I HEAR THE WA-TER FLOWING

AND I HEAR THE MU-SIC                 Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

Education (from the Latin e-ducare) means to draw out from. In other words, good education is not about putting knowledge into someone, but about drawing out the wisdom that is already there. How does this relate to teaching the piano? Firstly, think of the act of teaching as a wake-up call to yourself. A wake-up call to be in a space of good listening. A wake-up call to be fully present. One of the key things to observe is how mental tension leads to physical tension. If you can be aware of this in yourself it will inevitably help your own playing. But it will also give you a clue as to what you can see happening to your pupils. People tighten up physically in many different ways at the piano - some hunch their shoulders, some lock their jaw, some tighten the forearms or the wrists, some generate tension in the lower back. Behind all of these there will be some mental movement. Maybe a movement of fear as a difficult passage is coming up - maybe a block of dense black notes - or a change of key to A flat minor. Or maybe a movement of contentment, of feeling good that things are going well only to then stumble across something which is in fact much simpler. As in ‘Pride comes before a fall’. This is like the danger of thinking that you are meditating well - that very movement of the mind is itself fixing something as a solid experience rather than allowing it to be a dynamic process. To play the piano really well requires a clear intention to be fully present in the sound. The sound is continually changing like water flowing over a rock in the river. So to be present in the sound means to allow the sound to go. As soon as we hold onto the sound - as in thinking ‘I did that passage really well’ - then we have stopped being present. The deep wisdom of knowing that everything is changing, that everything is flow, that nothing is fixed, nothing is solid, is deep within us. It is something that we are born with. The ultimate meaning of education, then, is to help someone draw out from this natural wisdom which is hidden or dormant. One of the great joys of teaching the piano is to see in microcosm this process of awakening. When someone experiences a letting-go of ‘trying’ and a sense of real progress in the sound, this is the place of enlightenment, the place of joy for teacher and pupil alike. None of this can happen without the simple act of showing up. It is no good just waiting for the moment of inspiration for that may never arrive. We have to show up to practising regularly, and work on our intention regularly. We have to put in the time in faith that something will happen. It is like planting seeds in the garden in faith that somehow in the darkness of the earth transformation will happen and the plant will emerge into the daylight and grow. In this, learning the piano is very much like meditation. If we only practise once a week - maybe before we have a lesson - then we are not going to get the same opening up, the same transformation as if we practise every day. Even if the total amount of time is the same. Again, it is like the seed in the ground. Imagine if it was only light for one day a week - even if it was light for a full 24 hours that day, it would not compensate for the darkness the rest of the week. Showing up to practise sounds really simple - but what we are confronted with again and again is the inner critic, the inner distracter, the inner ego personality doing its best to fill our minds with excuses for moving our attention somewhere else. Learning the piano, then, is not so much about learning an external skill but about exploring and coming to terms with the internal landscape. Coming to feel at ease with both the demand to show up and practise, and the freedom to let go of chasing after a particular result. It is both incredibly simple and extraordinarily difficult at one and the same time.

I LOVE MY SPE-CIAL NUM-BERS

THEY GO WITH ME AND

KEEP ME MO-VING

THROUGH THE WORLD               Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

In one way, numbers appear to offer a limited number of possibilities. After all, including zero, there are only ten of them : 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Every other number is formed from this finite simple group, even such exotic numbers as 3/4 to the power 5/2. But from a different perspective in the human mind there are an infinite number of possibilities in the number world. There are even an infinite number of very special numbers like prime numbers and Fibonacci numbers. When it comes to music we find a similar paradox. It seems at first glance - or maybe first hearing - that there are only twelve different notes, and all the pieces of music in the world are simply different combinations of those same twelve notes. For the vast majority of Western music this is in the theoretical sense true. But in a more subtle sense you only have to talk to a violinist to learn that an A sharp in the key of B is not the same sound as a B flat in the key of F. For the pianist maybe, but not for anyone able to use their ear to create different pitches on their voice or instrument. Sound is physical vibration - notes sound ‘good’ together, what music theorists call consonant, because their vibrations match up mathematically. Notes sound ‘bad’ together, or what music theorists call dissonant, because their vibrations do not match up mathematically. Harmony is created out of different combinations of consonance and dissonance. If you play a major seventh interval, e.g. C and the B above, together on the piano the energy of the sound is harsh and is interpreted by many, perhaps most, people as being quite unpleasant. But now if you add the E and the G in the middle and play all four notes together the sound is quite different. The major seventh chord which results is a familiar jazz harmony and is interpreted by many people as mellow, cool, sophisticated. Many people who insist that they cannot understand or enjoy ‘modern music’ (which sadly for some includes most of the last 100 years) because of the dissonance will nonetheless accept and enjoy the ‘same’ dissonance, e.g. a minor ninth, in Bach or Beethoven. In other words, context is everything. Numbers, like musical notes, do not fascinate in isolation but in the way that they combine together, the way they hold memories, the way they make promises for the future. People belive in lucky numbers, they will choose birthday and anniversary date numbers for lottery tickets. They also believe in unlucky numbers - I was fascinated as a young child in suburban Birmingham by the absence of the number 13 from the house numbers in every road. Some numbers gain mythic significance very rapidly in the modern world. What do you first think of in relation to 42.................... 13 3/4 ............ 9 3/4............. 9/11............... * Equally some numbers can have multiple signifiers - does the number 111 make you think first of cricket or Beethoven? The two images for me - one of the cricket umpire David Sheppard standing on one leg until the batsmen scored another run; the other the extraordinary use of unusual time signatures like 12/32 in Beethoven’s last piano sonata - are both strongly connected to the number 111.

It has often been suggested that musical and mathematical ability go together, but in some ways they seem to come from very different areas of the brain. In my experience it is often the case that people who are very competent at sight reading and music theory are also good at mathematics. But these skills in themselves do not guarantee that someone is really musical. A good ear for music in terms of awareness of sound, pitch pulse, dynamic, articulation and phrasing does not appear to come from the same part of the brain. The result is that it is possible to be really musical whilst still finding the more mathematical skills of sight reading and music theory quite elusive.

*  My guess is for most Westerners : Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Adrian Mole; Harry Potter train platform; New York 2001

WHAT A LOT OF CHAT-TER-ING THERE IS

WITH-IN MY MIND

WITH-IN MY MIND

A POINT OF BA-LANCE

CAN BE FOUND

IN SOUND                        Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

Many years ago I had the idea for a research project which would philosophically and psychologically explore the communality of the experience of great music. Concerts which create such a strong and powerful experience that the usual stream-of-thoughts present in each member’s consciousness is overtaken by the communal experience of the music. On a few occasions in my life I have been present at concerts which felt as if they were world-changing events – I remember as a teenager a performance of Steve Reich’s Drumming in Oxford, long before he was well known in this country. There were only around fifty people present but it felt as if a whole new world of musical experience was opening up before our very eyes. In 1988 I saw Abdullah Ibrahim perform his composition Mandela live in London soon before Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The power and commitment of his playing convinced me that music could make real political change possible. These experiences have been a profound influence on my life. In the world of art therapy there is a word for this powerful shared experience – intersubjectivity. Experience which is shared at a deep level and which resonates in a similar way with different people at a level other than that which words can articulate. I went on a songwriting course once where three out of nine people on the course, myself included, were all writing challenging songs about our fathers at the same time. Not a word had been spoken in the group or to one another about our fathers. It was only when the songs had been written and we came to sing them to the whole group that the ‘conicidence’ became apparent. But was it coincidence? Or had we become more open than usual to accessing a deeper layer of the collective unconscious. There will always be some people who are more sceptical than others about the ‘reality’ of shared experience at this level – but there is understandably a communality of descriptions of mystical experiences across cultures, across centuries, across different stages of life. In the Orthodox Christian Liturgy the stage of moving from the individual-subjective experience is mapped out clearly. In the singing of the Cherubic Hymn we put aside ‘all cares of this life’ and place ourselves alongside the invisible orders of angels in worshipping the divine reality. When we receive communion the deep level experience is then of unity with the very essence of life, Christ as the divine DNA. In the light of this experience, the perennial questions in Western Christian history as to the nature of the Real Presence become irrelevant in much the same way as the sceptics’ questioning of the efficacy of homeopathy becomes irrelevant when you have seen a baby being transformed from a dangerously high fever to a calm sleep within twenty minutes of taking some Belladonna... When we approach the piano from this angle anything is possible. We teach well by being open in heart and mind, by allowing space for the angels to play with us and our pupils, and by immersing ourselves in an intersubjective experience of the music. By giving our ‘small self’ up we receive our ‘deep Self’ again and again. And while we cannot MAKE this experience happen for anyone else we can at least facilitate the conditions in which such experience is possible.

