Creating Musical 'Truth': an Interdisciplinary Application Of

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CREATING MUSICAL ‘TRUTH’: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATION OF SELECTED ELEMENTS FROM KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI’S ACTING ‘SYSTEM’ TO THE CLASSICAL PIANIST’S SELECTION, PREPARATION AND PERFORMANCE OF MUSIC FOR SOLO RECITAL

CHARLES WHITEHEAD, BMUS (PERF), MM

A DISSERTATION

FINE ARTS – MUSIC PERFORMANCE

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for The Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Approved

Professor William Westney, Chair

Professor Gerald Dolter

Professor Christopher J. Smith

Professor Linda Donahue

Professor Bill Gelber

Mark Sheridan Dean of the Graduate School

May, 2019

Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank all who have contributed in any way to the development of this research. As a piano performance major in the PhD Fine Arts program at TTU, I have been given numerous opportunities to interact with actors, singers, theatre and music professors, conductors, directors, choreographers, vocal coaches. These artistic minds have helped shape my research and I realize how we are all in the same creative stream.

I would like to convey sincere gratitude to my mentor, Dr. William Westney, who developed and tested Stanislavski’s ideas at the piano with me in our one-to-one sessions and advised me on many of the practical aspects of writing. Dr. Christopher Smith and

Professor Gerald Dolter from the School of Music and Dr. Linda Donahue and Dr. Bill

Gelber from Texas Tech Theatre have each given their own unique perspectives to my research. I also acknowledge the contributions of my fellow interdisciplinary scholars whose Stanislavski based research makes me feel that we are kindred spirits.

Hearty thanks to Dr. Michael Stoune, Robin and Don Parks, Dr. Sherry and Mark

Boyd, Dr. Adam Smith, Dr. Kevin Ngo, Dr. Andrew Gibb, Dr. David Forrest, Dr. Blaise and Dr. Beverly Ferrandino, Johnny and Kitty Case, Ken and Libby Draughon; and to Dr.

Stephen and Sharon Small and Robert Loretz in Auckland, New Zealand.

Special thanks to my wife, Debra Denson-Whitehead for her patience and being the sounding board for my ideas and playing and also Don and Marion Denson. And for the love and support of my whanau in Auckland, New Zealand: my father, Sel Whitehead,

Tim, Vern, Peter, Sandra, Tony, and my mother, Una who passed on to us the deep love for music.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT vi

LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES viii

LIST OF FIGURES ix

I. INTRODUCTION 1

Dramatic Relationships in Instrumental Music 3

Stanislavski’s Elements and Creative Experiencing 7

Imagination; Given Circumstances 7

Tone and Musical Emotions 12

Musical Subtext 13

Through-Action; Logic & Sequence 16

Sense of Truth; Justification 20

Analysis: Super-Objective, Units, Creative ‘Objectives’ 23

Musical Narrative 31

Methodology and Practical Application 32

Independent Preparation 33

II. REVIEW OF INTERDISCIPLINARY STANISLAVSKI LITERATURE 34

Stanislavski, Constantin; Pavel Rumyantsev. Stanislavski on Opera. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood, editor and translator. 35

Stanislavsky, Constantin; David Magarshack. Stanislavsky and the Art of the Stage: Five Rehearsals of Werther 45

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Carnicke, Sharon; David Rosen. The Routledge Companion to Stanislavsky. Chapter 8: A Singer Prepares: Stanislavsky and opera. 52

Hsiu-Wei Hu: Mei Lanfang and Stanislavsky’s Method of Physical Actions in the Performance of Traditional Chinese Opera. 56

Minut, Bogdan Andrei: Applying Constantin Stanislavski’s Acting ‘System’ To Choral Rehearsals. 59

Hebert, Ryan. “The Acting Principles of Konstantin Stanislavski and Their Relevance To Choral Conducting”. 61

Roslavleva, Natalia. Stanislavski and the Ballet. 62

Plumlee, Linda K. Acting the Dance: An Application of the Stanislavski Acting Method. 66

Litvinoff, Valentina. The Use of Stanislavski Within Modern Dance. 69

Fischer, Simon. “Belief: Living The Music.” (Classical Violin) 73

Hinckley, Jaren S.: A Clarinetist Acts: A study of Constantin Stanislavski's acting techniques as applied to clarinet performance and pedagogy. 74

III. MUSICAL ‘TRUTH’ AND THE SOLO PIANIST 79

A Historical and Aesthetic Context 79

The Classical Pianist and Stanislavski’s ‘Laws of Nature’ 79

Emotions in Subconscious Psychological Actions 81

Romantic Era Aesthetics: Individualism and Emotions 82

Russian Realism and the Emotional Life of the Human Soul 83

Developing Musical Truth in the Solo Piano Recital 84

The Recital Program 87

Integrating Roles: Director, Performer, Musical Spectator 90

Personal Analysis: Actions in Musical Discourse 92

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Mental Imagery 92

Adapting to a Different Instrument, Sound and Venue 94

Characteristics of ‘Musical Truth’ in Instrumental Music Performance 97

IV. THE ‘METHOD OF PHYSICAL ACTIONS’ IN INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC 99

Historical Background to the ‘Method of Physical Actions’ 99

Interdisciplinary Applications and Relevance to Solo Instrumental Music 100

Motivations for Musical Actions in Instrumental Works 101

Roland Barthes and Musical Actions in Schumann’s Kreisleriana 106

The ‘Super-Objective’ in Dramatic Instrumental Works 108

Developing ‘Truth’ in Musical Actions of Instrumental Work 110

Creative Justification for Musical Actions in Schubert Sonata D850: Rondo 114

V. CONCLUSION 116

Implications for Stanislavski’s ‘Artistic Truth’ in Instrumental Performance 117

What Might the Sociological Significance Be Today for ‘Musical Truth’? 120

BIBLIOGRAPHY 121

APPENDIX A: Application of Stanislavski to the Liszt Sonata in B minor 134

APPENDIX B: Musical ‘Truth’ in Recital 144

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ABSTRACT

This interdisciplinary research draws upon selected theatrical principles from

Konstantin Stanislavski’s ‘System’ of actor training and applies them to the preparation of solo piano works for professional performance. Stanislavski’s own texts demonstrate shared artistic concerns between theatrical and musical performing arts in numerous cross- disciplinary references. These may be found even prior to his later work with opera singers at the Opera-Dramatic Studio. In this research, I apply particular theatrical techniques from the ‘System’ as a way to develop compelling musical interpretation of solo piano music.

Pianists, like actors, can deepen their art by developing their own musical subtext for a work and building logical, expressive justifications behind dramatic shifts in musical discourse. Artistic work of this kind involves exploring the deeper motivations behind musical expression through individual, creative enquiry. Some of these ideas may have found corollaries independent of Stanislavski: Alfred Cortot’s editions and recordings of the music of Chopin for example, illustrate a sensitivity to musical narrative by finding expressive justifications for a score’s directives in analytical footnotes to his editions of solo piano repertoire and recorded realizations. My idea is to bring these selected concepts together in a more unified manner for the purpose of drawing out the dramatic relationships within instrumental works. The seminal writings of Stanislavski have already proved to be a reservoir of practical wisdom in a wide range of performance applications including modern dance, Chinese Opera and choral conducting.

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In particular, this research aims to bring Stanislavski’s aesthetic of artistic ‘truth’ to the context of preparing and performing solo piano music. In animating the ‘life of the human spirit’ of a role – an idea borrowed indirectly from Tolstoy – Stanislavski’s actors rely freely on a combination of intellectual, spiritual and physical resources to extend the limitations of their own personalities. ‘Artistic truth’ in a musical context is built through attention to the same inner and outer skills that peel back the layers of musical expression to find and communicate what a work “is all about.” This ‘truth’ works to eliminate doubts of technical and mental security in performance. It serves a deeper understanding of the work and of the composer while also reflecting the artistic development of the solo pianist at a particular point in time.

The following ‘Elements’ from Stanislavski’s ‘System’ are adapted to create

‘artistic truth’ in an instrumental context: imagination; subtext; actions; truth; logic and sequence; given circumstances, justification; units and objectives, super-objective, tone; tempo-rhythm. A more detailed emphasis is placed on truth and actions. When working together, these Elements may combine to suggest a sense musical narrative, which in my view is a symptom of Stanislavski’s artistic ‘truth’.

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LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES

1. Schubert, Piano Sonata D850 in D-Major iv. Rondo mm. 1 - 29 112

2. Liszt, Sonata. mm. 1 – 17 135

3. Liszt, Sonata. mm. 729 – 760 139

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LIST OF FIGURES

1. Lines of Creativity and Reception to ‘Musical Truth’ in the Performance of an Instrumental Work 116

2. Relationship of Tempo, Inner Expression and Designated Musical Actions mm. 1-17 137

3. Relationship of Tempo, Inner Expression and Designated Musical Actions mm. 729-760 143

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

While working on the PhD Fine Arts degree in Piano Performance at Texas Tech

University, I was fortunate in having numerous opportunities to work as a pianist across performance disciplines. Whenever possible, I used these opportunities to ask myself how the experience of listening in rehearsal to a theater director, or a singer, or watching a dancer might impact the music I was playing for that particular situation.

It was during the course of my academic studies that I came across the full text of

Stanislavski’s, “An Actor’s Work”. I was completely captivated. The fundamental aesthetic and the honesty of artistic self-examination completely resonated with my thinking about the solo pianist’s journey towards musical artistry.

In speculating on the potential of applying particular aspects of Stanislavski’s

System, I wondered if Stanislavski could be an exciting path to uncover analogous processes between creative acting and piano performance. As I became more familiar with the System and its ‘Elements’, I began to hope that I might uncover some insights connecting ‘experiencing’ in acting (in Stanislavski’s sense) to the dramatic playing qualities of pianists from the past that I most admire.

When I am actively listening to recordings of Artur Schnabel playing Schubert,

Alfred Cortot playing Chopin or Sergei Rachmaninoff playing his own concerti, I find that I am thrust deeper into the world of the music as a living work of human expression.

I find that I am entrenched in a dramatic world of the imagination that seems empathetic to the composer and the performer, while simultaneously digging into my own sense of

1 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 identity. These musical artists truly inhabit the works they play.

The initial focus of my research was to explore how these great artists arrived at their own individuality of expression and to draw parallels between Stanislavski-trained actors and these exemplary pianists. The path I found instead was one that arrived at individuality indirectly – through creative, introspective searching. Physical technique becomes the means for exploring and communicating each work as an encoded network of human relationships – it serves the pianist’s deepest, most human understanding of a work’s identity. Understanding this redirected me towards the dramatic implications of works for solo piano as I developed my applications of Stanislavski to the preparation and performance of works for solo piano.

The roads to developing the personal technique and interpretation necessary for a secure, confident performance of a work are many and varied. Pianists typically draw from different approaches before arriving at personal solutions that will satisfy his or her aesthetic priorities. My application of Stanislavski is not intended to supplant or claim superiority over existing strategies: it is simply offered as an additional tool in the pianist’s toolbox. It is a tool that may be useful to communicate a musical work with vitality and cohesion in performance, as well as a sense of belief in the musical artist’s personalized interpretive concept.

This approach may be especially useful for instrumentalists who are either exploring the dramatic possibilities for instrumental music, or those who are sympathetic to Stanislavski’s aesthetic and how his creative processes might translate into musical

‘experiencing.’ Its primary objective is to assist the solo instrumentalist in developing deep, active mind-body connections to the musical work, and in doing this, stimulate the

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Dramatic Relationships in Instrumental Music

A solo piano composition without text presents the pianist with unique challenges, leading to creative questions that help to develop a personalized interpretive concept:

What is the dramatic nature of the relationship between thematic ideas? What prompts and sustains the flow of musical ideas in discourse? When thematic ideas recur, what does this mean in terms of expression, and why? How does the solo pianist determine an appropriate ‘tone of voice’ to a particular passage?

This research presupposes that much of the keyboard literature from the Baroque

Era onward does indeed contain an essential dramatic content. Identifying, embodying and communicating the dramatic relationships within an instrumental work are vital to forming convincing musical interpretations. In applying Stanislavski, the musician engages in a depth of creative work in order to build and communicate a sense of inevitability to the flow of events in a work. This involves both conscious and subconscious states of mind. The potential to communicate dramatic content with immediacy and spontaneity in performance may be enhanced by the pianist’s active attention in practice sessions to developing a dramatic through-line of musical actions for a work.

I identify the dramatic content in an instrumental work not only as that content which is a product of the composer’s musical ideas. In my view, it is the solo pianist’s own imaginative conception and realization of a score’s related events, musical actions and rhetoric (including appropriate tone of “voice”) that combine to stimulate a sense of musical narrative. This content contains implied relationships that are encoded in the

3 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 score. The creative task of the performer becomes to find and explore these relationships in practice sessions so that their animated form is richly characterized and developed in performance.

As a point of departure for this research, New Zealand musicologist Christopher

Small clarifies the aspect of human relationships in concert music:

To take part in the performance of a concert work, whether as a performer or a

listener, is to take part, no less than if one were in a theatre, in a dramatic

representation of human relationships, which is no less real for giving its

characters neither local habituations nor names. Nor are those dramatic meanings

which the listener and the performer take from the piece as it is performed “extra

musical.” On the contrary, they are (emphasis, mine) the musical meaning of the

piece. The drama is built into the relationships and is not to be dismissed as

external to or imposed upon the real musical meaning. (Small 153)

Because each composition generates its own extremes of expression in performance, Edward T. Cone also views the act of performing art music as a dramatic event: “A proper musical performance must thus be a dramatic, even theatrical event, presenting as it does an action with a beginning, a middle and an end – hence an action of certain completeness within itself.” (Cone 13)

According to Small, all Western classical concert music since 1600 is in “the

“stile rappresentativo” and our understanding of concert works today owes more than we realize to the semiotics, the system of commonly understood signs, first established on the stage by those early masters and by their successors over nearly four centuries.”

(Small 153)

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Historically, once these signs, symbols or musical gestures became familiar to the audience from stage music, they could be transferred to the “more abstract dramas of concert music.” (Small 147) In addition to dramatic pacing, purposeful ordering of musical events and expressive contexts of musical meter, composers have relied on the evolving tonal system and the exploration of harmonic tensions, expectations, desires, delays, climaxes and resolutions to represent the conditions of human relationships.

When Stanislavski asks the question, “Does the dramatist provide everything the actor needs to know?” (An Actor’s Work 65) he points to the enormous amount of creative and imaginative work the actor must do to “determine all the nuances of the character’s thoughts, feelings, aspirations and actions.” (65) Stanislavski indicates that the dramatist leaves much in the text that is not explicit, including the psychological drives a character feels and experiences and that impels action. Similarly, the encoded information within musical scores contains much that is not explicit and requires that the performer engage his or her musical imagination.

The ‘System’ and its various Elements assist the actor on a unique creative journey towards the discovery of a living human spirit in the role by means of,

“…taking of what is most essential into ourselves, endowing it with the beauty of

form and expression appropriate to the stage, by paring away what is superfluous,

with the help of our subconscious, our artistry, our talent, our flair and our taste,

we turn the role into something poetic...for the audience.” (201-2)

In the same way, musical performance whose beauty of expression is communicated through a compelling succession of emotions brings us closer to the life of

5 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 the human spirit and yields a deeper sense of dramatic potential within instrumental works:

“If the music is able to evoke a convincing succession of sentiment…and that succession were able to lead us to evoke some aspect of the indomitable human spirit perhaps…then we have something of the stuff of great dramas being subtly alluded to through the organization of sound.” (Loretz 23)

Although the subconscious plays an important creative role in the ‘System’, this musical research accepts Sharon Carnicke’s idea regarding Stanislavski’s aesthetic of artistic ‘truth’: that the ‘System’ equally embraces the performer’s conscious mind and its performance-related concerns through a unique combination of science and mind-body philosophy. In this capacity, the ‘System’ has impacted a diverse range of performing

20th and 21st Century performing art disciplines including Chinese Opera, modern dance, conducting, violin and clarinet playing and performance repertoire beyond 19th Century psychological realism or Romanticism: “A system based on the redefinition of “truth” as the experiencing of the performative moment and grounded in yogic practice can indeed encompass dramatic literature from different eras and cultures and in different aesthetic styles.” (Carnicke 180)

Stanislavski says: “Truth onstage is what we sincerely believe in our own and in our partner’s hearts.”(An Actor’s Work 161) Its manifestation in performance is the result of attention to the numerous inner and outer skills that peel back the layers of both character and the performer’s identity, revealing honest motivations for action.

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These inner and outer skills take the form of ‘Elements’ in the System’s two main sections: inner ‘Experiencing’ (including truth, action, imagination); and outer

‘Embodiment’ (including tone of voice, tempo-rhythm, physical movement).

Both types of skills are needed in the solo pianist’s preparation of works for performance and will be important topics for this research.

Stanislavski’s ‘Elements’ and Creative ‘Experiencing’

The next section initiates a musical application of selected Elements from the

‘System’ with references to relevant musical and aesthetic scholarship. Included is a discussion of the performer’s attention to a logical through-line of musical actions, which may enhance the sense of musical narrative in performance of non-programmatic instrumental works.

Imagination; Given Circumstances

A solo piano work without text requires a rich and active musical imagination to bring a fresh reading to life in each new performance. The musical score is only a map for building a vivid interpretation with vital expressive qualities and characteristics not necessarily explicitly stated. As one reviewer observes in Bruce Ellis Benson’s, The

Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: “Not only are there always characteristics necessary to a performance that are not described by the score, but the intentions of composers are nowhere as clear or self-evident as they are usually taken to be.” (Backstrom)

The gaps that withhold absolute clarity in the “intentions of composers” hint at potential problems in musical interpretation and share common concerns with the actor’s problems in fleshing out theatrical characters. Backstrom’s comment suggests an

7 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 awareness of individual creative responsibility when the pianist commences work on a new piece.

When Stanislavski is applied for the purpose of developing dramatic musical relationships in a composition for solo piano, the result should be a performance that communicates the pianist’s personalized concept of implicit human actions, events, characters and emotional qualities. The projection of dramatic qualities is not accomplished through the literal extremes of dynamic or tempo: it is also the result of how sincere, imaginative expression is cultivated as a response to the ideas presented in the score. As piano pedagogue, Adele Marcus advises her students: “Projection is not only a question of loudness; it is also the meaningfulness of what you feel and how sincere you are.” (Elder 216)

The process of animating the dramatic content of music and the score often starts by formulating creative questions. These become a way to explore expressive meaning beyond the literal facts of the text: “What is the work about?” and “What physical actions work best to carry this out?” Imagining the sensations of physical actions away from the piano can also effectively stimulate external realization.

In his advice on healthy practicing, William Westney writes: “Imagine in energetic detail how you want the specific passage to feel. Imagining an action is practically the same neurological experience as performing the action.” (Westney 88)

When applying Stanislavski’s concept of ‘Given Circumstances’ to developing musical interpretation, the particular musical “circumstances” given by the composer in the score will include genre, instrumentation, structure, key-scheme, time signature,

8 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 textures, registers, phrasing, dynamic and expressive markings, tempo indications, articulations, modulations, historical and stylistic considerations, topoi, etc.

Rather than being viewed exclusively in terms of stylistic boundaries,

Stanislavski’s ‘Given Circumstances’ provide interpretive clues and support the imagination in defining the particular identity of a work including the internal relationships of tempo and rhythm to designated musical actions. The ‘Given

Circumstances’ of a work may spark the performer’s creative desire and stimulate interpretive ideas. For example, a modulation or tempo modification indicated in the score may support the performer’s belief that emotional intensity or a specified action has been altered. The ‘Given Circumstances’ therefore become part of the dramatic circumstances of a composition in the same way that Mozart chooses minor keys at particular moments within a major key piano concerto or sonata or when late Beethoven composes fugal finales to resolve accumulating tension from previous movements.

Understanding the ways in which Stanislavski uses the ‘Given Circumstances’ to support a sense of theatrical truth may therefore point the solo pianist to effective ways in justifying truthful emotions and personalized musical actions.

Contrary to the idea that musical interpretation of standard repertoire for the piano is a re-creative act and that all the information required for performance is explicit in the score, both the practical and written components of this research highlight the need for creative skills and creative work before a musician can communicate musical expression convincingly to a concert audience. At the heart of this is the pianist’s internal and external searching to discover expressive musical meaning beyond the literal facts by employing all avenues of creativity: the imagination, intellect, emotional and

9 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 psychological input as well as the physical approach to the instrument. In this way, the dynamic dramatic relationships of the score may be animated and the audience is more likely to be engaged.

Objective knowing, separate from the artistic mind and body, is not necessarily useful performing knowledge. The latter is also embodied knowledge that is understood, felt, lived and experienced in both preparation and in performance. By actively discovering objective facts, internalizing them and justifying them, their significance has a deeper connection because it is found from within the conscious mind and the physical body of the performer. Facts begin to take a new form in the way the musician imagines, feels, lives and plays the work. Just as Stanislavski guides the actor to “love the art in yourself, not yourself in art” (An Actor’s Work 585), internalizing and embodying artistic expression means to value and find this expression within the musical artist’s own self.

Artistic ‘truth’ impacts musical performance when expressive qualities as well as the physical means to carry them out develop together to create a sense of inevitability and flow. This occurs as the imagination begins to build the network of musical relationships during practice sessions. It is the author’s view that artistic ‘truth’ has a similar function for the solo pianist as it does to the actor: to bring the person of the pianist and the work together in the pianist’s creative ‘experiencing’ during performance.

The instrumentalist’s ‘inner monologue’ may be defined as the sum collected thoughts as that musician navigates through a piece during performance. Certain thoughts may focus on the action of a new piano or the quality of sound in a particular venue, some on positioning of the hands and fingers, others on memory, relaxation or breathing.

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Usually there is a degree of conscious awareness to maintain attention and concentration on the tasks at hand. Skills of focus are strengthened in practice and run-throughs prior to performance to prevent the mind from wandering or being distracted. However, just as this research finds that every ‘Element’ from Stanislavski’s System has both an outer and an inner component, a pianist’s musical imagination may also use the concept of ‘inner monologue’ to characterize events in a dramatic conception of a musical work.

The first movement of the Webern Variations Op.27 for piano is in ‘ABA’ form.

In my mind, the ‘A’ sections sound inwardly nervous and psychologically tense: my musical imagination easily conceives these sections as ‘inner monologs’ with each rest between gestures prompting a new thought. If I characterize the ‘B’ section of my interpretation as an event such as an argument or conflict, then the first inner monolog is a negative anticipation of this event while the second is a reflection on the same but with a different subtext motivating the details of the score. With this subtext, my explorations at the piano are more effectively able to convey a dramatic beginning, middle and end to the unfolding of musical events.

