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Music room / Musical instruments / Piano / Relaxing while playing
Latest Post: March 9, 2010 at 9:42 AM
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Edna Stern says: (Follow this user)
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Hi, I’d like to reply to Jessica's post,  talking on the importance of staying relaxed while stressing. I'll give my point of view, which is relaxing while playing the piano. I'm not quite convinced that what Jessica says on professional pianists being less tense is correct. I think that professionals, though less tense permanently, have to deal a lot with this problem, the proof is that they are always suffering from muscular problems and tendinitis. Of course they need to be more relaxed than most people in order to be able to play technically difficult pieces, but they are tense in their own ways and just know well how to hide it. The problem they face is that the muscles sometimes get tight in a stressful situation and don’t react in the same way as in practicing at home. The solution is obviously to force them to relax, the question is how. This is a very tricky question as it is connected to another important question which is how to let go of your will. This question might be applicable to other fields as well. Coming back to piano, from my experience, there is nothing that comes more in between you and the music than your will of doing something well and beautifully. I’ve noticed that many times when I play very beautiful pieces and am trying hard to make them sound expressive, it simply doesn’t work, either it’s too loud, too fast, too slow, sort of screaming etc. This happens sometimes at home so it’s easier to analyze as the stress element isn’t there to make it worse (the stress adds to the difficulty but the problem stays the same).  After trying different solutions I came with these conclusions (and maybe you can apply them to non musical fields)

  1. When recognizing a place in which you wish to do something special, because you feel the music demands it, you should not concentrate on the main voice, it’s very important to let your mind wonder equally between the voices that are playing and give the same importance to other voices. You’ll find out that what makes this place special is usually not that thing you especially like and try to put forth to the listener but the interaction between the voices. This is of course applicable to one voices instruments while playing chamber music and is the secret of good chamber music playing.
  2.  Don’t fall into exaggeration. While some teachers and musicians think it important to project your intentions, exaggerate them in order to make them more clear to the public (also taking in consideration the element of acoustic), I respectfully disagree with that opinion. It is actually an easy trap to fall into and one that should absolutely be avoided. Exaggerating implies doing too much of something- if it should be loud, then one tends to play too loud and hard while exaggerating and though the public will be impressed (wow, look at what power he has or look how he “lives” the music- he’s going overboard soon the piano will explode and the roof will fall). It is important to overwhelm the listener but in a meaningful way, one that respects the piece and the logic of its construction. The only solution I see here, is to be completely inside the piece and at the same time outside it. Looking at it from outside and seeing it evolving and getting bigger. Bigger than you, in a way that would put aside your will of doing there something.
  3. Don’t have illusions: when you are in a stressful situation you don’t react the same way as at home and the outcome is not the same-for better and for worse. It’s especially important to allow yourself to be human, to accept your mistakes and to move forward.
In general, if you can do 1-3 , it means you are well into what you are doing:  listening- being a performer and listener at the same time and you’ll see that your muscles will respond in their usual way and you managed in forcing them to relax. (to come back to the original question of how to keep relaxed in stressful situations)

I’ll just finish by adding that when I read posts in completely different fields, they sometimes help me and give me clues to solving problems in mine. I don’t know if anybody not in music could apply any of my solutions or if they are really  too much connected to my profession, but still thought I’d try to share for the small chance it helps others.

 

January 2009

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:
Edna Stern in "Evading tiredness" (Study)
Solveig Wright in "I wrote a book that does not sell" (Library)
Molly Bloom says: (Follow this user)
32 followers


Edna,

Was very interesting to read your description, thanks. Of course the element of time is different in performance, but not the fact of entering into a place of creation and of sensitivity to the fine structure of things, as they actually are rather than as one (or one's aesthetic sensibility) might prefer or imagine them to be.

I think at some point in scientific research one understands that there is a subtle, but enormous, difference between the legions of very talented people who find, in their research, structures and patterns whose symmetries were suggested to them by their own minds or by their (perhaps very finely tuned!) sense of how things should be, and the few people who are able to encounter (say) mathematics on its own terms, to reveal no more or less than the inherent structure of the thing itself, however alien it may at first seem.  

Grothendieck said this much more beautifully, "ce qui fait la qualité du chercheur, c’est la qualité de son attention à l’écoute de la voix des choses" --  

(and many more such things: I point those interested to Recoltes & Semailles, http://people.math.jussieu.fr/~leila/grothendieckcircle/RetS.pdf)

 

January 2009

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:
Molly Bloom in "Avatar / Avatar" (Cinema room)
Emily Andrews in "How do I become dedicated? / How do I become dedicated?" (The Living Room)
Mia Vialti in "Reading Dickinson / Reading Dickinson" (Library)
Imogen Adler in "Sex at thirty versus twenty" (Bedroom)
Molly Bloom in "Simone De Beauvoir: The Second Sex / The Second Sex: Chapter 1, first half" (Library)
Solveig Wright says: (Follow this user)
24 followers

I came across this discussion just now and wanted to add a remark. I read a student of Heifetz's say that Heifetz held the violin so lightly that the student was afraid that if he exhaled strongly when standing near him it would blow the instrument right out of his hand.

I found this description very interesting as I would not have guessed it from watching videos of him play (and the violin isn't an instrument I play myself so it's not something I would have thought of to look for), but once you understand this possibility, it completely changes the way you watch and the way you understand the physical act of his playing.

I wonder what would mean to hold ideas in the same way, deftly but with an extremely light touch.

 

February 2009
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This topic has the following siblings:

Piano - Poetic and Heroic music

Piano - Bach and the pedal?

Piano - Adult starting learning piano

  
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