by persistent playing and persuasion.
“Pfühl,” she would say, “be reasonable, take the thing calmly. You
are put off by his original use of harmony. Beethoven seems to you
so pure, clear, and natural, by contrast. But remember how
Beethoven himself affronted his contemporaries, who were brought
up in the old way. And Bach—why, good Heavens, you know how he
was reproached for his want of melody and clearness! You talk about
honesty—but what do you mean by honesty in art? Is it not the
antithesis of hedonism? And, if so, then that is what you have here.
Just as much as in Bach. I tell you, Pfühl, this music is less foreign to
your inner self than you think!”
“It is all juggling and sophistry—begging your pardon,” he grumbled.
But she was right, after all: the music was not so impossible as he
thought at first. He never, it is true, quite reconciled himself to
Tristan, though he eventually carried out Gerda’s wish and made a
very clever arrangement of the Liebestod for violin and piano. He
was first won over by certain parts of Die Meistersinger; and slowly a
love for this new art began to stir within him. He would not confess
it—he was himself aghast at the fact, and would pettishly deny it
when the subject was mentioned. But after the old masters had had
their due, Gerda no longer needed to urge him to respond to a more
complex demand upon his virtuosity; with an expression of shame-
faced pleasure, he would glide into the weaving harmonies of the
Leit-motiv. After the music, however, there would be a long
explanation of the relation of this style of music to that of the
Strenge Satz; and one day Herr Pfühl admitted that, while not
personally interested in the theme, he saw himself obliged to add a
chapter to his book on Church Music, the subject of which would be
the application of the old key-system to the church- and folk-music
of Richard Wagner.
Hanno sat quite still, his small hands clasped round his knees, his
mouth, as usual, a little twisted as his tongue felt out the hole in a
back tooth. He watched his mother and Herr Pfühl with large quiet
eyes; and thus, so early, he became aware of music as an
extraordinarily serious, important, and profound thing in life. He
understood only now and then what they were saying, and the
music itself was mostly far above his childish understanding. Yet he
came again, and sat absorbed for hours—a feat which surely faith,
love, and reverence alone enabled him to perform.
When only seven, he began to repeat with one hand on the piano
certain combinations of sound that made an impression on him. His
mother watched him smiling, improved his chords, and showed him
how certain tones would be necessary to carry one chord over into
another. And his ear confirmed what she told him.
After Gerda Buddenbrook had watched her son a little, she decided
that he must have piano lessons.
“I hardly think,” she told Herr Pfühl, “that he is suited for solo work;
and on the whole I am glad, for it has its bad side apart from the
dependence of the soloist upon his accompanist, which can be very
serious too;—if I did not have you, for instance!—there is always the
danger of yielding to more or less complete virtuosity. You see, I
know whereof I speak. I tell you frankly that, for the soloist, a high
degree of ability is only the first step. The concentration on the tone
and phrasing of the treble, which reduces the whole polyphony to
something vague and indefinite in the consciousness, must surely
spoil the feeling for harmony—unless the person is more than
usually gifted—and the memory as well, which is most difficult to
correct later on. I love my violin, and I have accomplished a good
deal with it; but to tell the truth, I place the piano higher. What I
mean is this: familiarity with the piano, as a means of summarizing
the richest and most varied structures, as an incomparable
instrument for musical reproduction, means for me a clearer, more
intimate and comprehensive intercourse with music. Listen, Pfühl. I
would like to have you take him, if you will be so good. I know there
are two or three people here in the town who give lessons—women,
I think. But they are simply piano-teachers. You know what I mean.
I feel that it matters so little whether one is trained upon an
instrument, and so much whether one knows something about
music. I depend upon you. And you will see, you will succeed with
him. He has the Buddenbrook hand. The Buddenbrooks can all strike
the ninths and tenths—only they have never set any store by it,” she
concluded, laughing. And Herr Pfühl declared himself ready to
undertake the lessons.
