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... for anyone frustrated by the lack of spontaneity in daily life. An introduction to the Alexander Technique through activities.
About the Book . Excerpt . Reviews . The Authors
Curiosity Recaptured: Exploring Ways We Think and Move
Excerpt
Grabbing the Bird by the Tale
My own life-long interest in music was sown in me by my mother, who could play on the piano any melody she heard, and by my father who introduced me to the penny whistle as soon as I could hold one. Musical curiosity pushed me in my mother's direction and I discovered very early how to play tunes "by ear" on the piano as well as on the penny-whistle.
In the window of the local music shop was a wooden recorder which I coveted but could never afford (it would have cost six months' pocket money). It seemed to me, at age ten, the most superior form of penny whistle. Not many months later, in June of 1940, opportunity knocked. By this time, however, the recorder had taken second place in my affections to a wooden fife.
Believing invasion to be imminent, the British Government initiated a scheme to evacuate children to the Dominions. Enrollment lasted for a brief three weeks, during which time my parents arranged for me to live with my aunt in South Africa. Prior to my departure, I did the rounds of my home-town relations collecting pocket money for the journey. I concealed enough of this from my parents to purchase the much-coveted fife. I remember sitting on my bed, trying to elicit a tune from it and pretending it was just one of my penny whistles. On the ship to South Africa with three hundred other children we would gather every evening for a sing-song which I would accompany on the fife or whistle when appropriate. By the time we arrived in Cape Town I was able to play both with equal facility. As we had cases of measles on board, we were kept in quarantine at the Governor General's House, Westbrook. During this period, the Municipal Cape Town Orchestra played for us. During the intermission I spoke to the youngest member of the flute section, a 21 year old Englishman, David Sandeman. "I play the flute too," was my opening line. He asked me to show him my instrument--very different from his--and invited me to visit him when I settled with my aunt and uncle.
After my first visit and lesson, I was in possession of a real flute, on which he had started his career. I was invited weekly for a free lesson which always concluded with tea and donuts in the company of his mother, a teacher of French in a girl's school, who had recently arrived from England.
Many years later, David Sandeman, who had returned after the war to become principal flute in the London Philharmonic, gave my wife an account of my lessons with him. He related that I was his first pupil ever and that he was under the impression that there was nothing to teaching the flute--you told the student what needed to be done and he would come back the following week doing it. It wasn't until he had his second student that he discovered there was more to it.
David's approach to teaching the flute was perfectly suited for me. He encouraged me to teach myself--to learn how to learn. He practiced William James' cardinal rule: Never discourage, discouragement is of the devil. This fruitful relationship lasted a year, by which time my uncle was transferred to Johannesburg and I was musically on my own. As luck would have it, David's orchestra came to Johannesburg for an opera season and I renewed our friendship. During his stay, he introduced me to the Professor of Music at Wits University. He invited me, age 13, to play in the University Orchestra. On one occasion, we played for the visiting Cape Town Ballet whose repertoire included the "Carnival of the Animals" by Saint-Saens. This remains indelibly in my memory because of the virtuosic flute solo, the Aviary. In little over a minute, the player is required to synchronize breath, fingers and tongue, the latter articulating rapidly the syllables teketeketekete over 300 times--a technique known to wind-players as "double-tonguing." At 14, I had not yet attempted to teach myself this skill, having been told by David Sandeman that it was first necessary to master "single-tonguing" (the rapid reiteration of tetetete). In the performance, I think I played the notes minus the articulation--less of a flutter than the composer intended.
During my studies at the Paris Conservatoire from 1950-52, I was once again confronted by the "Aviary", which I took in stride, double-tonguing and all. Several years later, with the London Symphony, I was called upon to record it as backing to the Ogden Nash verses, which were recited by Bee Lillie. This version, instead of lasting one minute was doubled in length which entailed over 600 repetitions of teke. As an aside, Saint-Saens "Voliere" is only one of many pieces in which the flute represents our feathered friends. I sometimes ask, in Doctoral exams, that the student write on the ornithological aspects of the flute. A cursory search of my memory recalls the following recordings I made with the London Symphony Orchestra between 1955 and 1967: Lo Here the Gentle Lark, the Gypsy and the Bird (Joan Sutherland); Bluebird in Sleeping Beauty (Pierre Monteux); Pastoray Symphony (Josef Krips); Respighi--The Birds (Dorati); Stravinsky--Firebird, Le Rossignol (Dorati); the Morceau de Concours for my 1st prize at the Paris Conservatoire in 1952 was Messaien's "merle Noir" (Blackbird).
Over fifty years after my first acquaintance with the piece, I found myself again confronted with fluttering like a bird, while playing in the Sinfonia da Camera (Hobson) in Urbana, Illinois. As with athletic skills, rapid movements are seemingly more suited to the young in years than the long in the tooth. Faced with rapid repeated tongue movements I began to wonder whether my tongue had loosened over the years or whether its mechanism was deteriorating.