In case there is concern that the Stanislavski influenced pianist is focusing excessively on personalized imagery where this might be inappropriate for this

“objective” type of music, Peter Stadlen’s edition of Webern’s Variations for Universal

Edition points to the notion that 12-tone music should not necessarily be divorced from creative imagery – at least as far as the composer’s ideas of interpretation are concerned.

Stadlen performed the premiere of Webern’s Variations Op.27 and the autograph edition contains illuminating recollections based on his private coaching with the composer prior to the work’s premiere:

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“It may be that the comparatively richer incidence of expression marks in the

middle section of the 1st Movement does at least hint at an improvisatory style,

even if they by no means suffice to suggest the sharp emotional contrasts, and the

abrupt changes of tempo and imagery, that Webern had in mind here…during our

meetings which continued for several weeks…what mattered, he said, was for me

to learn how the piece ought to be played, not how it is made.” (Webern v)

Tone and Musical Emotions

Composer, music theorist and movement coach, Alexandra Pierce promotes a concept of musical empathy that allows a musician to self-identify with various characters, actions and emotions in music so as to portray these genuinely and vividly in each performance of a work. She describes the impact that musical empathy has on the tonal colors and inflections of expressive music making. Pierce recalls Stanislavski in developing the connection between human emotions and tone of voice - a necessary aspect in communicating musical rhetoric effectively:

“Focusing on tone of voice fuels empathetic sensitivity if it arises from one’s

own emotions each time one plays…one remembers the affective path that has

been taken, and a fully rehearsed piece will develop a relatively settled shape, but

if this is not refreshed by a spring of empathy, it will become, and will

communicate, a hardened shell. Constantin Stanislavski’s seminal work in actor

training centered on precisely this issue. An Actor Prepares and Building A

Character are provocative reading for musicians.” (Pierce 165-6)

The ability Pierce refers to may be included as a function of what is broadly covered by the term, musicality. As described in Daniel J. Levitin’s study, musicality is

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”…a complex interaction of physical, emotional, cognitive, and psychosocial traits…”

(Levitin 637)

The musicality of both the musician and the concert audience has a potential to suggest expressive meaning in the way that human relationships are represented in particular musical ways. For instance, a performer may create tonal qualities that support a particular emotional interpretation of music or allow the movement of a phrase to reflect the urgency of a designated musical action. Stanislavski’s concept of artistic

‘truth’ is tested in performance by how easily the audience’s own musicality allows them to respond and make these connections naturally or not. As part of a developed sense of musicality, musical empathy makes it possible to ignite “the affective path” that Pierce refers to - the line of emotions that accompany personalized musical actions and may contribute to a sense of musical narrative.

Musical Subtext

In the creative work of the instrumental musician, the ‘subtext’ of a work is shaped by the performer’s openness to explore deeper levels of musical expression: it is the limitless expressive meaning that stimulates mental images behind the score. Pianist,

Daniel Barenboim describes how the lines of musical text and subtext create complexity through development and contrast with each other:

“The task of the performing musician then, is not to express or interpret the

music as such, but to aim to become part of it. It is almost as if the interpretation

of the musical text creates for itself a subtext that develops, substantiates, varies

and contrasts the actual text. This subtext is inherent in the score and is itself

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boundless. It results from a dialogue between the performer and the score and its

richness is determined by the curiosity of the performer.” (Barenboim 43)

While the composer has provided the foundational structure of the work, including implications of musical meaning, it is the performer’s task to search the essence of his or her own experiences and feelings to determine and communicate expressive meanings behind the facts and contexts of the score. This is the dialogue that becomes the instrumentalist’s own musical subtext for the work being prepared.

The pianist’s physical freedom and technique should be simultaneously developed in order to support these creative ideas. Without physical comfort or freedom, the most creative of ideas cannot be realized at the instrument, thus making artistic ‘truth’ impossible to communicate on stage. To clarify its vital importance to artistic communication, Stanislavski states that it is not the text itself but the subtext that carries the significance of meaning in a work:

“As soon as musicians and actors bring the subtext to life with their own

experiences, the secret hiding places, the essence of the work they are performing,

the reason it was created, become apparent both in the subtext itself and in

themselves. The meaning of a work of art lies in its Subtext.” (An Actor’s Work

420)

The creative work of determining the musical subtext of an instrumental work includes finding possible motivations for musical events including elements of repetition or change. Repetitions, for example, may stimulate certain expectations from the ear because the brain has a memory of repeated musical occurrences. A change to what the ear expects should find logical sense or be motivated from what happens within the score:

14 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 there should be a reason for repetition or change that affects a performer’s choice of dynamic, tone color or musical movement.

In Stanislavski’s work with opera singers, it was clear that all elements of music, including articulation, have a potential impact on the way the audience perceives musical meaning. Even in musical sounds without text, the musician should clarify an expressive intention so that smaller fragments relate to the overall phrase meaning. In this way, the performer takes an interpretive stance of a personal nature. Stanislavski demonstrates how the singer’s inner thoughts should infuse wordless sounds with expressive intent:

“Each word enunciated should have a relationship to the whole phrase. When you

slur your diction you will take the edge off the word, you will lose the aroma of

the phrase. After you have clarified the phrase, grasped it, sing it without words,

just with sounds. And convey in this manner the whole sub-text of the phrase.

What we need even more than the words is your relationship to them.”

(Stanislavski on Opera 160)

Just as words have articulation within a phrase, solo piano music relies on articulation markings to communicate appropriate stylistic expression especially when these are played in relation to the performer’s own intentional expression and not just as literally indicated in the score. Stanislavski asks singers to convey “the whole sub-text of the phrase” using only musical sounds. This should further emphasize that the thoughts and meanings behind musical discourse have an expressive force that can provide motivation and dramatic sense to the various details of the score, including (in this case) articulation indications.

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The pianist’s imaginative subtext animates the pattern of stylized musical gestures that comprise a work and enhances the relational aspects between the musical idea and the thoughts and feelings that drive it. When the listening audience is able to make this connection without hindrance, the implicit human relationships in the score have been effectively communicated and there is an impulse to follow the line of musical events.

Through-Action; Logic & Sequence

According to Stanislavski, the continuous subtext informing the actor’s emotions makes the creation of a through-line of dramatic actions possible:

“Only when the whole line of the Subtext runs through our feelings, like an

underground spring, can we create the Throughaction of the character and the

play.” (An Actor’s Work 419)

In a similar way, there is a stronger suggestion of stylized musical actions and the connections between them when an instrumentalist has a strong conviction of his or her own creative subtext for that composition. This sense of conviction is part of a deeper level of truly knowing the musical work.

In his analysis of the beginning of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op.95, musical theorist and aesthetician, Fred Maus promotes an approach to comprehending musical meaning by hearing particular events as musical actions. Reflecting on his own analysis,

Maus writes:

“…the analysis makes the sense of drama concrete by narrating a succession of

dramatic actions: an abrupt, inconclusive outburst; a second outburst in response,

abrupt and coarse in its attempt to compensate for the first two actions, calmer

and more careful, in many ways more satisfactory. I suggest that the notion of

16 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

action is crucial in understanding the Beethoven passage. A listener follows the

music by drawing on the skills that allow understanding of commonplace human

action in everyday life. In transferring those skills from the context of ordinary

human behavior to the more specialized context of musical events, a listener can

retain some forms of interpretation relatively unchanged, while other habits of

thought must be changed to fit the context…the description of the Beethoven

passage explains events by regarding them as actions and suggesting motivation,

reasons why those actions are performed, and the reasons consist of psychological

states.” (Music as Drama 118-9, 121)

Although the object to whom actions are directed remains undetermined in concert music, this type of analysis is relevant to a musical application of Stanislavski because of the way that desire, psychological states and motivations can be suggested in musical actions. By hearing stylized musical action in this manner, Maus proposes that expectation or desire is created for a corresponding response while a state of psychological hysteria is created from peculiarities of register and pitch. In Maus’ analysis of the Beethoven Quartet, musical motivation is the result of how a particular action is impelled as a response to another action: dramatic implications are created and fulfilled in developing musical discourse.

Transferred to the context of preparing solo piano music for performance, stylized musical actions in a composition are brought to life through the musical imagination.

Patterns of musical movement may be heard to represent analogues of psychologically motivated human activity such as hesitation or panic. These are developed at the piano through artistic experimentation (thinking and feeling the musical idea as a particular

17 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 motivated action while playing) as a vital part of the expressive content of the score.

Experimentation indirectly affects musical qualities of timing and sound because the pianist has not solely relied on musical elements exclusively to directly evoke musical action. It is effective because the designated musical action is a response drawn from the pianist’s own sense of musicality.

Stanislavski’s concept of the actor’s “inner score of a role” (An Actor’s Work on a Role 149) was adapted from the idea that a musical score is made up of various musical elements reflecting the composer’s artistic sensibilities. The actor’s ‘score’ was not confined to the playwright’s ideas only but comprised of “physical and psychologically elementary tasks determined by the actor’s inner life and experiences.” (149). In developing the inner score, the actor should “find tasks that regularly arouse his feelings and invest the physical score with life. It should not only excite the actor by its physical truth but by its inner beauty, its joy, bravado, humour, sorrow, horror and poetry etc.”

(151) Feelings are fundamental to Stanislavski’s concept of the ‘inner score’ because they animate the human aspect of the role through the actor’s own creative personality.

The composer’s score provides indications as to the outer features of musical sound. My research develops the idea that the ‘inner score’ for a work is one in which the instrumentalist has developed his or her own through-line of musical actions with logic and personal feeling justifying each chosen action. The composer’s score for an instrumental work provides the foundation for every musician to creatively engage the musical imagination and discover the ‘inner score’ - a personal structure of musical actions and emotional qualities.

18 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

‘Logic and Sequence’ is one of the System’s ‘Elements’ significant to the pacing, transitions between, and the ordering of stylized musical actions. ‘Logic and Sequence’ supports the ‘Justification’ of a convincing and believable line of musical actions. In a practical sense, logic and sequence impact musical relationships when the pianist considers musical elements (tempo, articulation, dynamics, tone etc.) that are most relevant in the shift from one musical action to the next. This may involve answering creative questions that the score suggests to the performer such as: How much tempo alteration (if any) is appropriate in a transition in order to keep the integrity of successive actions? What tonal qualities best characterize the change from one action to another? Is change abrupt or gradual? When the musician has additionally worked to find a corresponding ease of physical realization at the instrument, there is a solid foundation for captivating listening. This becomes a reliable path to unite both music and musician in performance.

One of the primary purposes in creating a structure of musical actions for a work is to inspire the instrumentalist to feel real human emotions and to play musical works spontaneously in repeated performances. In applying Stanislavski, emotions are not merely imitated from one performance to the next but arise from the musical impulses that drive purposeful musical actions in each new rendition. When the music and musician are united in this way, the performer can approach Stanislavski’s concept of creative ‘Experiencing’.

In a musical context, Pierce reminds her readers that during creative performing, a measure of consciousness is needed to “maintain self-control.” (Pierce 135) She refers to

Stanislavski:

19 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

“An actor lives, weeps, laughs on the stage, but as he weeps and laughs he

observes his own tears and mirth. It is this double existence, this balance between

life and acting that makes for art.” (Pierce 135; Stanislavski “Actor’s Work” 476)

Stanislavski’s concept of creative ‘experiencing’ and dual consciousness brings him into the 21st Century musical performance with real implications for musical communication in a wide range of instrumental repertoire. Belief and conviction in personalized musical interpretation is stimulated by mental and physical creative work, leading to ‘experiencing’ in performance and the communication of a ‘sense of truth’.

‘Experiencing’ in a musical context allows a pianist’s own creative playing qualities in performance to unite with the character of the work itself. In his book, “Why

Classical Music Still Matters”, the author explains that this connection has meaningful implications for musical performance:

“…thinking about the performer or performance in the sense of creative

reproduction and worldly activity takes us into the wider field of human

performances, both symbolic and material, and therefore into the realms of

actions, desire, social condition, and the vitality of experience. It directs us to the

often trying, but deeply rewarding, marriage of the character of performance and

the characteristics of the thing performed, neither of which has the first word – or

the last.” (Kramer 84)

Sense of Truth; Justification

In the chapter, “Truth in Music” from Music, Art and Metaphysics, Jerrold

Levinson states why Beethoven’s music is “psychologically false” in the section ending the second movement of Beethoven’s Violin Sonata Op.30 No.2 in C-minor:

20 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

“The slow movement is, to my mind, psychologically false in a less resolvable

way. Twice toward the end of a set of variations on a lyrical and stately theme the

piano erupts in rocketing scale figures of brusque character for which there has

been no psychological preparation nor any subsequent justification.” (Levinson

301)

Levinson’s discussion of musical truth is in the context of the composer’s choices for creating convincing expressive sense. By applying Stanislavski to a problem such as this, it now becomes the performer’s responsibility to build artistic ‘truth’ and to find creative justifications that integrate all musical gestures into compelling discourse. This involves close examination of the ‘Given Circumstances’ of the score.

For this creative task, when dramatic elements of change are highlighted, the performer sets about determining how and in what way these scale figures become a bridge to a new kind of expression. The change that happens near the end of the movement is that the lyrical statements modulate to more distant key areas and become more fragmented and weighted with dramatic intensity.

In taking a personal interpretive stance, I am convinced that these fraught statements become like echoes of a past, uninterrupted lyricism. Transported into new tonalities, these thematic fragments have undergone a world-weary transformation. The

“rocketing scale figures”, the repeated notes that precede them and the pauses that follow, keep the music in a state of suspension. They signal a shift in discourse and move this in the direction of a commentary on the general expressive style. A shift of this nature could suggest to the pianist a dramatic ‘change of voice’ and not merely dynamic contrast. This would be an indication to use suitably contrasting tone qualities. Robert Hatten suggests

21 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 that shifts of discourse allow for “putting a "spin" on the presentation of events.” (On

Narrativity in Music, 76)

A state of suspension in the music creates tension and intentional uncertainty as to what will happen next. During performance, the musicians should not communicate anticipation of what is to follow and keep rests pregnant with expectation. The rocketing scales, repeated notes and pauses are devices that potentially support spontaneous communication, or even a sense of narration to the dramatic events of musical discourse: the scale figures could be played as a sudden interruption to events, or to alert a profound shift of intensity or dramatic direction, or perhaps interject an entirely new element of excitement. The performer’s best choice becomes the creative ‘justification’ for the scale figures and what follows.

The solo pianist’s process of justifying indications and events in the score builds belief and security to musical events in a dramatic sense by clarifying the conception of musical meaning. ‘Justification’ asks the questions that refer back to the performer’s musical subtext and provides personal answers using the musical facts or ‘Given

Circumstances’ as to why certain compositional choices have been made.

Musical ‘truth’ is also communicated in the pianist’s body through the unity of a personalized artistic concept, physical comfort and natural movement – the inner and outer components of the pianist’s craft. The pianist’s flexible technique enables the range of creative emotions and characters to be convincingly conveyed to the audience. Pierce describes the role of the musician’s body in performance and how the body works in conjunction with the mind:

22 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

“Resonating a piece and conveying it passionately to an audience depend not only

on a broad range of response, affective and intellectual, but on adjusting physical

mobility and firmness in order to express shades of meaning. The full engagement

of the performer’s body and inner life will, at its best, be reverberant even when

the expression called for by a passage is harsh or languid.” (Pierce 134)

Practice sessions involve “adjusting physical mobility and firmness in order to express shades of meaning” and this may include breaking larger physical gestures into smaller ones so as to build ‘physical truth’ to musical ideas. Smaller gestures should gradually be combined and integrated into the larger gesture.

Performer’s Analysis: Super-Objective, Units, Creative ‘Objectives’

The ‘Super-Objective’ is Stanislavski’s term for the overarching thematic concept of a work that unifies the through line of actions. In Stanislavski’s theatre, the ‘Super-

Objective’ for the play is decided during read-throughs and then modified as the concept becomes clearer. Stanislavski’s own provisional ‘Super-Objective’ for Hamlet is “Just

Retribution” (Benedetti 117).

The ‘Super-Objective’ for a solo musical work should be decided by the individual musician: it may relate to themes or subjects appearing frequently in a composer’s music but it should reflect the performer’s own perspective on a particular work. In the author’s first Dissertation recital, the designated ‘Super-Objective’ for the first movement of Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No.8 (the third of Prokofiev’s “War”

Sonatas) was “Reminiscence in desolation and shell shock in the aftermath of war.”

Although descriptions of instrumental music may seem implausible, verbal articulation can be an aid in focusing the expressive intent so that the musical elements

23 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 are directed towards a specific dramatic purpose. Verbalization of this kind in non- programmatic music may also be an aid to stimulate vitality, purpose and clarity to musical character and actions: if successful, this may compel the audience towards a natural empathy with the performer’s musical conception.

Preparation of an instrumental work for performance involves a preliminary analysis that will aid the development of a personal practice strategy. In applying Stanislavski, breaking down a score will focus not only on traditional harmonic and formal analyses but determining the dramatic content of the musical work using the musician’s intellect and musical imagination.

After playing through the work a few times, the pianist articulates the basic expression by clarifying its emotional content and fundamental musical expression of the piece. She or he should be able to describe:

1. The basic character, movement and emotional qualities of the work.

2. The particular characters and relationships of the main themes to each other.

3. The principal sections of musical structure including development and the

dramatic relationship of these to one other.

4. Transitional sections.

5. The unfolding of the main dramatic climax and identification of smaller ones.

6. Any distinguishing features of the composition’s musical sound world.

7. Particular technical (physical) demands and the expressive intent behind each.

As the pianist’s work moves from a sense of the overall expression towards more detail, a deeper level of analysis breaks the form down further.

24 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

Stanislavski’s work in identifying ‘Units and Objectives’ breaks dramatic structure down into smaller parts that “relates given circumstances to action.” (Carnicke 226) This serves as a reminder to instrumentalists that indications in the score should be connected to the dramatic expression of musical actions, which the pianist finds through creative enquiry and personal responses. Particular kinds of questions help to determine the nature of dramatic content in instrumental music such as:

1. Who does the musical voice belong to? Does the writing suggest a particular instrument, voice or ensemble besides the piano that might affect tonal action?

2. What does the music do? Does the rhythmic movement or mood of the music in the

‘Given Circumstance’ of the score suggest any kind of musical movement or action?

What is the significance of this movement dramatically?

3. Why does a musical action happen at a specific point? From what prior actions or emotion does this action come from and shift towards? Why does the musical action change and what is the possible motivation behind change?

4. How or in what manner does the designated musical action unfold? Specify a beginning, an end and point of greatest tension to the musical action. How can the musical elements justify a particular interpretation of dramatic musical actions?

There are no named or determinate “characters” with specific problems to be solved in instrumental music. However, the instrumentalist’s interpretation of the music can embrace the performer’s concept of various musical characters that interact throughout performance through musical qualities.

Stanislavski asks the actor to observe shifts or changes of action and to have the essential dramatic aspects of the larger sections in mind before breaking these down into

25 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 smaller units. The larger divisions help ease and accessibility to a scene. These will

“serve us as a fairway which shows us the right course to follow and leads us through…the complex threads of the play, where we can easily get lost.” (Actor’s Work

147). Similarly, the solo pianist should develop a clear overall expressive concept of the work including each of its major sections so that smaller sections and their expressive tendencies are guided through the outer layer of musical structure.

A pianist’s intention to accomplish specific physical or expressive tasks is often aligned with a particular goal in mind (to play with rich tone; to bring out a musical character). Productive intention arises from desire to achieve a goal and is rarely as successful when motivated by a sense of duty or pressure. Desire stimulates focus and the energy and vitality necessary to move intention forward towards effective action.

Stanislavski recommends that the character’s ‘Objectives’ “…be described by a verb” (Actor’s Work 155)… “its most important quality is its fascination for the actor himself. It has to be pleasing, draw him, make him want to do it. Like a magnet it attracts his will to create.” (152). Albert Pia similarly advises that, “Objectives should be truthful, believable, should have value and depth, and be active so as to move your role ahead and provide forward action.” (Pia 52)

Aside from the specific intentions related to pianistic tasks, Stanislavski can be usefully applied to the intentions within the dramatic circumstances of a composition. In a play, the character/actor has an immediate intention in a given circumstance to achieve what he or she wants. This results in believable action. In this research, I translate

‘Objective’ (the theatrical character’s task or problem) into the inner expressive tendency of the music: how the musician interprets what the musical discourse wants to do or tends

26 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 towards in a specific section. For example, music may give the impression of wanting to fade away, broaden, stagger or overwhelm. This named tendency or expressive

‘objective’ results in a related musical action that now has a psychological component: the music wants to fade and so it dissolves/ it wants to broaden and so it eventually stops/ it wants to stagger and so it falls/ it wants to overwhelm and so it builds.

In instrumental music, smaller ‘units’ of music encompass the player’s designated expressive ‘objectives’ that form part of active musical discourse. By dividing a score into smaller sections according to the musician’s designated expressive ‘objectives’, a dramatic structure takes shape. Stanislavski urges that each change of tempo, texture or dynamic happens for a reason. Therefore, the performer should always be enquiring and searching, using the musical imagination to supply personal responses to the contents of the score.

In order to clarify musical qualities of an action in the ‘given circumstances’, the pianist can experiment with the opposite expressive action in practice sessions: for example, if the music consoles, then it could be played it in a way that agitates. The pianist’s conscious mind and memory should recall which musical elements were altered to suggest each counter-action. Changes in physical behavior should be monitored and observed as the opposite is played.

Even in smaller, perpetual motion types of pieces such as études, there should be an underlying descriptive objective in the performer’s mind that has the capacity to draw dramatic content from the music. Chopin’s virtuoso etude, Op.10 No.1 in C-major suggests nobility or grandeur and expresses this by the simultaneous actions of each hand: the left hand whole notes toll ‘as if’ they were huge bells while the arpeggios of the

27 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 right hand cascade ‘as if’ in a waterfall. An etude with a different musical character,

Op.25 No.5 in E-minor suggests joy and playfulness of movement and expresses this through gestures and dance actions that hop and leap. The performer’s conviction of music’s inner content is key to personal ‘artistic truth’ and should spark the musical mind beyond the verbal description when actually playing. A successful rendition unites the music and musician so that when the music being played is described, so too is the musician’s experience in playing that music.

