Late imperial Russian society turned to Music with a fervor to overcome their own diagnosis of a decaying society, lost to individualism and materialism. Transcending reality meant achieving a deeper connection with a broader conception of existence, so the effect of music was fundamentally spiritual: “a path from ordinary reality to higher spiritual insight, from the ‘real’ (realia) to the ‘more real’ (realiora).”1
To this idea it is pertinent to pose the question: What is transcendence today? Can we still aim for music to play the role of a transformative force in society? What hopes can we have, as musicians, for the social and spiritual effects of our practice?
Transcendence today does not need necessarily to involve the connection of a higher spirituality, or ascendence to a new religious consciousness. A simple deviation from an individual’s routine, from the normal temporality of their daily life, can be considered a transcendental experience. Transcendence then relies on the actual capability of experiencing a different temporality. In experiencing a musical performance, entering into “musical time”, and getting into contact with an extraordinary sensorial experience, can mean transcendence today. The transformative power of performance (the function) and its relevance, relies on this resilience, in an ever more fast-paced society, as related to dealing with different paces, and being able to get out of our own temporality, our material world, and our usual state of mind.
This possibility for transcendence through music implicates a capability of perception of the moment based in the freedom to experience, to immerse oneself in one's senses. When talking about creating a transcendental experience for the performer as well, one should address the actual reality of today’s classical music concert. In classical music concerts today, the whole experience and perception of the moment itself, of performer vs spectator, is very disparate. The need to comply with modern performance norms is one of the causes of performance anxiety in musicians2 who go through an intense psychological and emotional state that cannot be compared to that of the individual sitting passively in the audience. Although both share the “music”, a moment in time and space - the event - the actual inner experience of that music it is not similar.
Acting upon this issue, requires the full agency of the performer, much beyond their own musical contribution. Creating a space and a moment of transcendence for himself requires them to act upon the conditions and circumstances of performance. In the current classical music industry, this issues still rely most commonly on the responsibility of artistic directors and programmers and are something on which performers today actually have very little to no control on. Many of us still submit our performance activities to a strongly disseminated status-quo of a rather strict concert format, without questioning how much we could gain and discover by adopting a less subversive attitude and having more control over the feeling of the whole experience.
Looking back into my own past performative experiences, I recall a particular piano performance where many ritualistic features of the traditional concert were erased. The context was an open-house event, where musicians of different genres of music were spread out throughout different places of the building, and throughout the evening and night each soloist or group would, without any announcement, initiate their individual performance. There was no strict schedule of when each performance would happen; there was no printed program for the visitors, and no specific area for the spectators to sit. The whole concept was fluid; every time a new performance started, the visitors could either continue to engage in their social activities or could walk through the spaces until they found the source of the music. My own experience in performing in such circumstances was incredibly positive. Erasing the usual formalities of the classical music concert allowed me to feel much freer in my own enjoyment of the performative moment. I also felt a much more caring connection with the audience, who simply stood close around me in the building's bar area. The fact that there was no printed program also revealed an unforeseen interaction with the audience: after finishing playing, many curious people engaged in conversations with me to ask about what I had just played, and they were clearly interested in knowing more about the music.
Although this performance event, at the time, had apparently nothing to do with Russian symbolism, or Nikolai Obukhov’s music, in some ways it places some of the previously analyzed philosophical and artistic principals in a modern practical perspective. Questioning the traditional means of the concert format can break the cycle of performance anxiety, and this feeling of disconnection with the audience and with the moment itself. In the next section of this exposition, I will develop my own performative approach, focusing on maintaining a curational attitude to the creative process. The advantage of performing Obukhov’s solo piano works is that, at this moment in time, there is a very scarce performance practice tradition in this repertoire, so in that sense I enjoy very few constraints.