The discipline of music is a good training for many aspects of life

I suppose that the discipline of music is a good training for many aspects of life. The musician has to practise every single day; some professionals say that it takes up to an hour’s practice to get back to the standard of technical execution where one was yesterday; after that, the practice improves one. The artist or, the business man can have a holiday for a week or so without any harm; but the musician cannot.

Music also teaches the importance of correct form. I learnt this from my own experience. I began the piano at five years old, and when I was about eight, my father sent me to a famous teacher. One of the things he told me was this: “I know a young boy like you wants to play some of this modern jazz as well as the classical music.  Well, if you do your regular practice for me every day, properly for an hour, I don’t mind if you play jazz after that. But promise me one thing:

Whenever you play the piano, whether it is exercises or classical music or jazz, or simply because you want to mess about trying out tunes of your own – always sit correctly, exactly in the middle as I have shown you.  Never slump or sit a little to one side.”  He did not explain, but he said this rather impressively, and I followed what he said. Soon, I had the habit of always sitting just in the middle, and upright, whether I was playing anything serious or not.

When I was about 14, I began a piece where the hands have to jump from the middle, the right hand to an octave far up on the right-hand side, and, simultaneously, the left hand must strike an octave far down the left-hand side of the piano.  Normally, when one has to make a sudden jump to a far-out chord like this, one looks to guide the fingers on to it. But in this piece, the two chords come together. I felt I would like my eyes to function independently, but I could not do that. I tried looking at the right hand, and making a grab at the notes with the left hand, but generally I missed. Then I tried looking at the left hand, and guessing with the right, but that did not work either.

The teacher said, “You’ll never succeed like that.”

“What can I do?’ I asked.

Now he amazed me. He made me sit at the piano with my hands in my lap. He told me to shut my eyes. “Now, keep your eyes shut, and play those two octaves.”

“I can’t – I don’t know where they are!” I protested.

“Yes, you do,” he said. “Try”.

After a few attempts, I found that I could hit them fairly regularly. In three or four weeks, I could hit them every time.  Somehow, I did know where they were; I simply threw out my hands and felt them under the fingers. I could play any note on the piano blindfold.

Then he told me, “You can do this because since you were a little boy you have always sat exactly in the middle of the piano. Your arms have gradually learnt the position of all the notes, without needing your eyes. You thought you needed your eyes, but actually you did not.  But if you had sometimes sat even half an inch to the right or the left you would not have this instinctive certainty now.”

This taught me the importance of correct form, and the hidden advantages which may lie in it. When the Suiboku artist Hozan gave a demonstration in London, the British audience was very surprised to how exactly and precisely she placed the ink and the brushes and the paper, and how formally she seated herself in front of them. In answer to questions, she said they were always in exactly the same positions. When we look at Western artists painting, it is quite different; the physical posture seems very sloppy compared with the Japanese.

(I will get a photo of this).

On the other hand, my father (a famous violinist) once remarked to me that forms can become meaningless when a particular stage is reached, and that the musician may develop a new form. As an example, he instanced how all violinists are trained to hold their instruments with their chin alone. I have seen this in Japan when the small children are being taught; the child has to take the left hand away from the violin altogether, and shake hands with the teacher. The teacher and the pupil are both holding their violins steadily by the pressure of the chin alone.  My father also taught my elder brother to play the violin in this way. But, he said, though it is necessary to hold the violin very steadily when learning, it might be a mistake to go on holding it like that when the technique has been mastered. “Because”, he said, “it must muffle the resonance of the instrument. I hold it as loosely as possible while still retaining control.”

He told me a story about Mischa Elman, who was a violin prodigy at the beginning of the century. He made his public début at the age of about 13, and soon became famous for his wonderfully resonant tone; it came to be called the ‘Elman tone’.  He was soon invited to give concerts in the great cities of Europe, and of America. (He visited the Far East also.)

At one of these early concerts, Kubelik, then the acknowledged doyen of violinists, went to hear him, along with a friend of his, a pianist. They sat together in a box in the concert hall, and listened as the wonderful ‘Elman tone’ filled the air.  At the end of the piece, the audience clapped with wild enthusiasm. Kubelik and his friend sat quiet. As the applause died down, Kubelik turned to his friend and said, “Hot in here, isn’t it?” The friend replied, “Not for pianists!”

My father told me that he thought Elman, too, broke the great rule about holding the violin very tightly. That was how he could get his wonderful tone. Of course, to hold it loosely needs wonderful control. I once saw Elman play, but he was then a very old man.

I have also had the experience of learning a famous ‘form’, which had lasted over 140 years (and perhaps still exists in some places), but which turned out to be meaningless. My first piano teacher, when I was five years old, told me to practise scales while balancing a matchbox on the back of the hand.  It is quite difficult to do this when the thumb passes under the other fingers.  Scales are very boring for children, and I got interested in this sort of balancing trick, to help pass the time.  After about a year, I could do it fairly well, and I was rather proud of it. Then at eight years, my father arranged for me to have lessons from a great teacher, and I remember vividly the second lesson. He told me to play a few scales, and then said,

“Why do you hold your hand so stiffly?!”

I said complacently, “So that I can balance a matchbox on it”, expecting him to ask me to do it.

“What for?” he said, and without waiting for a reply, told me to keep the wrist relaxed and raise it to let the thumb through. This was the very thing I had been told never to do. The matchbox was there to prevent it.

I was dumbfounded.  A little later, I felt annoyed at having been made to practise something which turned out to be meaningless. Perhaps it gave me a lifelong suspicion of orthodoxies which are handed on without any questioning and never shown to be of value. This particular trick had been handed on since 1780; I learned finally that it had been devised by Clementi, the great rival of Mozart. He taught his pupils to do it (with a coin, -they had no matchboxes) as a means of developing independence of the fingers, and the accounts of his playing by witnesses confirm that he did succeed in keeping the backs of his hands level even in most difficult passages. He was a great virtuoso of the time, who is said to have won a piano contest against Mozart himself before the Emperor Joseph II. It seems incredible that he could have played continuously like this, but the pianos then had a much lighter touch than today.

© Trevor Legget