In these kinds of pieces, the pianist builds comfort and technical security by finding sensible places such as a change of hand position or harmonic change to make slight lifts of the hand or arm. Musical expression may then convey a physical sense of breathing or phrasing. Over time, the security this builds in shorter segments extends to physical confidence in longer segments. It allows the feeling of more time and awareness to shape the flow of the piece according to expressive intention.

A technical problem of a physical nature in a passage of intensified musical drama may even find a solution in the dramatic content of the music. This connection partially distracts the mind from the physical issue and focuses mind and body on what music is expressing rather than judging the success of physical movements.

Pedagogue, George Kochevitsky suggests that technical accomplishment is fundamentally related to musical intention: “Technical perfection should be measured, not by the degree of a pianist’s mastery over this or that form of technique, but by the correspondence between his artistic intentions and the means of their realization.”

(Kochevitsky 37)

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Periodicity and note grouping in traditional musical analysis may support further breakdown of musical structure in the way that gestures of dramatic continuity or closure are identified. Kofi Agawu takes a similar position:

“…there is often more to the sense of periodicity than what is conferred by

grouping. The analytical emphasis, then, should not be on antecedents and

consequents, well-defined or malformed sentences, or sonata formations and

deformations…The emphasis, rather, should be on the sense behind the musical

gestures…” (Music as Discourse 76)

Rather than viewing musical analysis as an activity abstracted from musical or physical expression, the performer’s own “sense behind the musical gestures” can open up possibilities for solo instrumentalists to explore musical composition as dramatic works. Musical semiotics can support traditional analytical approaches by drawing attention to musical gestures at cultural or dramatic levels of musical significance. For instance, a pianist may find a motivation for a personally designated emotion or musical action by identifying how a musical element or idea relates to the specific musical topic in which the idea occurs. The musical imagination becomes stimulated to impact qualities of sound or psychological qualities of movement in the music.

The nocturnal, chorale and folk topoi that arise distinctly in the fourth piece ("The

Night's Music") from Bartók’s Out of Doors have a harmonious relationship to each other. Bartók finds a reason to ‘voice’ the chorale melody in the lower octaves, spaced more closely together in its second appearance rather than the widely spaced octaves when initially heard. As I hear it, the affect of the lower octaves and a new pitch center makes the human aspect of the chorale sound more melancholic and burdened than the

29 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 dissonances of chromatic clusters that represent the night and continue on with the folk melody to end the piece. This is also characterized by the simultaneous juxtaposition of the free spirited folk melody heard in the upper register. One possibility is that the motivation for the chorale voicing at the beginning reveals God harmoniously existing as part of nature; the motivation for the chorale voicing at the end could be to demonstrate how human involvement can destroy the beauty of the relationship we each have with

God and nature. With this idea in mind, the pianist should not focus excessively on beauty of tone but rather a calm and objective tone, ‘as if’ the lower octaves are the voice of a prophet. In my interpretation, the chorale melody would be more prominent than the folk melody in the upper register while the basic tempo would remain steady.

Distinct from ‘Objectives’ as the inner expressive intentions of the music itself, the solo pianist as director of his or her own creative work has numerous short and longer-term objectives or goals to meet in practice sessions. These should be connected in a broader context of expressive intentions. These objectives may involve working to secure command over particular technique problems, building towards appropriate performance tempos, developing tonal or rhythmic range and nuance, or securing the memory for performance. Artistic experience and maturity is required to monitor and prioritize particular goals or objectives and to be patient as smaller goals gradually meet larger ones. The developed skills of mind and body are employed towards an individual and imaginative presentation of the work itself.

In performance, the focus on specific objectives related to the demands of a particular work can be effective in countering initial nervousness, especially at the start of a performance. This may include a physical task such as focusing on finding a relaxed

30 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 tone or feeling the freedom and expansiveness of an opening gesture. As the mind and body adjusts to a personally conceived progression of ideas and their physical realization, the pianist finds a ‘sense of truth’ to each moment of performance and the ‘life of the human spirit’ is more readily communicated and consistently present.

Musical Narrative

After locating the main structural divisions and principal climax of a composition, a progression of musical events, actions and emotions may even begin to suggest a sense of narrative progression. Fred Everett Maus’ article, “Narrative, Drama, and Emotion in

Instrumental Music” contrasts different approaches to conceiving narrative in instrumental art music. In discussing “analogies between music and narrative”, he writes:

“Comparisons with narrative and drama both serve to emphasize temporal qualities of music, including the structuring of events into plot-like successions.” (Maus, Narrative

301)

In applying Stanislavski to an instrumental work, the underlying musical subtext and the logic and sequence to musical through-action should stimulate the ear to hear music as a continuous, dramatic flow of related musical events. In this musical adaptation, a symptom of Stanislavski’s ‘sense of truth’ is identified when the ordering of temporal events and their expressive justifications effectively communicate a convincing narrative continuity. If the concert audience perceives the unfolding musical narrative in a natural, unforced manner, then musical discourse is communicating a ‘sense of truth’ through an unbroken line of musical events.

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Methodology and Practical Application

The Methodology for this research includes a review of various applications of

Stanislavski across other art disciplines including modern dance, ballet, Chinese opera, choral music, violin and clarinet playing. The chapters following this Review identify two key topics and their implications for the solo pianist applying Stanislavski in the preparation and performance of Classical music repertoire:

1. Musical Truth and the Solo Pianist: A Historical and Aesthetic Context

2. The ‘Method of Physical Actions’ for Solo Instrumental Music

Practical Application

Two solo recitals of major repertoire pieces were prepared and given as half of the dissertation project. They were invaluably assisted with the expertise of the author’s performance professor (the Dissertation Chair). The second of these featured Liszt’s

Sonata in B-Minor, excerpts of which are used in the Appendix to illustrate how a score may be broken down in terms of a dramatic structure rather than as a traditional harmonic/formal analysis, and then re-constructed as a through-line of stylized musical actions.

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Independent Preparation

An additional recital was performed at Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City on

November 16th 2017. Written feedback in the form of an online review by Dr. Blaise

Ferrandino (for the New York Piano Group) is relevant to this research in terms of audience reception and its mention of musical narrative. Because this additional recital was not a requirement of the degree, the author was working independently of a teacher in preparation for the performance. This was an opportunity to truly test the ideas from

Stanislavski that the author has found most applicable. As the concepts became more familiar and ingrained over time, the more profound the impact they have had on the author’s playing and developing logical through-lines of musical actions and emotions.

The text for the review may also be found as Appendix B.

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CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF INTERDISCIPLINARY LITERATURE

In addition to Stanislavski’s documented work with opera singers, there is a growing body of literature by performance pedagogues and researchers outside of theatre who have found resonance in Stanislavski’s ideas. Interdisciplinary Stanislavski scholarship can be found in opera, ballet, modern dance, violin technique, choral conducting, choral rehearsals and clarinet playing. The musical applications primarily focus on ways to enhance a musician’s physical gestures, connection to an instrument, the musical work being performed, or on communication and concentration in music performance. These ten sources and the valuable 2014 publication, “The Routledge

Companion to Stanislavsky” form the basis of this literature review.

Resting on the foundation of the sources listed below, my research aims to show how a successful approach to pianistic technique integrates both the physical and psychological investigations of Stanislavski. The goal of integration as I view it is to convincingly communicate ‘artistic truth’ to concert audiences through personally motivated musical actions within musical works.

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1. Stanislavski, Constantin and Pavel Rumyantsev. Stanislavski On Opera. Translated and edited by Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood. Theatre Arts Books, 1975.

Dating from 1921 at the Opera Studio of the Bolshoi Theatre, this volume contains the best available account of how Stanislavski directly applied concepts from his acting ‘System’ to a musical context. Pavel Rumyantsev’s first-hand written record forms the basis for this volume. Opera singers of the time had a tendency towards vocal exhibitionism: they were stuck in acting patterns of stock gestures and poses that disconnected them from events of the opera, the meaning of texts, or subtext behind the music.

The book is divided into chapters for each of seven operas directed by

Stanislavski and produced at the Opera Studio. The repertoire emphasized Russian operas of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Stanislavski’s direction places an overall emphasis on total individual involvement and on having imaginative and clear purpose to all singing and stage action.

In improvisations with music, Stanislavski’s singers had to use their sensitivity to music and their natural responses to ‘inner rhythm’: “the thing that carries away your emotions, arouses them, giving them both keenness and power” (12). Stage movements were generated directly from the impulses in the music. The skills of the improvising musician were also relevant as well as the musical information given that could inspire stage action:

“The musician who improvised the music for the sketches knew, of course, the

content of the plot and how to develop the course of action; he was also able to

introduce meaning into what was being done, together with the most varied

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nuances, by his use of both rhythm and musical form.” (12)

All of this was accomplished through purely instrumental means. In studying ballads and art songs, singers were required to, “Listen to the music. It will reveal what lies behind the text, your innermost thoughts.” (15) Focusing on the deeper, hidden meanings of music was a viable way to deal with stage anxiety:

“Do not miss a single note, project yourself into the depths of every sound created

by Rimsky-Korsakov, unriddle them and you will find there is no better means of

concentration than this of quieting yourself and allowing yourself to be carried

over into the life created by you and the composer.” (20)

The highest level of art involved the contribution of the individual. Music-making at this level,

“…must be transformed… into a confession made by your heart. You must take the place for me of both the poet and the composer, you must infuse into me your own creative emotions, your state of being. All the elements of your inner life must be set to work. Then you will bring to life the author’s idea, his theme.” (16)

As a philosophical statement, the challenge is given for instrumentalists to become artists along with all creative responsibilities that go along with musical artistry.

Stanislavski’s thinking makes it very clear that the composer’s contribution by itself is not enough to inspire a musical audience and bring a work to life: solo piano music, like theatre and dance, is a performance art requiring the creative involvement and emotional convictions of the pianist to ignite the composer’s ideas. “All elements of your inner life” refers to Stanislavski’s elements of inner ‘Experiencing’ (the imagination and

‘What If?’; ‘Given Circumstances’; ‘Objects of Attention’, etc.) that prompt creative

36 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 questions and build a deeper relationship between the music being played and the musician playing that music. Audience communication is enhanced when the performer focuses on specific ‘Objects’ within the music:

“An actor from our theatre may not simply sing at his audience. That is a

complete denial of our theatre. Our approach in art is directed at an object

(emphasis, mine). Every actor, like every human being, has some object towards

which his thoughts, his attention, is drawn when he embarks on any creative

work.” (58)

An ‘Object of Attention’ within an instrumental piece could be any focal point such as a change of texture, a chord of particular harmonic interest or a change in rhythmic pattern. In rehearsal, the pianist naturally brings attention to bear on a particular

‘Object’ but additionally works to determine what this ‘Object’s’ expressive significance is within the phrase, section, or musical subtext. In performance, the musician’s attention then brings the ‘Object’ into closer relation with the other musical elements that strengthen belief in the performer’s expressive subtext. This engages subconscious inflections of sound and movement qualities in performance, without forcing or overthinking musical expression and enlivens the communicative aspects of live music making.

The performer’s deep imagination and creative vision also becomes the catalyst for the audience’s imagination. The strong belief or ‘sense of truth’ in a personalized interpretation has the capacity to inspire the audience to the truth of their own images and emotional responses:

“We cannot know what you see in your imagination but we shall be drawn by

37 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

your inner visions and we, the spectators, will paint in our imaginations our own

pictures, under the impact of your creative inspiration.” (30)

Mental preparation for the opera character’s behavior and state of mind was to begin prior to performance, before a note was sung or played: “You must always come onstage having begun to act your roles in the wings, before you reach the audience.” (51)

Similarly, the pianist can use the time before performance to play the score through in the inner ear and to initiate the kinetic memory mentally. In this way, the expressive world within the music and the physicality of the pianist is initiated before the instrument is approached. This may even stimulate the creative desire to play and perform rather than focusing on a nervous state of mind.

Not only were opera singers directed by Stanislavski to listen for their character’s subtext by listening to the orchestra but instrumentalists in the orchestra were directed to know the characters and their particular circumstances of the opera and play their instruments in a way that enlivened the inner drama and external action. Of the oboe’s part in the famous Letter Scene from Eugene Onegin, Stanislavski advises the player:

“…see how she (Tatiana) acts, and perform your role on the oboe in a duet with her. Help her to act out her life on the stage.” To a horn player in the same scene: “Look at her. She is weeping…Weep with her. That’s the kind of orchestra we must have.” (100)

It may be suggested that Stanislavski is asking the musician to play with a ‘sense of truth’ that is consistent with the life of the opera. This is accomplished in a practical way through the ability to hear the inner and outer actions of musical expression and to allow the musical qualities to freely empathize with them. Even if the musicians play correctly and accurately, ‘musical truth’ is absent when these intensities are adjusted

38 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 without reference to the deeper, inner meanings of music. In the realm of solo piano music, this meaning is determined through a searching dialogue between the performer and the musical text. Musical expression can prompt change from one musical action to another for those with these particular listening skills: “Listen to the music; it will tell you everything. When the music changes, your positions change.” (220) Change in any of the elements of music can indicate a psychological or physical shift in movement or mood (harmony, rhythm, tempo, timbre, register, phrasing, articulation etc.).

In Stanislavski’s studio, singing actors must find justified physical and inner lines of actions that span the entire role: “…you must consciously build the logical sequence of your physical actions. Later these proven actions will be incorporated into the score of your role and eventually they will again become, as in in real life, unconscious.” (217)

Stanislavski insists that musical sounds should always have a relationship to subtext and a logical through-line of action. An instrumentalist able to identify a line of musical actions from beginning to the end of a composition cultivates a different kind of relationship to the music, becoming part of the active stream of discourse: “You may not sing a single note that is unrelated to your inner course of action without having prepared for these sounds a sort of prelude composed of your relationship to them.” (163)

Many qualities of music, including tempo, meter, rhythms, melodic intervals, tonality, dynamics and articulation contribute to a sense of how music may be heard or experienced as a particular action. Solo pianists must additionally ask themselves how they want their music to be heard or perceived by the audience. This involves listening to one’s playing ‘as if’ you, the pianist, were someone in the audience hearing yourself play.

Stepping outside of the self and listening as if you were another person is important in

39 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 giving a different perspective on the movement or sound qualities depicting the performer’s designated musical actions.

In opera, music could also suggest how each character’s actions had a specific

‘Tempo-Rhythm’ for each ‘Given Circumstance.’ ‘Tempo-Rhythm’ identified the external speed of the physical action combined with the character’s inner state of mind, influencing the inflection and qualities of character movement. While the basic ‘Tempo’ indicates the speed of an action (a calm character and a nervous one for example, might perform the same action but with different attitudes and internal speeds), ‘Rhythms’ provide more detailed information about the patterns of movement within an action

(jerky, smooth, hesitating etc.) and are in relation to the character and the psychological state. Tempo markings in music therefore have potential psychological implications for the progression of musical actions and how they become part of living musical expression in performance. Each singer had to be aware of their character’s identity, the relationship to other characters and their character action’s at any moment: “But you will be unable to find the right tempo-rhythm for your life if you are not exactly aware of what you are to do on the stage.” (239)

Stanislavski also discusses the importance of character ‘Objectives’. These are generated from the fantasy of the singer-actor by asking “Who?”, “What?”, “How?” and

“Why?” types of questions. Identifying a character’s ‘Objectives’ in a scene helps to create a line of logical actions corresponding to character identity and what he or she as wants as that character.

Musical characters in solo piano music should relate to each other through the inner expressive ‘Objectives’ or musical actions. As mentioned previously, each of these

40 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 is described in terms of an active verb such as to interrupt, dominate, shock, subdue, divert etc., and therefore potentially changes the course of music’s inner expression.

Pianists also have other basic objectives in order to attain success in performance: to play expressively, to play with rich tone, to be physically relaxed in difficult passages, to make the musical structure clear, to play with a reliable memory etc.

Stanislavski did not wish opera singers to be slaves of the written dynamics or rhythmic notation. The relationships between dynamics were a part of the connection between musical ideas and their context: “Piano and forte indicate only relative strengths of sound. It is up to us to define their limits each time after taking into account the situation which we wish to convey.” (70) Dynamics could inflect speech as action. They also justified the emotions of a character in a given situation: “…you must act by means of words. We are trying to achieve a pianissimo in your singing but this is not a formal requirement, it evolves out of the depth of your emotions, and not because the notes carry a special indication of a double piano.” (260).

Singers should be thoroughly comfortable with the meter and the rhythmic patterns of their music. Once they have thoroughly absorbed these patterns, they may discover rhythmic nuance and flexibility in their musical parts and roles and not be bound by exactitude. (73) This should encourage pianists to explore rhythmic flexibility where this fits the needs of inner musical expression and the ‘Given Circumstances’ of the score.

Stanislavski addresses varying stress emphasis on repeated words. The following example depends on having a specific purpose behind repeated emphasis:

“If you have two phrases that are more or less equal as to music and to thought,

41 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

the second one must be given more force than the first, when it is a question of

affirmation, or desire, or insistence.” (89)

Repeated notes and phrases present a similar creative problem in instrumental music that may be dealt with by observing rules governing rhetoric. The specific purpose is decided by the performer and part of the pianist’s creative responsibility in knowing what the music is doing and why at any given time. If the pianist cannot initiate varied emphasis naturally, these questions enable the musical elements to be adjusted consciously, depending on the particular creative responses.

Stanislavski’s concepts enhance directness towards intentional expressive meaning in musical sounds. The aural images that come from a musician’s inner ear are analogous to the mental images of thoughts that singing actors create, therefore enhancing vocal expressiveness: “A singer must always see in his mind’s eye the thing about which he is singing.” (211)

As the pianist gains familiarity and physical ease with a new work, clarity of expression is improved through aural images that are stimulated through the musical imagination. The desire and motivation to paint the pianist’s own aural images with physical sounds can subconsciously direct ear-hand-pedal coordination to create and experiment with timbre qualities. Musical sounds themselves inspire inner images or feelings from real life that in turn may influence the character of stylized musical gestures or actions. For example, music that sounds to the performer ‘as if’ it were a particular aspect of nature can inspire the player’s intuitive musicality to emphasize tonal and movement qualities and enhance that particular inner image. A reliable pianistic technique facilitates the coordination skills between mind and body to effectively convey

42 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 nuances of tone color in musical actions and emotions: “…you cannot use the same coloration to sing about joy, worry, or a shrewd move.” (187) Shorter pieces that develop particular tone qualities may be helpful in building a vocabulary of tonal resources.

Opera singers should value their intuitive feelings to music and relate them to their character, their relationships with other characters and circumstances:

“You must understand the music, because it is the expression of your own

feelings. You must know why this or that note, this or that rhythm, this or that

timbre, has been assigned to you and what it suggests to you.” (163)

Musical sounds should be saturated with inner feelings. When pianists are able to justify the various components of music they play (notes, rhythms, timbres etc.) through personal responses and feelings, then musical discourse is not a separate entity from the musician but a natural extension of the artistic self. Creative ‘experiencing’ becomes a possibility in performance.

The musical meaning of a work in all its complexity must affect and touch the listener for it to be considered a genuine artistic statement. Stanislavski reminds the performer:

“We the audience…are not interested in a formal rendering of the plot – we want

to look into the depths, the wellsprings of your heart. Your words carry your

thoughts and the music carries the feelings behind them.” (253)

Music without text relies on musical sounds alone to convey the instrumentalist’s unique perspective, thoughts and feelings of a composer’s work. This perspective, brought to the surface through creative work, plays out within musical structure and permeates it with feeling. The purpose behind connecting the various ‘Elements’ from

43 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

Stanislavski’s ‘System’ to the elements of music is to deepen the musician’s relationship to a composition and to animate musical structure with the “life of the human spirit.”

Moreover, it may produce a genuine artistic statement capable of affecting the concert audience.

If Stanislavski’s ideas enhance the dramatic qualities of musical performance in opera by emphasizing the union of music and drama, the solo piano recital might also benefit from being thought of as a dramatic event. Towards this approach, each movement of a Sonata could be considered an Act and having its own through-line of musical actions in the context of a larger, integrated work.

Pianists should be intentional about the way similarities and contrasts between works can impact the way an entire recital program communicates as a dramatic experience. With greater emphasis on completeness and on physical technique, there is more of a tendency today to program complete books of Études by Liszt or Chopin than in the nineteenth century. Performers pay less attention to works in which they can express a unique creative perspective in favor of intellectual, memory or technical display. Audiences become impressed that these kinds of programs can be delivered at all rather than on focusing on rich moments of deep dramatic experience. Ideally, compositions should be selected that the performer closely identifies with on a personal level.

As a Director, Stanislavski “tried…to excite everyone with each new piece of work, to make them fall in love with it. He felt this attitude of falling in love with a new production was a necessary element in creative work.” (337)

Pianists choose their repertoire for each recital and adopt personal strategies for

44 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 learning based on a hierarchy of artistic priorities. They must shape a clear image of each new work in its entirety including all its myriad details. As solo artists, pianists must inspire the musician within to love a work and to be carried away with it. Each new discovery should be relished as part of the creative journey and inspire enthusiasm and excitement for work. This should encourage pianists to explore new works with enthusiasm and to periodically revisit familiar ones with a fresh approach to creativity, embodying new ideas, feelings or physical approaches.

Pianists working as professional artists are independent directors of their own creative work. Although piano playing is not an ensemble or a collaborative art form, this research follows Stanislavski’s efforts to blur the line between himself as director and the actors who became “active co-creators with him in his directorial concept”. (374) The

‘Director’s’ mind-set is present in practice sessions to address the overall progress of interpretation and piano technique and to ensure that individual input is a part of the creative process. The performer’s subconscious mind becomes more involved as the process moves forward and especially in performance. Practice sessions should also gradually involve practicing the state-of-mind ‘as if’ in performance and the sustained concentration necessary to be fully involved in the expressive world of a musical work.

2. Stanislavsky, Constantin and David Magarshack. “Five Rehearsals of Werther.”

Stanislavsky and the Art of the Stage. Faber and Faber, 1950, pp. 255-84.

This book is based on the lectures given by Stanislavski at the Opera Studio when it was operating under the Bolshoi Theatre. The students who auditioned were already skilled and experienced performers. The recorded notes of Konkordia Antarova, one of

45 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 the singers in Stanislavski’s class, document rehearsals at the Studio between 1918-1922

(Whyman xv). David Magarshack translated the lectures for the 1950 English edition and wrote an extended Introduction that summarizes the ‘System’.

The third and final section of this book deals with how aspects of the ‘System’ are used to build the living characters of Charlotte and Werther during five rehearsals of

Massenet’s opera, Werther.