THERE ARE TWELVE KEYS MA-JOR,

TWELVE KEYS MI-NOR

AND FOR EV-ERY KEY

THERE ARE TWO PRELUDES AND TWO FUGUES       Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

There are twelve different notes in the chromatic scale, and then we return to the opening note again, an octave higher. The octave always sounds in harmony because the frequencies of the notes match up in simple mathematical ratios. Similarly the fifths in between the octaves. For instance : - //A 110 /E 165 /A 220 E/ 330 A/ 440 E// 660 Each of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale is the base note for two scales, one major and one minor. The Well-Tempered Clavier consists of two pieces - a Prelude and a Fugue - for each and every major and minor key. One collection of pieces was written in the 1720s; the other in the 1740s. In total, then, we have 12 x2 x2 x2 = 96 short pieces of music. But the collection is always known as the ’48’ because the Prelude and Fugue are always played consecutively as if they were different movements of a single piece. Other composers have written sets of pieces in all the twenty-four keys. For piano, the most famous are Chopin’s set of Preludes, Op 28 and Shostakovich’s sets of Preludes Op 34 and Preludes and Fugues, Op 87, inspired by the composer’s hearing the Bach ’48’ performed by Tatiana Nikoleyeva in 1950. But why not symphonies? No-one as far as I know has ever tried to write a symphony in all 24 keys. The largest collection of symphonies is that of Haydn, which at 104 is unlikely to be surpassed. There are, nonetheless, several keys that he left untouched. There are many practical difficulties tuning string and wind instruments together in more complex keys, and so the majority of symphonies in the classical and romantic eras were written in keys with no more than three sharps or flats. Meanwhile, the piano plays equally well in all keys - or equally badly in all keys if you happen to have the sort of perfect pitch that most of us are glad we don’t have! When I think of the number of symphonies written by famous composers I think immediately of 1,4,7,9,15,41 and 104. Of these numbers the 9 is famously important for proving an end point for several composers. Mahler, indeed, was so nervous about writing a 9th symphony in case it was his last that he famously titled his major symphonic work Das Lied von der Erde instead of Symphony No. 9. Now, in the spirit of making unlikely connections, if we take this special symphony number, 9, and multiply by the special chromatic scale number, 12, we arrive at one of the most powerful sacred numbers in all the world, 108. In the Tibetan tradition as indeed in many much earlier Asian traditions the number 108 takes on a special significance - the number of beads on a mala, the number of mantras chanted in one cycle of prayers. Astrologically, 108 is 9 Heavenly Bodies x 12 Signs of the Zodiac. It is 27 Lunar Mansions X 4 phases of the moon. In Buddhism it is also 6 (consciousnesses) x 3 (preferences) x 3 (times - past, present and future) x2 (virtuous or non-virtuous). It also happens to be the case that the distance between the Earth and the Sun is 108 times the Sun’s diameter, and the distance between the Earth and the Moon is 108 times the Moon’s diameter. The Sun’s diameter also happens to be 108 times that of the earth. Why are numbers so important to us? Clearly in some ways they correspond to things that we understand - or think that we understand - very dimly. They are a tool for creating patterns of order in the chaos; they give us a framework for seeing and interpreting the world.In other ways, they seem to correspond to material reality - there is this particular number of children, this particular number of musical keys. From a slightly different perspective, however, we can see that the numbers we think of as ‘normal’ are in fact the exception. On a sliding scale of all numbers, 1,2 and 3 are all extraordinary exceptions just as on the sliding scale of all musical vibrations, what we on the piano call C,D and E are extraordinary exceptions. A violinist can understand this more easily than a humble pianist, for the latter can only play the notes which are set in front of him/her whereas the violinist can make an infinite number of notes between for example the D/ and E/ of the piano. Where does his leave us? Maybe with a sense of wonder that we really understand so little. The numbers that we love to make sense of our lives are only a tiny fraction of the whole. Just as the physicists are discovering that the very stuff of the material cosmos is for the most part emptiness rather than solidity. Just as the mystics of all traditions have always known that the reality we think we understand is but a tiny fraction of the big picture.

AND NOW,

I PUT MY LEFT FOOT FOR-WARD

RIGHT FOOT FOR-WARD              Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

      Pulse is perhaps that most universal musical parameter. We feel a pulse in our body and we feel the way that changes when we rest, when we exercise, when we are emotionally agitated, when we meditate. We have at the same time an awareness that the rate or speed of pulse can change. Musically speaking, there is no doubt that some people find it much easier than others to hold on to a steady pulse. I still have little idea as to why this is so but I do know that it is very difficult to teach someone a good sense of pulse if they don’t have one. Metronomes are a useful aid of course but I have found over many years of teaching that many quite accomplished and musical people find it near to impossible to play consistently in time with a metronome. Of course there are many layers of complexity in playing even quite a simple piano piece and it seems clear that as the layers of complexity expand the brain becomes more aware of some layers than others. Pulse would appear to be one of the simplest layers but if awareness of the pulse goes there is next to no chance of creating a satisfying or successful musical performance. Often in working on a classical slow movement I have seen people master a complex passage in demisemiquavers only to falter when it comes to playing a bar with two crotchets and a rest. What is needed is not just an awareness of the pulse but an awareness of the inner division of the pulse. It is worth spending a lot of time on this, being absolutely clear what the difference is between 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 on the one hand and 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 on the other, assuming that the pulse always remains the same. Clapping these rhythms creates an aural, physical and structural awareness of the difference between 4/4 and 12/8 time; for many people it can also help to develop an awareness of the difference between straight and swung quavers. This is a very practical approach to understanding music theory; also to feeling the relationship between ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ musical languages. In my experience, though, it is much easier to teach this to youngsters than it is to adults who often need to ‘unlearn’ much of what they have fixed in their minds. And that I think is the real crux of the problem - having clear knowledge and ideas about pulse is not the same as hearing and feeling the pulse. To feel at ease playing music this knowledge needs to be embodied. For some people this is very obvious but for others it is way out of their comfort zone. In my now extensive experience of teaching piano I would say that the lack of an embodied sense of pulse is the biggest obstacle to more musical playing. It is more of an obstacle with adults because they tend to think that they must surely be beyond the stage of clapping pulses and dividing them into 2s and 3s. But the fact is that a couple of minutes spent on this every day will save months of frustration and wasted effort. And the great thing is that this is something that you can practise anytime you are walking. Simply treat each step as a single pulse and internally divide the steps into 2 and then into 3 and then into 4. Repeat as many times as you want! 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 er and a 2 er and a 3 er and a 4 er and a Do this while you are walking every day for a month and hear what a difference it makes to your piano playing!

THE 

SOUNDS AS THEY-

CHANGE ALL SUP-

PORT MY

 MINDFULNESS          Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

The practice of mindfulness is both very old and very new in human consciousness and experience. Very old in that long before any modern religions developed - only within the last five thousand years - it is clear that people were practising mindfulness. Hunters and gatherers, nomadic people, people from the Arctic to the tropical rainforest, from the savannah to the desert. Mindfulness - being aware of what is happening while it is happening - was essential for survival. It has only been in more modern times, in what are commonly called more ‘civilised’ societies, that survival has NOT been so dependent on the cultivation of mindfulness. Yet in our contemporary Western society there is no doubt that mindfulness also has a very new dimension. Short courses in mindfulness are now available everywhere as more and more people learn something of the cost of our modern high-tech left brain dominated culture and how the practice of mindfulness can help to restore some balance and sanity. Most meditation practices depend on some sort of support or anchor, something to which the attention returns every time it wanders off. One of the meditation supports is a simple awareness of sound - sound arising, sound remaining, sound ceasing, particular sounds morphing into other sounds. Mindfulness practice increase your awareness of sounds that are actually here and now just as the traditional hunter would have been acutely aware of what sounds were actually present and what they would mean in terms of the presence of animals. We are now only just beginning to understand how important this awareness of sound is even for living creatures in the depths of the ocean - and how easily their survival is being threatened by the extraneous noise of ships above. John Cage’s notorious composition 4’33” - the so-called ‘silent’ piece - has been ridiculed by many people. But in some ways it is one of the most important musical works of the twentieth century because it makes us listen with much greater attention than is usual. It takes us into a mindful space where our ears are more open and our perennial left-brain analysis is quietened down. Seeing the piece performed live, in all of its three short movements, is an experience which can teach us how we might approach our own music making, whether performance, group work rehearsing, or solo practising. In my experience practising piano immediately after meditating makes this sort of awareness much easier to attain. Being aware of the arising of each sound, the morphing of each sound into another sound, the intensity of each sound, the tone colour of each sound, and the decay of each sound - all this is very much like putting a mirror to the use of sound as a mindfulness support in meditation. Attention to this whole constantly changing process means that our attention is present, and the constant change frees us from the need to fix our attention on one point rather than another. The experience of playing through an entire piece in this state of presence is that there is no effort required. When we contrast this with all the times we were told in life to make more effort, to try harder, we can see how absurd our ‘normal’ ways of thinking are. Every time we suggest to someone else that they should ‘try harder’ we are directing them AWAY from mindfulness. Every time we bring people’s attention in practising back to the actual here-and-now sound we are encouraging them TOWARDS mindfulness. In most pieces that we learn at the piano there are one or two passages which we continue to think of as ‘difficult’. And usually we manifest physical reactions to our fear of the difficulty just as we might do if suddenly put into a hunting situation where we have to work out how to survive in the presence of a wild and potentially dangerous animal. if we can stay really present we realise that the fear comes and goes, the physical manifestations of fear come and go, and that all we need to do is to stay present. Good piano practise is good mindfulness practise. And developing a good mindfulness practice will help you to develop deeper and ultimately more productive ways of practising the piano.

