Creativity – Pianodao

Creativity is a Dialogue

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Developing creativity is one of the high goals of learning an instrument. And yet over the decades I’ve taught, those advancing a more creative approach have been variously seen as either maverick outliers or magical superstars, but rarely as the piano teacher norm.

I have also met some who emit an impression that improvising pianists are somehow superior to those who “merely” regurgitate the music of others. Some even cast the concert pianist who can rattle off Rachmaninoff as a rather pitiable savant, akin to an imagined orator who can deliver a Shakespeare soliloquy, but who can’t hold a real conversation.

I think they are quite profoundly wrong. Having frequently improvised in front of an audience, I feel considerably less comfortable rising to the challenge of performing Chopin to the classical cognoscenti. I suspect many would. We all have different strengths, and need not compete.

And I would say that the creative arts of interpretation and improvisation are equal in value, complimentary in nature, and both have an important role to play in piano education.

The Schumann Effect

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

In his Advice to Young Musicians, the composer Robert Schumann wrote,

“Consider it an abomination to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.”

At face value, these are pretty strong words, implying we cultivate a reverence for music notation and rigidity in performance. In his exposition of Schumann’s thoughts, however, the cellist Steven Isserlis wisely suggests,

“Schumann’s general point here is that we must avoid inappropriate additions or alterations to the musical text… Some composers have left us specific instructions, which we have to follow to the letter; others, particularly in earlier periods, have left most of the interpretative decisions to us. In much baroque music it is almost essential to add ornamentation at times; composers would have expected it.”

The pianist’s unique voice

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

When considering the great pianists who inspire me the most, I often wonder what qualities make their playing stand out as a unique and important legacy, and usually answers come quickly. But equally, I find that those I teach often convey their distinct personality through their playing.

How can we develop our own individual, personal voice at the piano, speaking on behalf of composers, but with our own unique dialect?

A Path that is Yours Alone

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

Stephen Nachmanovitch’s inspiring book Free Play (1990) offers an uplifting paean to creativity, improvisation, playful curiosity, and personal artistry. Though endorsed by the likes of Yehudi Menuhin and Keith Jarrett, it seems many have yet to discover the book and embrace its ethos; do look it up!

Early in the book, Nachmanovitch paints an evocative scene:

“A walk, following your intuitive promptings, down the streets of a foreign city holds rewards far beyond a planned tour of the tried and tested. Such a walk is totally different from random drifting. Leaving your eyes and ears wide open, you allow your likes and dislikes, your conscious and unconscious desires and irritations, your irrational hunches, to guide you whenever there is a choice of turning right or left. You cut a path through the city that is yours alone, which brings you face to face with surprises destined for you alone…
When you travel in this way you are free; there are no have-to’s and shoulds… As the pattern of people and places unfolds, the trip, like an improvised piece of music, reveals its own inner structure and rhythm.”

As we enter the holiday season, with many of us looking forward to travels at home and abroad, why not try out Nachmanovitch’s recommendation? Just remember to take a map, a bottle of water and provisions.

At the piano, too, how about we embrace a little more spontaneity?

An Empty Vessel

Fermata • Pause and Reflect

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Reflection by Andrew Eales

The image of an empty vessel is a common one found in many cultural and spiritual traditions. It is a concept which is marvellously introduced in these words from the Tao Te Ching, written by the Daoist sage Lao Tzu:

“Clay is folded into a vessel,
Yet it is the hollowness that makes the vessel useful;
Windows and doors are cut out,
Yet it is their empty space that makes the room useable.”

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (chapter 11, excerpt)
translation, Edward Brennan and Tao Huang

Here’s a wonderfully pithy rendition of the first part, this time as translated by that great author Ursula K. Le Guin:

“Hollowed out, clay makes a pot.
Where the pot’s not is where it’s useful.“

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (chapter 11, excerpt)
translation: Ursula K. Le Guin

In her ever-thoughtful commentary, she notes,

“One of the things I love about Lao Tzu is he is so funny. He’s explaining a profound and difficult truth here, one of those counterintuitive truths that, when the mind can accept them, suddenly double the size of the universe. He goes about it with this deadpan simplicity, talking about pots.”