Pie

Several weeks ago, Deacon Rick Hoover blessed me when we met at the communion rail. He reached out and said "Lord bless these hands and bless this teacher." Those spontaneous words spoken over my person meant a lot to me. I noticed Rick blessing several others as they went forward, as well.

A few days later, Rick had a stroke. It will probably be quite a while before he serves communion again. I dedicate this post to him and invite prayers for his recovery.

Yesterday afternoon, I gave a recital in the same sanctuary where Rick had blessed me. Before the concert, a sweet friend who attends church with us asked me a question which she prefaced with the words "I want to ask you a stupid question." She wondered if I practice.

I appreciated her vision of me and my talent and her theory that practice might not be necessary. But of course, I do practice and really need to. Like most college piano professors, I don't get to practice several hours a day, but you learn to plan your programs differently, choose different repertoire, and employ different strategies to find a way to make it all work hopefully fairly well.

Even with fairly simple-to-play music, practicing is necessary to maintain engagement with what you are doing. There are experiments to try, decisions to be made, and good habits to form.

And when it comes to playing a solo recital, playing piano is very demanding. Much material has be recalled, reproduced, and done so with sensitivity and responsiveness in real time. It's a different mode of functioning that is a bit like being a surgeon. A surgeon who wears a tuxedo and doesn't use anesthesia.

At the end of the concert, the same friend asked an excellent question: "What do think about when you are playing?" I asked the question a lot for many of my undergraduate years. Lately, I've been trying to answer the question a little better for my students who are asking it, too. (My answer to my friend at the recital was that I am constantly imagining what the next few notes will sound like and that keeps me on track.)

There is a blend of things that one needs to have going on in his or her mind to have a successful performance at the piano.

1. On some level, we have to be processing the basic of notes and rhythms. Otherwise, the piece won't get played. Early in the learning process, we think of these a lot, but ideally, they aren't foremost in our minds when we are performing.

2. Next, there are the ideas and behaviors that make the piece really work. These go under the heading of musicianship and they happen on the local level (ex. getting the best inflection of a two -note grouping) and the highest level (ex. finding the tempo that makes the piece dance and sing). By performance time, a much greater percentage of thought ought be on this category than on notes and rhythms.

Getting the right mix of those two, recognizing that what we need changes as we learn a piece, and also knowing the specific blend that fits us best as individual pianists with different ways of processing are all very important. 

3. And then there's technique. I think about it a lot. I'm normally blind to my thinking about it which is why it took me several days to remember that part of brain power goes into it as we are performing. It is, of course, possible to think about it in unhelpful ways even if one's basic technical ideas are good. It can't replace category 2 but it can sneakily try to do so without us realizing what has happened. Nonetheless, one needs enough thinking about technique to be able to express category 2. How much varies from pianist to pianist and from piece to piece. I like to think in terms of adequate technique for expressing the music at hand. Otherwise, one is tempted to chase something other than the music.

These three areas make up a nice pie chart and it's a really useful act of self discovery to divvy up one's playing pie with actual numbers. Perhaps one's numbers are 80% notes, 5% musicality, 15% technique at the early stages of learning a piece. It's helps to know when the balance has shifted or ought to have shifted to something more like 60% notes, 30% musicality, 10% technique . . .

But wait, what about the other stuff that goes through the mind as we play? What about who is present? What about the things people have said and the comparisons between ourselves and other pianists? And what about our various feelings about the experience of performance?

Of course those thoughts will come. Totally eradicating them is not likely to happen, and pursuing that goal will probably not be good for us either. Minimizing them, containing them, and not allowing them to take over - that's a realistic discipline. So assign them a small percentage, maybe 3%, and then picture their little bitty piece of pie.

Then there's a further stage. It's what happens on the actual stage.

4. Performance-think. The pianist needs to respond and adjust to the actual piano used in the performance and the room in which it is being heard. It is at this point that all the musical experimentation in the practice room, all the technical exploration and exercise, and all of the thorough learning of notes and rhythms come into play. As you rehearse in the hall, you discover what will and will not work. You might have to adjust your image of the piece according to what is possible in the new setting. You might have to change your technique to tame the instrument at hand. And as you actually play the performance, you need to be processing each past moment and sensing how to enter each next moment. There's little time or space for thinking notes and technique when you enter that way of being. That's why you need wisdom for when and where to give yourself cues from the other categories. Teachers, friends with good ears, and experience help with that. 

For those who have made it all the way through this post, I would like to share something a little more interesting. Some will find it energizing. Others might find it to be a little strange. If you're still reading, please give me the beneft of the doubt to the end of the post.

Lately, I've been asking another question, a question of my own. It's a question that engages my faith and makes piano playing even more of a pilgrimage for me. I've been asking how Jesus might have played piano if that had been a possibility. For those who were at my recital, that was certainly not it. But I'm trying to move in his direction.

1. First and foremost, I think he would have played lyrically, singingly. He had vocal chords and we know that "when they had sung a hymn, they went out." Plus, his conversation was pastoral in all senses of the word.

2. As a carpenter or stone mason, Jesus the pianist would have been meticulous. If you don't have a good model for attention to detail, spend an afternoon with a carpenter who truly loves his or her craft.

3. As the son of God, he would have had a very different view of power. I think he saw it from the other side and knew its wholesome and proper use as something along the lines of an expression of ultimate tenderness and creativity. Jesus does not seem like one to strive for an effect or to try to impress. In fact, he rebuked the Tempter on that very point.

4. And somehow, his playing, like his living, would have been done with joy and peace, as well as empathy, that connected to his listeners in ways that met their needs for both comfort and challenge.

I think I can work on the first three and pray to be a vessel for a bit of the last.