JUST START WITH ONE QUITE SIM-PLE VOICE

AND MAP IT WITH A-NO-THER

Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

At the heart of the Bach to Bach project is the conviction that it is interesting to map one system onto another to see what arises in the way of interillumination. When we consider two systems together, such as the 38 Flower Remedies and the 48 Preludes and Fugues, connections arise which did not previously exist. This sort of mapping is always radical and creative. Radical because it demands going back to the roots; creative because it unearths connections that were not previously seen. Going back to the roots is a particularly striking image here. With the Flower Remedies we consider the way in which particular plants root themselves, seed themselves, propagate themselves in order to illuminate our understanding of how human thoughts, emotions and physical symptoms are all so clearly connected. Dr Bach’s work of mapping the world of plants onto the world of the human mind was an immensely rich, radical and creative act whose significance we are only just beginning to acknowledge. We can consider roots in a different sense with the Preludes and Fugues. Each of the twelve notes of the chromatic scale takes its turn to be the root note for four pieces, two major and two minor. The function of the root note is to give a point of stability, a home base, a reference point. Some of the pieces wander well outside this home base but the knowledge that they will eventually return creates an emotional; ‘safe space’ in which other layers of feeling can be experienced. Each piece presents a journey, and just as physical journeys in the external world eventually end by returning home so these musical journeys bring us back to the roots which we recognise. The whole journey through the ‘Well Tempered Clavier’ takes in all the roots in turn. It is not surprising, then, that the emotional range covered is vast. For the pianist to be able to bring these emotional connections alive there has to be a lot of disciplined work on making connections happen physically. Any pianist will be acutely aware of the fact that when you put two hands together there are difficulties of coordination which seem much greater than that posed by either hand separately. I sometimes consider this mathematically and explain to people that the level of difficulty is more like multiplying numbers together than simply adding them. So if the left hand part of a particular piece is say difficulty level 3 and the right hand difficulty level 4 (levels to be imagined or interpreted by each individual according to their experience) then putting the two hands together may well be more like difficulty level 12 (3x4) rather than difficulty level 7 (3 + 4). This is only discouraging if we hold onto the mindset that we ‘should’ be able to play the hands together because we can play them separately. If we can let go of that sometimes pervasive thought then we can open up to the fact that in learning to coordinate all the fingers of both hands for playing the piano we are going way beyond what we have learned to do through millions of years of evolution. The thumb to index finger opposition evolved for using tools to help us survive, but the precisely differentiated use of all our fingers is not about survival and it has to be learnt through long hours of practise. If we can get through the block that it ‘should’ be easier - and if we can take on board the fact that the increase in difficulty level involved in putting the two hands together means that we have to go much slower - then the whole process can become really fascinating. The key thing is the slowing down because that gives us the space to observe much more closely what is actually happening. Practising a piece with two hands together really slowly may not sound particularly musical, but it is absolutely necessary to achieve a real physical clarity about what the combination of fingers is doing. There are always more layers of observation to uncover. In learning a Fugue in three, four or five parts everything is even more complex - the brain, the ears, the fingers are all being challenged to map several things together at the same time. But the beauty of the Fugue is that this always starts from one simple voice. The Fugue as a form thus presents us with the perennial paradox of the One and the Many, the Simple and the Complex. We all make our maps through life, and in doing so we all have to map one system onto another in order to function as social animals. It is because we are creative beings living in relationship with other creative beings that we are able to find new interilluminations to move us forwards. Our life is ever in the process, not in achieving goals. Applying that to practising the piano transforms our fear of failure into the joyful experience of flowing energy.

FIRST YOU MUST PLAY ME SLOW-LY

AND THEN YOU

WILL SEE SOME PRO-GRESS

THEN SOME MORE PRO-GRESS

THEN YOU WILL START TO SEE

THAT IT’S EA-SY                               Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

There’s no such thing as a difficult piece on the piano. Either a piece is impossible – or it is easy. The way in which it changes from the one to the other is by practising…..

I’m not sure which famous pianist first said this, but it is fact maddeningly true to experience. The only problem is that we don’t have  - or don’t think that we have
Enough time
Enough energy
Enough patience
Enough clarity of mind      and
Enough physical and mental coordination to engage in
Enough practise.

But if we did we would find that it is true. And even if we only find that it is true for one piece then we have discovered an important truth – that there is nothing to fear.

Einstein was once asked what he felt was the most important question for humanity. His answer was to find out whether the universe is essentially friendly and benign. If it is, he said, we have nothing to fear. We can therefore focus our energy on tuning into the universe’s positive field instead of putting up walls of defensive armour and protecting ourselves from endless imaginary tigers.

A lot of the blocks that manifest for people learning the piano are to do with imaginary tigers. There are so many excuses not to practise. There are so many feas about playing wrong notes – especially in front of teachers! There is so much tension which manifests in the body – shoulders, jaw, neck, forearm, wrist, even big toe (as I have discovered myself) But where does all this tension begin? Quite clearly it all begins in the mind –in the movement of fear which comes from anticipation of a difficulty which has not yet arisen.

EXERCISE

Take a short passage which at present is impossible for you to coordinate.
Slow it right down, analyse every movement of the fingers which is necessary in this passage and clarify in your mind the exact order of those movements.
Remain emotionally detached from the results; simply observe what happens when you repeat and repeat and repeat.
 Relaxed mind makes for relaxed muscles.
 And one day without warning the light switches on in your mind – this is easy!

The bad news is that sometimes this state is achieved once and then appears to go away again. I have often seen and heard a pupil play something which they thought they couldn’t  - but then not be able to repeat the success. The way the mind tightens up is very subtle – the very thought that success has been achieved can produce a tightening in the muscles which makes it difficult to repeat the success.
Endless patience is needed – but if you persist you will find it is true. As long as you think something is difficult you will tighten up and it will remain impossible. When you have dissected it and analysed it and slowed it down and practised it again and again one day it will be easy.

SPEAK AND LIS-TEN

MIND-FUL-LY-

                    Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

Education is one of those topics which gives scope for seemingly endless dialogue, discussion and disagreement. A perennial political hot potato where everyone wants to be seen and heard expounding the best solutions. As we have seen already, If the etymology of the word is taken seriously, education is about drawing out from not about filling up an empty vessel. The teacher’s role is to draw out from the student an ability to focus on the sound being produced, a relaxed alertness which physically makes the playing easier and a clarity of intention which is enhanced by an understanding of the structure of the music being played. This threefold model of how people learn music is something I have always found very useful. There is first of all learning from the sound, as can be developed for example by being able to accurately reproduce a melody or rhythm which has just been heard. Some people are amazingly good at this without having any ability in music reading or music theory whatsoever. They need to be encouraged to believe that they are good musicians already; that they have the most important aspect of music learning already well developed. Secondly there is learning from the physical memory. Everyone needs to be encouraged here to practise by mindful repetition. Not repetition for the sake of repetition but repetition with awareness to create a stronger physical memory. On piano the physical memory of a piece is a very complex dance between the hands where there are thousands of very fine precise movements. Thirdly there is the mental clarity of the musical structure. This informs the clarity of the intention behind the playing. Some clear knowledge of the architecture of a piece is necessary to have a clear intention behind the sound in terms of pulse, harmonic movement, dynamics, phrasing and articulation. The teacher is a guide, a coach, a confidant, a trusted ally in the journey through this threefold way of learning. but ultimately of course you have to find your own way through. You have to forge your own relationship with the sound just as with your own body and mind. You have to forge your own understanding of the different possibilities. One of the most interesting factors here with the piano is the use of the sustaining pedal. Many pupils want to know exactly when they should use the pedal, but my view is that the teacher needs to throw the question back with the challenge to listen attentively to the sound and pedal as little or as much as is necessary to make the sound match the intention. Pianos vary so much, as do the rooms in which they live, so in a way all you can offer as a teacher are a few guiding principles and encouragement to listen more attentively. There can be no safety net of knowing exactly what you are going to do with the pedal in a particular piece because as soon as you play it on a different piano in a different room you may well need to do something different. If as a teacher you approach each lesson with the view that you can learn more than the pupil then you will not often be disappointed. It is like meditation - staying present with open heart, open mind, listening, acknowledging the presence of inner demons (both in yourself and the pupil) without either suppressing or projecting them. Awakeness, alertness and openness to experience will keep you listening and learning. And if it doesn’t work for a particular lesson because you are simply too tired or too wrapped up in your own thoughts or feelings then learn from that experience too - and be kind to yourself as well as to your pupil! The best way to develop good listening in your students is to model good listening yourself. The best way to develop better coordination in your students is for you to model good coordination yourself. The best way to develop clear intention in your students is for you to model clear intention yourself. And if you do all this then this will also be the best way for you to learn from the experience and continue to grow on your own path.