The significance of this book for pianists is in the ways that Stanislavski uses the

‘System’ to build relationships: between the singer and the character being played so that they become a unified person who truly lives out the role in performance; and between this person and how he or she experiences, internalizes and expresses the music of the opera. In various ways, what happens in musical expression informs the actions of the singer-character.

The sense of anticipation and obsession for the actor’s role provides the impetus for focusing attention on the initial task (257). The force of the imagination is engaged to create a line of inner images illustrating the ‘Given Circumstances’ of the play. In the theatre, these are visual images seen by the “inner eye.” (257)

The musician’s skill to audiate a score is an ability to hear the work in the inner ear. However, the musical imagination should enable the pianist to develop a more ideal realization that embraces personal ideas and responses to the musical events and ‘Given

Circumstances’ of the score. The inner imaging of sounds that are shaped and colored through the feelings and psychological states of the music may be developed through the pianist’s musicality and quality of creative work.

As always with Stanislavski, inner and outer components are interrelated. In

46 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 relation to singing for example: “Sound, however, does not depend on physical actions only. The correct feelings create the right temperament and evoke the right sound.” (267-

8) The pianist should be clear what the relationship is between their choices in sound quality (not only dynamic levels) and the feelings or character of the music at any point in the score.

As always with Stanislavski, inner and outer components are interrelated. In relation to singing for example: “Sound, however, does not depend on physical actions only. The correct feelings create the right temperament and evoke the right sound.” (267-

8) The pianist should be clear what the relationship is between their choices in sound quality (not only dynamic levels) and the feelings or character of the music at any point in the score.

The actor’s own awareness of his inner and outer consciousness while on stage is clearly described by Stanislavski:

“During every moment of his presence on stage the actor must see either what is

happening outside him on the stage or what is happening inside him, in his

imagination, that is to say, his visual images which illustrate the given

circumstances. All these component parts form, either inside or outside, an

endless and uninterrupted series of visual images, a sort of reel of a film. While

the actor’s creative work goes on, it continues to unwind itself, reflecting the

illustrated given circumstances of the play among which the actor – the performer

of the part – lives on the stage.” (257-8)

Developing a secure mental picture of a musical composition as well as the corresponding kinetic memory of the work at the keyboard requires intense practice both

47 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 at and away from the instrument. The motivation to create sounds generated by the imagination and inner ear should excite the pianist to create the corresponding physical sounds at the keyboard. The pianist then reacts to the actual sounds, further prompting the line of inner images and providing a level of structural continuity.

Stanislavski focused considerable time on discussing how to walk on the stage and how a singer-actor’s gait should be appropriate to the character being portrayed.

Particular movement qualities should reflect the character’s outer and inner states. (266)

Pianists practice basic musical movements such as scales and arpeggios in a variety of ways – separate hands, adjusting rhythms, dynamics and articulation – so as to develop technique and expand knowledge on how various patterns can occur within compositions. Movement and appropriate attitudes towards musical movement should also reflect a relationship to expressive character and the pianist’s designated musical actions in the ‘Given Circumstances’. When considered in relation to subtext, the ‘Given

Circumstances’ (tonality, tempi, rhythmic patterns, phrasing, expression markings, texture, articulation etc.) assist in charging tonal qualities and musical movement with psychological or emotional content rather than simply allowing performance to be a literal reading of the rhythmic patterns.

Stanislavski challenges the aspiring singer: “You must render an account to yourself about every note you sing. What is it for? What does it express?” (268) These creative questions and answers are prompted by the individual’s artistic imagination. This also relates to an artistic sensibility required to find a progression of feelings for the entire role. Stanislavski observes that in this process, organic feelings unite with the

‘Given Circumstances’. On a fundamental level, feelings should create the structure for

48 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 the role. (269)

This last point is especially important for instrumental music because it indicates that feelings should be integrated into the (musical) structure. They provide an additional layer of musical “knowing” essential in communicating music as a living art form.

Stanislavski describes how the line of emotions becomes the structure of the part when these resonate with the performer’s own feelings:

“They will become that when in your heart too they find an echo, that is, when

they become the rhythm of your heart. For it is only then that you will convey in

the sounds of your singing voice all the deep creative powers which have been

awakened in you. Now you cannot any longer either change, or reduce, or hide

them. They are given in your part. Your awakened temperament has picked them

up there. And you have made them your own in the harmonious work of the

whole of your organism. These feelings will be appropriate not only to

you…They will be the creative powers which will find an echo and arouse pity in

the whole of the auditorium. Every spectator will feel them in himself.” (270)

Still focusing on the work of the imagination, Stanislavski points to how a singer- actor creates a living person by being attentive to “creative problems” which influence the character’s actions, feelings and relationships to other characters. When a character’s desires or ambitions come about as a result of the singer’s own imagination and personal observations of life, they have the capacity to ‘justify’ feelings, avoid routine and prompt the right physical action. (274) Stanislavski explains:

“Your observations of life itself are of utmost importance. For life is that

emotional material from which there arises in the actor, ‘the life of the human

49 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

spirit of the part,’ that is to say, that which constitutes the fundamental aim of

art.” (275)

Finding the creative problems or ‘objectives’ of the role helps the actor to determine what the character wants. The response to each ‘objective’ plays out as stage action. Using the imagination, the solo pianist also determines the tendencies of living musical expression and how this expression is played as a logical progression of musical ideas. Musical impulses and actions relate to life when they are attached to motivation and feelings. The musician works to develop and justify musical actions with creative questions so that they contribute to the flow and dramatic shaping of a work.

Just as he directs the singer-actors, “…not for one moment be without some problem in your part”, Stanislavski seems to suggest sensitivity to the deepest impulses that drive music and the feelings they generate. An impulse might be contained in music that has a quality of stillness and little or no rhythmic movement. Yet, it can be pregnant with meaning in a context where harmonic tension is unresolved.

Continuity of thought and action is crucial to Stanislavski, even if there are pauses in speech or if a character is standing still. Action continues in these moments and they require even greater intensity of feeling and intention. Stanislavski points to the moments after an aria has been sung saying that, “Life goes on.” (276). It is the performer’s responsibility to maintain an engagement with thoughts and stage action. A musician should know the score thoroughly and “each musical phrase should always be associated with definite thoughts and feelings.” (276)

Multi-movement works such as Sonatas and Suites present similar problems for solo pianists, who must create appropriate mental links between movements to unify a

50 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 composition and create justification for its contrasts and events. For Stanislavski, to do the opposite was to “drop out of the life of your part” (277) and to disengage with the audience. The musical performer is responsible for every moment in performance and should aim for consistency in connecting musical ideas, thoughts and emotions in conception and in execution. Interpretative clarity enhances believability and this is fundamental to the idea of ‘stage truth’.

Stanislavski explains how musical ability and temperament allows a singer to imbue singing with a feeling for action when these connect with the life of the music:

“Thanks to the sum total of the facts arising from your musical temperament, your

ear and your voice, you possess a special ability which the people listening to you

do not possess. You can merge into the music by means of your action and you

can supply it yourself by means of your action, that is to say, your singing…Why?

Because the whole image of your part lives for you now only through your

music.” (276)

Together, the pianist’s merging of healthy, embodied technique with imaginative inner actions combines to communicate a ‘sense of truth’ in performance: “If your physical actions are right and you live in full harmony of mind and heart, you will always be a truthful reflection of life on the stage.” (277)

Stanislavski refers to an ideal unity of mind, body and heart in stating, “The whole of you sings.” (277) By way of an analogy, he refers to the singer’s voice - or in the pianist’s case, the instrument – which becomes “the strings over which you can at the same time move not one, but three magic bows: mind, heart and body.” (277) This unity is activated before the musical sound has been produced, indicating that mental

51 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 preparation is an intense process of imagining the life of the work in musical sound. Any one of these bows may be more energetically engaged, resulting in “different shades and colors in your problems and sounds.” (277)

In the fifth and final rehearsal for the opera, Stanislavski works again on the subject of dramatic pauses. He states: “A pause on the stage is the highest point of stage art” (278) and proceeds to describe what happens in the dramatic silences between

Werther and Charlotte.

In opera and theatre, pauses often occur as momentary exchanges of non-verbal communication between characters and may even intensify psychological activity.

Stanislavski views thoughts as inner action. The thoughts that occur in a pause aim to fulfill a creative objective that the actor has designated for the character based on the particular circumstances.

Silence, even as measured time in instrumental music has potential dramatic force. The interpreter’s creative enquiry determines the nature of the silence for the particular dramatic ‘Given Circumstances’ of a work. It may be the silence after a musical “question” as in the motive that begins the Finale of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata

Op.10 No.3, or perhaps the time needed to separate musical characters and create tension as the opening page of Liszt’s B-minor Sonate demonstrates.

3. Carnicke, Sharon Marie and David Rosen. “A Singer Prepares: Stanislavsky and

Opera.” The Routledge Companion to Stanislavsky, edited by R. Andrew White,

Routledge, 2014, pp.120-138.

This chapter provides a historical context for Stanislavski’s work in the opera

52 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 studio. It concentrates not only on the ways Stanislavski’s theatrical ideas were applied in music through his work with opera singers (“opera-actors”), but the ways music was influential on the new reforms that Stanislavski was bringing to live theatre. It is

Carnicke and Rosen’s contention that if music and theatre were truly interdependent for

Stanislavski, then theatre practitioners have done a disservice to how Stanislavski has been represented in separating the ideas that seem obviously relevant to the theatre

(‘Given Circumstances’, ‘Actions’ and ‘Emotion Memory’, for example) from the ones that have received relatively little attention because they are more readily associated with music (‘Tempo-Rhythm’ of speech and physical movement, phrasing, and control of the voice).

Stanislavski acknowledged the creative challenges of the dramatic actor in his address to opera singers who already have music as a foundation for what they do on stage: “All you have to do is find a true basis for the notes given to you and make them your own.” Dramatic actors on the other hand, “have to create our own rhythms, compose the music of our spoken words, and provide true feelings out in the vacuum of the stage.”

(123) Stanislavski expected actors to be addressing theatrical concerns using a musical perspective when this was appropriate and necessary.

As previously stated, the art of solo piano playing gains communicative power with the concert audience when expressive justifications are found for the written details of the score. The correct rhythms and pitches require these justifications as the “true basis” that Stanislavski refers to so that the performer’s inner concept of a work may be effectively communicated. An accurate portrayal of a score without this basis risks underestimating the value of expressive relationships between ideas that enhances a

53 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 deeper connection to the score and conveying ‘artistic truth.’

The authors find that Magarshack’s translation of Stanislavski’s lectures at the

Opera-Studio between 1918-22 in Stanislavsky and the Art of the Stage and

Rumyantsev’s Stanislavski on Opera to be the most reliable English sources available of

Stanislavski’s ideas applied to opera. Their chapter additionally draws from Russian sources that have been largely unavailable in English, including Grigori Kristi’s, “Rabota

Stanislavskogo v opernom teatre” (Moscow: Iskusstvo 1952). Kristi had worked with

Stanislavski in the Studio as a student, producer and teacher.

The remainder of the chapter is divided into three main sections:

1. My Life in (Musical) Art is a biographical summary of Stanislavski’s experiences, involvement in voice training and musical productions, and his later formation of the

Bolshoi Theatre Opera Studio. The authors posit that Stanislavski’s reforms were intended to address the needs for a kind of theatre that would appeal to the new audience of middle and lower classes.

2. The curriculum at the Bolshoi Opera Studio explains how students performed exercises that were designed to develop their imaginations. They also developed improvisations to broaden their understanding of a story and explore the actions of their characters. The music playing during movement exercises “sometimes harmonized with the singer’s physical movements and sometimes provided contrapuntal contrast.” (127)

This was the same approach used by Stanislavski in his directorial concept of Chekhov’s

The Seagull. The purpose of these exercises was to coordinate a singer’s acting with the accompanying music.

The musical repertoire had a specific purpose and included art songs, “treated as

54 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 monologues that embodied dramatic and emotional moments of life.” (127) Selected opera scenes provided material for learning to “break elements down in a dramatic scene, to utilize physical and psychological action during performance…and to embody a character’s external and internal states of being.” (127)

The curriculum focused on the importance of diction as well as the physical training of the singers. Clear diction was practiced using consonant energy and “word- control” which placed an emphasis on “words most important to the dramatic meaning of an ensemble where different texts are sung simultaneously.” (130)

Stanislavski’s exercises in relaxation and isolation of muscles were performed with music. They borrowed from Dalcroze eurhythmics, Hatha yoga and Isadora

Duncan’s freedoms in modern dance. Physical strength and control and walking with graceful fluidity were also included in the training;

3. Directing for the opera examines “The coordination of music and action” (132) and “To reflect on stage what the music is saying.” (135) The authors recall

Stanislavski’s 1932 article, “The Laws of Operatic Performance” and the distinctions he makes between instrumental, “pure music” concerts and opera. Opera directors “are to hear the action that is conveyed by the music” (132), and then translate this into visual stage action.

As directors of their own creative work, pianists can also develop the ability to hear and experience the music they play in terms of actions. In the various ‘Given

Circumstances’ underlying notes and rhythms, the progression of musical actions in a work takes on appropriately nuanced qualities of tone and timing. Using Stanislavski, the pianist should also work to identify and animate the inner rhythms and emotional

55 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 qualities of musical characters.

The concept of ‘Tempo-Rhythm’ is also addressed. Sometimes, there is a contrast between inner rhythms that are calm and outer rhythms of musical movement that are active. A pianist whose body is calm while playing many notes has learned to maintain a calm, inner bodily rhythm. However, musical expression within a piece may also be conveyed with contrasting inner and outer rhythms: music can be sustained and yet full of psychological activity. As developer of the inner and outer rhythms of pure musical expression, the pianist develops a higher level of consciousness to give the impression that this is all natural, intuitive or improvised expression while simultaneously knowing exactly how this relates to the dramatic structure.

4. Hsiu-Wei Hu. Mei Lanfang and Stanislavsky’s Method of Physical Actions in the

Performance of Traditional Chinese Opera. 2009. Wayne State University, Detroit, MI,

PhD dissertation.

Mei Lanfang (1894-1961) was highly regarded as an exquisite actor of female

Dan roles in traditional Beijing opera. He was the first star performer of Chinese opera to tour Japan (1919, 1925), the United States (1930) Russia (1935), Europe and England.

Hsiu-Wei Hu’s research explores the compatibility of Stanislavski with the aesthetics of Chinese opera. As the West exerted a strong influence on Asian culture in the twentieth century, outdated conventions in morality works requiring a cultural sense of fantasy were replaced by a desire for greater realism among younger audiences. As younger theatre audiences began to regard Chinese opera as old-fashioned and difficult to appreciate, Mei Lanfang’s use of psychological realism and concepts analogous to

56 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

Stanislavski paralleled the need for believable artistic expression. Hu’s research compares Mei Lanfang’s reforms of Beijing opera to Stanislavski’s shift away from emotion memory and towards the ‘Method of Physical Actions’ in the 1930s.

As with Valentina Litvinoff’s application of Stanislavski to modern dance, Hu’s research prioritizes abstract physical movements. In particular, Mei Lanfang’s remarkable physical gestures in his performances of Farewell My Concubine exemplify the way that Stanislavski’s concepts of ‘Justification’ and ‘Truthfulness’ can be successfully integrated into this highly stylized and symbolic art form.

Hu’s work is divided into six chapters: Chapter 1 - Research Problem deals with historical conventions in Chinese opera; Mei Fanlang’s historical contributions to the art form; the reasons for the decline of Chinese opera; Chapter 2 – Survey of the Literature examines the history of Chinese opera, its components (stories, roles, costumes, singing, staging, movements), physical gestures, abstract elements and their origins; the compatibility of Chinese and Western aesthetics in modern practices; Chapter 3 -

Methodology compares Stanislavski’s shift from affective memory to the Method of

Physical Actions; Mei Fanlang’s tours abroad including his reception in the West and

Russia by Stanislavski; Chinese versus Western aesthetics; Chapter 4 – Presents a text/performance analysis of Farewell My Concubine by comparing Stanislavski’s concepts of Given Circumstances, Justification and the Method of Physical Actions ;

Chapter 5 – Discusses Mei Fanlang’s acting and compares his approach to the Method of

Physical Actions; Chapter 6 – Presents a case for how the Method of Physical Actions may be useful today at “The Contemporary Legend Theatre.”

The definitions of terminology of special interest for this application to solo piano

57 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 music include: ‘Truth’, ‘Justification’ and the ‘Method of Physical Actions’

‘Truth’: Hu contrasts Mei Lanfang’s approach to artistic truth with the ‘truth of life’ method of Beijing Opera:

“Mei Lanfang’s artistic truth on stage, on the other hand, was more physical and instinctive in its approach. He identified human nature with essentially physical awareness and abstracted the aesthetic forms from the reality of everyday life. In Mei

Lanfang’s later years, he explained that artistic truth of traditional Chinese theatre is not identical with the realistic truth of modern spoken drama:

“There are two methods to reflect the truth of life. One is to present the essential truth of life through lifelike external images – this is the basic artistic method of Chinese modern spoken drama. Another way is to present the essential truth of life through approximate external images – this is the basic artistic method of Beijing Opera”. (92-3)

‘Justification’: The aesthetic beauty of Mei Lanfang’s external movements displayed an aesthetic beauty, embracing accuracy, charm and elegance of physical movements (126). External movements with these qualities inspired Mei Lanfang to find inner, psychological justifications for his role, resulting in the audience being able to perceive an actor’s individuality. (125)

“It is the central concept of what made Mei Lanfang’s performances different from other traditional Chinese actors. He not only analyzed the physical actions but also developed justifications for the character. It is important to examine what Mei Lanfang did with regard to analyzing physical actions during his rehearsal process.” (102)

The ‘Method of Physical Actions’: According to Hu, Mei Lanfang shared

Stanislavski’s view that,

58 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

“a series of physical actions, performed in logical and sequential order, will

inspire an actor’s emotions. When Mei Lanfang “shakes out his sleeves” while

portraying Lady Yang, he demonstrates this technique through his personal

adaptation of the female form, gestures and movements. His graceful performance

was not only logical but directly connected to the inner life of his character.”

(152)

Mei Lanfang additionally studied the plot, other characters and employed improvisations in rehearsals. (132)

The critical reception of Mei Lanfang by theatre practitioners in Russia revealed varying aesthetic priorities: Meyerhold was intrigued with the ways that Mei Lanfang’s performance communicated vitality of its formal and non-realistic presentation.

Stanislavski himself was impressed by the natural, human quality of movement saying,

“acting by Mr. Mei is a free movement guided by the laws of art.” (Wu 62)

5. Minut, Bogdan Andrei. Applying Constantin Stanislavski’s Acting ‘System’ To Choral

Rehearsals. 2009. Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, DMA dissertation.

This research is for choral conductors and applies the ‘System’ to preparing repertoire in choir rehearsals. Minut is particularly interested in artists and choral methods that adapt ideas from Stanislavski’s ‘Psycho-technique” which embraces the interconnectedness of inner and outer Elements within the ‘System.’ For example, Minut describes various exercises prescribed by choral conductor, Grigore Constantinescu:

“…vocal warm-ups on legato, staccato, accents, and so on, all of which being connected to life aspects, he works with the choir on exercises that focus on emotional

59 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 states that a certain melodic contour and a given verse can create through semantic variations. When they work on repertory, the focus is on details and they ‘cultivate the patience to not leave anything to chance in any direction, working hard on what we want to say, like in a role, in a theatrical play.’” (154)

Minut defines ‘Given Circumstances’ as “the contents of the choral score” (172) which includes “the notes, rhythms, textures, harmonic context, text, subtext, semantics, ideas, imagery, message.” (220) Furthermore, the ‘Given Circumstances’ covers comprehension of “the plane of the literary text and its subtext to the complexity of the musical language and style” (162) by the conductor and the choral singers.

Minut’s practical applications of Stanislavski in choral rehearsals focus on three repertoire selections:

1. Kasar mie la gaji” (“The Earth is Tired”) by Alberto Grau

2. If Music Be The Food of Love by David C. Dickau and Henry Heaveningham

3. There Will Be Rest by Frank Ticheli with text by Sara Teasdale

The first selection will be representative of Minut’s approach.

The dissonance, rhythmic accents and vocal effects in the first example, Kasar mie la gaji “reveals a message of awareness with regard to the many problems of the humanity and of the environment.” (188) For the choral conductor, a “psycho-technical” approach is used by the choral conductor in preparing for rehearsals in the creation of his own imaginative concept of the ‘Given Circumstances’, ‘Objectives’ and composer’s

“message”. (165)

The singers play with creative vocal exercises developed from interesting techniques found from within the music in order to stimulate subconscious belief in what

60 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 they are singing about. Exercises such as vocal glissandi re-contextualize specific vocal techniques within each singer’s personally conceived circumstances in order to stimulate the imagination and create physical freedom. The singer’s intellect, emotions and will

(‘inner motive forces’) are engaged to connect to the music and its message in a holistic manner. This kind of ‘Experiencing’ brings about a response from the singer’s whole being – not only in the singing. Exercises also address Stanislavski’s element of

‘Communion’, which is of particular significance to choral singing.

The conductor established a through-line by employing a subtext that he could related to each structural unit of the music and the overall message of the composition:

“the Earth is dying.” Each of the five stages of grief were explained to the choir as a binding narrative and this became a way to link the smaller sections together along with the ebb and flow of psychological tension in the music.

6. Hebert, Ryan. “The Acting Principles of Konstantin Stanislavski and Their Relevance

To Choral Conducting.” The Choral Journal Vol. 52, No. 5, Dec. 2011, pp. 20-26.

This article is addressed to choral conductors. The author finds Stanislavski’s concepts beneficial to developing skills of non-verbal communication and physical expressiveness. Hebert focuses on the text of choral compositions in order to justify it as dramatic music and avoids the implication that the music – either by itself or in conjunction with the text - may have inherent dramatic qualities. When conductors connect personally to choral texts, their conducting gestures may embody increased emotional meaningfulness as the outer manifestation of inner feelings: “conductors, by seeing the drama in the text, could do the same by drawing on their own personal

61 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 experience to reflect the emotional response in the gestures.” (25)

Of more interest to the art of solo piano playing in this article is the emphasis on physical gestures. The pianist’s gestures mostly interact with the piano in order to create embodied sound but they also communicate qualities of musical movement, continuity or weight of sound to the concert audience. Although Hebert does not use Stanislavski’s term, his primary interest appears to be in the ‘Psycho-physical’ capacity of conducting - the physical gestures that embody inner action and emotional information. He does not connect conducting gestures to structural events in the music itself or to any level of musical meaning in a choral composition.

