Mindset: Dealing with
Performance Anxiety
- At
Dr. Don Greene's website, you can read
about his books Performance Success, Audition Success, and Fight Your
Fear and Win. You can also take his Artist's Survey to get a profile of
your tendencies under pressure. In Performance Success, Don Greene
categorizes the elements of successful performance, and has exercises for
practicing those elements. At The Well-Balanced
Pianist, we have daily discussions about its concepts, and some of
the participants make amazing leaps in learning and performance as a
result.
- Start Where you
Are, by Pema
Chödrön, presents the basic practices of Tibetan Buddhism, which
can help musicians to learn to stay in the moment and let go of things (even
really embarrassing things that just happened). The basic meditation practice
is especially helpful in performance, if you practice it rather consistently.
This book is much richer than this, a guide to living, but the basic mediation
helps directly with performance anxiety. One of my students once referred to
this as a "massage for the mind." Later she wrote and said that she didn't
realize at first how much it was a "massage for the heart."
- Dr. Susan Jeffers is the
author of Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, which helps with mindset at
any time of the day -- sleeping, waking, practicing, teaching, performing, even
changing directions or facing tragedy. We used this book in our 2007 programs,
and as a result, a lot of pianists are now saying, "I can handle it!" At her
website, you can read her affirmation of the day and purchase books she
recommends and publishes, as well subscribe to her newsletter and other free
goodies.
- Effortless
Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within, by jazz pianist Kenny
Werner, has helped some of my students and friends, especially those who tend
to be paralyzed by perfectionism. He complains a lot about school, which I have
a hard time relating to (I liked and flourished in school!), but he makes many
good and helpful points. And I love his definition of mastery -- when it has
become effortless -- and the idea that effortless mastery is the goal of
practice.
- Using Your Brain--for
a Change, by Richard Bandler, Steve Andreas (Editor), and Connirae Andreas
(Editor), shows you how to use Neuro-Linguistic Programming to change aspects
of your internal imagery to create different experiences. Solutions are
refreshingly simple and effective, and the text often amusingly
iconoclastic.
- The Inner Game of
Music, by Barry Green with Timothy Gallwey, is the musician's version of
Gallwey's The Inner Game of Tennis, which helped many sports competitors
and musicians in the 70's. It is still making a difference today. Green and
Gallwey present a method for teaching oneself and then getting out of one's
way.
- Mihalyi
Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist who, instead of researching the roots of
dysfunction and unhappiness, spent his career researching those things that
bring us joy in life: among them, creativity, happiness, and fulfillment. In
Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience, he names the optimal life
experience "flow," and lays out the ways people achieve it. He has many
important things to say about creating meaning in life. In The Evolving
Self, he discusses how humans must develop in order to avoid ceding our
planet to the cockroach. Unfortunately, in the opening chapters, he takes some
unseemly jabs at a few disciplines, such that people in those disciplines would
probably close the book and walk away. I suggest you chalk it up to humanity
and keep reading this rich text.
- Read discussions on
performance and practice mindset that took place
on The Well-Balanced Pianist Forum.
Musicianship: Music and
Interpretation
- Images: The Piano
Music of Claude Debussy by Paul Roberts, is at once the most comprehensive
book on the subject, and the most beautifully written book on music I have
encountered in a long while. Roberts explores the music of Debussy in the
context of the art and literature of his time. This book, full of poetry and
art reproductions, fuels the imagination, and also gives excellent practical
advice on the performance of Debussy's works. It is hard to imagine any more
that can be said about these works.
- The Romantic
Generation, by Charles Rosen, contains the dense and intense writing we
have come to expect from the brilliant, prize-winning author of The
Classical Style and Sonata Forms (fabulous books in themselves). His
judgment of Mendelssohn is awfully harsh, but he makes many valuable points
about other subjects -- the mazurka, pedaling in Chopin, rhythmic qualities in
the music of Schumann. Just bear in mind that even though he is a powerful
writer, much of what he says is his opinion.
- NewMusicJukebox, produced by the
American Music Center, is an online library and listening room that provides
immediate access to scores, streaming audio, and vital information about music
by American composers. A great place to find new music -- you can search by
title, composer, or ensemble.
- Performance Practices
in Classic Piano Music: Their Principles and Applications by Sandra P.
Rosenblum is an indispensable guide to ornamentation, articulation, and all
other kinds of expression in the music of the 18th century. She starts by
showing us how the piano was created gradually, with the input of the greatest
composers and performers of the age. The book is also loaded with examples of
interpretations of various markings from the literature, so if you or your
student is wondering about a marking in a piece by Haydn, chances are she has
it. Be careful, though! Once you open the book to ask one simple question, it's
hard to put it down.