STOP ___

AND LIS-TEN AND

SEE

                    Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

It is very clear from our experience of life that different people experience the same events in very different ways. After seeing a film it is always fascinating to read a selection of people’s reviews online. I remember a film a few years ago called The Tree of Life where I found reviews expressing the full range of responses from ‘one of the most moving/outstanding/brilliant films I have ever seen’ to ‘don’t waste your time on this pretentious crap’. Ostensibly the same external artefact - in this case a film - can bring forth a huge range of human reaction and opinion. Some people are very happy to go along unquestioningly with the emotional trajectory of a film, something which is often made all the stronger by the musical score, whereas others start from a point of view of extreme scepticism about anything which they feel is trying to generate a particular emotional response. Sometimes film scores are so lavish, so intense, that they really dominate the experience. But in other films, the scoring can be quite minimal but deeply effective in creating space for the audience. I remember the amazing power of the music in the film Vera Drake in spite of the fact that it is only present for something like six minutes of a two hour film. To my mind the best films always leave space for different responses from different people, and indeed raise different questions for different people. Moving across to the world of teaching music it is not surprising then that people learn in very different ways. One of the great learning points for a teacher is that a way of explaining something to one pupil does not necessarily work for another at all. In my experience we all have ‘blind spots’, connections in the brain which don’t appear to light up just as we have areas of illumination, connections where everything seems totally clear. As teachers we need to keep on trying to open doors, open connections for different people from different angles. It is also useful as teachers to reflect ourselves on areas of life where we need other people to open connections for us. For instance I have always struggled with understanding diagrams for assembling things together. I need someone to explain the diagrams to me in a clear calm slow and non-judgmental way just as I realise others need various aspects of music theory explained. Just as the seeking for perfection bedevils so many human interactions, it creates a real challenge for music teachers. The pursuit of perfection could be described as a seductive illusion, and yet paradoxically as music teachers we have to keep up the journey, the seeking towards perfection whilst knowing that its attainment is impossible. A good aim for us to have is to nurture this awareness of paradox in our pupils. It is a very subtle balance to steer someone to see that it is worth aiming for something which is impossible to attain. The deeper lesson is that piano playing, just like life, is about the process of flow and energy, not about end-gaining a particular objective. From this sort of perspective, a pupil can really start to make their own connections between their piano playing and the rest of their life with more confidence and awareness. Responses to particular pieces of music, like films, are of course very personal. The music that I have composed relating to the Bach Flower Remedies does not aim to set out an experience which people should have of the particular Remedy but rather a journey which people are invited to take in their own way at their own speed. A few years ago we ran some Musical Remedies sessions which combined art exercises with the Flower Remedy music. The art exercises also proved to be very personal and gave people space to find out what was already present in - or just beneath - the surface of their current awareness. Just as Dr Bach intuited the connections between the way the plants grow and the way mental states arise, the music and art exercises of the Musical Remedies retreat enabled people to intuit their own connections more directly. In the Philokalia, the Desert Fathers talked repeatedly of the need for prayer to move from the mind to the heart. In contemporary mindfulness practice we reflect on the similarity between our mental, emotional and physical experience of constant change, and the fact that we don’t need to identify with any of these changes. Our deeper level of connection is with flow, not with solidity. There is ultimately in Ken Wilber’s phrase ‘no boundary’ between us and the world. In mystical language we already live and breathe ‘in Cristo’, in the universal divine energy. We live in a society where the mental dimension has been given an exaggerated significance. The power of contemporary technology adds to the tendency to strive for perfection. So many more things are possible for us now than even twenty years ago that we start to feel that this perfection is both desirable and achievable. Before we know it, this mentality then gets inside the creative acts of composition, film making, drawing and painting. The Musical Remedies sessions aimed to restore some sense of balance, to use our mental emotional and physical senses in harmony, to see more clearly what is happening in the undercurrent of thoughts which move along with us just underneath the surface, and to realise that our true identity is not with any of this at all. Certain themes keep coming back through these writings in much the same way as themes recur during pieces of music. Through all my years of teaching people on the piano, the most important recurring themes are : BREATHE LET GO STOP TRYING SO HARD BE MORE AWARE OF MENTAL TENSION BE MORE AWARE OF PHYSICAL TENSION AWARENESS - AWAKENESS

I HEAR THE MU-SIC FLOW

AND THE LAN_GUAGE_ HERE BE-

LOW AND THEY TAKE_ME_WAY BE-YOND THE

PATH I THOUGHT I UN-DER-STOOD AND O-PEN UP THE

WORLD

                    Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

I remember when I was still a teenager discovering the Duino Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke in German. There was no way that my German was up to reading his poetry and understanding it conceptually. But this poetry had an extraordinary effect on me, opening up new landscapes and new depths. Years later I remember attending an Orthodox service in Oxford for the first time. The service was all in Church Slavonic and conceptually I understood very little. Yet the overwhelming sense of the acceptance of the dark alongside the light in our experience came through the language at a much deeper non-conceptual level. More recently in my life two other experiences with languages have confirmed my view that the resonance of language communicates at different levels. At the Drubchen in Holy Isle in 2006 I had very little idea or understanding of what was going on. Continual chanting in Tibetan formed the backcloth of an intense experience of ‘re- ordering’. The whole ceremony was dedicated to the removal of obstacles both seen and unseen. It was in the middle of this chanting that I experienced my own ‘re-ordering’ and removal of obstacles. I had a sudden awareness of and connection with someone who was dying that day around 400 miles away. I found out later in the day from the lady’s daughter that the lady who had died had been talking about a special island during her last few hours. I had been granted an experience of something way beyond my understanding. But somehow the chanting in Tibetan had opened up the liminal space within which it could happen. More recently still I attended workshops on the Aramaic Lord’s Prayer and Beatitudes with Neil Douglas-Klotz. Neil is a great scholar and has done a lot of work on the Aramaic language, unravelling layers of meaning which expand the horizons of the more familiar English - or Greek - texts enormously. But for me the experience of chanting the Aramaic was and remains different from chanting in a language which I understand conceptually. The Aramaic opens up a different layer, a different field of energy, which brings the inner living content of the prayers to life in a new way. My experience of music runs parallel to these experiences of different languages. Music speaks to different layers of the psyche, and it is not necessary to understand music conceptually in order to experience its power. Indeed the opposite may be true - that too much emphasis on trying to ‘understand’ music conceptually actually inhibits the human ability to receive the deeper layer of connectedness. To some extent this is true even for the creator of the musical experience, the composer. There is a qualitative difference between mastering various musical techniques of composition and having anything to really say through the musical medium. Good composers will use the techniques they have mastered at the service of a musical vision which goes beyond what can be conceptually explained. In the case of the Bach ’48’ this is particularly relevant and explains why the famous Donald Francis Tovey analyses of the pieces can appear so dry and soulless to anyone interested in articulating their experience of the inner vision of the music. There is a considerable unanimity of experience amongst people who have repeatedly listened to certain pieces of music such as the slow movement of the Schubert String Quintet, the slow movement of Beethoven’s A minor string quartet or the sixth and final movement of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde. With works such as these music functions as a meta-language in the way that meta-physics shows people the possibilities and depth of physics. During the last fifty years - since maybe the writings of people like Fritjof Capra in the 1970s - we have become much more aware of a deep congruence between the languages of contemporary physics and mystical non- dual consciousness. If we move through life as a flow with open mind and open heart then non-dual consciousness is always present as a possibility. If we approach composing, playing, listening to music with the same openness then here too there is always the possibility of breaking through. I have been very conscious when teaching adult music classes that often what people think they want to or need to know or understand is very different from what they actually want and need at a deeper level. So many people are still put off by the world of ‘contemporary classical’ music because they don’t think that they will be able to ‘understand’ it. Yet often the breakthrough comes by persuading them to ‘stand-under’ the music, allowing the music to flow over them and let go of the ‘trying to understand’. Reflecting back myself, this was exactly my own experience with the German, Slavonic, Tibetan and Aramaic examples I have given. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy’ as Hamlet says to the philosopher Horatio in Shakespeare’s play.

I LOOK FOR OR-DER BUT THE

CHA-OS IN MY MIND

GROWS                    Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

Once as a teenager I spent two whole days tracking the use of the four instruments in the first movement of Mozart’s String Quartet in G, K387 onto squared paper. It was the sort of exercise that now could easily be done by computer, working out the exact percentages of time that the various possible combinations of instruments in the quartet play for. I remember being totally absorbed in this self-set and by most criteria utterly futile task. And I also remember a real sense of pride and well-being that emerged with the completion of the task. I suppose many people might have developed a whole career from this obsessive tendency. From archers to code breakers to computer programming geeks to cricket statisticians there is probably no limit to the human fascination with order and pattern in numbers. With ‘the 48’ there is a simple satisfaction with the fact that there are twelve notes in the chromatic scale, two modes (major and minor) and two books, making a total of exactly 48 Preludes and Fugues. Repetition of patterns are everywhere. Although we may sometimes think of the universe being chaotic and unpredictable, in fact the same mathematical pattern occurs in a myriad of forms. This is the spiral pattern based on the Golden Ratio which connects with the Fibonacci series of numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144 etc. The power of fractals, where the macrocosm mirrors the microcosm. Take a look at the link below before reading on….. It is not surprising that when it comes to being creative, human beings have also discovered the power of this particular pattern and ratio. And so it is that this pattern is hidden away in a lot of musical compositions, as in the note lengths in the sixth (unison) movement of Messiaen’s Quatuor pour le fin du temps. As people become older it seems that the need for pattern, for order, for regularity, becomes greater.Any disruption to routine, however slight, can become a great burden. It is as if we imagine that if we hold on firmly enough to what we ‘understand’ - which is order and pattern - then the business of decay, chaos and death will somehow not affect us. And yet in contrast to this the experience of anyone who has spent time meditating is very different. The mind here does NOT follow orderly patterns, will NOT be tamed into order and controlled to move along pre-set pathways. No, the mind wanders freely, and sometimes very fast, between all sorts of fragments of the past and the future. Meanwhile, the observer watching this movement continually tries to latch onto some events because they seem pleasant or desirable; tries to escape from some other events because they seem unpleasant or undesirable; and otherwise judges the content that arises as bland and boring. This internal mental chaos is the raw material of meditation, and is of course the reason why so many people claim to be ‘no good’ at meditation. They imagine that it should be about having experiences of calm and orderly beauty and simplicity like we see in the Golden Ratio in the natural world. It seems then that the human condition is forever in the midst of chaos and forever seeking order. No wonder the order and pattern of numbers are so desirable. No wonder the music of composers which express order and pattern are so popular. No wonder that lots of people remain resistant to music that they hear no pattern in. As a piano teacher I am used to many people’s fear of improvisation. The way to encourage people here is essentially to build confidence by limiting the possibilities. Thus for instance using three pitches only to improvise is a good starting point, then when people are both confident and starting to feel bored adding a fourth and then a fifth note. Structured improvisation around simple chord sequences, modes and rhythmic patterns can be taught and learnt quite easily. Totally free improvisation, however, is quite a different animal. This is indeed music making thrown into the reality of listening to what is really going on right now, however chaotic it might be. It is not often that totally free improvisation makes for a coherent listening experience, but for the players it can be the most liberating of all forms of music making. We all need to find a balance between discipline and freedom, between order and chaos. We need this to experience both the extraordinary beauty and the immense fragility of the planet that we inhabit. We also need it to connect with one another at a soul level. Music is without doubt a great medium for developing this balance between discipline and freedom, between order and chaos. Enjoy!

