André Teixeira

The belief that imagination’s engagement and emotional connection with what I play enhance my performance propelled me to do this research. However, these are not systematically integrated in instrumental practice. Thus, it seemed to me that the twentieth century theatre director Konstantin Stanislavski’s ‘system’ would be the perfect basis for such a quest. The starting point were acting techniques from his first book "An Actor Prepares": the "given circumstances", imagination-related ("supposed circumstances", “inner visions”, "magic if”) – and emotion-related ("emotion memory", "sensation memory", "surroundings"). Partly supported by existing literature, these techniques were linked with the instrumentalists' work and tested out in a self-case study through three interventions. The process consisted of making video recordings of the 'before' and the actual interventions, which were guided by the filling out of intervention forms designed by me. The techniques were applied on three distinct piano passages of Richard Strauss’ melodrama for narrator and piano "Enoch Arden". Furthermore, I did interventions’ reports to provide more palpable insights about the experience, namely the effects of each technique on the performer. The outcome was evaluated through a questionnaire filled in by a group of listeners, comprising musicians and non-musicians, and by me. The responses generally show that the techniques were effective. However, the recordings were perceived as very similar. Also, the listeners’ perception sometimes differed from mine. Nevertheless, the reports allow us to conclude that these techniques might affect the performer’s focus, creativity, self-confidence, knowledge about the works and also self-knowledge.

Contrary to what one might think, there is not a big number of writings connecting Stanislavski with music (except, perhaps, in Russian), apart from his book (and Pavel Rumyantsev’s) Stanislavski on Opera, which documents the director’s involvement and approach in the direction of seven operas at the Opera Studio of the Bolshoi Theatre.

The rest of the existing literature, as far as I could ascertain, is from 2002 onwards and relates his system with traditional Chinese opera, choral rehearsing and conducting, and, more similarly to my aim, classical violin and clarinet performance and pedagogy.

However, for two reasons these will not be used in this research:

The first is that two PhD dissertations (despite the more academic nature of a PhD dissertation) were published in 2019 by pianists from North American Universities who approach Stanislavski’s system in a musical and practical way closer to my intentions – partly due to the fact that they are, like me, pianists.

The second is that, due to its origin, the forementioned literature is not easily accessible (some of it I could not find at all) and my contact with it is very recent, since I discovered it only through the quite extensive bibliographical compilation of the 2019’s PhD dissertations, which will, in any case, provide me with enough material to work with.

I must mention that my research differentiates from these two (and others on the topic) for the fact it does not simply explain the techniques and describes how to train resorting to them, but shows through video recordings their actual application and their possible effects.

The two forementioned works are:

• The acting system of Konstantin Stanislavski as applied to piano performance, by Andrea V. Johnson

• Creating musical ‘truth’: an interdisciplinary application of selected elements from Konstantin Stanislavski’s acting ‘system’ to the classical pianist’s selection, preparation and performance of music for solo recital, by Charles Whitehead.

As such, the keystones for this research are Stanislavski’s book An Actor Prepares, providing most of the theoretical framework, and these two dissertations, which will help me shaping the procedures of the interventions.

3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

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