Musings on Performance

Sometime between the Duke Chamber Players' final concert of the season and my own senior piano recital, I realized how much a musician could learn at Duke. The musicology department, for one, has earned a reputation for excellence over the past years, especially with distinguished professors and researchers like Stephen Jaffe and Larry Todd. The community of student musicians and performance faculty has grown considerably as well; look no further than the rising quality of each Duke Symphony Orchestra concert or in the emergence of new groups like the DCP or the Duke New Music Ensemble. Sharing ideas and performances with such a community ultimately helps all members understand their music better.

What must not be understated, though, is the sheer volume of performances most students undertake. Symphony orchestra and DCP both perform twice a semester. Chamber music, area recitals, personal recitals, and auditions comprise one additional performance. Tack onto this list numerous recital accompanments, gigs, and outreach performances, and it would appear that the most involved performers may be out in front of audiences on average once or twice a week! Suffice it to say, I've had weeks here where I probably spent more time on stage than in class.

Performance, contrary to intuition, does not occur note-to-note. In fact, I don't think most human minds are capable of processing notes at performance speed; such an approach would very likely trip up the musician. Instead, the stage mind thinks in abstract concepts. Performers learn to subconciously group together notes into blocks or phrases, and memory triggers, often the end notes of prior phrases, guide them through a piece. These blocks, or concepts, are not easily perceivable or describable; on stage, they are translated into music through visualization and through emotion. Although the performer does not think by notes, he or she is generally aware of what notes are currently being executed, and thus is able to tweak individual notes during the execution of a particular concept. This is what gives live performance its spontaneity and excitement.

Obviously, this depiction of performance holds consequences for the idea of practicing. Practice is no longer simply a quest for perfection in execution, it is rather a means of building and refining these subjective concepts. These ideas are both conciously and unconciously developed through practice, whether in the formation of a certain phrase contour or in the determination of an ideal attack for a particular note. Performers bulid these details into their concepts rather than think of them conciously during a concert. Likewise, muscle memory is built within the framework of these concepts; look no further than musicians who often have difficult times starting a performance at the middle of a phrase.

As one becomes a more adept performer, he or she is able to conceve of larger and larger phrases and concepts at a time while simultaneously fine-tuning his or her ability to notice and tweak details. Larger conceptions generally mean that a piece is more unified, as the parts, the individual phrases, are seen as components to a whole. Good performers also become more comfortable with their conceptions so that to audiences, their execution looks simple and easy.

These skills can really only develop on stage in front of a real audience; they cannot develop through practice, since practice is altogether a different cognitive process. Thus, the performance time I've had over the last four years has been absolutely invaluable; stage time has been just as valuable a teacher as anything else. I know that opinions sometimes differ on whether private lessons can help much here at Duke, especially given limited practice time and instructor time. But lessons are not the only way to develop musicality. Perform, don't just practice.