NO EX-PEC-

TA-TIONS

LETTING GO OF ALL THE

MEMORIES AND FANTASIES RIGHT NOW                     Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

In one of the most paradoxical of Jesus’s teachings he says that it is only by losing yourself that you find yourself. Mystics and contemplatives through the centuries have expanded on this and in our own day there are many writers, of both religious and secular persuasions, that reassert the same fundamental wisdom. It is only by loosening our attachments that we can experience real freedom. Our attachments to possessions, to achievements, to other people, to tribal loyalties (football teams?), to religious loyalties, to ethnic identity, to the whole concept of self altogether. No wonder that it is so hard to loosen all those attachments, all those things which we spend at least the first half of our lives building up. Yet it is the moments - and for most of us it is only the odd moment here and there - in which we let everything go that we do indeed find ourselves at a deeper level. We find ourselves to be part of the continuous flow of energy that we call Life, or if we are used to using mystical language, cosmic consciousness. We find that there is in Ken Wilber’s words ‘no boundary’ between ‘me’ and everything else. We find ourselves by giving up all our attachments to false or partial selves and realising that we are part of the flow. ‘Go with the flow’ as Jesus might have put it in the contemporary idiom. Even the slowest piece of music has some flow to it. Even a single note is a vibration, a frequency where something is happening very many times a second. Even the lowest note on the piano is vibrating at something like 27.5 times per second whereas as pianists we are limited to playing something like 12 notes per second at full speed. To enter into a piece of music as a performer involves a lot of letting go. There are attachments to the visual representation of the music on the page - so often in teaching I have seen people lose their listening completely because they are focussed visually on the dots on the page. There are also attachments to eh position of the hands. Again and again I observe people arriving late on the ‘next’ phrase of music because one or both hands have been left behind, still holding on to something which has gone. more subtly than these examples are attachments to an idea of what the piece should sound like, maybe a memory of a particular recording. There are also attachments to the emotional resonances associated with a particular piece at a particular point in our personal history. (For me, the incredible power of the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony is made even stronger by the personal memory of listening to it on the radio as a teenager at the exact moment when my grandmother suffered a stroke in the next room. ) Only by letting go of all these various attachments will we open up the possibility of experiencing the flow of the music as it really is right now. When we go to a concert to listen there are also many attachments to let go of. Attachment to our expectations, to our memories of how we have heard this music before, to our projections about this particular performer, to how comfortable we are in our seat, to how organised we are about getting home afterwards. Only by letting go of all these will we open up the possibility of experiencing the flow of the music as it really is right now. There is no doubt in my experience that the quality of presence in the performers is the key thing which affects the quality of presence in the audience. When you have been at a concert with this sense of presence you will be amazed how short it all seemed, as if you had been transported beyond time and space. The language of mystical experience comes alive in such a musical experience even for people who have no background of reading mystical writers or any interest in religion. As a performer to an audience presence is the quality that you need above all else. However technically good a performance is it will not come alive to the audience if the performers are in effect playing from ‘memory’ rather than from presence. As a teacher presence is also the most valuable quality. Who are the teachers in your life, in any field, who have really received your attention and admiration? Which are the musical performances in your life that stand out the most? What is the thread that links these stand-out experiences together?

TO FIND A DEEP TRUE

CLARITY____

JUST TRUST THE SOUND       Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

There is a strong need in many people to intensify their experience of life, what we might call ‘ordinary’ or ‘mundane’ life. Ordinary life does not seem to be enough to satisfy the inner seeking for a more authentic experience. Often in the contemporary world this can lead people into destructive patterns of addiction, and there is general agreement that addiction to alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, video games or internet pornography are not positive states for anyone to be in. There is a very fine line though between the intention which leads to these addictions and that which leads to such apparently more acceptable things as endurance sports, religious rituals, caving, mountaineering - or maybe even playing PokemonGo! If the intention is to change the experience which is here-and-now into something which is somehow more intense, more valuable, more challenging, more worthy then there is always going to be an element of delusion, an element of trying to escape from what is actually happening. This seems to be at the heart of the dilemma of being human. We can see that on one level everything is present, here-and-now - and that all we need to do is to stop trying to change our experience; in other words accept our experience as it is. On the other hand we also know that on another level there is something which doesn’t feel right enough, deep enough or authentic enough about our present here-and-now experience. This is the part of the mental process that develops the intention to find an activity, an area or arena of action, where we might find what we feel is lacking. It is a common saying that there is a thin line between genius and madness. What I am suggesting here is an extension of this - there is a thin line between what are thought of as wholesome and unwholesome addictions and we can always have a sense of ‘there but for the grace of God…..’ Looking at the experience of playing the piano from this wider perspective we come to see the significance of our intention. Assuming we have practised well, if the intention is clear in our mind to create a particular balance of sound then the combination of our fingers and the instrument itself will produce that sound. If our intention is clear to convey a particular emotional resonance our fingers will find the touch needed to achieve that. If our intention is to convey emotional neutrality then our fingers will find the touch needed to achieve that. If our intention is to be open and receptive to what the music wants to reveal itself then that CAN happen - if we can get our ‘small selves’ or ‘ego selves’ out of the way and allow space for the bigger picture to emerge to reveal itself to the listener. The paradox is that the harder we ’try’ the more difficult it is to achieve. In teaching piano I have seen this time and time again - the one thing which makes more difference than anything else is to steer people away from the intention of trying too hard. Relax the mind, relax the intention, have a sense of receiving the sound for the first time and being open as to where it takes you. As a performer I experienced this very clearly once when playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. The performance didn’t start at all to my satisfaction and for the first few minutes I was most definitely trying too hard. Suddenly there was a moment where I consciously let go of the trying and realised I could simply receive the music afresh. The result was a really special performance which the audience responded to very positively. To some people I’m sure this must sound improbably woolly and imprecise. But nothing I am saying here denies the necessity of a lot of practical repetition in the learning phase. It is this repetition which actually constitutes the physical mapping, the coordination of the two hands which will make the playing of the particular piece possible. The paradox of intention in playing the piano is not essentially different from the paradox of living in the human condition. To live happily we have to do a lot of disciplined work on our inner motivation before we can find a deeper sense of freedom, a freedom which in a sense only emerges when we throw the crutches away. At this point of throwing away, as pianists we realise that we don’t need to impose ‘our’ intention on the music at all. We become transmitters of the living language of music which we can trust to work at a deeper level of perception.

I LOVE THE

SIM-PLE

IT SPEAKS TO ME       Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject)

The vast majority of music in the Western world, both classical and popular, is created out of the same bank of twelve different notes, the notes of the chromatic scale which give us the root notes of the twelve major and minor keys. It often seems extraordinary how so many different pieces of music have been created out of the same twelve notes. Different in terms of all the musical parameters such as tempo, dynamic, articulation, rhythm, melodic shape, harmonic structure, instrumental colour and density of texture. And also different in terms of emotional resonance. Why do some pieces created out of these twelve notes make people cry? Why do some make people laugh? What is that makes some pieces memorable on one hearing and others not on ten? What is it that gives music the power to shape people’s consciousness, to raise the spirits, to inflame the passions, to still the mind? To show people how the same group of notes can produce very different resonances I often get beginners on the piano working by improvising with a simple pentatonic scale. Try this yourself - taking the notes C - D - E - G -A in the right hand and the popular chord sequence C (I), Am (VI), F (IV), G (V) in the left hand. Listen to the sound world and the emotional resonance while you improvise. If you are not confident enough to play two different hands together like this, find a friend and try together! If the left hand creates some form of rhythmic structure, the right hand will feel freer to improvise on the top. Now, taking the SAME five notes in the right hand, move the A an octave lower so that your hands now over the notes A - C - D - E - G. Move the pattern in the left hand so that you play the chords Am (I), F (VI), Dm (IV) and E (V). Improvise again and listen to how the emotional resonance has changed. This is all to do with a change of ‘centre note’ from C to A and the consequent change of feel from major to minor mode. Different modes are different ways of ordering the same group of notes so that the ‘centre’ note changes. This in turn creates a different pattern of tones and semitones, and this registers on our ears as creating a different emotional resonance. If we take the notes of the C major scale but start on the note E then we have a mode where there is a semitone at the beginning. This mode, called Phrygian, is used a lot in Flamenco music and many people will hear something Spanish sounding about this mode without knowing why. If in contrast we take the same notes starting on F, then we have a mode with a sharpened 4th note : F, G, A, B. (A very different sound and feel from the more normal F - G - A - B flat) This mode will resonate with people who know the Bach cantata Es its genug and the Berg Violin Concerto where it is quoted. Gabriel Faure’s song Lydia also uses this mode very appropriately as the name of the mode is the Lydian. Generally speaking, however, improvising in this mode will create more of a modern jazz resonance than a classical resonance - the sharpened fourth, especially when combined with a major seventh chord (e.g. F - A - C - E) creates a harmony which is full of dissonance but which sounds emotionally very rich. Obviously when it comes to composing or songwriting an understanding of different modes and different harmonies broadens the emotional palette. However, many emotionally powerful pieces of music use amazingly simple material. The simple descending scale that makes the theme in the famous Pas de Deux from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. The simple repeated arpeggios patterns at the beginning of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. The simple chord progression of the opening to Handel’s Zadok the Priest or Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. The reason certain pieces of music are played over and over again has to be because people respond emotionally to them. Schoenberg really believed that by the twenty-first century we would be going round whistling twelve-tone or atonal music. We are not. This is not to say that there is not an enormous emotional power in atonal music, but it is to say that for most people the simple diatonic scales and harmonies have a more direct emotional impact. (And sadly very few people seem to whistle any more anyway…..) The emotional resonance of the different Bach Preludes and Fugues takes time to reveal itself. This is not music which gives up its secrets on one hearing but rather rewards the player or listener who stays with it for a long time. What I have been personally rewarded with here is a deep sense of emotional connection between particular Preludes and Fugues and particular Bach Flower Remedies. It has and continues to be a fascinating and intriguing journey.

