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.

←

3.4. 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

Just as the previous PhD dissertation, this one also provided me with valuable information to create the interventions’ forms and also dwells on aspects taken from all books of the ‘system’.

In this dissertation, some principles of Stanislavski’s ‘system’ - primarily the concept of ‘artistic truth’ - are employed in the context of the solo pianist’s work. The following elements were adapted to bring this ‘truth’ to an instrumental [music] context: imagination; subtext; actions; truth; logic and sequence; given circumstances, justification; units and objectives, super-objective, tone; tempo-rhythm. (p. vii)

Whitehead presents an extensive literature review which reveals the existing bibliography connecting Stanislavski with other fields, with a focus on music, as well as an identification of writings of pianists, like Alfred Cortot, with elements from the ‘system’. Whitehead suggests, such as I did, that relating instrumental music with narrative and drama allows us to better understand the score (at least with some music) (Whitehead, 2019, p. 3).

I did not directly use Whitehead’s ideas to shape the ‘imagination’ and emotions’ forms, only to the ‘given circumstances’. In particular, he defined musical components to be considered as given circumstances (pp. 8-9) and he adapted the questions ‘who?’, ‘what?’, ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ to music (p. 25). This will be further elaborated in the next chapter.

Finally, Whitehead’s examples in the score of how to musically interpret Stanislavski's techniques, from page 135 to 143, are extremely enriching, since he connects the ‘given circumstances’ with actions, the ‘subtext’ and the ‘super-objective’.

Thus, although I will not explore these latter techniques in this research, it allows us to understand their interdependency and how they could be approached in a future work.

→

Tip

Tip