Alexander Technique: Faith in Musical Performance
by Charles J. Stein, certified A.S.A.T, M.M.
“The precision in hitting the right keys is strictly proportional to your stage of release. Translate as release, your complete unconcern about what the hands are going to do – let them go with unshaken assurance as they are realizing your ideation. Do not guide them even mentally.”
This opening paragraph is from the book New Pathways to Piano Technique by Luigi Bonpensiere. In a nutshell, it teaches how to do an activity effortlessly that requires exceptional precision. Bonpensiere says that if the visualization of the execution of a piano piece is perfectly clear in our thoughts, then the actual execution of the music will be as precise as the ideation (visualization), if we have faith in ourselves.
I’m going to use musical performance as my activity throughout this article, but all I say applies as well to golf, running, skiing, horseback riding, etc.
The basis of the Alexander Technique is that the head leads in all integrated movement of the body, and we see this in most babies, Fred Astair dancing, and Muhammed Ali boxing in his early years. These examples of people who have not distorted the instinctive, beautiful, graceful movement of their bodies through the poor use habits of our chair and stress oriented society.
The Alexander Technique provides a framework to accomplish what is stated in the opening paragraph. That is, if we get totally out of our way in performing an activity, then the body knows exactly what needs to be done to play the right notes on the piano every single time. Getting out of our way is where the problem lies, and this doesn’t occur for three reasons. The first is the poor posture most of us bring to an activity. Most of us bring excessive tension and poor use to the activity, and the activity usually reinforces these difficulties in our bodies. The second is the rules that teachers teach us, that we do willingly in our intention to be good performers. I have had possibly ten different guitar teachers and in light of my Alexander Technique training, much of what they taught me about playing the guitar was mechanically untrue. They taught me what their teachers taught them, because despite my teachers’ misconceptions, they played well. The third problem is, that from the first grade on or earlier most of us learn to please our teachers. This pressures us to avoid mistakes in a new activity instead of doing it for the joy of it. We usually go to our music lessons and do all we can to get praise. There is nothing that raises the tension level unnecessarily in the human body more than trying to primarily please our teachers.
Performing for anyone is ideally a gift from the heart. When the music is offered as a gift, then we are not caught up in needing the listener’s approval of our playing. Missing notes is irrelevant when the music comes from the heart and not from the head. Whenever I hear a performance from the heart, there are usually fewer mistakes than when the performer is trying to get it right.
The Alexander Technique drastically reduces the intrusion of poor posture and technical untruths into an activity. An Alexander Technique lesson is trouble shooting at it’s finest and most subtle. It is an opportunity to look at movement in the human body as individual parts and to bring all the parts together as a whole. I help create a balance in the body so that the performer isn’t holding onto the instrument for dear life. Here is a perfect example of this. Take a pen and copy a page out of a book. Attempt to do it again without tension in the hand and sit fully upright. It won’t be easy, and probably in your second attempt your handwriting looks awful. This is what happens initially in any activity you’ve gotten good at and attempt to improve by doing the minimum necessary with poise and balance.
Whenever I show a musician to see how little it takes to play her instrument, she feels as if she is out of control, and she is. It feels as if she’s going to drop the instrument or fall off the instrument. She usually does the opposite in her intention to play perfectly, which is to tense and/or hold onto the instrument tightly to guarantee accuracy. This rarely works over the long haul, because the performer is sacrificing her body for the music. If she stays with this process of doing the minimum necessary to play and maintains dynamic in her body, her playing will move closer to her ideation of flawless playing.
Many musicians in their thoughts about a specific passage create difficulties in their ideation of the performance. An example is the pianist who has decided a particular passage is difficult or nearly impossible and in his visualization sees himself having a problem. He slows down in his mind to avoid mistakes, or he just avoids the passage in his thought and hopes he’ll make it through the performance.
In our minds we have the right to see ourselves playing like Horowitz, but because we don’t believe we can play that effortlessly, we don’t allow ourselves the freedom to play like gods in our heads. We can only play as well as we see ourselves performing in our minds, and that is potentially flawless execution, if we trust our bodies. This can be transformative, because any activity can be a vehicle for moving the potential of our bodies towards the effortlessness of spirit, instead of telling ourselves how inaccurate and limited we are. So, the joy created in an activity that frees us can be remarkably healing, emotionally as well as physically.
There are three actions described in this article that create a complete performance. The first is visualization. This is the clear ideation of the music to be performed. It is trusting your hands to create a performance as beautiful as envisioned by you. The second implied action is withdrawing the ego from the activity. There is no way we can do the simplest activity with grace by telling the muscles involved what to do. This creates uncoordinated movement or paralysis by trying to do what your body already knows how to do.
The third action is thinking the head leading up and lengthening the spine during performance (directing). This is the essence of the Alexander Technique. If I repeatedly think of my head moving up, freeing my neck, spine lengthening and creating a longer and wider and more easeful back, it will happen. This allows the arms, legs and back to do what they need to do and creates a free flow of the musculature in the body. I feel this in myself, and I feel and see it in others when I put hands on them, when we are both consciously directing. This is moving with thoughts of release, and it is how the Alexander Technique reconnects the mind and instinct to rediscover what most of us have lost in our bodies.
These three actions: visualization, withdrawing effort and directing combined can help any individual realize their potential for beautiful, joyous and exceptional playing on a musical instrument.
One final point, any performance done for the joy of it raises the energy level of the performer and the listeners in a way no amount of trying to impress others with mastery can ever do. Joy is from the heart, but mastery is from the ego. The artificial high created from the ego disappears after the performance is over, but the high from the heart stays with us.