Because “conductors portray dramatic messages with their bodies,” (26) Hebert is interested in the ways the ‘System’ as a creative process can free the imagination and deepen a connection with dramatic choral texts. He also suggests that Stanislavski may provide a means to address self-consciousness and lack of concentration in young conductors. Hebert concludes by proposing that the combined study of conducting and acting techniques have “the potential to lead to a deeper understanding of how musical communication is physically represented through gesture.”(26)

7. Roslavleva, Natalia and Robert Lewis (Introduction). Stanislavski and the Ballet.

Edited by Selma Jeanne Cohen. Dance Perspectives No.23, 1965.

In this monograph, Roslavleva discusses the influence of Stanislavski on the development of Russian ballet in the twentieth-century. Co-founder of the Actor’s Studio,

Robert Lewis links Stanislavski’s ideas to dance in the Introduction:

“Soviet ballet schools refuse to separate the internal creative work from the

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external technique…(4) What is not always understood by actors, however, is that

this process of intention is a continuing thing, like inner music, and…has a follow

through that extends through our listening when the partner speaks, through

silences, through movement.” (6)

Roslavleva divides her topic areas as follows: “The Meaning of the Method”;

“Stanislavski’s Contact with Dancers”; “The Expressive Instrument”; “The Dramatic

Development of Russian Ballet”; “The Dancer and the ‘Actor’s Craft.’” In the opening section, Roslavleva notes the relevance of certain aspects of Stanislavski’s teachings for ballet:

“Life of the human spirit in given scenic circumstances – this is what he

understood by acting. Is it possible to doubt that his discoveries are just as

applicable to ballet as to any other performing art? If “acting is believing”, then

dancing-cum-acting, also, cannot do without believing. (8)

The second topic explores Stanislavski’s personal contact with dancers including

Isadora Duncan with whom he initially found a kindred spirit. Describing what Duncan called the “motor in my soul”, Stanislavski closely observed: “I watched her during performances, rehearsals, and searches when the birth of developing emotion would first change the expression of her face, and then with burning eyes she would pass on to the display of what was born in her soul.” (15)

As a new kind of free-spirited dancer who always seemed to play herself rather than different characters, Roslavleva observed that Stanislavski’s methods aimed at a different aesthetic: “Stanislavski wanted to start a motor of creation to be someone else…pertaining to the life of the character.” (17)

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Roslavleva finds that the dancer’s body is naturally the “Expressive Instrument” and she re-states the importance of developing body and muscles in order to use

Stanislavski’s approach effectively: “One can’t play Beethoven on a badly tuned piano.

Just in the same way your instrument should be perfectly tuned, so as to express all the nuances of your feelings.” (18)

In ballet, Galina Ulanova is observed to be the same kind of artist as Stanislavski in that inspiration was never without the mind, discipline and astute observation: “She once said when dancing Juliet and being Juliet, she saw everything around her, to the last scratch on the floor.”(18) Ulanova was fully invested in the “belief” she was Juliet while also acutely aware of the objects and space that her dance character interacted with.

“The Dramatic Development of Russian Ballet”(23) is the longest section in this study. Several memorable productions of ballets are recalled to illustrate Stanislavski including Prokofiev’s, Romeo and Juliet. As Juliet, Ulanova became, “a living example of the Stanislavski Method” (36) in that through her total sense of belief she was able to completely identify herself with Juliet’s character and the epoch.

Ulanova found it necessary for the dancer to fill in gaps where the music did not find a natural empathy. This required responding to

“our ‘internal melody’…and we, the performers of the roles, had to add in our

thoughts to what the composer had done… since Prokofiev’s music, in spite of

all its modernism, is congenial to Shakespeare’s work of the sixteenth century,

this ‘thinking for the composer’ on the part of the dancers is, not contrary to his

conception, but merges with it into one whole, and the spectator sees a dance,

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perceived as a direct and vital embodiment of both Shakespeare’s and Prokofiev’s

thought.” (36)

The solo pianist also contributes to expressive meaning even if aspects of a work are not immediately agreeable. Each pianist must find a personal way to make a musical work his or her own and communicate a convincing, unified concept to the audience.

Ulanova warmed to the work by listening to her “internal melody”, prompting new thoughts as she heard the music. What moved her from a position of judging the piece (or work) to one of questioning her own relationship to it was this singular focus on her own

“internal melody” and how she became a part of it. This is also crucial to the concert artist in effectively conveying believable interpretation to the musical audience.

“The Dancer and the “Actor’s Craft”” is the final section of this booklet and contains ideas directly related to the present research concerning the identification of actions within instrumental music. The Introduction to this section includes the following comments pertaining to music:

“Ballet…is an art of action…mastery of this danced action forms the fundamental

aim of this course. While ballet is an amalgamation of three arts – music,

choreography and drama – the leading role among these three belongs to music. It

is therefore of paramount importance for the ballet artist to be able to ‘hear and

distinguish in the sonorities of the given scene the action contained in the music

(emphasis, mine), and to transpose this sonant scene into a dramatic one – visual.’

(Stanislavski).” (44)

A Schumann or Chopin Waltz played by a pianist who does not adequately convey the appropriate musical actions would not inspire the imagination or physical

65 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 actions of the dancer. A successful interpretation will allow the dancer to hear the stylized musical actions of the waltz in its particular ‘Given Circumstances’ and everything concerning movement, character, mood and emotions that these imply. The ability to hear “the action contained in the music” may inspire personally convincing dance actions. Dancers are not necessary however, to inspire the imagination of the concert audience if the musical actions contained instrumental works are also communicated in this way.

Roslavleva concludes: “many aspects of Stanislavski’s Method are so varied that there is no limit to its application”, but also echoes Stanislavski: “art begins beyond the

Method.” (50)

Concerning music, there are valuable recollections by Stanislavski’s colleagues of his teaching. Conductor for the Stanislavski opera studio, Boris Khaikin recalled that in musical theatre, the point of departure for everything should come from the music.

Stanislavski always listened carefully for the dramatic content of the music and both musicians and singer-actors were required to verbally articulate what they heard the music express. (21)

Behavior should be related to this expressive content in the music. “Everyone and all of us were a little director, actor, dancer and musician.” Only after perceiving the emotional current of the music is it possible to arrive at the “truth of feelings and logic of action.” (22)

8. Plumlee, Linda K. Acting the Dance: An Application of the Stanislavski Acting

Method. 1989. Texas Woman's University, Master‘s Thesis.

66 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

Linda Plumlee’s study recognizes the common ‘psychophysical’ aspects of dance and theatre. The author stresses that the dancer is a specific character within narrative dance whose movements are stimulated by that character’s motivations and objectives.

The choreographer’s vision provides the ‘Super-Objective’ that unifies a dance piece while the truthful portrayal of the ‘Super-Objective’ depends on the ability of the dancers to communicate logical character development.

Plumlee adapts the ten most relevant elements from Stanislavski’s ‘System’ to the preparation and performance of an original dance piece, After Hours. She describes each element as it applies to dance and its impact in the application on the rehearsal process for After Hours. Her concept of ‘imagination’ is crucial for the dancer in developing a consistency of the dance character’s inner dialogue. The dancer’s imagination creates the questions that establish the motivations for the character’s dance movements throughout the entire piece. In this way there are similarities to the solo pianist’s application of

Stanislavski.

Although dance is essentially non-verbal, exercises involving new circumstances required the dancers for her original work to walk through a particular floor pattern and verbally articulate each character’s objectives and inner dialogue with respect to other characters. This affected the ‘Tempo-Rhythm’ of a character’s actions, leading to enhanced freedom in movement and ultimately deepened the connection of action to logical character development. A ‘Sense of Truth’ to actions was enhanced in verbal descriptions of a character’s relationship to other characters in particular circumstances.

Improvisation exercises became a creative way for choreographers and dancers to solve problems related to the clarification of internal characterization and in finding the

67 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 most appropriate movement choices. A focus on character relationships and

‘Communion’ (ensemble) was fostered in a playful situation where set moves were abandoned: “the dancers depended on their psychophysical knowledge to lead their characters to logical, believable circumstances and actions.” (66) Improvisation exercises involving ‘Emotion Memory’ were also an effective way to connect to a character’s emotional states (humorous as well as dramatic) away from the dance work.

With her emphasis on the dancer as a character, Plumlee does not always view the dancer as a unified dancer-character in the sense of Stanislavski’s ‘I-am-being’ in a particular role: “Every movement and gesture must be approached through the logic of the character as opposed to the logic of the actor or dancer who plays the character.” (69)

In her pedagogical applications, Plumlee suggests that Stanislavski’s ideas are more effectively implemented in dance improvisation and performance classes rather than relying on choreographers who have limited time to introduce these concepts. These classes are part of the dance environment that “fosters imagination and creativity” and

“would provide an excellent training ground for dance character development.” (70).

Informed movement may be the result of a verbal intentionality that connects the physical to the psychological aspects of dance art.

Plumlee is interested in how drama and dance work alongside each other as she explores the connections between the actor’s methods and the dancer’s. Her approach finds that the elements of Stanislavski System should be adapted to the needs of the individual dancer.

68 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

9. Litvinoff, Valentina. The Use of Stanislavski Within Modern Dance. American Dance

Guild Inc. 1972.

This monograph by modern dance pedagogue, Valentina Litvinoff (1910-1991) seeks to integrate Stanislavski into a dance aesthetic that includes the social responsibility of modern dance and a value on body education. It is significant as the interdisciplinary application of Stanislavski most concerned with 20th Century performance art and its implications for 21st Century performance remain relevant. Litvinoff models Martha

Graham as “a living embodiment of Stanislavsky” (11) through an intuitive approach to physical actions. The monograph is organized into separate sections for the dance teacher, the dancer and choreographer.

Modern dancers are distinct from ballet dancers in that they “listen to – or rather sense – an inner rhythm or beat.” (11) The ‘Truthfulness’ of musical beats (30) in modern dance is the result of movement that has an organic impulse and concerned with the “life between the beats” (28) rather than a pursuit of metronomic regularity. The transitions between dance moves have a physical rhythm that becomes the focus of “the dancer’s managing kinesthetically the life of the dance instrument.” (31)

The notation of 20th Century piano music is often dense with information for the pianist to absorb. Tempo fluctuations are generally written into the score rather than implied stylistically as they often are in 19th Century music. Although the pulse of a work may generally require a steady beat, Litvinoff’s approach encourages pianists not to be a slave to notation and in so doing dehumanize performances of modern music. Such playing alienates the audience and limits the performer’s enjoyment of music to intellectual achievement. The pianist should look to find variety and “life between the

69 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 beats” in terms of subtle flexibility of timing or tone color. Identifying the musical character or action of a passage can provide additional interpretive clues.

Litvinoff’s application of Stanislavski’s ideas to modern dance requires that physical actions be informed by sense-memory and motivation. Improvisation exercises explore how both of these elements affect the dancer’s stylization of physical action. The modern dancer’s body as a non-verbal, expressive instrument is ‘Experiencing’ (in

Stanislavski’s sense) in its capacity to sense action within the dancer’s own body (32) and by communicating human qualities in an expanded range of nuanced movements. (16)

The author illustrates how motivation may be infused into numerous small actions that comprise larger actions. (14) The conscious intent of breath energy is a motivating force that affects the ‘Truth’ of inner rhythm, range, weight and projection of dance actions. (46, 19) In applying Stanislavski’s aesthetics to modern dance, Litvinoff advises that abstract dance should be informed by the essence of ‘Truth’ and real life:

“The less programmatic a dance is, the more it needs – both in choreography and

in the very movement – the creative catalyst of Stanislavsky’s ways. For they deal

with the elusive essences of nonverbal communication.” (19)

This statement has direct relevance to an instrumental application of Stanislavski - much piano music is not explicitly programmatic and yet also requires the pianist to find inner motivations for stylized musical gestures and actions.

Non-verbal feelings come from “the life of the body”. (32) Litvinoff goes further in abstracting ideas from Stanislavski’s ‘Method of Physical Actions’ when she describes technique exercises where the modification of a basic dance movement is ‘Justified’ by imagining the impact of a different movement. The example given is breathing that has

70 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 moved “sideways”. In this case, breathing has been a motivating action to shift the torso slightly to the side while in a second plié. Litvinoff quotes Stanislavski’s acting student,

Toporkov in reminding the dancer how important it is to understand the artistic self and to constantly channel technique into specific creative problems: “An organic actor is one who knows how to lead his own human nature into a creative task.” (33)

Litvinoff does not clarify a direct correlation to the elements of the System

(‘Super-objective’, ‘Units’, ‘Objects’, ‘Through-action’ etc.) as she develops her theories on physical actions in the first half of her paper. Just as Stanislavski alternates between merging and separating the physical and the psychological aspects of an actor’s work,

Litvinoff’s writing attempts to maintain the integrity of non-verbal, non-narrative modern dance while at the same time integrating the vital aspects of physical actions, unity and aesthetic propositions of Stanislavski’s theories. The modern dancer’s approach to movement and the choreographer’s approach to content and form should reflect a sense of responsibility that “encompasses the artist’s philosophy of life and his sense of where he is in relation to the dynamics of his society.” (63)

Litvinoff’s application is noteworthy in focusing Stanislavski’s ideas towards abstract, non-narrative or non-dramatic dance forms through its prioritization on physical actions. Rather than developing a structural ‘Through-line of actions’, ‘Units’ and

‘Objectives’, the focus is on “clarity of design or the ‘projecting’ to a specific point: on exploration of qualities of motion; or on communication within a group.” (40) The dancers’ bodies respond to the physical objects of the stage environment (35) and they practice in improvisation exercises using sense memory in an imaginary environment.

They respond inwardly and outwardly to these surroundings and to their group dynamic.

71 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

This aids in projecting movement with clarity, economy and eloquence (38) while helping to pinpoint unwanted mechanical motions.

As she does not prioritize developing dance characters, subtext is also absent from

Litvinoff’s teaching. Instead, she seems to invoke Stanislavski’s metaphor of the

‘unbroken line’: Litvinoff refers to “one spontaneous movement” (41) to bring unity to the relevant elements of the ‘System’. This symbolic movement is imbued with endless subtleties and nuance.

In comparing Natalia Roslavleva’s application of Stanislavski in ballet, Litvinoff finds that modern dancers respond with greater intuition to the counterpoint between modern music and the conceptual content and design of movement: rather than, “listening to the internal melody.” Even so, Litvinoff does share a common humanistic concern regarding the dancer-choreographer’s responsibility in relating the art of modern dance to the dynamics of contemporary society.

Furthermore, “disciplines concerned with deepening and assessing our knowledge of the body and the self may lend clarification to the everlasting search for that ‘life of the body’ so essential to Stanislavsky.” (47). In her applications of Stanislavski to modern dance, Litvinoff maintains that attentiveness to inner content does not mean that choreographers should avoid verbal descriptions or that modern dance should conform to narrative constructions: “choreographers, as they deal with content, ought not to fear the use of words in their clarifying function…it goes without saying that in our day, content does not mean a return to the narrative…an approach that is so constricting and false today.” (60)

In applying these ideas to interpreting contemporary piano music, the essence and

72 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 expansion of musical sound, forms, movement and stylized gestures are the materials that take priority over conveying character and a sense of musical narrative. However, modern sounds in piano music may find ‘Truth’ in observing the dynamics of 20th and

21st Century society – not through literal representation only but the feelings and thoughts that reflections on those sounds can generate. Frederic Rzewski’s piano music for example, expresses stylizations of social struggle, the oppressed, or in pieces like

“Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues” how modern industrialization has removed a way of life.

The ‘Method of Physical Actions’ as modeled by Stanislavski in his rehearsals for

Tartuffe has been translated here as an approach to developing a modern dance technique through motivated physical dance actions: “All other components follow if the ‘action’ is right, that is, not mechanical, but motivated and sensed.” (20)

10. Fischer, Simon. “Belief: Living The Music”. Strad 118 No.1405 May 2007, pp. 76-7.

Fischer’s article examines the relationship between the Stanislavski System and violin performance. Belief (Fischer’s synonym for Stanislavski’s ‘Experiencing’) is understood as a profound connection to a musical composition being performed. Fischer identifies the kind of violin playing that demonstrates “complete ease, mastery and delight…with grace, style and every conceivable color and emotion.” Violinist, Vanya

Milanova models this type of playing for Fischer and when asked what she is thinking while performing, he finds her response to resonate with his own understanding of belief as it applies to acting: “When the music is happy, I am happy. When the music is sad, I am sad.”

Fischer finds analogies in violin playing to the three categories of acting that

Stanislavski discusses in “An Actor Prepares”: mechanical (playing with no emotional

73 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 involvement), representative (trying to reproduce a genuine musical experience) and belief. The latter is an ideal type of playing where “technique comes from the musical impulse.” For example, he says that in expressive vibrato playing,

“The vibrato throb is like the sound and feel of sobbing, which curiously is often

identical to laughing. If you try to vibrate only as a physical action it is never

the same as when you picture its expressiveness or color and let it happen by

itself.” (77)

Stanislavski is relevant to the question of how to convey musical emotions through violin playing: “This has to come from yourself, and from your own imagination, memories and feelings.” (77)

Fischer’s ideas of “Becoming one with the music” and “Living the music” invites the comparison to Stanislavski’s ideas of reaching the creative subconscious state, of

‘Experiencing’ and also the actor’s state of ‘I-am-being’ in the character role. He does not detail the various elements of the System as they might apply to violin playing.

Fischer’s article is more of an observation on the results of the systematic process than on the process itself.

11. Hinckley, Jaren S.: A clarinetist acts: A study of Constantin Stanislavski's acting techniques as applied to clarinet performance and pedagogy. 2002. Florida State

University, DM dissertation.

Jaren Hinckley’s research applies Stanislavski to clarinet performance and pedagogy. His conviction is as follows:

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“Clarinetists and teachers who integrate Stanislavski's techniques into their

performing and teaching will become more expressive as performers and will help

their students convey music more directly and powerfully to the audience.” (x)

According to Hinckley, clarinetists are missing a “feeling of truth” when they “place their fingers on the keys or cover the appropriate holes at the appropriate moments, but this results in a mechanical performance without much thought behind it. Sometimes their use of rubato sounds too thought out, too labored, or not natural. Such clarinetists have not portrayed successfully the character of the piece or the intent of the composer.

These clarinetists lack a feeling of truth.” (12)

Hinckley discusses the following selected elements from the Stanislavski System that may aid clarinetists in achieving ‘a feeling of truth’: the ‘Magic ‘If’’; ‘Unbroken

Line’; ‘Adaptation’; ‘Communion’; ‘Emotion Memory’; ‘Method of Physical Actions’

The ‘Magic ‘If’’ is discussed in terms of the clarinetist’s search for appropriate musical characters in work. An exercise in imagining that certain music for clarinet was played on a different instrument is initiated when the clarinetist asks: “How would you play that if you were a …?” (17)

This is already a fairly common procedure for the solo pianist who often takes on the role of making the piano sound ‘as if’ it were an orchestra, a string quartet or a solo singer. The musical qualities associated with those instruments or voice types are recalled in the pianist’s memory, imagined and the appropriate musical colors emphasized through weight of sound, voicing, articulation and pedaling.

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Hinckley suggests that a ‘Sense of Truth’ and confidence in performance can be gained when the clarinetist imagines himself as somebody else. He quotes David Pino’s book on clarinet playing:

“I decided I would go into my next “jury” as though I were an actor in a play, an

actor who was playing the part of one of the finest clarinetists who ever lived! Not

only did I carry out that plan, but it seemed to make a significant difference in the

quality of my playing. It was much better…By pretending I was somebody else I

lost my self-consciousness.” (18)

Stanislavski’s concept of the ‘Unbroken Line’ is significant for the clarinetist because it can, “bring a sense of wholeness, continuity and life to a piece of music.” (34)

There are a number of musical situations when this unbroken line is vulnerable. For example, Hinckley points to musical expression that lacks subtext (29), direction, or that is vague or “in general” (one of Stanislavski’s major criticisms). He suggests the strategy of using a personally imagined narrative that matches musical events in order to counter this, therefore allowing the music to come alive for an audience in a more consistent manner.

According to Hinckley, the ‘Unbroken Line’ can be also be compromised in: ensemble situations when the clarinetist is not playing (such as piano interludes); musical rests where silences are not felt in terms of their dramatic weight within a specific musical context; recital programming that is “like a jumbled assortment of varied pieces”

(32) rather than unified as a whole. Hinckley calls on the clarinetist to be vigilant in maintaining the integrity of the ‘Unbroken line’.

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Stanislavski’s concept of ‘Communion’ is discussed in terms of developing a rapport with the player’s accompanist or other players in ensemble. It is more likely to be present if the clarinetist has a unified artistic purpose together with other stage partners.

When this is happening among musicians on stage, the audience may also be drawn into the communion.

In my application to solo piano music, ‘Communion’ relates to how the pianist focuses concentration in a purposeful, directed manner. When the ‘Objects’ of musical discourse are connected to genuine thoughts and feelings, the pianist creates communion between himself and the work as well as between musical elements. When musical actions respond to each other, they give the impression there is a communion between musical ideas and if this impression is given spontaneously, the audience sense a higher degree of musical ‘truth’. Of course, these connections have been engineered in practice sessions but the pianist should relish the opportunity to use new frames of mind as the material from which to modify the connections between ‘Objects’ or musical actions. At the same time, the musician should remain physically free while listening actively to his or her own music making. The pianist may then respond accordingly to the live network of musical relationships created in each new performance of a work.

