Peter Jancewicz
“Those that seek not to make mistakes, shall make
mistakes.” (Andrew Buskell)
Andrew Buskell, for those
unfamiliar with the name, is a bright, creative and enthusiastic teenager. He
also happens to be one of my piano students. On his own time, Andrew regularly
unearths unfamiliar and intriguing music, and often brings it in to his weekly
lesson. His tastes are eclectic, to say the least. One day, he appeared with a
piano transcription of Stravinsky’s Firebird. For several weeks in a row, he
subjected my patient and long-suffering ears to some downloaded sheet music
from a video game (Final Fantasy, which appears to have no end of sequels,
raising some questions about the accuracy of the title). To another lesson, he
brought a CD player with a piece of jazz that had captured his imagination.
Occasionally he composes something and plays it for me. One day a few months
ago, he had been doing some reading about Zen and presented me with a sheet of
paper on which he had written some of his own Zen-like aphorisms about piano
playing. I glanced through it, we both laughed, and I posted it on my notice
board and gleefully used his own sayings to make suggestions about his playing.
However, his aphorism about mistakes kept coming back to me to haunt my
thoughts and after a while, I began to find a curious wisdom in it.
Many students, unless relentlessly
encouraged otherwise, focus their attention on hitting the right notes to the
exclusion of all else, particularly when first learning a piece of music. I use
the term “hitting” intentionally. They
lurch frantically from place to place on the keyboard with such anxious,
startled movements that even if they happen to find themselves at the right
note, they are so worked up that it is impossible for them to play with any
sensitivity. This kind of “bull in a china shop” approach invariably does
violence to the music, the piano, the teachers’ ears, and last but definitely
not least, the player. No wonder so many people think playing the piano is hard
physical labor!
Once they know the notes, a
student’s focus can change from trying to hit the right notes to trying to
avoid playing the wrong notes. And if I do not constantly pay attention when I
practice, I can just as easily fall victim to this as my students! I suspect
that this trap comes as a result of two powerful and mutually reinforcing
influences: a natural human desire to succeed as well as a strong culturally
reinforced need to be seen by others as being right and successful all the time
and at all costs. The outward trappings of success are usually richly rewarded
in our society and are also interpreted as meaning that the successful person
is a happy and well-adjusted person. They apparently have it all! This apparent
reality is contradicted by consistent evidence in our newspapers and
magazines. They report in technicolor
the misery and shattered personal lives of apparently successful people, from
beautiful movie stars to flamboyant CEO’s to wealthy sports stars. In a piece
of music, the notes are the outer trappings of the music and are of course
indispensable, but they are not the music itself.
By this time, the student’s awkward
motions have been well practiced so that they feel normal and natural. They may
think that since they are actually getting the right notes, that this is the
way it has to be, and that this is sufficient to play well. However, they still
continue to hit wrong notes, and the diligent ones practice more and more to
try and avoid making those pesky mistakes. Often, they keep practicing the same
way, tense, nervous, and increasingly frustrated, so they find themselves in a
vicious circle. The simple intention not to make a mistake can cause physical
tension, which makes it more likely that they will hit a wrong note, so they
try harder not to hit a wrong note. “Those that seek not to make mistakes,
shall make mistakes.”
The problem is not that many
students are unintelligent, unmusical, or even uninterested. It can simply be
that they are putting their attention in the wrong place. When learning a
piece, it is a given that the student must play the right notes. But having
decided on which piece to learn, the notes themselves become less important
than how to reach them easily and efficiently. If the movement is right, then
the note will inevitably be right. It is somewhat like setting out from home to
go to school. One must know where the school is in relation to the home to be
able to find it. At the keyboard, the way in which a student gets from point A to
point B determines whether or not they get the right note.
About 100 years ago, an Australian
actor and orator named Frederick Matthias Alexander developed the Alexander
Technique in response to a crippling performance problem. He would lose his
voice in the middle of his performances, and nobody could figure out why.
Alexander persevered on his own and discovered that he was using his entire
body in an inefficient, uncoordinated and in fact destructive manner. After
several years of concentrated effort, he found ways to use his body more
efficiently and eventually cured himself. He concluded that it would be a far
more valuable contribution for him to impart his technique of correct body use
than giving any number of Shakespearean speeches, so he began to teach his
technique. Briefly, the Alexander Technique is a way of guiding people to train
themselves in the proper and efficient use of their own body by teaching them
to inhibit ineffective and harmful movement habits and discover new movements
that work well. In most people’s movement, they tend to concentrate on the end
they are trying to gain rather than the way they do it. For example, a person
wanting to stand would make the decision to stand. Then, instead of paying
attention to the process by which they get from the sitting to the standing
position, they keep their attention focused on the actual final position.
Alexander’s terms were “endgaining”, concentrating solely on the position
itself, and “means whereby”, attending to the action or the way to move. Piano
students continually make the mistake of endgaining (focusing on the note)
rather than paying attention to the means whereby they gain that end (the
movement itself).
Of course, focusing attention in
the appropriate place is also applicable to other things besides notes. Simply
playing the right note involves a rather crude action when compared to the
subtlety of movement necessary to play that note with good rhythm, dynamics and
articulation within the context of the musical phrase. To discover and maintain
perfect or near-perfect movement for each note is a subtle and time consuming
task, and requires a constantly varying balance that depends on the piano, the
hall, and the student’s mental and physical state. Students must pay close
attention to the movement in order to let go of any extraneous tension, a
never-ending process of comparing internal sensation (movement/means) with
external results (sound/end). They must be willing to admit their errors to
themselves and face those errors down, for without the observation, admission,
and solving of mistakes, there is no learning. To simply try and avoid making
mistakes, especially without awareness of what they are, is another way of
saying, “I am afraid to learn.”
Playing even an elementary piece of music is a staggeringly complex aggregate of a very large number of simple movements. Any added complication to each simple movement can quickly add up to crippling muscular tension. The only way to avoid this is to pay very close attention to the “means whereby” the pianist gains their end. The blind alley of simply trying to avoid mistakes can probably wreak more havoc than any other approach. In his novel “East of Eden”, the great American author John Steinbeck writes: “If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means” (ch. 21, para. 1.) Steinbeck, Alexander and Andrew Buskell all offer similar advice. And I can’t think of a better general principle for learning to play the piano.
© Peter Jancewicz 2007