From now on, he came on Mondays as well as Wednesdays, and
gave little Hanno lessons, while Gerda sat beside them. He went at it
in an unusual way, for he felt that he owed more to his pupil’s dumb
and passionate zeal than merely to employ it in playing the piano a
little. The first elementary difficulties were hardly got over when he
began to theorize, in a simple way, with graphic illustrations, and to
give his pupil the foundations of the theory of harmony. And Hanno
understood. For it was all only a confirmation of what he had always
known.
As far as possible, Herr Pfühl took into consideration the eager
ambition of the child. He spent much thought upon the problem,
how best to lighten the material load that weighed down the wings
of his fancy. He did not demand too much finger dexterity or practice
of scales. What he had in mind, and soon achieved, was a clear and
lively grasp of the key-system on Hanno’s part, an inward,
comprehensive understanding of its relationships, out of which
would come, at no distant day, the quick eye for possible
combinations, the intuitive mastery over the piano, which would lead
to improvisation and composition. He appreciated with a touching
delicacy of feeling the spiritual needs of this young pupil, who had
already heard so much, and directed it toward the acquisition of a
serious style. He would not disillusionize the deep solemnity of his
mood by making him practise commonplaces. He gave him chorals
to play, and pointed out the laws controlling the development of one
chord into another.
Gerda, sitting with her embroidery or her book, just beyond the
portières, followed the course of the lessons.
“You outstrip all my expectations,” she told Herr Pfühl, later on. “But
are you not going too fast? Aren’t you getting too far ahead? Your
method seems to me eminently creative—he has already begun to
try to improvise a little. But if the method is beyond him, if he hasn’t
enough gift, he will learn absolutely nothing.”
“He has enough gift,” Herr Pfühl said, and nodded. “Sometimes I
look into his eyes, and see so much lying there—but he holds his
mouth tight shut. In later life, when his mouth will probably be shut
even tighter, he must have some kind of outlet—a way of speaking
—”
She looked at him—at this square-built musician with the red-brown
hair, the pouches under the eyes, the bushy moustaches, and the
inordinate Adam’s apple—and then she put out her hand and said:
“Thank you, Pfühl. You mean well by him. And who knows, yet, how
much you are doing for him?”
Hanno’s feeling for his teacher was one of boundless gratitude and
devotion. At school he sat heavy and hopeless, unable, despite
strenuous coaching, to understand his tables. But he grasped
without effort all that Herr Pfühl told him, and made it his own—if he
could make more his own that which he had already owned before.
Edmund Pfühl, like a stout angel in a tail-coat, took him in his arms
every Monday afternoon and transported him above all his daily
misery, into the mild, sweet, grave, consoling kingdom of sound.
The lessons sometimes took place at Herr Pfühl’s own house, a
roomy old gabled dwelling full of cool passages and crannies, in
which the organist lived alone with an elderly housekeeper.
Sometimes, too, little Buddenbrook was allowed to sit up with the
organist at the Sunday service in St. Mary’s—which was quite a
different matter from stopping below with the other people, in the
nave. High above the congregation, high above Pastor Pringsheim in
his pulpit, the two sat alone, in the midst of a mighty tempest of
rolling sound, which at once set them free from the earth and
dominated them by its own power; and Hanno was sometimes
blissfully permitted to help his master control the stops.
When the choral was finished, Herr Pfühl would slowly lift his fingers
from the keyboard, so that only the bass and the fundamental would
still be heard, in lingering solemnity; and after a meaningful pause,
the well-modulated voice of Pastor Pringsheim would rise up from
under the sounding-board in the pulpit. Then it happened not
infrequently that Herr Pfühl would, quite simply, begin to make fun
of the preacher: his artificial enunciation, his long, exaggerated
vowels, his sighs, his crude transitions from sanctity to gloom.