Try the following experiment. Divide a regular pulse of one second into three parts (as in a waltz). Count 1-2 of the 1-2-3 and maintain a pulse of 1-(2) 1-(2) 1-(2) beating time on the one only. This will give you a pulse of 90 to the minute. At this speed repeat the syllables tetetete--four tes to a beat. Then intersperse ke between each te (maintaining the four tes to a beat). Thus: teketeketeketeke you will have the articulation problem to which I have been referring. This is the "tongue-twister" set by Camille Saint Saens.
As you will have inferred, except for my very positive experiences with my first teacher, David Sandeman, I consider myself largely self-taught. I did make one disastrous effort to learn the flute from a teacher whose approach was: If you want to study with me, you must do as I say. "From his vantage point, everything I had done previously was wrong. To breathe, I must raise my chest like a pouter pigeon. My lips should be fixed in a permanent smile and my tongue must strike the palate audibly to begin each note. Raising the chest to breathe in was one of the erroneous preconceived ideas with which Alexander had to contend in the early days of his teaching. Fixing the lips in a permanent smile is perhaps worse in that it is tantamount to fixing the head at the atlanto-occipital joint. Adding the uncustomary (and unnecessary) movement of the tongue was an overload for my nervous system. Assiduous practice on these lines precipitated a nervous breakdown, one of the symptoms of which was a stutter every time I pronounced the syllable te.
I am still recovering from that teacher's influence. The loss of a natural skill led, in my case, to a tendency unduly to analyze and criticize myself and others. Trying to be right when you have lost the belief in your own rightness (an important ingredient in the make up of a performing artist) is a double bind. A very good friend told me his teaching was based on the question: "What is preventing this person from playing well?" He had never heard of the Alexander Technique.
Foreign service in the Royal Air Force put an end to my studies with this teacher and I returned to finding my own way.
Early in my professional civilian career, in 1954, I was introduced to the Alexander Technique and lost no time in trying to apply the principles (as I understood them) to playing the flute. When I began lessons, I was principal flute of the Royal Opera, a strenuous occupation, entailing long rehearsals (10am-3pm) on occasion with performances every evening and an afternoon performance on Saturday. During the rehearsals in the orchestra pit, there was frequently a cold breeze blowing through the theatre while the scenery was being transported from the street to the stage. I had a tendency to bronchitis which was aggravated by such working conditions. A friend suggested that Charles Neil, one of the members of Alexander's first training course, might be able to help with my respiratory problems. I began a three year course of lessons. I regret to say that what I learned at that time is not what I now understand to be the Alexander Technique. When Charles Neil died in 1958, my Alexander lessons began, and with them, the process of change in my conception of the Technique, my use and, of course, my breathing.
My earliest recollections of applying what I was learning to playing was (and continues to be) to rid the mind of "taking a breath" to play. This is an important aspect of all my practicing. If I wish to play a long phrase, I first exhale, then allow the breath to return (through the nostrils, silently) and then play when the breath is ready to move out. When playing continuously, I always take time to breathe, even if it means stopping the flow of the music. Naturally, this applies to practice. When one is performing, one does what the music requires with whatever means one has at the time.
This kind of practice paid its first real dividends in the late 1950's, when I was the principal flute for the London Symphony. We played an annual Beethoven Cycle with Josef Krips. I found that I was able to play a loud, continuous section of the first Allegro in the 7th Symphony without being aware of "taking a breath." The breath was returning in the brief intervals between the rhythmic figures. Some idea of what happens when you stop the interference can be experienced if you exhale quickly, blowing out the cheeks. Repeat this little experiment rhythmically several times and you will notice that the breath returns with a sort of "elastic recoil."
The next really significant change in my playing was triggered by Alexander's 1906 article in which he names the great principle in practical respiratory re-education to be Antagonistic Action. The other clue in this article was "Many people can acquire fair chest poise at the end of inspiration, but...at the end of the expiration the mechanism is absolutely disorganized." I was practicing some difficult passages on my flute at the time, using two mirrors for visual feedback. In my customary way, I divided the long opening phrase into sub-phrases, played them with time for breaths and then, finally, decided to "deflate" and "inflate" myself several times prior to playing the whole phrase in one breath. As I got to the end of the phrase, I saw myself visibly shorten--the pelvis moving forward over the feet, the back "narrowing in the loins." This was the first time in my practice that I had really made an unusual demand on my respiratory capacity and I saw in what way my mechanism was "absolutely disorganized." I then played the same passage but inhibited the movement forward of the pelvis, maintaining my length, and found that I had just as much air as before, but that at the end of the expiration the inspiration took place by "elastic recoil." This to me exemplified Antagonistic Action.