O-PEN  THE DOOR

THE SE-CRET OF THE MIND

THE POR-TAL OF THE HEART

AND THERE IN-SIDE    IS THE

GATE            TO   HEAVEN                    Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject!

To some people there is a natural connection between mathematical and musical ability; to others maths and music seem to occupy very different parts of the brain. To someone who struggles with music theory but has an ear that can take a song in at one hearing and reproduce it note for note the maths will probably seem quite irrelevant. But to a composer fascinated by numbers the riches of mathematics are as infinite as the series of prime or Fibonnaci numbers.

I remember being astonished when I suddenly realised in the sixth movement of Messiaen’s great Quartet for the End of Time – the unison movement – that the apparently random collection of note lengths were actually composed and presented as a set of perfect palindromes. 3 + 5 + 8 + 5 + 3,  4 + 3 + 7 + 3 + 4, 2 + 2 + 3 + 5 + 3 + 2 + 2 and so on. In a totally different context, I remember the excitement of understanding that the well known West African bell pattern, which can be symbolised * - * - ** -* -* -*  actually has the beat or pulse on every third note  *--*--*--*--. When you hear these two together, there is this wonderful sense of two different metres being heard simultaneously even though the whole pattern can be understood easily enough in Western terms as a repeating pattern of twelve fast semiquavers. Try it for yourself and see – tap the bell pattern with your right hand on right knee, and the pulse with left hand on left knee. It’s fun!

For explaining the real difference between 3/4 and 6/8 time – which is something a lot of amateur students of music find quite confusing – there is no better example than the opening of the song America from Bernstein’s Westside Story. One bar in 6/8 with 2 beats followed by one bar in 3/4 with three beats. Same duration, but totally different feel. It’s always a great feeling as a teacher when you see someone suddenly understanding this directly. This is not paper knowledge, but real musical knowledge.

Many mathematicians through the ages have devoted years and years of their lives to discovering proofs which only a tiny number of people in the world understand., But for the wider population, surely the more important thing than proof is fascination. And one of the groups of people most fascinated by numbers are composers. This was as true in the medieval world as it is in the contemporary world. It is as true in the world of Indian music as it is in the West. The link between pattern in number and pattern in sound is a deep one in the human experience. Maybe it is a way of connecting with our own physical reality, the changing pulse rate of our material existence.

EACH NOTE IS FLOW-ING

When beginning on the path of meditation, the propensity of the mind to move rapidly around in a game of free association can seem like a real drawback. Indeed it is enough to put many people off - ‘I tried meditating once but I was no good at it’ . When it comes to embarking on a creative project, however, this same propensity of the mind to free-associate is a vital and positive part of the energy to be harnessed. This project began from a series of 48 Post-it notes placed on a large white sheet in four colour-coded groups of twelve. Each Post-it note then became a vehicle for the free association of ideas around certain central themes. Similarly with the composition process - the initial spark comes from the free-associating mind, not the rationally weighing and sifting mind that comes in later. Music is an amazing activity for engaging the right and left sides of the brain together. Nowhere is this clearer than in thinking about pulse and rhythm. The feel of the pulse of a piece of music does not lie in the 1 2 3 but in the spaces in between. It is essential to feel a sense of both accent and duration. Without those, no amount of counting beats will produce music with any inner rhythm. When you hear music that speaks, that communicates emotion, that moves you, this experience is happening in real time which is flowing time which is what mystics call the eternal now. The music moves from one beat to the next to the next to the next without losing connection. The performer is present, the listener is present. We are all learning to hear the spaces just as when we feel good when we stand by running water it is because at some level of our being we are experiencing a heightened consciousness of the spaces between things. In what we often take to be ‘normal’ consciousness we experience ‘reality’ as being composed of a set of discrete objects with us viewing them or listening to them as an independent observer. With everything unfolding along a clear linear time line. With heightened consciousness, however, we experience ‘reality’ more closely to how physicists now understand the world to be. If we find it helpful we can call this a mystical consciousness, but it is definitely something that we can break into at any moment from any situation. When this breaking into a more universal consciousness takes place through playing or listening to music it is because the mind is free to experience what is really happening - which is constant change. The sound of a note on the piano is not a steady state but a constant flux changing in dynamic and colour. The decay in the sound is a given from the nature of the instrument itself. Pulse has to be steady to create space in which the music can come to life. This is surely what Chopin meant when he told his pupils that the left hand must remain regular like a metronome while the right hand should sound completely improvised. This is how jazz works too - the simultaneity of order and freedom, discipline and chaos, left and right brain working together. The energy of mental free-association being harnessed to a framework of stability.

HERE IS THE

ONE HERE IS THE    

TWO

MAP THEM TO-

GE-THER AND SEE WHERE THEY

TAKE YOU

Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

I have long been intrigued and excited about the possibilities of mapping one set of paradigms onto another apparently totally different set of paradigms. The Bach to Bach project, mapping the Bach Flower Remedies onto the Bach Preludes and Fugues is in this sense a natural exploration to make. There are all sorts of connections between things, but we have to ‘tune in’ in order to hear them. The Bach to Bach connection, however, did not come from a strategy, an idea or even a vision. It emerged from an experience of musical energy. While practising the Prelude and Fugue in C minor from Book 1 of Das Wohltempierte Clavier I suddenly felt the Impatiens quality of the energy. I instinctively and intuitively went to the very different Prelude in E flat minor from book 1 and immediately felt the change of energy to Clematis. These were, as we have already seen, the first two of the Flower Remedies to be discovered by Dr Edward Bach, and so it is perhaps not surprising that these were the first two of my Bach to Bach connections to reveal themselves It has always seemed very simplistic - and indeed dangerous - for any one religion or ideology, one way of seeing and understanding reality, to claim a monopoly. And yet that is where so much of our Western thinking seems to remain, whatever the religious, scientific or political flavour. Sadly in the music world also it is still quite commonplace for musicians of one genre to have little or no regard for musicians of quite different genres. There are still many classically trained musicians who do not explore the popular music world at all and who always remain really scared of improvising. There are many excellent young musicians in the pop and jazz worlds who have no interest in exploring the world of classical music, and many who are scared of the discipline needed to learn to read traditional music notation. In both directions this narrowness is sad because it comes from a closing down rather than an opening out of possibilities. The intention behind mapping is to counter the prevalence of either/or thinking and open to the both/and possibilities. The serious application of traditional Eastern both/and logic to modern Western either/or dilemmas. But serious does not mean that it is not fun! The mapping of quantum physics onto Dionysius the Areopagite’s thinking about orders of angels creates spaciousness in the mind - about the deep relevance of both to understanding the ever-changing but eternally-the-same reality. Richard Rohr’s mapping of the Enneagram onto the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer creates spaciousness for the prayer to resonate differently for different personality Types. Tsultrim Allione’s mapping of the ancient Tibetan practice of Chod onto the Western psyche’s need to do real work with the Shadow is really powerful and transformational. Real work which could yet prove to be of enormous importance in converting the catastrophic urge of humanity to self-destruct. In the musical world mapping like this has been around a long while, some examples much more successful than others. Think of the central section of Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia with its amazing journey through Western music on the back of Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt, Mahler’s song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn which he used in his second Symphony. Think of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass with the mapping of both rock and blues numbers and atonal orchestral interludes onto a traditional Catholic Mass. Think of the extraordinary mapping of sexual and spiritual energies onto a simple chord with harmonics in Stockhausen’s Stimmung. These are inspirational examples of what is possible. Bach to Bach, then, is an example of a way of thinking to inspire you to explore in your own way. Receive, explore, transform. See where it leads you. See what connections you can find. If ultimately we are all connected, then there must be m. I recently attended an evening with performance poet Ian MacMillan. Taking a few randomly chosen words and phrases from members of the audience, Ian improvised a magnificently surreal story in the form of rhyming couplets. Unseen and unimagined connections brought to life.

