Stage Fright

 I've basically always had stage fright, and it's not something that we musicians often discuss amongst ourselves. As a teacher, it has come up often, and I have often advised students on how to visualise, to prepare assiduously, but a thought occurred to me tonight, and it is one that I wish my teachers had shared with me. 

My recent recitals, which I do for fun (for even skilled performers, unless very well known, never really get paid for recitals), have had better results than in the past for one basic reason; I have  been far more focused on the desire to share music with my audience, to get caught up in the song, to be a conduit for the muses.

Early on in my career as a nervous performer I became aware that stage fright is a sort of egoism; an excessive concern for your desired outcome, and worse than that, your concern for being thought a failure when you go wrong. Perhaps I am being too harsh on we nervous nellies, and our failure to play with confidence arises from a natural disposition, and maybe a heightened sensitivity. I am sure that all these things are true. In addition, a creative person naturally imagines scenarios in their mind, the more dramatic the better. It may be an enigma never to be solved, but my insights about performers and their role as interpreters of other's music have taken a radical turn: I believe we are meant to be servants of music, and vessels for the divine inspiration that comes from opening oneself to the spirit of music.

There are two parts to this: One is that you must have within yourself a song that wants to come out. If you don't have that desire, then leave your instrument in the case. Janos Starker once told me: "we do this because we must do this". A few years ago, while at a pianist friend's house, I played some well-known repertoire with her, and was stunned at the music that was pouring forth, and how right and necessary it felt: I became aware that there was music in me that just had to be let out. 

The second became clearer during my time as a conducting student with Raffi Armenian, and later in my own teaching: the attempt to understand what the composer wants in phrasing, and the architecture of a piece of music: where is the high point of a phrase, what is the high point of the piece, what is the emotion that the composer wants to convey? Searching these answers out is a joy, and the performance of a piece, without having done this important work, is a waste of time. I have heard musicians with important jobs who had no conception of how a piece ought to go. Questions of taste enter here, and of course all things are subjective. But a performer needs to find the interpretation, their interpretation, and that is done by inquiry, not imposition. Beethoven says it best: the score contains everything except the music.

 

In former times, musicians wore servant's dress, and though a return to that practise would be silly, a return to the idea of serving the muse has been a welcome idea for me. And therein lies my possible solution for stage fright. If my teachers even knew how nervous I was (they probably didn't), they might have said to me: "This music is more important than your nerves, your concern for making a good showing. You are entrusted with making this music come alive; you need to be alive to its meaning, and alive to the spirit that makes music through you. There is no time for your feelings now, there will be time for them later; you are here to serve the muse; get to work!"