m1469 wrote:
I do not quite understand what you mean when you say that one "will gain the skills needed to perform through pracitce, but that the skills needed to pracitce cannot be obtained or derived through performance skills." Could you expand? What exactly do you mean by performance skills?
Skills needed for practice include the knowledge and ability to execute practice tricks. But they also include the ability to focus and concentrate, the ability to repeat something endless times, the ability to analyse and study a score, the skills to deconstruct a piece and reconstruct it, the ability to listen critically to other performers (either live or in recordings). All of these will be essential to develop your skill at playing the piano which is the bottom line if you want to perform. If you cannot play the piano, how can you perform?
However the converse is not true. Performance skills will not add to your practice skills. In fact you can learn to practise in order to play the piano to a high standard of excellence without ever performing (many amateur players only play for their own delectation). Not performing will not in any way interfere with your practice/playing.
Performance skills (I am sure there are more – these are the ones that come to mind):
1. Of course the skill of playing the piano (which will be acquired through practice and the exercise of the several practice skills).
2. Dealing with an audience. This encompasses everything you do once in a stage, from entering the stage to bowing to leaving the stage. You can tell straightaway the seasoned performers from the green ones by their degree of self-consciousness on stage. Naturally the “stage” is here taken in its widest meaning and includes your living room when you are playing for friends. This kind of performance skill has nothing to do with piano practice. It will not inform your piano practice, and yet it must be practised. I suggest to my students that they learn magic tricks and perform them to develop the skill of appearing naturally when fooling an audience. Playing the piano in public is – in a certain level – an illusion that you must sell your audience, and as such has much in common with magic. Being at ease in front of an audience is not something we are born with (even though people often talk of “natural performers”). It must be learnt and practised, and has nothing to do with piano practice per se.
3. Dress sense. Superficial as this may seem, it will have an impact on your performance and must be gauged appropriately according to your audience and their expectations.
4. If you become really famous, your whole life can become a performance as you are pursued by paparazzi and so on. Dealing with the public and with the press at this level is also a performance skill – although classical pianists tend to suffer less from it than pop musicians and actors. Success and fame can wreck you if you do not have the skills to deal with it. Again this will not inform your piano practice in any way whatsoever.
5. Part of performance skills is to be able to adapt to different pianos and different hall acoustics. This must be practised – but can only be practised through performing indifferent pianos and on different halls. This sort of skill cannot obviously be done on your piano at your home.
Perhaps I am very ignorant here, but shouldn't one always strive to improve through performance? Or, more directly, learn something which can in turn be useful in future pracitce and performance?
It may be that I am simply at a certain stage in the game, but every time I perform, it is with the primary intention of improving in some way, and learning something. To an extent, I could care less how my best efforts are received by others, so my primary goal is not that of entertainment. I also never expect to ever be "finished" with or forever perfect any peice of music I would ever program. Even if I believed it to be possible, in 20 years I will bet my life savings (sorry, it's not much) that I will be playing it much differently. And, unless I have lived in a hole without a piano or the mental capacity to think of one, it will be improved.
Always, a performance will not go over without any hitch, and somebody will walk away dissatisfied.
In my mind and at this point anyway, each performance is a pracitce for the next one. I do not think that this is the same thing that you mean by saying that "you cannot and should not perform practice." Correct me if I am wrong.
Also, if performance truly is the product of practice, it seems that this assumes there to be no further ramifications from performance. Is this right? And, shouldn't the product of practice be the perfection itself? Perhaps this is what you mean by performance. (wow, too many "P" words).
Consider a card trick. A really superlative card trick that will leave people completely gobsmacked and believing your supernatural powers will need to be practised for (sometimes) years, before you can actually perform it.
What is the point of performing it? To leave people completely gobsmacked and believing your supernatural powers! Of course there may be other reasons: Money, fame, impressing the girls. However the true reason anyone takes up magic tricks is a deep love of fooling people. Quite sick I know. But it is the truth. Specially fooling the scientific types who think they can crack any trick. They are a source of immitigable pleasure, partly because they don’t even come closer.
It may seem I am digressing, but I am not really. The point here is that no one would be investing the time and effort to practise a magic trick unless they intend to fool (or amaze, if you want to be kind) someone with it. So performance cannot be avoided. At the same time you are not going to fool anyone with your magic trick unless you have practised it to perfection. So the (successful) performance must necessarily assume previous practice.
If you botch it (and doing magic for children is the hardest, trust me), of course your botched performance can teach you a lot and inform you that your practice was not enough, or that it was wrongly done. But this is not the usual. You do not expect to botch your performance so that you can learn from it. Learning from performance cannot be the final goal of performing. A philosophy like that is simply a way to save something from a botched performance: “All right, I really flunked it, but hey, let us look to the bright side! At least I learned what not to do!”. (It is a good philosophy).