In his application of ‘Emotion Memory’, Hinckley encourages listening to music outside of clarinet music, including orchestral, chamber, opera, piano and vocal genres, as well as experiencing the richness of other art disciplines. Combined with participation from a wide range of life experiences including sport, travel, nature, spiritual life and social interaction, the clarinetist will have a richer range of emotions to draw on which can then be “channeled through the clarinet into music.” (63)

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According to Hinckley, Stanislavski’s ‘Method of Physical Actions’ can be used profitably to create ‘Truth’ and belief in the clarinetist by simply walking “on stage with complete and total confidence. The physical action of walking on the stage confidently will create corresponding confident feelings that free the clarinetist from much of the stress and performance anxiety that often occurs in performance.” (67-8)

He also suggests an exercise in rehearsal where a certain type of musical movement in a piece is played together with a corresponding physical movement (such as walking in a forward direction while playing an unrelenting rhythm). This becomes a way to extend the experience of that stylized movement through the player’s body. In this exercise, stylized musical movement in a work may be enhanced through physical sense recall even when the clarinetist is standing in a performing stance. (68-9)

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CHAPTER III

MUSICAL ‘TRUTH’ IN SOLO PIANO PERFORMANCE

A Historical and Aesthetic Context

The Classical Pianist and Stanislavski’s ‘Laws of Nature’

“…all artists without exception receive spiritual sustenance from laws established

by nature, preserve this in the intellectual, affective or muscle memory, work on

material in their artistic imaginations, give birth to the artistic image with all its

internal life included in it and reincarnate it according to known and natural laws

which are compulsory for all.” (Stanislavski, My Life in Art: 494)

‘Laws of nature’ are a basic source for genuine artistic expression across art disciplines in the late 19th and early 20th Century. Stanislavski’s aesthetics for the actor and contemporaneous pedagogical approaches to solo piano playing exemplify the emphasis on nature, biology, psychology and evolution. As Rose Whyman’s historical research clarifies, the basis for Stanislavski’s references to psychophysical and psychological “laws of creativity” can be found in his deep study of the human voice and movement, advances in psychology and the influence of the transcendent philosophy of

Hatha Yoga. (10)

Tobias Matthay (1858-1945) was a distinguished English piano teacher and author of pedagogical books whose students included numerous pianistic personalities of the early 20th Century including Dame Myra Hess and Eileen Joyce. Matthay’s pedagogy advocates aspects of physical action and relaxation grounded in his concept of nature and a physiological attempt to treat the pianist’s body as a natural extension of the piano

79 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 itself: “For the laws of evolution do indeed apply as strongly during the process of learning to play the Piano as during every other form of growth in Nature.” (Matthay,

Relaxation V) Matthay’s idea of evolution in the context of piano technique relates to the learning of physical actions:

“…in learning, we must always try and master the more simple facts before

proceeding to the more complex ones. Hence, also in learning Piano-technique,

we must gain some familiarity with the simpler muscular actions and motions,

before attempting those which consist of a complex combination of the simpler

ones.” (V)

Matthay was not only concerned with the outer aspects of piano technique and promoted the student’s independent musical thinking and awareness. “A vivid performance” was only reached when the teacher,

“insist on the pupil himself always using his ears (upon the actual sounds that

should be), his judgment, his own reason and his own feeling; and this, not merely

“in a general sort of way,” but for every note, intimately, so that the musical

picture, as a whole, may be successful.” (Musical Interpretation 19)

Matthay’s piano teaching advocated absolute attentiveness to mind-body awareness in the process of learning each musical work.

In acting, Stanislavski’s comprehensive ‘Psycho-technique’ prompts natural creative impulses. Likewise, the pianist’s inner and outer creative mechanisms for living and experiencing music foster healthy body and mind behavior to become second nature.

Matthay’s pedagogical principles additionally maintain that the difficulties of playing the piano should never preclude an attitude of enjoyment. (Comeau 216)

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The idea of ‘laws of nature’ in musical performance continues to inspire 21st

Century literature in the concrete physiological and technical aspects of piano playing.

Thomas Mark’s research into body mapping distinguishes natural movement as, “in harmony with the structure of the body” (Mark 2003: 10) rather than reinforcing bad habits at the piano that become normalized.

Perhaps because musical expression is difficult to verbalize, the ‘laws of nature’ that deal with developing the musical imagination are more elusive to locate within contemporary literature. My research makes an attempt to address the ‘laws of nature’ in the context of the pianist’s inner skills. The discussion includes an examination of the term “musicality” and enquires how the development of deep musicality may nurture an ability to hear and feel the network of relationships through the discourse of an instrumental composition.

Emotions in Subconscious Psychological Actions

In a musical context, the principles of the ‘laws of nature’ extended beyond the physiological and into the artistic psyche. Russian pianist and pedagogue Heinrich

Neuhaus (1888-1964) describes the way that music as a form of human expression is at the core of human nature: “The power of music over the human mind, its omnipresence, would be unexplainable if it were not rooted in the very nature of man.” (Neuhaus 27)

In The Art of Piano Playing, Neuhaus puts forward the idea that emotional qualities from the subconscious are present in logical actions. As it relates to the pianist, all knowledge is human experience and bound up in musical expression:

“This emotional quality (let us agree to call it the subconscious state of the spirit)

is not absent even in the most reasoned, to all appearances unemotional, actions or

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thoughts. All the greater then, the emotional content, for any thinking musician, of

any knowledge… all knowledge is at the same time an experience. Consequently,

like every experience, it belongs to the sphere of music and inevitably enters its

orbit.” (Neuhaus 28)

Knowledge and experience, lived and felt within the human condition, provides a valuable source for psychologically motivated actions in both the conscious and the subconscious artistic mind. Actions occur “for a reason” when motivated by the

“subconscious state of the spirit.” The result is that subconscious musical artistry allows the power of the living human spirit to enliven musical discourse in performances of solo works for Classical piano.

Romantic Era Aesthetics: Individualism and Emotions

Romanticism gave prominence to individualism and emotion as the basis for an authentic aesthetic experience in Western art music. (Lippmann 1992: 205) As one of its most celebrated performers and composers, Franz Liszt also enjoyed an autumnal career and international reputation as a respected piano pedagogue. Liszt’s teaching philosophy placed high value on interpretive individuality “…and he was able to accept an individual interpretation by a student of a musical work even if it went against his.” (Razumovskaya

362; Fay 205-80)

Emphasis on the individual continued to be the dominating aesthetic of musical interpretation in Russia in the first half of the 20th Century. Soviet musicologist, Lev

Barenboim (1906-1985) believed that Stanislavski’s aesthetics resonated with Liszt’s emphasis on individuality of human expression and that this was a vital part of contemporary piano pedagogical approaches. (Razumovskaya 362) Barenboim’s belief

82 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 was highlighted in Neuhaus’ pedagogical texts as well as those by Grigory Kogan (1958) and Samarii Savshinsky (1964) as further evidence that, “Stanislavsky’s work became an important part of many musicological writings on piano pedagogy.” (Razumovskaya 362)

Russian Realism and the Emotional Life of the Human Soul

Maria Razumovskaya’s scholarship forwards the notion that Neuhaus’ brand of

Russian realism aligned him with both Stanislavski and Tolstoy and that both these influences impacted Neuhaus’ post-Liszt pedagogical methods. She indicates that Lev

Barenboim was one of the first to trace Stanislavski’s aesthetics to the nineteenth-century

Russian Realists (362). As described in Razumovskaya’s paper, the primary aesthetic concern of the Russian Realists was to encapsulate the “human soul” (363).

Duplicating the realist, physical appearance of a subject was a superficial occupation compared to “capturing the living emotional life of their subject by looking

“through” its surface.” (363). According to Razumovskaya, Neuhaus’ pursuit of Realism in a work of music was really the performer’s pursuit of truth in individual identity:

“Neuhaus’ ‘truth’ had to be Realist as it was the interpretation of himself – and in

so doing all art was therefore as real as himself. But, Neuhaus’ position also

meant that the concept of truth of a musical work was not predetermined by a

composer. The truth of a work seen in Realist aesthetics existed independently for

each interpreter in any number of ways at different points in his life: since ‘Art is

life’ then ‘truth is infinite.’” (369)

Viewed in this light, ‘artistic truth’ has the capacity to be as varied as life itself.

For the Stanislavski trained actor, artistry and imagination fuel a truthful life in mind and

83 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 body as that person develops a character’s thoughts using inner monologues and improvisations within specified ‘Given Circumstances’.

The solo pianist may also draw an artistic vocabulary marshaled from rich life experiences, psychological observations and knowledge. These imprint a genuinely unique identity on the musical interpretation of a work. This is possible through piano technique that embodies an individual, personalized musical conception at the instrument.

A single interpretive choice is selected for each particular moment from the myriad possible choices. Justified through an imaginative subtext, the ‘Given Circumstances’ of the score and a feeling of truth in the pianist’s body, that choice becomes the truth of the moment in a particular performance.

Developing Musical Truth in the Solo Piano Recital

“Truth is needed in the theatre in so far as it can be sincerely be believed, in so far

as it helps convince you… and enables you to fulfill your appointed creative tasks

confidently.” (Stanislavski, An Actor’s Work: 166)

While the solo piano recital shares some aspects in common with a theatrical play as a dramatic event, others lend it a distinct identity. The usual mix of works and musical styles is typically divided into two halves by an interval that resemble the acts of a play: the end of the first half is a point of climax while the recital continues with a new work in the second half. However, selected works are drawn from a wide-ranging repertoire, including the keyboard compositions of Bach and Scarlatti, the classical sonatas and variations by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and the rich body of literature by 19th through 21st Century piano composers.

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Unlike a play, the recital is conceived and performed by a single player. For each work performed, there are numerous musical ideas, characters and actions that are heard and develop in relation to each other through a logical progression of musical events.

With respect to the historical development of dramatic content in music, pianist and scholar Charles Rosen observes the impact of stage drama on instrumental music in the transition to the 18th Century classical style:

“With the sense of the event or individual action and the new technique of an

almost systematized intensity, the classical style became at last capable of drama

even in non-theatrical contexts.” (Classical Style 155)

This continued as composition and performance styles of solo piano music developed dramatic and psychological content in the later 19th and 20th centuries. Freer formal structures that 20th Century composers developed in order to express this dramatic content tended to use a higher degree of specificity in the use of expressive indications within the score.

By placing priority on literal fidelity to the printed score, modern pianists sometimes overlook the creative paths available to them in finding a musical work’s inner meanings and impulses to action. With attention to the ‘System’s’ most applicable elements, Stanislavski may be an aid to developing the creative ‘Justifications’ for musical events that strengthen interpretation and bring music to life through the pianist’s embodied technique. The personal input of the musician makes the communication of

‘artistic truth’ possible to the recital audience.

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In addition to implementing knowledge of musical style and structure into an interpretation, the solo pianist has particular creative tasks and problems that are relevant to the art form. These include:

1. Putting together a recital program with harmony, balance, contemporary

significance, showing the individual strengths and repertoire interests of the

performer. The pianist should be able to verbally articulate a creative justification

for the choice of works and their order in performance.

2. Integrating the solo pianist’s various “roles”: as director of his or her own

creative approaches to technique and interpretation during practice sessions; as a

performer and musical “storyteller”, engaging both conscious and subconscious

states of mind.

3. Creating a personal analysis that builds conceptual belief in all musical characters,

clear inner actions and their evolving relationships throughout each work.

4. Adapting the technique and hearing for a particular piano and acoustic in each

new performance venue.

In the same way that Stanislavski’s ‘sense of truth’ focuses on the character-actor’s creative problems, a pianist’s ‘sense of truth’ may be applied to each one of the above tasks. The actor and musician both create artistic truth by strengthening individual connection to the role or composition through the creative work of mind and body.

Members of the audience may then experience artistic truthfulness through the performer’s unimpeded spontaneity of expression.

The presence of artistic truth may be sensed by various attributes that the performer and audience experiences in their own way during performance. This is summarized at

86 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 the conclusion of this chapter. In the context of instrumental music, musical ideas are communicated ‘truthfully’ through the pianist’s body and mind, generating a feeling for both confidence and security during performance.

1. The Recital Program

“You evidently have a one-sided feeling for truth, which is right for comedy but

out of joint in drama. Like Grisha you must find your real place in the theater. To

understand one’s “type” in time is important in our art.” (Stanislavski, An Actor’s

Work: 200)

Stanislavski suggests here that belief and truth are open to doubt because the actor himself is out of place as a dramatic type. Within a musical context, the pianist should know his or her individual strengths and repertoire preferences and reflect these in appropriate programming choices. ‘Truthfulness’, applied here to the pianist’s selection of repertoire, involves knowing the artistic self and is developed as part of creative experience and self-examination. Music, which the pianist’s mind and body naturally identifies with, is likely to be communicated with greater vividness and spontaneity because the desire to express musical meaning in a particular way is already known and felt.

Pianists have a natural attraction for particular pieces and this leads to a strong identification and greater potential for ease of expression. For example, listeners identify a high degree of musical truth when Alfred Cortot plays Chopin’s Ballades or the

Fantasie Op.49 or when Vladimir Horowitz plays Scriabin’s Sonatas. Both pianists excel in the repertoire of those particular composers although Horowitz limited his performing repertoire to a select few of the ten Scriabin Piano Sonatas. Similarly, repertoire in which

87 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 there is no natural connection is avoided: Cortot rarely attempted Russian music and

Horowitz played relatively few major works from the French repertoire. The choice of repertoire therefore becomes an aspect of artistic identity and maturity.

In addition to finding a suitably balanced program there should be a logical sequence of works from beginning to end. This includes beginning with a work where the pianist can easily feel a sense of physical truth. As a dramatic event, there should be a thoughtfully timed climactic point, in the recital that is the result of positioning the most dramatic piece at a strategic point.

Since holding the audience’s attention and interest is also a factor in choosing a program, qualities of harmony (desirable contrast or similarity in adjacent works), balance (the length of compositions, virtuosic versus less physically demanding works, serious and entertaining compositions) and consideration of works with contemporary significance, should be factors influencing the building of musical ‘truth’. In addition to canonical works, Stanislavski developed his ideas in plays by contemporary playwrights such as Chekhov that dealt with current issues and concerns.

Consideration of today’s music may lead pianists to ask, “What are the current concerns dealt with in musical expression today?” or “How do contemporary works for piano tell us something new about current society or the relationship between the performer and audience?”

American pianist, Leon Fleisher who is known for his performances of Beethoven and Brahms advises pianists:

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“I feel we have an absolute obligation to look at the music of today and to present

that part of it which seems convincing…that we feel has something, some spark

of originality and conviction, and maybe even staying power.” (Dubal 176)

In the author’s first Dissertation Recital, a short work, Melpomene by New

Zealand pianist-composer, Stephen Small was included as an Introduction to the Liszt

Sonata. Although the two works were composed more than a hundred years and fifty years apart, the connection between them was one of mood and psychological content: broodingly dark, exotic scales, repetitive figures in the low register and the feeling that something ominous was about to transpire. In performances prior to the Dissertation recital in Lubbock, Texas and Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, the audience feedback indicated that this connection created the desired effect and set the dramatic tone for the

Liszt Sonata in a believable manner.

Contrast should always have a purpose. Otherwise, it may diminish the sense of truth to the audience even if individual works are well performed. Specific works by composers from different periods can highlight particular similarities, relationships or influences that the performer wishes to emphasize through the musical content. Glenn

Gould’s programs would often include Second Viennese composers along with the works of Bach to highlight the polyphonic development of music that continued into the twentieth century.

In addition, recital programs should be artistically satisfying for both audience and the performer and have potential to be enjoyable. Choice of encores should be carefully selected and not detract significantly from the purposeful impact of the main works played in the recital.

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2. Integrating Roles: Director, Performer and Musical Spectator

As an independent artist, the pianist directs and assesses his or her own creative practice. Truthful feedback through body and mind comes from taking manageable sections of music and specifying each creative objective to be rehearsed. In a master-class for the Music Academy of the West from 2015, concert-pianist Leon Fleisher describes the complex inner dialogue of the solo pianist:

“We are three people at the same time…Person A, Person B, Person C. Person A

hears in the inner ear, before you play: you hear your ideal, you hear what you

want it to sound like…Person B is that part of you that does the actual

playing…and Person C sits…and listens, and if what Person C hears is not what

Person A intended, Person C tells Person B what to change. That’s the process.”

(Fleisher, Masterclass)

In my application of Stanislavski, an active and responsive dialogue between the pianist’s mind and body is symptomatic of ‘artistic truth’. The pianist is not only developing a personalized musical interpretation of a work but cultivates the ability for mind and body to attend to the relationship between intent, result and adjustment. The inner ear is active in its capacity to anticipate musical sound, as is the outer ear to inform the body if adjustments need to be made in technique or quality of sound.

Moving closer to actual performance, the pianist allows himself to play through larger sections or even entire works, allowing honest emotions to emerge in what may be heard as a non-specific musical narrative. The subconscious mind is engaged along with the conscious mind in the flow of musical ideas and emotions. In endorsing the teachings of Stanislavski in The Art of Piano Playing (53), Neuhaus finds that true emotional

90 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 qualities come from the pianist’s subconscious and exist in thoughts as well as actions.

During performance, the musician enters a realm where everything that happens on the concert stage for a particular audience becomes the “moment of truth”.

While careful, thoughtful practice is important to physical and memory security, it does not guarantee that musical performance will follow every detail of preparation.

Onstage, there are alternating states of mind when the pianist is fully aware of producing conscious physical actions or making decisions in matters of tone, dynamics, phrasing and tempo, and others where the subconscious is given permission to direct the flow of the music. The comfort that comes with the fluidity of this dual consciousness is usually earned through performance experience and the acceptance that there are moments requiring adaptability to the “truth-of-the-moment”. This acceptance can even stimulate excitement to the new possibilities a live performance of a work may yield.

Performance experience and subsequent reflection helps to accumulate information on adapting to the unknown, transforming these moments into positive challenges of performance truth instead of moments to fear. In asking honest questions, the performer can relish the challenge of, “What is this music now, at this moment in time, and where might it lead me?” knowing that similar problems have already been creatively dealt with in other stressful performance environments.

When there is confidence that all physical tasks can be successfully carried out, the capacity to communicate musical ‘truth’ is enhanced. The audience is more likely to believe in the integrity of the pianist’s ideas when there is a natural ease of execution than if there is a physical struggle to communicate discourse. The pianist must have an objective grasp of his or her abilities in mastering the problems encountered in each

91 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 work. This extends to having an accurate idea of the mental and physical energy levels required to carry through the entire recital. The result in performance gives the audience an impression of the event as a whole and informs them of the pianist’s particular affinity with certain composers and works.

3. Personal Analysis: Actions in Musical Discourse

“The through-line of action serves the actor…as the score serves the pianist,

giving his performance, unity, order and perspective.” (Stanislavski 46)

The purpose of applying Stanislavski’s concept of ‘artistic truth’ to score analysis is to explore how the pianist’s technique may embody a personalized concept of musical through-action. As a result, the sounds and gestures of the music should be charged with meaning and dramatic intention.

The solo pianist learns the score by internalizing and externalizing the evolving relationships between musical characters, actions and emotions. In practice sessions, the pianist develops logical justifications for musical text using the facts (the ‘given circumstances’) of the score, musical imagination and honest emotional responses.

Stimulated by embodied sounds and strong impulses of musical gestures, the audience in turn engages their imaginations by connecting their own imagery to musical ideas and actions. The audience’s intuitive imagery, like the pianist’s, creates justifications as a natural response to ‘truthful’ music making.

Mental Imagery

As neurologist Antonio Damasio makes clear in his book on human consciousness, mental imagery is a natural, biological aspect of human consciousness, aiding in the conscious decision-making before deciding an action:

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“Good actions need the company of good images. Images allow us to choose

among repertoires of previously available patterns of action and optimize the

delivery of the action chosen – we can, more or less deliberately, review mentally

the images which represent different options of action, different scenarios,

different outcomes of action. We can pick and choose the most appropriate and

reject the bad ones. Images also allow us to invent new actions to be applied to

novel situations and to construct plans for future actions – the ability to combine

and transform images of actions and scenarios is the wellspring of creativity.”

(Damasio, 24)

In music, the mind’s inner ear allows a musician to hear or imagine particular sound qualities (tuning, dynamics or patterns of musical movement, for instance) prior to sound becoming a physical reality. Expressive intention supports the successful realization of stylized musical actions. As a result, musical expression and its ‘objects’ have the capacity to spark the listener’s visual imagery. The ideas evoked by this kind of imagery are commonly discussed in practical music teaching. The purpose behind this is twofold: to discover what a work of music is all “about” for each performer; and additionally, to understand the relationship between intention, action, and spontaneous expressive response. It is not a claim that such imagery is definitively what this music actually is.

The pianist’s mental imagery also works to transform the objects of the musician’s inner ear into kinesthetic movement and expressive musical sounds. This is especially so when the pianist has developed a reliable, internal body map. As Thomas

Mark comments: “Refining and deepening our ideas will elicit ever more refined and

93 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 subtle movement” (Mark 13). Developing a clear concept of the score is important in its connection to the pianist’s kinesthetic sense.

Mental imagery additionally impacts the communication of musical structure.

Robert Jourdain’s findings in Music, the Brain and Ecstasy direct attention to how the musician’s creative mind organizes the “deep relations” and “hierarchies” (232) that are embodied in musical text. His discussion of the imagery used by virtuoso pianists is relevant to this application of Stanislavski.

Mental imagery assists the interpretation of musical structures but the motivations for the musician’s own “deep relations” are necessarily recreated for each performance.

A musical subtext that includes psychologically or emotionally charged musical actions is therefore useful in keeping spontaneity alive in performance. Aural imagery also impacts the connection between abstract musical structure and kinesthetic movement:

“…virtuosi appear to nurture deep relations by directly cultivating their

imagery…deep relations can’t be read from a score with the ease of individual

notes, but must be rediscovered each time a musician returns to a passage…

(232-3) virtuosi…perform with high strung awareness of an unfolding hierarchy,

often played out in auditory imagery…Every motion is governed by abstract

structures from deep within a hierarchical representation of the piece.” (230)

4. Adapting to a Different Instrument, Sound and Venue

“Public performance is a potent truth serum, stripping away all self delusions and

instantly revealing – in front of an audience – the solidity of our knowledge, our

precise degree of mastery…What thoroughly integrated learning it takes, both in

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body and mind, to welcome such an accountability with confidence.” (Westney

142)

Consistent with the connection between body and mind, psychological and physical barriers to stage confidence are frequently intertwined. Prior to a piano recital on an unfamiliar instrument, the pianist’s sense of anxiety may be physiologically noticeable with increased heart rate or physical tightness before a note has been played. If not managed, judgments in tempo, lack of tone control, memory (physical or mental) and in turn, character and musical actions may be negatively impacted. Preparing for and counter-acting the feeling of fear of new performance environments is part of a pianist’s job in finding personal musical ‘truth’.

New external conditions can potentially cause doubt in the performer’s belief that music will be communicated effectively to the audience. This may even be accompanied by a physical consciousness that the body has undergone negative change as a result of these new conditions. The performer’s psychological state reflects the type of preparation: if the performance is pre-planned without flexibility for subconscious expression and the musician expects to fully control feelings in performance, the conditions are set up for disappointment and at worst, a feeling of failure. The enjoyment that accompanies artistic sharing often becomes a casualty, as does the ability to recover.

However, adjusting to new performing environments is the real life situation of the performer. Nerves should become manageable, expected and even understood as an agent of performance energy and creativity.