DO NOT

HIDE I AM    

CO-MING TO FIND YOU AND

TURN YOUR EN-ER-GY TO-

PRE-SENCE-

Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

In any form of inner growth exploration there is a shocking realisation that we are our own worst enemies. So often what prevents us from moving forwards is not primarily to do with other people or external circumstances at all but rather the demons in our own heads. Most of us are effectively more able to sabotage our best intentions and aspirations than anyone else is. There is a lot of power locked into the inner demons of self criticism, self limitation and self aggrandisement. Somehow we all need to find ways of working to convert this energy for more positive development. Otherwise what tends to happen is either suppression or projection. We either suppress the demons to the extent that we refuse to acknowledge their existence or else we project them outwards in a never-ending stream of scapegoating other people or institutions and externalising both blame and responsibility. This is vital work in playing and teaching the piano because the main obstacle to better playing is always a combination of inner demons. Fear of a difficult passage to come can often cause mistakes to happen in an easier passage beforehand. Why? Because as soon as you lose presence because of something in the future you are playing on autopilot. And although playing on autopilot may go well for a while it does not have the real intelligence to deal with the ever-changing circumstances of the actual present moment. Think of it like this - if you are walking along a flat pavement and there are few people around and you know exactly where you are going you will be fine on autopilot unless something really unexpected happens. But if you are walking in hills and there’s a swirling mist and you don’t know your bearings you will need to be much more acutely present in order to look after yourself and survive. Similarly on the piano. You can almost certainly play easy familiar pieces on autopilot but if you do so you are not training yourself to develop strategies for being more present when you are tackling something more demanding. It is not good ‘practice’. Good practice in playing the piano comes down to the same as good practice in walking, cooking, reading, conversing with friends or even using the computer - mindfulness and presence. But what about the demons? Well, the demons need to become part of our practice too. Sometimes in giving a lesson on the piano it is possible to point out a demon to someone - maybe a tense wrist, a locked jaw, a constriction of breath, an abiding sense of fear, an over excitement, an unnecessary intensity, an exaggerated detachment, a distracted mind- and almost immediately the person is able to understand what they need to do. At other times it can seem impossible to get through. I once taught someone whose response to any pointing out of ‘demons’ whatsoever was to start the piece all over again from the beginning and make all the same errors as before in an even more determined way. I was aware then that I lacked strategies to help this person break through this impasse, and indeed I think that much of my journey to find ways to break through has come from these sorts of experience. These reflections are not about prescribing solutions but about opening horizons so the following selection of journeys of exploration is for you to follow up as you will. Some journeys will be right for some people and not for others. To be more precise, some journeys will be right at this moment for some people. If something resonates with you in this way then follow it up. If something does not resonate then leave it alone. Preferably in a quiet way which doesn’t make value judgments and which leaves the way open to return at a later date. Enneagram Karen Webb, Helen Palmer, Richard Rohr, Sandra Maitri, Beatrice Chestnut Five Rhythms Gabrielle Roth Aramaic language Neil Douglas-Klotz Tibetan Buddhism Pema Chodreon, Tsultrim Allione Apophatic spirituality Richard Rohr, Thomas Merton In the end everything comes down to mindfulness. Know what is happening while it is happening whatever it is. Applying this to your piano playing makes more difference than anything else. A change in intention which comes from a change in presence makes a change in the sound. And remember - the music is always in the sound, not the dots on the page!

AND SO TO FIND A /

PIECE THAT IS A CHALLENGE/   

ONE THAT'S RE-A-LIS-TIC

TAKE YOUR TIME AND LET THE/

MU-SIC TAKE YOU ON A/

JOUR-NEY THROUGH THE YEARS AND/

YOU WILL FIND GREAT_/JOY

Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

There is such a huge repertoire of music for the piano that it is important to be realistic about what you decide to tackle. If you are determined to learn all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas then you are not going to have much time for anything else in life unless you have a really exceptional talent. On the other hand if you pick a few of the sonatas out - maybe with the help of a teacher or musical mentor - and stay with them for a long enough while - then you are being realistic. Idealism may have its place in the grand scheme of things but in the area of choosing repertoire realism is more likely to result in a joyful and fulfilling experience. The great piano works of the Western tradition continue to bring joy and insight throughout life. If you have learnt Beethoven’s Op 110 as a teenager - as I did - then re-visiting it in later decades brings new joy and new insight because the whole experience of life has grown deeper as well as broader. On the other hand some other pieces - like for example the Chopin Fantaise-Impromptu - seem to be young person’s pieces and you may be disappointed when re-visiting them with the growing insight of later decades. The first set of Bach’s Preludes and Fugues was written by a composer in his thirties; the second set by a composer in his fifties. And it is true that whilst I learnt a number of the pieces from Book 1 when I was younger it was only in my fifties that I invested much time in Book 2. is this a coincidence? Or another example of discovering emotional resonance? Of course many great piano composers did not live beyond their thirties - Mozart, Chopin, Schubert. yet there are works by all of them that seem beyond the limitations of time or age and that can be returned to again and again during a lifetime of playing. I have re-visited such pieces as Mozart’s Rondo in A minor, K511, Chopin’s Ballade in G minor, and Schubert’s Impromptu in G flat at frequent intervals during forty years and they never fail to reveal new depths and insights. There are other pieces that I feel I have re-visited with the wrong intention, and the inevitable result is more frustration. By wrong intention, I mean the tendency to want to master, to conquer, to capture as another trophy of success. Perhaps the thing to learn from these is that failure to get on top of a piece - and I am thinking particularly here of pieces that I really wish I had the skill to play like Rachmaninov’s Prelude in B flat and Albeniz’s El Polo - reveals a lot about the inner working of the mind. The main reasons for not mastering a piece I can now recognise as : Not being realistic about the complexity of coordination required Not being realistic about the amount of time necessary to invest Wanting too much to ‘get to the end’ Lack of patience Not staying sufficiently focused Being realistic does mot mean backing out of setting yourself a challenge. It means selecting a challenge which engages you and where you can see gradual progress. A challenge which you can return to again and again at different stages of life. A challenge which you can enjoy as process rather than seeking to complete. The piano repertoire is vast. you will get most reward by selecting a few pieces that really speak to you and returning to them again and again.

I FEEL THE PULSE ANDTHE RHY-THM

PLAY-ING THIS TUNE__   

I THINK THIS REAL-LY IS QUITE EA-SY

(Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

I have always been fascinated by numbers. When I was a child I would walk up and down suburban streets checking all the house numbers, intrigued by the absence of number 13s, and again by one particular street where there were several even numbers missing as well. Maybe it was just a mistake - I never got to the bottom of this! Later on I was fascinated by other series of numbers - the perfect numbers 6, 28, 496 etc.; the Fibonacci numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 etc. ; the perfect cube numbers 1,8,27,64 etc. Most of all, I was fascinated by the numbers which I still don’t really understand like e and i, the imaginary square root of minus 1. Many composers have been fascinated by numbers too, and indeed patterns based on the Fibonacci numbers can be found in many pieces of music. But of course some numbers are more common in music than others - the 5 notes of the pentatonic scale, the 6 notes of the whole tone scale, the 7 notes of the diatonic scale, the 12 notes of the chromatic scale. The 2 beats in a bar of duple time, the 3 beats of the waltz and minuet, the 4 beats of rock music, the 5 beats to a bar of sections of famous pieces like Mussorgsky’s Pictures from an Exhibition, Tchaikovsky’s Pathetique Symphony - and of course the Dave Brubeck hit Take Five. Being musical, however, is nothing to do with counting beats. Often, counting gets completely in the way of listening. It can be very confusing having an amateur conductor say 1 - 2 - 3 -GO rather than clearly signalling where the first beat of the bar actually is. A common mistake amongst pianists who are over fond of counting beats is that when the music comes to a rest the counting will speed up. It is as if people simply cannot believe that the pulse needs to remain steady during a silence. The pulse of a piece of music needs to be internally heard and felt. If the ‘counting’ part of the brain dominates over the ‘listening’ part of the brain the pulse will almost inevitably speed up and the flow of the music will be disturbed. Counting needs to happen in a sort of different dimension so that the awareness of the pulse is in the foreground and the awareness of counting is in the background. This is why a good conductor does not count a group in but rather gives a clear indication of the pulse. Before you start playing a piece on the piano, find the pulse, feel the pulse of the music by playing a couple of bars from somewhere later in the piece as an imaginary soundtrack in your head. This will establish the pulse clearly in your conscious awareness. If you are playing a rhythmically complex piece you will also need to feel clearly the divisions of each pulse and be able to switch your awareness from dividing the pulses into two to dividing the pulses into three. Regular work on this away from the piano is highly recommended. You do not need an instruments for this other than your own body which is always with you - so there are no excuses for not practising! Tap slow pulse with RH, then with this established tap 2 to a beat with the LH for a few beats, then switch to 3 to a beat. Reverse the hands. Tap the slow pulse with the LH and the divided pulse with the RH. Tap the divided into 2 pulse with the RH for 4 beats, then the divided into 3 pulse with the LH for 4 beats. Tap the two divided pulses together, 2 in the LH and 3 in the RH Tap the divided pulses together, 2 in the LH and 3 in the RH Work on this for a few minutes each day, and gradually your rhythmic coordination at the piano will improve considerably.