The next really significant evolution in my playing developed out of questions related to the balance of the head raised by Professor and Alexander teacher Frank Pierce Jones' Psychological Revue article of 1965. This article led me to the writings of Anatomist Raymond Dart--initially "The Postural Aspect of Malocclusion." Frank stated that the center of gravity of the head corresponds roughly to the 'sella turcica,' an area at the anterior of the base of the skull. I reasoned that the center of gravity must be dependent on the relationship of the upper and lower jaw--which was a mobile one. Free movement of the jaw is integral to the kind of flute playing in which I was interested.
The discoveries I have made over the years have dramatically altered my flute playing. They have also affected my teaching, despite the fact that I do not teach my flute students the Alexander Technique. If they are interested, they can study that on their own initiative (with my encouragement). My personal approach to teaching is to accept the student as he/she is, see what I think can be improved and look for a step-wise progression in the right direction. No matter how badly one plays, one can always play worse; this establishes the negative direction on a continuum. To move from worse to better is the immediate goal. How far is in the lap of the gods. In practicing, I always ask that the student take time to breathe inaudibly, no matter how long, and divide the music into phrases which can be played without strain in one breath. Problems of fingering are broken down into the smallest division--moving from one note to the next. Step 1: Finger note x, think of the fingering for note y. Step 2: Count 1-2-3 and move on 3 from x to y as quickly as possible. Repeat sequence as required. Step 3: Finger and play x; Step 4: Count 1-2-3 and move to y (as short as possible). Step 5: Integrate notes prior to x, pause on x, count and play y. Step 6: Cut duration of pause (progressively). If you think you are about to make a mistake STOP. Every mistake practiced is a mistake learned. AMEN.
A book appeared some twenty years ago written by a former concert pianist turned computer scientist. He had investigated the different time-space patterns made by someone pressing their finger on a sensitive button in response to a stimulus designed to elicit an emotional response. The button was able to register time and direction. For example, Hate had a sharp profile and took little time to express, Love by contrast, had a gentler profile and required more time. He named the characteristic form of each emotion its essential form. He also experimented with the expressive patterns of musical phrases. One of his most useful observations which reinforced something I already thought but had not formulated was that only one emotion can be conveyed at a time. Aggressive movements while playing affectionate music will not result in the sum of the parts but in the expression of one or other (inadequately).
A recent study of the early years of Alexander's development (Rosslyn McLeod, Up from Down Under) led me to Francois Delsarte (1811-1872) whose system was taught and advertised by Alexander in 1900 as "an aesthetic science with the same precision as mathematical science." Delsarte's history parallels both Alexander's and my own. A talented youth with a beautiful tenor voice, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at age 14. After six months of vocal instruction his voice was ruined. He remained for four years, studying dramatic art, during which time he realized that his various teachers were each working according to their own personal tastes without any common principle. He set about searching for a scientific basis to artistic expression and from his observations developed his own system of dramatic expression which he taught for many years in a course of "Applied Aesthetics." In this, he emphasized the true nature of all art, "body," "mind" and "soul."
Since losing my metaphorical voice, my flute playing has taken many turns, but I rediscovered the joy of "playing" when I crossed paths with Chung-Liang Huang, a Tai Chi master and author of Embrace Tiger and Return to Mountain. We met as fathers of daughters at a mid-western grade-school when we were talked into performing together for the children (our own included). I discovered that dancing and playing simultaneously, undertaken in the spirit of "play" was both possible and pleasurable. Now, when I sit motionless in an orchestra, it is because I choose to. I know the potential for moving naturally is still there but restrained by choice, not by anxiety.
In my most recent attempts at playing the Aviary, I discovered that, in keeping with a flexible relationship of the jaw, lips and tongue (as examined in the familiar whispered "ah"), the second syllable of the double-tongue (ke) can be produced in a variety of ways. If you listen carefully to the pitch of a whispered ah and compare it to a whispered eh then ee you will notice a rise in pitch as the tongue approaches the palate. The various flutters in the Aviary are in the three different registers of the flute's range. Applying this discovery to the use of the tongue in the different registers, I am able to play the solo more distinctly and more easily than hitherto.
As a final experiment, repeat the following at a speed of 90 beats per second: tikitikitikitiki/ tikitikitikitiki/ teketeketeketeke/ teketeketeketeke/ takatakatakataka/ takataketi---/ Repeat four times, non stop.
My own painful experience led me indirectly to the Alexander Technique and to the constant rebirth of curiosity. I hope yours will encourage you to experiment with the articulation problems of Saint-Saens Aviary which are only one aspect of playing such music in an aesthetically satisfying way.
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it has liberated Saint-Saens cage of birds for yet another free flight.