Creating opportunities in new venues with different audiences allows the pianist to carefully evaluate listening strategies and make necessary physical adjustments during

95 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 performance. Part of the pianist’s stage awareness is in sensing how the audience hears and responds to musical discourse in a new space. This may require spontaneous adjustments of tempo (such as slight relaxation or greater forward direction) or in pedaling technique (more or less use of the sustaining pedal).

Stanislavski advises actors to focus on physical tasks and ‘Objectives’ during performance. The creation of simple physical tasks in the new circumstances (fullness of tone, listening to the decay of sound to match successive tone qualities, free gestures, taking time between physical actions) can be a way to re-direct concentration on the life of the musical work in this new space. Each performance is an opportunity to test both concentration and the integrity of musical ideas including motivated musical actions and the through-line of a composition, even in the presence of offstage disturbances.

The performance problem also calls to mind Stanislavski’s concept of

‘Adaptation’ where the idea is to focus attention on and commune with the stage partner.

In this context, the piano is the pianist’s partner or friend whose musical colors and projection of characters and emotions reflect the inner life given to it by the performer.

Each performance experience provides an opportunity to develop a close relationship with an instrument through new qualities of physical touch and acoustical resonance.

This effectively gives music a new voice, opening the possibility of living the music anew by listening, hearing, touching and responding in a new set of conditions. With experience and honest self-evaluation, the pianist’s ‘sense of truth’ is excited because of the belief that a musical conception can be communicated confidently in different environments. Body and mind may find greater peace to meet artistic objectives despite heightened adrenaline levels. Concert pianist, Andre Watts describes the situation:

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“ …I sit down to play and the piano reveals its qualities to me. Very quickly I find

out if the bass is muddy or the treble is weak, and here begins my psychological

adjustment to the instrument. I now have to make a choice. Will I be friends with

the instrument or will I spoil a whole evening fighting with it? In order to make

friends, I must accept the weaknesses of the instrument…you must allow yourself

to feel that somehow the piano will help you.” (Dubal 326-327)

With this creative attitude, an out of tune piano should not significantly deter a pianist from the belief and ‘sense of truth’ that has been built in his or her own musical conceptions. The musical imagination should always be engaged rather than judgmental so that the sound of the instrument becomes the ideal voice of the music and the musician in that moment. When the pianist is fully prepared and open to experiencing the “truth of the moment”, performance may even lure unexpected inner reserves. In an interview with

David Dubal, pianist Tamas Vasary describes the spontaneity and truth that the act of performance draws from his interpretations:

“I love the improvisatory element of performance which interacts with my own

conception of the score. On stage it is life or death, and some very essential parts

of you may surface which go beyond the logical, cerebral functions. Only on

stage, during high tension, can one find his own truth if one knows how to listen

for it.” (Dubal 323)

Characteristics of ‘Musical Truth’ in a Solo Instrumentalist’s Performance:

• Clear, differentiated musical characters

• Emotional and psychological expression in musical discourse

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• A strong suggestion of meaning (subtext) underlying musical sounds

• A logical line of clear, compelling musical actions, prompting imagery or

narrative sense of the audience

• A logical sequence of justified events (climax, resolutions, character changes etc.)

• Transitions between movements and works justify purposeful dramatic continuity

• Individuality of tone and movement impulses to musical actions

• Physical ease and eloquence directed towards embodied musical sounds

• The subconscious and conscious states of mind are engaged

• The feeling of spontaneity where the music and the performer are united as one

• A sense of perspective to interpretation where all parts relate to the whole

‘Non-Truth’ Characteristics in Instrumental Music Performance:

• Generalized tone - not specific to defining musical characters, emotions or their

development

• Unclear relationship between musical characters or ideas

• The ‘Given Circumstances’ and implications for deeper musical meaning or

subtext are ignored

• No logical sense, sense of perspective or justification to musical events

• No logic or sequence to an inner line of musical actions or feelings

• Physical tension in the body and an absence of security in physical tasks

• No sense of a subconscious human spirit experiencing the music ‘in the moment’

• The audience is uninvolved or inattentive during performance

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CHAPTER IV

THE ‘METHOD OF PHYSICAL ACTIONS’ IN INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

Historical Background to the ‘Method of Physical Actions’

After an initial year developing skills in the ‘System’s’ elements of inner

‘Experiencing’, Stanislavski’s actors went on to focus on the outer aspects of a role as described in the manual’s second part, “Building a Character.” These outer elements of the ‘System’ include Voice and Speech, Tempo-Rhythm, Perspective of the Role, and

Logic and Sequence. In training their creative ‘psychotechnique’ as an integrated mind- body approach to acting, the actors formed an “ideal company…who could approach a text methodically and creatively, and ask all the right questions and find appropriate answers. The staging would then emerge organically and naturally.” (Stanislavski, An

Actor’s Work 103)

After the second year of training, the actors were ready to turn their work towards an actual play. This third year found the actors exploring their various stage characters in selected plays as detailed in “Creating A Role.” While rehearsing Othello and The

Government Inspector, Stanislavski begins “initiating his students into the Method of

Physical Actions.” (Creating a Role: Preface). Finally, in the fourth year the actors moved towards the performance of an entire play.

The development of the “Method of Physical Actions” occupied Stanislavski in the years between 1916 and 1938, the year of his death. Artistically, it was to go beyond psychological and emotional realism in achieving ‘stage truth.’ Benedetti reconstructs the Method of Physical Actions as a practical technique in accordance with all available

99 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 primary source material in “Stanislavski & the Actor”. He states that this approach is not limited to psychological realism in theatre but became a way to rehearse that could be applied to “plays of all kinds, both contemporary and Classic.” (Benedetti 103). During the years of its development at the Moscow Art Theatre, Stanislavski’s actors worked on a variety of works from Shakespeare (Hamlet), Molière (Tartuffe), Kugel (Nicholas I and the Decembrists), Bulgakov (The Days of the Turbins) to Katayev (The Embezzlers).

Although Stanislavski died before seeing the first full performance of Tartuffe using the new technique, the actors and assistants completed the production and performance according to the model they had worked on. One of the actors, Vasili

Toporkov, gives a first-hand account of that performance. The account describes how the

‘Method of Physical Actions’ was effective in bringing out ‘artistic truth’ to the performance. In particular, Toporkov observed the actors’ natural approach, the way they related to each other, and the audience’s level of involvement:

“The results of our presentation surpassed our expectations. The first moves, the

first lines, when no one was doing any ‘acting,’ only adapting to each another,’

‘forming up with one another,’ produced great concentration in the audience, and

that couldn’t but be reflected in the way the actors felt.” (Stanislavski in Rehearsal

152)

Interdisciplinary Applications and Relevance to Solo Instrumental Music

Applications of the Method of Physical Actions in 21st Century interdisciplinary research can be found in choral rehearsals (Minut: 179-180), clarinet performance

(Hinckley: 63, 142) and Chinese opera (Hu: 127). Although they vary according to the physical aspects most relevant to each art form, Stanislavski’s underlying aesthetic links

100 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 them by an ongoing aesthetic desire to integrate mind, body and spirit in performance.

Ultimately, theatre scholar Bella Merlin comes to the following conclusion:

“Whether our preferences lie in physical theatre, postmodern dance or the realism

of film and television, we’ll never escape the fact that we are nothing but body,

imagination, emotions and spirit: acting will always be psycho-physical to a

greater or lesser extent. There can be no question that Stanislavsky was the first

twentieth-century practitioner to investigate it seriously.” (Merlin 155-156)

As with other disciplines, the aesthetic significance of Stanislavski’s ‘Method of

Physical Actions’ for the 21st Century instrumental musician lies in its pursuit of ‘artistic truth’. As long as the musician’s embodied technique is vital to artistic audience communication in classical music performance, stage ‘truth’ remains relevant to the solo pianist’s art.

Even non-verbal communication with no specified program requires a focus on physical actions and the motivations that prompt them. Litvinoff, for example, has described modern dance improvisations whose purpose is to unite sense memory and motivation, “on the basis of physical action.” (Litvinoff 18-20).

Motivations for Musical Actions in Instrumental Works

In repeated performances of the same play, actors must recreate and control honest emotions for their character. Stanislavski’s later work concentrated on actions that had appropriate psychological and physical aspects in the ‘Given Circumstances’. The

‘Method of Physical Actions’ put the actor’s focus on building a logical ‘score of actions’ that would indirectly draw out appropriate emotional states. Pedro de Alcantara also

101 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 advocates an indirect, natural pathway to freedom from (outer) technique to (inner) feeling:

“To ‘put feeling’ into your performances is to end-gain. Feeling should arise of its

own, through the freedom of the technique and the substance of the music itself.”

(Alcantara 212)

In linking drama to musical narrative in instrumental music, musical theorist and aesthetician Fred Maus suggests that the abstract nature of musical analysis and the excessive “weight on the role of emotion in musical experience” (Robinson 111) limits other possibilities for understanding musical communication. Maus’ alternative is to examine the way human actions may be encoded within musical discourse of instrumental works and in so doing create the sense of a musical narrative:

“Musical events can be regarded as characters, or as gestures, assertions,

responses, resolutions, goal-directed motions, references, and so on. Once they

are so regarded, it is easy to regard successions of musical events as forming

something like a story, in which these characters and actions go together to form

something like a plot… Instrumental music consists of a series of events, and the

easiest anthropomorphism is to treat those events as behavior, as actions. Once

one begins thinking of musical sounds as actions, rather than just events, the

notion of plot or narrative is close at hand.” (Maus 1991: 6-7)

Maus’ argument is supported with his own model for an analysis of the last movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op.14 No.1 in E-Major. Maus provides a commentary for his own analysis that employs a particular usage of language to describe the actions of musical agents:

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“Harmonic and rhythmic aspects contribute to the sense that two initially

coordinated forces pull apart…the approach to tonic pitches in both parts

creating a sense of coordinated motion toward a goal…rapid descent implies

eagerness to return from registral isolation to a closer relation with the other parts

in the texture…” (Maus 1991: 8-9) (emphasis, mine)

This style of analysis communicates on a level that humanizes otherwise abstract constructions and functions within the analysis. It also provides the performer with ideas for interpreting and verbalizing musical content as a series of motivated actions towards specific musical goals.

A further example of this kind of analysis is found in Maus’ description of motivated musical actions in Beethoven’s String Quartet Op.95. This is followed by a commentary on the particular manner of his analysis. He suggests that:

“…the notion of action is crucial in understanding… In general, the description

of the Beethoven passage explains these events by regarding them as actions and

suggesting motivation, reasons why those actions are performed, and the reasons

consist of combinations of psychological states.” … “It would be natural to call

the quartet a conspicuously dramatic composition, and the analysis makes the

sense of drama concrete by narrating a succession of dramatic actions: an abrupt

inconclusive outburst; a second outburst in response, abrupt and coarse in its

attempt to compensate for the first; a response to the first two actions, calmer and

more careful…” (Maus 1997: 119-121) (italics, mine)

In dramatic terms, “a second outburst in response” may correlate as an example of a musical counter-action to “an abrupt inconclusive outburst”. With regard to

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Stanislavski, the significance of this is that the musical actions are not separate entities in

Maus’ analysis but are a response to a prior action.

Although this is a theorist’s work, it is a useful model as a performer’s analysis because it prompts the musicians understanding of how musical ideas relate to each in dramatic terms. The analysis also stimulates the performer’s minds and imaginations in creating the impression of psychological states that motivate the flow of events through particular qualities of musical movement, dynamic intensity and timing. When they come from the player’s own feelings and imagination, musical actions are likely to be more convincing and ‘truthful’ in Stanislavski’s aesthetic sense.

According to Maus, the nature of music-as-drama that makes it distinct from drama in the theatre is its lack of determinate characters. In performance, each audience member hears the musical actions of a work in a particular way that has brought together the creative personalities of performer and composer:

“…as the listener discerns actions and explains them by psychological states,

various discriminations of agents will seem appropriate, but never with a

determinacy that rules out other interpretations. The claim is not that different

listeners will interpret the music differently (though undoubtedly they will), but

rather a single listener’s experience will include a play of various schemes of

individuation, none of them felt as obligatory…it remains possible that the play of

interpretations within this indeterminacy would include interactions involving

fictionalized interpretations of the composer and performers.” (Maus 1997: 123)

The creative work of determining the line of musical actions additionally involves exploring the motivations for those actions. Phrase repetitions can create certain

104 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 expectations because the brain has an aural memory of a repeated musical pattern. In applying Stanislavski, the instrumentalist penetrates beyond the score to find his or her own motivations for changes to established patterns. The musician asks the creative questions of the score that may justify an implied musical subtext.

The motivation for musical action has consequences for the manner and attitude of playing: the performer’s task goes beyond an intellectual realization of motivated change to charging the sounds with meaning, allowing the audience to perceive the music similarly. When the sounds come from a performer’s individual creative feelings they are able to communicate meaning more convincingly to the musical audience.

In a series of master-classes on Beethoven Piano Sonatas, pianist Barenboim worked with a student on the Introduction to the fugal Finale from Beethoven’s

Hammerklavier Sonata Op.106. Barenboim identifies a change following a sequential pattern but it is a new, unexpected gesture of two chords in the left-hand that has motivates a singing, free, recitative-like phrase in right-hand octaves:

“Always assume when you are repeating a pattern, the ear is extraordinarily

intelligent and remembers everything and the ear says, “I have heard this before,

that’s where he is going.” And suddenly you show… [Barenboim demonstrates at

the piano by emphasizing the left-hand chordal gesture and its particular response

in right hand octaves]…you obliterate all memories with that [gesture] and that is

the motivation for this freedom.” (Barenboim Masterclasses)

Desire, will and motivation are related human impulses that give a sense of logic, coherence and justification for musical actions. When there is a creative logic to musical

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‘through-action’, the audience can more easily experience the life of the human spirit pulsating through a musical work.

Roland Barthes and Musical Actions in Schumann’s Kreisleriana

Stanislavski’s aesthetic in the ‘Method of Physical Actions’ may offer a useful framework for examining the philosopher, Roland Barthes writings on Robert

Schumann’s solo piano music. Barthes’ offers a unique analysis of Schumann’s

Kreisleriana that is particularly concerned with human actions and desire.

For Barthes, the source for human actions is found in the body – in this case,

Schumann’s body. The logic behind Barthes ideas is the fact that pianists who compose music encode their own physicality (as well as intellectual, psychological and emotional qualities) into their scores. When a pianist plays the music of Debussy and Rachmaninoff for instance, an awareness of two different physical bodies emerges, reflecting unique biological and physiological conceptions of human movement.

Barthes distinguishes between those who physically play music and those who do not. As an amateur pianist, Barthes found that it is in the actual act of playing that the body’s way of knowing decodes musical meaning: “Schumann lets his music be fully heard only by someone who plays it.” (294-5) The body therefore becomes the source for what really matters in signified musical expression. One may infer that the ‘life of the human spirit’ for Barthes is found in the actions of the body – he describes it as the way the body “beats” in a work. Barthes also clarifies what is truly significant in living musical expression: “…what we want to perceive and to follow is the effervescence of the beats.” (312)

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Barthes gives no indication of knowing Stanislavski or the ‘Method of Physical

Actions’. However, his description of the “beats” of Schumann’s body in the cycle of eight pieces (he calls, “variations”) comprising Schumann’s Kreisleriana reads like a score of musical ‘through-action’:

“Here is how I hear Schumann’s body (…His body is what he had most of all):

in the first variation, it curls up into a ball, then it weaves, it stretches out; and

then in the second, it wakes up; it pricks, it knocks, it glows,

in the third, it rises, it extends: aufgeregt (excited),

in the fourth, it speaks, it declares; someone declares himself,

in the fifth, it showers, it comes undone, it shudders, it rises: running, singing,

beating,

in the sixth, it speaks, it spells out, what is spoken intensifies until it is sung,

in the seventh, it strikes, it beats,

in the eighth, it dances, but it also begins snarling all over again, beating…”

(Barthes 299-300) (italics and emphasis, mine)

As Schumann’s body is in constant, pulsating motion with respect to changing actions, it is likely that the body itself provides the link between actions. These active verbs signified in the music of Kreisleriana are how Barthes body as a pianist has taken possession of Schumann’s bodily actions. The performer’s body has embodied

Schumann’s as well when the pianist plays actions with embodied pianistic technique.

Each performer would necessarily respond with verbs that would appropriate their own bodily response to Schumann’s “beats”.

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With regard to musical signification, Barthes writes that, “musical signifying, in a much clearer fashion than linguistic signification, is steeped in desire.” (Barthes 312)

Barthes finds desire in “beats” – a label for signified bodily actions that for him take precedence over all other musical elements. Therefore even the psychological content comes from the actions in the body:

In Schumann’s Kreisleriana (Opus 16; 1938), I actually hear no note, no theme,

no contour, no grammar, no meaning, nothing which would permit me to

reconstruct an intelligible structure of the work. No, what I hear are blows: I hear

what beats in the body, what beats the body, or better: I hear this body that beats.

(Barthes 299)

The ‘Super-Objective’ in Dramatic Instrumental Works

In the Stanislavski ‘System’, all beats, units and objectives are channeled by way of the through line of dramatic actions towards the ‘Super-Objective’. For acting teacher

Albert Pia, identifying the ‘Super-Objective’ for a work “…will lead to comfort, understanding, ease and confidence in the actor performing the role. It gives purpose to the character’s life and all his actions in every moment of the play.” (Pia 94-5)

Dramatic musical forms also demand expressive unity and flow during performance as the music progresses from movement to movement or from one large section to another. The overall idea of a work that unifies the progression of expressive musical actions is how the ‘Super-Objective’ has been interpreted in this musical application to solo piano music. A performer’s own designated ‘Super-Objective’ for a work would clarify not only “what the piece is all about” in terms of its essential expressive content for the performer but what the music is doing. As an example in the

108 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 solo piano literature, Edwin Fischer suggests that Beethoven’s Tempest Sonata Op.31

No.2 in D-minor has been a “striving after calm…from the very outset” (74).

In both theatre and music, ‘Super-Objectives’ relate to themes that appear often in an artist’s work but are more specific to particular works. Pia gives the example that in

Tolstoy’s works, the idea of “Struggling for Self Perfection” (94) is a recurring theme. In

Beethoven, recurring themes of heroism, overcoming struggle, fate and universal brotherhood are recognizable. The joy of life or resolution of character conflict is thematic in Mozart’s works, while Schubert’s music constantly expresses the journey of a wanderer or impending death especially in his later works. The author’s own ‘Super-

Objective’ for the Liszt Sonata in B-minor, performed in the second dissertation recital was “Transforming of spiritual forces from darkness to light.” The idea of spiritual transformation in the works of late Beethoven and Schubert became particularly influential on composers of the later Romantic Era. Liszt’s musical themes at the beginning of the Sonata completely change their identity by the end of its half-hour musical journey.

The musical ‘Super-Objective’ is concerned with moving away from stylistic generalities of expression towards more specific ideas that unite the composer, performer and the musical actions of the work itself. While it is important to find this basic expression of the piece early in a pianist’s work on a piece, greater familiarity with the inner actions and motivations of expression may lead to adjustments or refinements of the performer’s designated ‘Super-Objective’.

Should instrumentalists constantly be asking themselves the question, “What is the music doing?” or “What is happening here?” in every piece they play? I would say

109 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 that, yes, only with this kind of specificity can the performer’s imagination be at the service of a composition’s unique course of musical actions and events.

Developing ‘Truth’ in Musical Actions of Instrumental Works

In this instrumental application of Stanislavski, stylized musical actions connect to form a dramatic through-line in the musical form of a composition. The pianist breaks down the musical-dramatic structure into its larger sections, not unlike the Episodes of a play. Each of these sections should then be described in terms of a basic action.

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata Op.81a in Eb-Major provides an example.

For this work, the composer himself has designated each movement with a basic action in the score based on his individual, personal experience – Farewell, Absence and

Return. The psychological moods and movement of the music clearly relate to the actions portrayed by actions of leaving, being alone and the return of a friend. Using this as a template, the basic actions of Beethoven’s two-movement Piano Sonata Op.111 in C- minor could be described similarly as Struggle and Transformation. The dramatic contrast the second movement makes to the first may be heard as a dramatic ‘counter- action’. When the feeling of struggle has been convincingly communicated to the musical audience, the effect of transformation in the second movement becomes more dramatically effective. However, this is the musical expression of the opening movement

– it most likely will not be accomplished with a literal sense of physical struggle.

Each movement or large section may be broken down again into sections similar to Events in a play. In Stanislavski’s ‘Active Analysis’, an Event consists of an action and related counter-action. The purpose of finding a corollary to this in instrumental

110 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 music is to create a sense of dramatic texture, tension and complexity to the musical trajectory of a composition.

To illustrate, the Rondo finale of Schubert’s four-movement Piano Sonata D850 in D-major shows how musical form may be broken down as a dramatic structure into musical actions. The “B” and “C” Episodes of the A-B-A-C-A form should have contrasting musical actions to the “A” sections that are built into the deeper formal structure. The actions within a section and between them then require creative

‘justifications’ in order to create the deep inner relations within musical structure. The musical imagination and mind work together to create ‘justifications’ for perceived changes in dramatic musical actions as demonstrated in the following annotated score excerpt, Example 1. Here, the initial “A” section (mm. 1-29) is itself an ABA structure.

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Subtext: A happy traveler in the country, marching towards his beloved

RH – cheerful dotted rhythms; “Pastoral” topic tone (mp-mf range) A

“Marching” action, with purpose

Triplet legato (anticipation of “B” section)

‘Given Circumstances’: B New texture & mood

Inner monologue: inner joy, anticipation of meeting his beloved and a marriage proposal

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Transition chords back to “A” section.

Voice top line a little and take time

Darker character Inner monologue: rejection

Justify psychological tension in ‘Given Circumstances’ (D-minor modulating to Bb-major)

legato triplets

Transition back to the Pastoral topic & the joy of the journey

Example 1: Schubert Piano Sonata D850 in D-major iv. Rondo mm. 1-29

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Creative Justifications for Musical Actions in Schubert Sonata D850: Rondo

Schubert’s D-Major Piano Sonata, D850 has a concluding Rondo (ABACA) with a 4/4 time signature and the tempo indication, Allegro moderato. The ‘Given

Circumstances’ (D-major tonality and mood of the simple major triadic harmonies) indicate a ‘pastoral’ musical topic. The introduction of the first ‘A’ section begins with left-hand accents on beats one and three, signaling a steady March character. The easy walking movement has a sense of purpose to its regularity –a particular destination seems to give the walk greater purpose. It combines with a simple, folk-like melody, suggesting a traveler’s happy venture in the country. Smiling, carefree joy in the dotted rhythms characterizes the major key theme while the happy marching action of the left-hand accompanies the traveler’s whistling action in the right-hand. The pianist’s tone could conceivably be full and yet move with lightness.