Hanno would laugh too, softly but with heart-felt glee; for those two
up there were both of the opinion—which neither of them expressed
—that the sermon was silly twaddle, and that the real service
consisted in that which the Pastor and his congregation regarded
merely as a devotional accessory: namely, the music.
Herr Pfühl, in fact, had a constant grievance in the small
understanding there was for his accomplishments down there among
the Senators, Consuls, citizens, and their families. And thus, he liked
to have his small pupil by him, to whom he could point out the
extraordinary difficulties of the passages he had just played. He
performed marvels of technique. He had composed a melody which
was just the same read forward or backward, and based upon it a
fugue which was to be played “crab-fashion.” But after performing
this wonder: “Nobody knows the difference,” he said, and folded his
hands in his lap with a dreary look, shaking his head hopelessly.
While Pastor Pringsheim was delivering his sermon, he whispered to
Hanno: “That was a crab-fashion imitation, Johann. You don’t know
what that is yet. It is the imitation of a theme composed backward
instead of forward—a very, very difficult thing. Later on, I will show
you what an imitation in the Strenge Satz involves. As for the ‘crab,’
I would never ask you to try that. It isn’t necessary. But do not
believe those who tell you that such things are trifles, without any
musical value. You will find the crab in musicians of all ages. But
exercises like that are the scorn of the mediocre and the superficial
musician. Humility, Hanno, humility—is the feeling one should have.
Don’t forget it.”
On his eighth birthday, April 15th, 1869, Hanno played before the
assembled family a fantasy of his own composition. It was a simple
affair, a motif entirely of his own invention, which he had slightly
developed. When he showed it to Herr Pfühl, the organist, of course,
had some criticism to make.
“What sort of theatrical ending is that, Johann? It doesn’t go with
the rest of it. In the beginning it is all pretty good; but why do you
suddenly fall from B major into the six-four chord on the fourth note
with a minor third? These are tricks; and you tremolo here, too—
where did you pick that up? I know, of course: you have been
listening when I played certain things for your mother. Change the
end, child: then it will be quite a clean little piece of work.”
But it appeared that Hanno laid the greatest stress precisely on this
minor chord and this finale; and his mother was so very pleased with
it that it remained as it was. She took her violin and played the
upper part, and varied it with runs in demi-semi-quavers. That
sounded gorgeous: Hanno kissed her out of sheer happiness, and
they played it together to the family on the 15th of April.
The Frau Consul, Frau Permaneder, Christian, Clothilde, Herr and
Frau Consul Kröger, Herr and Frau Director Weinschenk, the Broad
Street Buddenbrooks, and Therese Weichbrodt were all bidden to
dinner at four o’clock, with the Senator and his wife, in honour of
Hanno’s birthday; and now they sat in the salon and looked at the
child, perched on the music-stool in his sailor suit, and at the
elegant, foreign appearance his mother made as she played a
wonderful cantilena on the G string, and then, with profound
virtuosity, developed a stream of purling, foaming cadences. The
silver on the end of her bow gleamed in the gas-light.
Hanno was pale with excitement, and had hardly eaten any dinner.
But now he forgot all else in his absorbed devotion to his task, which
would, alas, be all over in ten minutes! The little melody he had
invented was more harmonic than rhythmic in its structure; there
was an extraordinary contrast between the simple primitive material
which the child had at his command, and the impressive,
impassioned, almost over-refined method with which that material
was employed. He brought out each leading note with a forward
inclination of the little head; he sat far forward on the music-stool,
and strove by the use of both pedals to give each new harmony an
emotional value. In truth, when Hanno concentrated upon an effect,
the result was likely to be emotional rather than merely sentimental.