- Music by Women:
The International Alliance
for Women in Music website has fabulous resources for those interested in
music by women: bibliographies, discographies, course syllabi, interviews,
profiles, online sources for music, discussion lists, links to other
women-in-music organizations, and much more. The Musica delle
donne website, dedicated to a concert series featuring music by women, is
designed to assist those interested in programming music by women by providing
an archive of works programmed and a list of composers performed, with links to
composer's biographies. The works are for a wide variety of instrumentation --
solo, chamber, and larger ensembles. The website of
Eine Kleine Frauenmusik, a radio
program which has ceased broadcasting, has over 500 program program scripts.
Most scripts are listed with program contents. You can play the broadcast, and
read short biographies of each composer.
- If you or your students have trouble with
sightreading, I can't recommend the Four Star Sight Reading series enough. It
is published by Frederick
Harris. This series builds skills gradually, painlessly, and surely, by
teaching pianists to simply pay attention. Upon returning from a desultory
summer of work with this series, one of my high school students said, "It felt
so easy I thought it couldn't be helping, but somehow, everything is easier
now!"
- Read discussions that
took place on Baroque, Classical, Romantic,
Contemporary, and Jazz musicianship on The Well-Balanced Pianist
Forum.
Wellbeing: Ways to
improve posture and movement of the body
- Yoga: the Iyengar
Way, by Silva Mehta, Mira Mehta, and Shyam Mehta, contains detailed text
and photographs of many important asanas, or Yoga positions, as taught
by B.K.S. Iyengar. The Iyengar system of Yoga is to commonly taught Yoga as the
Taubman Approach to piano technique is to traditional piano technique: it gives
us precise tools to improve our alignment as opposed to letting us find it (or
not) on our own. I did Yoga for twenty years before I met an Iyengar
practitioner, upon which I realized that I was doing Yoga every morning and
night to undo the aches and pains I had from the previous day's Yoga. With
Iyengar Yoga, I feel the same purity of sensation in my body that I feel in my
hands and arms from Taubman work. A note of caution: just as with Taubman work,
it's a miracle if you can teach yourself from a book or tape. It's even
possible to do yourself harm. Use the book as an adjunct, but if you want to
pursue it, find a teacher who makes you feel good from the first lesson.
Iyengar Yoga websites: www.bksiyengar.com and
www.iyengar-Yoga.com
- Indirect Procedures: A
Musician's Guide to the Alexander Technique, by Pedro de Alcantara,
deals with the application of the Alexander Technique to playing musical
instruments. I have little experience with the Alexander Technique, but people
whom I greatly respect credit it with helping them in many arenas of
music-making and performance. One of my students in Chicago asked me to read
this book, and lent it to me before I took a flight back home. I was interested
to read many ideas which overlap with Taubman work, and fascinated with
Alexander's systematization of the teaching of the self. By the time I got off
the plane, my shoulders and neck felt better than when I got on it, which I
took to be a good sign! One thing troubles me about Alexander work: many
traditional practitioners accept pain as part of the process -- one of my
students was bedridden for three days with back spasms after her first
Alexander class, and when she phoned the teacher to talk about it, the teacher
said that my student's muscles "must not be used to holding her in alignment."
The teacher wasn't alarmed that my student was in such pain following the
class. The Taubman Approach to Piano Technique and Iyengar Yoga, two systems
which have helped me a great deal, never accept pain, and consider it a sign
that something is wrong. Now, a friend whom I respect who is a certified
Alexander teacher says she finds no difference between the Taubman and
Alexander responses to pain -- so my student's experience may just reflect some
teachers' attitudes (especially if they are less than effective or their egos
can't allow them to take responsibility for problems), or may possibly reflect
differences between some disciplines within Alexander. If you're interested in
trying Alexander, don't let this thought stop you, just be on the lookout. And
as with Taubman work and Yoga, if you decide to try Alexander, find a teacher
you have reason to trust.
- For more information on
Alexander Technique, see Robert and Anne Rickover's packed web page,
The Complete Guide to Alexander
Technique.
- Renee Jackson has a
fabulous essay on
Alexander and Taubman, which you can read on
The Complete Guide to Alexander
Technique.
- Aston-Patterning practitioner Judy Huston's
website has information about Aston-Patterning, a body movement and deep
massage system developed by Judith Aston. You can find information about
training and a link to Aston props at the
Aston Enterprise website.
- The Posture Page contains information
about several methods that have a history of helping people improve their
posture.
- Read discussions that
took place on wellbeing and posture for pianists
on The Balanced Pianist Forum.
Copyright ©
2004-2010 Teresa Dybvig
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