Hence the performer’s axiom (be it magic or piano): Never perform something you are still practising (because you will botch it). You are not going to fool anyone if your magic trick is still in the practise stage. And surely you should never practise your magic tricks in public: it will give away the secret.
Now of course, as you perform your trick to different audiences, you may have to adapt it, you may get new ideas and variations, but you should practise these new ideas and variations privately first, although some people will improvise on the spot and get away with it.
Many card tricks are based on a move called the “double lift” where you show a card to the audience, but instead of lifting one card from the deck, you lift two. In order for this sly move to pass unnoticed you need a special way of lifting the two cards (in fact there are several – but every magician has his favourite) and showing them as if it was one. Making this slightly awkward movement to appear completely natural is essential for the success of the tricks that use it. Mixing up practice and performance as you seem to be suggesting can result in two consequences that you want to avoid at any cost:
1. You have not practised enough, so your double lift is easily detected (for it will be awkward) and you will fool no one.
2. You practised enough, and your double lift is fine, but you insist on practising it in front of the audience. It is obvious that no one will be fooled by your trick even if the double lift itself is undetectable.
Hence: only perform when you have achieve mastery through practice, and when performing, do not practise.
When I say you should not perform practice it is in the sense above. Would you sit at the piano in front of an audience and break down the piece into manageable chunks and repeat them until mastered? Would you do hands separate first? If you are into Hanon would you do five minutes of warmup at the stage? Somehow I doubt it.
Having said all that, I agree with several things you say. Here are some more thoughts:
Perhaps I am very ignorant here, but shouldn't one always strive to improve through performance? Or, more directly, learn something which can in turn be useful in future pracitce and performance?
Yes, you should always strive to improve, but public performance is not the venue to do it. The venue is of course private practice. In fact you hit the nail on the head on your next sentence: performance can show you the direction of your future practice. But this should not be the ultimate purpose of performance, just a side benefit.
Also, if performance truly is the product of practice, it seems that this assumes there to be no further ramifications from performance. Is this right? And, shouldn't the product of practice be the perfection itself? Perhaps this is what you mean by performance. (wow, too many "P" words).
Perfection is unattainable (which is exactly what makes it such a worthwhile goal). So perfection is not the product of practice, but rather its unattainable goal. Through performing you show us (and yourself) how close your practice got you to that goal.
It may be that I am simply at a certain stage in the game, but every time I perform, it is with the primary intention of improving in some way, and learning something. To an extent, I could care less how my best efforts are received by others, so my primary goal is not that of entertainment. I also never expect to ever be "finished" with or forever perfect any peice of music I would ever program. Even if I believed it to be possible, in 20 years I will bet my life savings (sorry, it's not much) that I will be playing it much differently. And, unless I have lived in a hole without a piano or the mental capacity to think of one, it will be improved.
Of course you can do whatever you want, but I don’t think that one’s primary intention in performing should be improving. This should be the primary intention of practising. Why do I say that? Because if your primary intention when performing is to improve, how exactly are you going to go about it? It creates an impossible situation. Are you going to stop at every bar and repeat it several times? Are you going to investigate new fingerings right there on the performance? The extreme nature of these examples should show that improving cannot be the primary intention. Although I agree with you that you will improve through performing – but it is a side benefit, something to keep an eye on, but not the main thurst and drive of your desire to perform. So why should you – or anyone – for that matter – perform? To entertain the audience? To please oneself? To do justice to the composer?
I have said once that for successful teaching to occur three conditions must be present: a student willing to learn, a teacher willing to teach and an environment conducive to teaching. If these three conditions occur learning will take place. If any of these conditions is missing there will no learning and no teaching.
I find this to be true of every manifestation in the Universe (how about that for sweeping generalisations?
): you always need three forces at work. If one is not there, whatever will not take place.
So as far as performance goes, for it to be successful three things must be in place: You must be satisfied that you did your best. The audience must be entertained (using this word in a superior sense), and the music must come through. So the main direction for performance will always depend on these three forces: the music, the audience and the performer. No one is more important than the other. The three are equally necessary. If anyone is missing there will be no performance (or it will be unsuccessful). But the individual contribution of each force may vary: in certain performances the performer will outshine the music and the audience, in others the music will prevail, and in others the audience. If you are familiar with vectorial analysis, you will know that the resulting force of three vectors will be determined by the direction and intensity of the individual vectors. So it is here. The individual contribution of audience performer and music will ultimately (and mathematically) determine the direction and intensity of the performance.
Best wishes,
Bernhard.
Topic: What's the difference: practice vs performance?