He gave every simple harmonic device a special and mysterious
significance by means of retardation and accentuation; his surprising
skill in effects was displayed in each chord, each new harmony, by a
suddenly introduced pianissimo. And he sat with lifted eyebrows,
swaying back and forth with the whole upper part of his body. Then
came the finale, Hanno’s beloved finale, which crowned the elevated
simplicity of the whole piece. Soft and clear as a bell sounded the E
minor chord, tremolo pianissimo, amid the purling, flowing notes of
the violin. It swelled, it broadened, it slowly, slowly rose: suddenly,
in the forte, he introduced the discord C sharp, which led back to the
original key, and the Stradivarius ornamented it with its welling and
singing. He dwelt on the dissonance until it became fortissimo. But
he denied himself and his audience the resolution; he kept it back.
What would it be, this resolution, this enchanting, satisfying
absorption into the B major chord? A joy beyond compare, a
gratification of overpowering sweetness! Peace! Bliss! The kingdom
of Heaven: only not yet—not yet! A moment more of striving,
hesitation, suspense, that must become well-nigh intolerable in order
to heighten the ultimate moment of joy.—Once more—a last, a final
tasting of this striving and yearning, this craving of the entire being,
this last forcing of the will to deny oneself the fulfilment and the
conclusion, in the knowledge that joy, when it comes, lasts only for
the moment. The whole upper part of Hanno’s little body
straightened, his eyes grew larger, his closed lips trembled, he
breathed short, spasmodic breaths through his nose. At last, at last,
joy would no longer be denied. It came, it poured over him; he
resisted no more. His muscles relaxed, his head sank weakly on his
shoulder, his eyes closed, and a pathetic, almost an anguished smile
of speechless rapture hovered about his mouth; while his tremolo,
among the rippling and rustling runs from the violin, to which he
now added runs in the bass, glided over into B major, swelled up
suddenly into forte, and after one brief, resounding burst, broke off.
It was impossible that all the effect which this had upon Hanno
should pass over into his audience. Frau Permaneder, for instance,
had not the slightest idea what it was all about. But she had seen
the child’s smile, the rhythm of his body, the beloved little head
swaying enraptured from side to side—and the sight had penetrated
to the depths of her easily moved nature.
“How the child can play! Oh, how he can play!” she cried, hurrying
to him half-weeping and folding him in her arms. “Gerda, Tom, he
will be a Meyerbeer, a Mozart, a—” As no third name of equal
significance occurred to her, she confined herself to showering kisses
on her nephew, who sat there, still quite exhausted, with an absent
look in his eyes.
“That’s enough, Tony,” the Senator said softly. “Please don’t put such
ideas into the child’s head.”
CHAPTER VII
Thomas Buddenbrook was, in his heart, far from pleased with the
development of little Johann.
Long ago he had led Gerda Arnoldsen to the altar, and all the
Philistines had shaken their heads. He had felt strong and bold
enough then to display a distinguished taste without harming his
position as a citizen. But now, the long-awaited heir, who showed so
many physical traits of the paternal inheritance—did he, after all,
belong entirely to the mother’s side? He had hoped that one day his
son would take up the work of the father’s lifetime in his stronger,
more fortunate hands, and carry it forward. But now it almost
seemed that the son was hostile, not only to the surroundings and
the life in which his lot was cast, but even to his father as well.
Gerda’s violin-playing had always added to her strange eyes, which
he loved, to her heavy, dark-red hair and her whole exotic
appearance, one charm the more. But now that he saw how her
passion for music, strange to his own nature, utterly, even at this
early age, possessed the child, he felt in it a hostile force that came
between him and his son, of whom his hopes would make a
Buddenbrook—a strong and practical-minded man, with definite
impulses after power and conquest. In his present irritable state it
seemed to him that this hostile force was making him a stranger in
his own house.
He could not, himself, approach any nearer to the music practised by
Gerda and her friend Herr Pfühl; Gerda herself, exclusive and
impatient where her art was concerned, made it cruelly hard for him.
Never had he dreamed that music was so essentially foreign to his
family as now it seemed. His grandfather had enjoyed playing the
flute, and he himself always listened with pleasure to melodies that
possessed a graceful charm, a lively swing, or a tender melancholy.
But if he happened to express his liking for any such composition,
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