These actions within a dynamic of piano reflect the excited internal state of the traveler. The Allegro moderato tempo remains steady with possible agogic emphasis at cadence points. Schubert’s right-hand phrasing allows the pianist to communicate more spontaneity through the metric stress: the opening emphasizes beat three while the middle section places more stress on beat one. This prompts a creative question: “What justification prompts the changes of metric stress and texture?”

The triplet phrases concluding the theme anticipate the phrase that begins the middle section. Something of the joy carries over but with even greater sense of purpose.

An inner monologue may be created for the traveler at this moment: he imagines meeting his beloved when he arrives at the destination and proposes marriage. Imagery can

114 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 inspire forward movement and prompt a new resoluteness to the playing attitude. The three left-hand quarter note chords bringing back the theme clarify the transition back to the returning March rhythm. Although not indicated in the score, an expressive relaxation of time and pronounced singing out of the topline may help create a sense of smooth transition between musical actions.

After this, the brief pianissimo D-minor inflection and modulation to Bb-major is followed with offbeat stress on beat two. This creates the main psychological tension in this opening section.

A creative ‘justification’ can support this tension and new tone colors charged with psychological content: it could be the traveler’s thought that the proposal might result in rejection. The swift change back to D-major in the final four bars suggests that even in this event, the traveler will pick himself up again and find true happiness in his ongoing journey of life. The transition in thoughts happens rapidly so that an honest return to the journey and its purpose can resume. Rhythms and tone therefore return to convey the joy of the journey, no matter the outcome of the proposal. The performer’s musical actions of the opening ‘A’ section are a combination of external actions

(marching and whistling) and inner actions (to propose, feel rejection and pick up) related to future events.

The pianist uses the textual details of the score as a springboard to develop deep relations in logical through-action. All aspects of expressive intention should become embodied and inflect the sound or timing of actions in some way.

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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

LINES OF CREATIVITY AND RECEPTION TO ‘MUSICAL TRUTH’ IN THE PERFORMANCE OF AN INSTRUMENTAL WORK

Concentration on the dramatic through-line of embodied sound: musical empathy and imagination activate the audience’s own spontaneous feelings, images or personal narratives as they are infected by embodied sound.

(Audience) The audience adds a new dimension to the truth of performance, affecting the performer’s embodied sound.

Embodied Sound during ‘Experiencing’ of the work (Performer – Composer – Audience)

The audience interacts with the score indirectly through the performer’s embodied sounds

SCORE (The Musical Work) ‘MUSICAL (Composer) TRUTH’ Subconscious, Musical empathy, The pianist’s physical technique creative musical imagination and responds to the musical objectives, intellect are engaged actions and feelings that make up the actions and feelings: to create a personalized line of musical subtext. the performer’s musical subtext. conception of what the work, “is all about”) Subtext - Inner “Score”, through-line of actions, feeling, images (Performer)

Fig.1 Lines of Creativity and Reception to ‘Musical Truth’ in the Performance of an Instrumental Work.

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Implications for Stanislavski’s ‘Artistic Truth’ in Instrumental Performance

The pathway to musical ‘truth’ enables the dramatic significance of a subtextual layer to emerge in the performance of an instrumental work. As a result, a musical network of encoded active, human relationships is communicated to the concert audience through the instrumentalist’s embodied sounds. Consequently, musical ‘truth’ has vital implications for both the concert artist and the audience whose musical imaginations are stimulated by ‘truthful’ playing.

Like truthful acting in a play, ‘truthful’ playing in recital sustains believability and unites composer, instrumentalist and audience through its logical and justified through-lines. As the performer ‘experiences’ the work in performance, these lines bring about vitality in a dramatic structure for a musical work. They are not programmatic constructions or narratives that the performer is attempting to convey to the concert audience. ‘Musical truth’ in no way requires that the audience perceive the performer’s imagery, inner monologues, narratives or personal subtext with any degree of specificity.

As mentioned in the Introduction, this application of Stanislavski is a tool intended to impart liveliness, cohesion, a sense of justification to all the literal details of the score, and belief in the musical artist’s personalized interpretive concept.

The Stanislavski influenced pianist interacts creatively with the score and brings a composition to life with individualized, embodied musical sounds. The musician’s mind has been trained to respond to imaginative stimuli, indirectly activating subconscious emotions and musical actions. As the pianist ‘s involvement in the work moves towards creative ‘experiencing’ during performance, the audience’s focus can further affect the

117 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 vitality of musical sounds. Figure 1 illustrates various lines of musical creativity and reception that can point towards ‘artistic truth’ in the performance of instrumental music.

The pianist interacts with the score (represented by the black middle line in Fig.

1) so as to bring the inner relationships to life within the work. The instrumentalist’s total involvement and concentration in the life of the work facilitates a sense that he or she is living that music in performance. In essence, this is Stanislavski’s creative ‘experiencing’ in a musical context.

Below this line is the implicit inner line of musical meaning (represented by the blue dashed line) – the pianist’s personal subtext. This is created through a personal

“dialogue” with the score and often begins with creative questions that clarify and determine (for the performer) the nature and relationship of dramatic events, musical characters and their subsequent development.

At the piano, the pianist’s technique responds to the musical objectives, actions and feelings that make up the line of musical subtext. As expressive and physical creative problems are solved, the pianist’s ‘sense of truth’ – the sense of belief in a personalized, dramatic interpretation – builds mental and physical security. The result is the musical work’s line of embodied sound (represented by the red line).

Embodied sounds are the physical sounds made by the pianist during performance. Musical sounds are embodied because they are charged with suggestion and meaning. The pianist has found a personal, inner line of musical subtext and the technical means to communicate this at the instrument.

In this type of performance, the audience has their own pathway towards ‘musical truth’ (represented by the green dashed line). As they become infected with the

118 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 performer’s embodied sounds, the audience has the capacity to become more concentrated and involved with the inner life of the musical work and therefore are no longer separate from it. The audience engages with the score indirectly through the performer’s embodied sounds. As a result, their reactions add new dimensions to the

‘truth’ of performance and are sensed by the pianist, further affecting the shaping and inner dynamics of embodied sound.

Engaging their own sense of musical empathy and imagination, the audience stimulates their own images or musical narratives. The objective structures of an instrumental work, enlivened by the performer’s ‘truthful playing’ and the audience’s creative responses, can inspire infinite narratives simultaneously. The truth of their musical experience likely reflects a personal involvement with the experience of that work in performance rather than generic acknowledgment of the performer’s skills. Even wild applause after performance, however well intentioned, is ultimately less of an indicator of ‘musical truth’ than the audience’s concentration and focus during performance and the moments of adjustment afterwards as they shift from a focus in the life of the work to that of their “role” as the concert audience.

The instrumentalist has sustained ‘musical truth’ to the end of a performance when that musician remains committed with the audience in the experience of that work, even beyond the written notation or correct number of beats before closure. In this way, the living human spirit in a musical work has taken on a life of its own and plays out its truth for a particular place, time and audience.

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What Might The Sociological Significance Be Today For ‘Musical Truth’?

In the early 21st Century cultural climate, live classical music venues and institutions struggle for relevancy and meaningfulness in the public eye. Exposure to classical music is often limited to sound bites or caricatures in multi-media communications: as a consequence, the desire and ability to experience and discern eloquent, dramatic expression in live recitals is compromised. Perhaps without realizing, classical musicians can compete for attention as a reaction to this by overemphasizing the outer actions of music in their live performances. Whatever the benefits in the performer’s mind, could it be a relative inattention to the deeper, inner layers of musical expression that contributes to the lack of meaningfulness in classical music performance today?

Stanislavski’s aesthetic, as transformed in the solo instrumentalist’s pursuit of musical ‘truth’, is an alternative response. Its purpose is to deepen the contemporary experience of live classical performance: ‘truthful’ music making gives to the solo recital new relevance and necessity as a place of introspection, personal imagination, emotional honesty to flourish, while simultaneously valuing the resilient beauty of the human spirit in connecting people to each other. It is this meaningfulness that may inspire future listeners to spare the time and attentiveness necessary to appreciate and be moved by the richness of human experience that great concert works have to offer.

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APPENDIX A

Application of Stanislavski to the Liszt Sonata in B-minor

The Liszt Sonata in B-minor is a large-scale dramatic work whose musical subject matter reflects its formal actions: it deals with musical and expressive transformation.

My designated ‘Super-Objective’ for the Sonata in B-minor is: “A spiritual journey of transformation from darkness to light.”

In order to illustrate how Stanislavski’s concepts have been applied to the preparation and performance of Liszt’s Sonata, two excerpts have been selected: the opening (or “Prologue”) where the main themes are introduced; and the last page of the work (or “Epilogue”) where the same themes have reached their final transformation.

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SUPER-OBJECTIVE: “A spiritual journey of transformation from darkness to light.” SUBTEXT: “Dark forces have been animated and are intent on unleashing hell.” HARMONIC “CIRCUMSTANCES”: Instability (ambiguous tonic; modal, minor, diminished)

UNIT 1 Action: “slithering” G-harmonic minor Inner Tempo: languid, stately

THEME 1 Legatissimo

G-Phrygian Action: “summoning, alarming” Inner Tempo: nervous, foreboding

D-harmonic minor UNIT 2

THEME 2

Action: “springing, vaulting”/Inner Tempo: mercurial, mocking 16th notes, sharply articulated with pedal

UNIT 3

THEME 3

Action: “hammering” Inner Tempo: threatening, cold open cadence

dramatic pause dramatic pause

Example 2: Liszt Sonata in b-minor. “Prologue” (Exposition) mm. 1-17

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Main Musical Action of Excerpt: “To arouse, animate, awaken dark forces to life.”

Given Circumstances: Harmonic instability (no strong root-position tonic harmony is established), tone and dynamics (sotto voce to forte range) and dramatic silences on downbeats (M.1, 2, 4, 7) contribute to the feeling of tension, unease and suspense. Liszt even indicates dramatic pauses in the score in m.15 and m.17, leaving these phrases open-ended in the manner of a rhetorical question.

The “darkness” referred to in my Super-Objective is suggested by the use of the

G-Phrygian mode (m.2-3), the harmonic minor scale (m.5-6) and the diminished harmonies in Theme 2 (m.8-13). The way Liszt employs the low register of the piano suggests a dark musical character: both hands play in the bass clef for the first eight measures. While the outer tempos are indicated in the score (see below), I indicate the relationship of outer tempo to my conception of the music’s inner expression.

Liszt’s articulation markings are clues to the kind of character of musical actions implied by each theme. Therefore, the descending, legato stepwise motion of the low register G-Phyrigian scale for Theme 1 (M.2-3) suggests a musical action of “Slithering downward to oblivion.”

Units: The first page has been divided into three sections that correspond with the three main themes and changes of tempo, meter or texture:

1. Unit 1: M.1-7 (Theme 1)

2. Unit 2: M.8-13 (Theme 2)

3. Unit 3: M.13-17 (Theme 3)

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Objectives: To introduce the themes of the work with clear musical characters, actions and movement qualities; additionally, to solidify the relationship of outer tempo to inner expression in communicating designated musical actions.

Designated Musical Characters of Main Themes in the Given Circumstances

Theme 1 – “Menacing, foreboding, ominous”– Lento assai; sharp staccato and legato articulations; sotto voce tone (in an under voice)

Theme 2 – “Animated, spiky, mercurial, martial” (contains the falling “abyss” motif) –

Allegro energico; change from quadruple to duple meter; double octaves, dotted rhythms, forte dynamic; G-diminished harmony; leaps; triplets

Theme 3 – Ominous, threatening voice of “Mephisto” –repeated left-hand 8th note figure;

B-minor harmony; rising sequential figure.

Outer Tempo/Meter Inner Designated Movement/Mood Musical Actions

Theme 1 Lento assai (very Languid, foreboding Nervous pulsations mm. 1-7 slow)/quadruple meter then slithering downward to oblivion

Theme 2 Allegro energico (Fast Mercurial, mocking, Evil powers spring mm. 8-13 and energetic)/duple with contempt to life, taunting and meter proclaim intent to torment.

Theme 3 Allegro energico (Fast Threatening, cold Hammering, mm. 13-17 and energetic) repeated notes warn of impending doom

Fig. 2. Relationship of Tempo, Inner Expression and Designated Musical Actions

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Notes: The smaller musical actions are thematic but these same themes in their final appearance (Example 2) have a different function and musical subtext. This is significant because where the main musical action of this section is to “awaken and bring dark forces to life”, in the closing section it becomes about reaching a state of unity, reconciliation and catharsis.

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SUBTEXT: The final ascent to heaven; a surreal arrival; a farewell to human life before darkness is fully transformed to light.

HARMONIC “CIRCUMSTANCES”: Moving towards major key stability

UNIT 1 Action: ascending, reaching heavenward THEME 3 Inner Tempo: calm, weightless, floating

(outer Tempo I) Neapolitan

(delayed resolution) (quiet strength)

Quiet strength (downbeat emphasis) Action: lifting, urging, sustaining Inner Tempo: active, guiding, in control

UNIT 2

THEME 2 Action: questioning, disbelieving

Inner Tempo: a little anxious

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Action: resolving, assuring Inner Tempo: calmly, with movement

UNIT 3 UNIT 4

B-Major arrival

Action: releasing, falling away Inner Tempo: steady, but not at rest THEME 1 UNIT 5 (outer Tempo 2)

(downbeat)

Action: unifying, reconciling Inner Tempo: calm, regal

opening gesture to Light (final resolution)

“Light”

Slight offbeat emphasis – gently pushing forward “Unity” (downbeat)

Example 3: Liszt Sonata. “Epilogue” (Synthesis, Resolution, Closure) mm. 725-760 140 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019

Main Musical Action of Excerpt: “To reconcile and transcend up to the light.”

Given Circumstances: The final page and half of the Liszt Sonata (M.711-760) is a

Coda or an Epilogue that concludes the work in a benedictory tone after the huge musical climax preceding it. The themes and tempi are re-ordered from their appearance at the beginning of the work so that the work’s closing theme is the same that began the work.

However, Theme 1 is now extended with a new character and musical subtext: in contrast to the dark, downward, harmonic minor harmonies in M.750-753, the change to an upward moving melodic gesture in the right-hand (M.754-759) and major tonalities

(M.756-759) colors the emotional content differently. In my reading, this same thematic material now suggests renewal and transformation towards light, symbolized by the upper registers and predominant major harmonies.

Subtext: the sotto voce tone (“in an undertone”) indicated in M.729 prompts a different subtext here from the instability it helped to communicate in M.1. In my interpretation, sotto voce should lend a quiet strength to the reframed left-hand action that psychologically drives the music onward to final absolution (previously, the

“hammering” action of M.13-4). The repetition of the B tonic confirms stability in the bass: Theme 3 serves as a background sonority to the right-hand ascending chords: its urging and driving quality justifies use of the sustaining pedal in this instance. The upward moving right-hand chords continue the journey to spiritual rest: this subtext justifies voicing the top note of the chords as an illuminated melodic line to the arrival of

Theme 2 (M.737). The dynamics of the final upward gesture (M.754-760) subside from pp to ppp but the final chord must be present enough (particularly in a large hall) to sustain the fermata that Liszt has indicated above this chord.

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Units: As before, these correspond with thematic appearances or changes of tempo, meter or texture:

Unit 1: M.729-736 (Theme 3)

Unit 2: M.737-741 (Theme 2)

Unit 3: M.741-743 (Theme 2 continued as a single, monophonic voice)

Unit 4: M.744-749 (Theme 2 clearly resolves to B-Major tonality)

Unit 5: M.748-760 (Theme 1 but with major tonality and clear downbeat emphasis. Lento assai begins with the descending scale here, not the three chords that precede it).

Objective: My expressive objective is to communicate a powerful sense of resolution and reconciliation between the main themes given that the Coda follows the culmination of intense, dramatic virtuosity. In essence, this ending communicates total transformation and psychological resolution of the themes when compared to their initial presentations in

Example 1.

Designated Musical Characters of Main Themes in the Given Circumstances

Theme 3 – “Insistent, gently pulsating” – The stable repeated Bs in the bass register are no longer as threatening.

Theme 2 – “Celestial, questioning, inviting” – pianissimo dynamic and expressive timing is indicated with “un poco rall” (“a little slower”) in M.737 (cf. the loud, martial character of Theme 2 in M.8).

Theme 1 – “Mysterious, dignified, procession-like - Lento assai; legato phrasing and un poco marc. (a little marked) on the descending scales M750.

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Musical Actions: Liszt creates complexity by combining different musical actions in each hand. In this instance, Theme 3 takes on a secondary role as an accompaniment in the left-hand (M.729-736) to the ascending right-hand melodic line depicting a lifting towards transcendent light.

Outer Tempo Inner Musical Action Movement/Mood

Theme 3 M.729 Allegro moderato Calm, weightless Ascending to (moderately fast) (voicing, forward- heaven (right-hand); moving) urging, driving (left- hand) Theme 2 M.737 ed poco rall. (a little Peaceful, tender but Surrendering, slower) still unresolved, questioning with motion

Theme 1 M.744 Allegro moderato (Theme 1): Calm Assuring, resolving (continues) but purposefully moving onward Theme 1 M.750 Lento assai (very Steady but not at Releasing, falling slow) rest away

Theme 1 M.754 Lento assai Gently urging Opening up towards (continues) (upbeat emphasis) heavenly light. to resolution

Fig. 3. Relationship of Tempo, Inner Expression and Designated Musical Actions mm.729-760

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APPENDIX B

Musical ‘Truth’ in Recital: Charles Whitehead’s Carnegie Hall Debut

“Charles Whitehead makes a splendid Carnegie Hall debut” November 18, 2017 | Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York Reviewed by Dr. Blaise J. Ferrandino

Charles Whitehead's piano recital at Weill Recital Hall on Saturday, November 18 at 2:00 PM was well attended and those present were treated to a remarkable performance of some of the most challenging works in the repertoire. Works by Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Debussy, and Stravinsky were featured.

Projecting narrative in the course of a musical performance can be a challenge. This is especially true when the technical demands of the works in question rise to dizzying levels of distraction. Indeed, in such cases, the mere delivery of pitches and rhythms can become the issue of the narrative in and of themselves. In such cases, unfortunately, the composer’s central message and any more universally appealing topoi are lost in the details of the pyrotechnic display.

Whitehead did a masterful job of creative narrative in each individual movement, work, and over the course of the entire recital. The second of Schubert’s Drei Klavierstücke (Op. 946) is an emotional outpouring as the prematurely wizened composer was to face death soon after its completion. The performer brilliantly captured the joys and sorrows of Schubert’s testimony. Each episode was delivered and subsequently recalled with careful and identifiable nuance. When the returns came they reflected the different points in the journey as surely as an individual sees the same things in different ways as they journey through life. Whitehead’s interpretation served as an introduction to the journey yet to be traversed that afternoon.

The programming of Robert Schumann’s Fantasie (Op. 17) next was a masterstroke. We leave Schubert’s reflections and focus in upon a tempestuous episode in Schumann’s life (it seems, of course, that these are the only types of Schumann episodes we recall). At age twenty-six, the composer is full of manic passions that are vented through the work. The technical challenges seem to be Schumann’s way of working through problems – real and imagined. Whitehead was technically impressive but his interpretation went beyond the solving of the aforementioned problems. The pianist was able to convey the abiding humanity of the man himself and the bittersweet joy of one reveling in misery.

After the intermission Whitehead performed a Waltz (Op. 70, No. 1), a Nocturne (Op. 55, No. 1) and a Mazurka (Op. 24, No. 4) by Chopin. Written around the same time as the Schumann’s Fantasie, these works, in total, cover as broad a musical and expressive range. But, while Schumann’s is a motion picture, the Chopin works are each pages from a photo album. Whitehead changed affect as appropriate to each of the three respective

144 Texas Tech University, Charles Whitehead, May 2019 works. He took a moment between each to “change faces”. Each was given its own character through the careful control of timbre and articulation. When the work ends the narrative has not been moved forward as much as it has been broadened with a more considered, less impulsive, reflection upon this point in the journey.

Étude D'Exécution Transcendante, "Feux Follets” by Liszt and Étude pour les Quartes by Debussy were programmed next as a pair. This seemed odd, at first, in the context of the narrative but there is a certain sense to each composer in mid-life (Debussy was to die at a much younger age than did Liszt) exploring art through the medium of the etude. These are far more than study pieces of course. Liszt and Debussy (quite overtly) are considering the limits of the instrument and using all they have learned thus far to do so. It is that point in the artist’s life where they are at the height of their powers and testing limits. These works tested the performer as well. During the Liszt was the only time where Whitehead allowed the music to “play him”. It happened several times, but only for a moment here and there. It was supremely intriguing to watch the wrestling match between composer and performer at these moments. In the end Whitehead (and, consequently Liszt the composer) won as this contemplation of fireflies ended up being just that. In all their simplicity and all their complexity they, as does this work, represent the grandeur of nature and the mind that has been given the challenge to consider it all.

As Liszt considered the firefly Debussy considers the interval of the 4th. Each is a product of nature (although some would argue the 4th to be a weak and secondary byproduct of the overtone series). Debussy’s work is endlessly organic. He remains amongst the most avant-garde of composers. Whitehead embraced the work as the experiment it is. Here he shared the composer’s “lab notebook” with the audience, seeming to invite us to join him is retracing Debussy’s steps. It was the point in the ongoing, recital-long narrative where the head was given a moment to catch up with the racing heart. The moment of introspection was heartfelt and yet restrained as the, then, fifty-three year-old, composer spoke through the performer.

The program concluded brilliantly with Trois mouvements de Petrouchka by Stravinsky. The selection of this work was perfect as it is an arrangement by the composer of three of the four Tableaux from his ballet composed ten years earlier. Although Stravinsky was only thirty-nine when he wrote the arrangement (twenty-nine when the ballet premiered) there is great narrative power to concluding the program with a work that is, in essence, a reflection upon one’s own creation. This arrangement is a different piece from the ballet as certainly as Schubert’s themes were transformed earlier in the concert. The pianist played these sometimes gratuitously demanding movements with great purpose and a certain feeling of world-weariness appropriate to the subject matter. In the end, however, the overwhelming affect projected was satisfaction for a life well led as well as for a recital well given.

Charles Whitehead acquitted himself as a powerful technician and, more importantly, as a master bard. Two curtain calls later that afternoon’s story reached its fitting end. Bravo!

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ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Blaise J. Ferrandino is a Professor of Music Theory and Composition at Texas Christian University.

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