SEE YOUR DE-MONS CLEARLY

WITH YOUR EYES AND HEART   

AND SEE THEM CHANGE

IN-TO YOUR FRIENDS

Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

To many of us, demons are seen as things to fight and destroy. Much of the Western spiritual tradition has been interpreted along this way of thinking with images such as that of St George killing the dragon. We might also think of the long history of ascetical attitudes towards sexuality. But to many others in the contemporary Western world demons are probably seen as unreal and not worthy of our attention. But it is not difficult for all of us to see many things wrong with the world around us so let us for the sake of this exploration acknowledge the reality of demons. There are external demons as manifested in the corruption of institutions as varied as multinational companies, political parties and churches. There are inner demons which are so powerful that an increasing number of people are self-harming or developing addictions. Our media, and perhaps especially our social media, is full of people writing (often ranting) about things which need to be changed. Whatever your view on anything it is really not difficult to find someone who passionately thinks the polar opposite. And so we inhabit a somewhat schizophrenic society where there is a ‘war’ on terror, a ‘war’ on drugs, a ‘war’ on poverty even while policies have been pursued for many years by different governments which have made us collectively more and more hooked into greed, anxiety and delusion. There IS an alternative. In the West ideas of the shadow and the unconscious have been famously explored by Carl Jung and Aldous Huxley among others. But I want to focus here on the wisdom traditions of Tibet. Here we see a path where we realise that we actually need to make friends with our demons, that all the demons which we imagine to be external and solid are in reality internal and fluid. By making friends with our inner demons we can experience their transformation into our helpers or allies. The shadow side, the dark side of our inner experience, is there for a reason. We need to experience the shadow, the darkness, because it alone contains the potential energy of transformation. This Tibetan wisdom tradition has been beautifully and movingly translated into a form accessible by modern Westerners by Tsultrim Allione whose work I highly recommend. But in our own tradition, the temptations of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew (4.6) also show clearly this necessity of befriending and transforming our inner demons, not fighting them in the external world. Turn stones into bread In modern terms.......Be successful now. Impress others. Do something which is relevant. Save the world - right now! OR..... see the need to transform/dissolve the internal solidity of the stones (hard-heartedness) with the bread (fluidity) of breathing and compassion. Throw yourself off the mountain and I will catch you In modern terms ..........Play righteousness games. Pretend that you have some special insight which others don’t. OR...... test the inner reality of our mind’s content, not the external authority. Bow down before me and I will give you everything you want In modern terms.......... Appease the systems of this world. Go along with what is needed to get on in the ‘real’ world and you will be rewarded. OR..... Don’t bow down before any external authority but trust the transformation to take place internally not externally. When we teach the piano we soon become aware of the reality of inner demons. There are firstly our own demons - of self-doubt, self- denial, self-glory, self-promotion, self-contempt. All need to be acknowledged and transformed into allies which help us communicate more clearly and honestly. Then there are the demons we become aware of in our pupils. It is very rarely a physical difficulty that prevents someone progressing further on the piano; much more often it is a mental tightening which leads to a physical tightening which then creates a perceived physical difficulty. Pupils’ inner demons are of course much the same as our own. Self-doubt is very common, especially when playing in front of someone else. There are many exercises which will help a pupil become more grounded in their body and less likely to spin off into self doubt - feeling the weight of their feet on the ground, feeling the breath coming from the diaphragm, hunching and releasing the shoulders, slowly moving the neck from side to side and forwards and backwards. But the first step is to make ‘friends’ with the fact that the self-doubt is present. It is just a perfectly normal part of human experience, not something to eliminate but something to get to know. Self-confidence can also sometimes be a mask for fear of anything new. I have taught teenage boys who can play certain pieces so brilliantly and are acclaimed as outstanding by their peer group but who are quite terrified of trying anything new or different in case a similar level of success is not forthcoming. Again, this ‘demon’ has to be befriended as a normal part of youthful (especially male) experience. Another demon that manifests in pupils is that of self-denial. The sort of pupil who may work through grade after grade of music examinations to please their parents and teacher and who never question their own relationship with the process. This is a hard demon for a teacher to see because it may appear externally that all is progressing really well and the teacher is being praised as well as the pupil. But the goal in teaching can always be something much wider and deeper than that of attaining external achievements - and it is clear to me after more than thirty years of teaching piano that everyone knows this at some level! The real joy and inner transformation that can be found from playing the piano is not something that can be taught in terms of external benchmarks but it is something which a good teacher can nurture. Think of it as planting seeds - some of them will flourish and grow into plants in their own right. The goal for the teacher can be like that for the parent - to be there when needed, but to avoid getting in the way when self-knowledge is developing.

FEEL EV-ERY NOTE YOU

PLAY AS EN-ER-GY THAT   

IMOVES YOU FOR-WARD IN YOUR

JOUR-NEY TO-WARD THE

LIGHT

Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

At its worst teaching piano can seem like an endlessly frustrating attempt to persuade someone else to do something which they really don’t want to do. But at its best it can seem like guiding someone on a creative journey which opens them up to deeper layers of wisdom and understanding. Most of the time, of course, it is somewhere in between these two extremes, but it is good to have a clear idea of where you are aiming. For many years I had a real block about the word ‘technique’ when applied to the piano and piano teaching. It seemed to suggest that you could only lean the piano by mastering a whole series of physical coordination exercises. There seemed to be no room for ‘feeling’ the music, communicating the deeper level of what the music had to offer. Now I understand things rather differently. I see technique as encompassing all the different parameters of music and developing one’s technique as an ongoing process throughout life. The most important principle of developing technique is what I call being present with the sound. If you are not hearing the sound internally you will not produce it externally. If you are playing notes mechanically with your mind wandering through shopping lists or football scores then you are not present with the sound, you are not developing your technique. On the other hand if you spend five minutes really focussed on the sound of each note in a simple scale then you will be developing your technique considerably. You will learn to recognise how intention precedes sound, how sound decays on the piano, how you need to play in terms of touch and speed of depression of the keys in order to connect the sounds one to another, how you need to generate a steady flow in your intention of the sound, how music comes from the flow between sounds rather than from discrete separate notes. All too often I have heard pupils - especially adult pupils - say that they can’t think about ‘expression’ (by which they really mean articulation, phrasing, dynamics, voicing of chords etc. etc.)until they have got the notes right. Sadly I can only conclude that they have been ‘taught’ this principle at some point. It does not work. You cannot develop a musical technique unless you have a musical intention. A musical intention does not mean ‘getting the notes right’ but ‘hearing and producing the right sound’. The ‘right’ sound here means the sound which matches your intention of the sound. It will be produced by a combination of an alert listening presence and a relaxed sensitive touch. The second important principle in developing your technique has to do with pulse. Practise feeling the pulse of the music that you are about to play - in silence. If the pulse is slow can you feel that pulse subdividing into two.....into three......into four? Can you feel the subdivisions changing from twos to threes to fours and back again without changing or losing the fundamental pulse? Five minutes in silence practising in this way will do more for developing your technique than hours of trying to get all the right notes. Apply what you have done in silence to practising scales. Play a scale for two octaves subdividing the pulse into twos, then for three octaves subdividing into threes. then for four octaves subdividing into fours. Then return back to threes and finally back to twos. Feel the basic pulse continuing beyond the final sound. This work will establish a way of thinking, a way of listening that will change your experience of playing music from ‘solid’ dots to ‘flowing’ sound. If we put these two principles together we can understand that developing technique is about being continually present to something which is continually changing. Going with the flow in a way which is really alive and life-affirming. And beyond that? Well I think that music points us in the direction of silence. The silence of contemplation, the silence that cannot be bound by language, not even the language of music. In this sense, then, teaching the piano can be seen as an invitation to contemplation, an invitation to use ‘doing’ as a vehicle to find a greater sense of ‘being’, and invitation to move out from the sickness of solidity of the ‘Ego-self’ towards the flowing unity of the ‘Deep-Self’.

HEAD AND HEART AND

COU-RAGE?   

AL-REA-DY HAVE THEM1

Try speaking this in the rhythm of the opening of the Fugue subject

Certainly through the first half of life most of us spend a considerable amount of energy and effort looking for answers to our inevitable questions. The natural curiosity as to why I am the way I am, how I fit into my family, how I fit into the society around me, how I can earn a living, what do I really believe in, what are the most important values to uphold, etc. For many people the search for answers dominates the whole of life. For others the idea that there really is a ‘right’ way to see the world, to understand history, to understand science, to understand religion, to understand one’s own nation, results in a set of views which can be endlessly pitted against other people’s differing sets of views. We still have either/or discussions and debates presented as creationism v. evolution, science v. religion, male v. female, East v. West, capitalism v. communism, Christianity v. Islam, Catholic v. Protestant, gay v. straight, Harry Potter v. Voldemort. Humans have always looked to people who will lead them, tell them what to do, what they should believe etc. etc. People like to have leaders so that can know that they are on the right track, that they are on the right side, that they are safe, that all will be well. And so it is not really surprising that the visionary insights and teachings of both Jesus and the Buddha were turned into religions. But it is worth spelling this out very carefully : Jesus did NOT come into the world to found a new religion. The Buddha did NOT come into the world to found a new religion. The creation of religions belongs essentially to the ‘old’ way of understanding which the great wisdom teachers came to point the way beyond. The ‘new’ way of understanding is always a new experience. Not a new religion, not a new school, not a new method, not a new road-map but a new experience. New experience is only possible from being present - and so it is not surprising that the heart of the message of all the great wisdom teachers is the same truth - let go of all attachment to a separate identity and live your life fully in the here-and-now. Presence which we can call simply the present. But most of us drift through life like the schoolchild sitting patiently and expectantly in their seat when told by their new teacher to ‘wait there for the present’. As we get older we gradually become more and more cynical and unsure that the present really exists at all. The reality - that the Kingdom of God is present here and now in all its fullness, that Buddha-mind is realisable here and now in this moment - is presented very clearly by the great wisdom teachers. It is not the hidden teaching that religious establishments and hierarchies have tried to make it. And so once again to playing and teaching the piano. Many people are searching, searching, searching for answers. The best guide to piano technique, the best way of improving my sight reading, the best was of learning to improvise, the best pieces for me to learn, the easiest way to memorise pieces, how to play like Oscar Peterson, the best way to see groups of notes as chords etc. etc. There is a strong belief in most people that there are real answers to all these questions somewhere ‘out there’, and that the job of learning is to find out those answers. Or even that the job of the teacher is to provide them! I think the journey of learning the piano is like setting out on the Yellow Brick Road in the land of OZ to find the Wizard who will give you your brain, your heart, your courage. There comes a point on the journey where you are are confronted with the reality - you already have these with you, you are using them all already, there is NO great Wizard out there to give you an infallible answer to your questions. What there is is infinitely more amazing and empowering - the realisation that you are fundamentally your own best teacher. it is a hard thing for a piano teacher to say of course because it puts them out of a job, but the reality is that you are your own best teacher. A good teacher can be a guide on the journey, a sounding board, someone to challenge assumptions and preconceptions, an inspiration to keep going on the journey, a counsellor in times of difficulty and despair. But a good teacher does not need to come up with answers to every question. Be discerning about who you ask to teach you. Be honest about what you are really looking for. And enjoy the music!