LITERATURE RESEARCH

This research is based on the question on how to transfer knowledge to an audience during a performance. A goal I want to keep in mind in such a concert setting is to take the listener with me on the same journey which I am taking myself on a daily basis. Together I want to be investigating the different aspects of music which I look into every day when practicing my instrument: history, technique, performance, instruments, and many more. Combining my personal questions and ideas about the music and the performance of music should make a pleasurable experience combined with an educational purpose. In doing this I want to also draw lessons from my audience. 

Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki

The desire of wanting to find a commonplace between me and the audience comes from when I learned about the concept of the ‘Beginner’s mind’. This principle is the core of the book Zen Mind, The beginner’s mind, by Shunryu Suzuki. Suzuki was an influential zen master from Japan, who based himself in San Francisco in 1958 (Suzuki, 1970). The book describes many insightful lessons on how to see your own mind and how to improve your Zen practice. I am myself not an active practicioner of Zen practice, but learning from this book, the practice of Zen meditation has some similarities with the practice classical music in my view. As in classical music, Zen meditation consists of many repetitions, repeating small gestures or rituals over and over again, until perfected. As classical musicians, we play the same piece many times, as do the zen buddhists practice the same phrases when meditating. The book also talks about subjects like ‘Posture’, ‘Breathing’, ‘Mistakes in Practice’ and ‘Control’, words I hear in my viola lessons very often when talking on how to approach a piece of music as a practicing musician.

What I want to focus on now is the concept of the Beginner’s mind. Suzuki stresses the principle as follows:  ‘The Beginner’s mind has endless possibilities, the expert’s mind few’. Meaning; the originality of a certain practice is original and true the first time we do it. He gives an example of reciting a certain Sutra, a meditation mantra. 

“Suppose you recite the Prajna Paramita Sutra only once. It might be a very good recitation. But what would happen to you if you recited it twice, three times, four times or more? You might easily lose your original attitude towards it. For a while you will keep your beginner’s mind, but if you continue to practice one, two, three years or more, although you may improve some, you are liable to lose the limitless meaning of original mind’’ (Suzuki, 1970)

This, I am sure, we as classical musicians know just as well as those who practice Zen meditation. We can replace the Prajna Paramita Sutra with Beethoven 5th symphony, or the first prelude for the cello suites by Bach. We are not necessarily bored by it. But the danger of playing it as if we know all the steps by heart and no new impulses are allowed in our brains, is a tempting danger for the piece being hollow and meaningless. Perfecting the notes is in this case the thing we tempt to strive for, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but the ‘expert’ approach, limits us as musicians to be truly open. It can easily stand in the way of learning something new out of music we know already. ‘Even though you read much Zen literature, you must read each sentence with a fresh mind. You should not say ‘I know what Zen is,” (...) This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner.’ (Suzuki, 1970) Here we can replace the word Zen in the sentence: I know what Zen is, for ‘Beethoven symphony 5’ or ‘music’, or ‘playing the viola’. If we approach all that is around through the eyes of the beginner, there is no good or bad playing or performing, but just the moment. 

So why do I start with talking about this? I think this principle is important to keep in the back of our minds at all times when practicing, but especially when we think of how to engage with an audience. The audience may be ‘expert’ or ‘beginner’ in listening to classical music, we have to try and convert all of the audience and at the same time ourselves to be in a beginner’s mind. The performers should always take responsibility to find the exploring beginner’s mind in which there are many possibilities, not the expert mind where there are few. 

Teaching to Transgress- bell hooks

When we talk about interacting with the audience to teach them something, we can also see this performance as a parallel of the classroom. The writer Gloria Jean Watkins, also known as bell hooks, writes about many socially engaged subjects including feminism, love, social class and art (Ignabire, 2021). In her essay bundle ‘Teaching to Transgress’ the first two chapters contained important notes on teaching.

Hooks states that learning something means freedom and power. When we learn, be it in a classroom or from a book, we gain power and understanding of the world around us. But this freedom to gain knowledge is generally discouraged by the lack of excitement in the classroom. Excitement, especially in academia, is seen as transgression (hooks, 1994). This I can personally relate to; fellow students often sigh when talking about having to do this assignment or follow that course. Around classical music there is also an the presumption people need to learn before we can enjoy music, and that this ‘learning’ is a bad thing (Petersen, 1992).

Continuing the thought of excitement in the classroom, hooks states that in the classroom there is a collective responsibility for this excitement. The teacher has the role of being the designer of the lesson, but the student also needs to be engaged in some way, otherwise it is near to impossible to actually create and environment in which we can learn. To reach that goal, teachers sometimes need to take the role of a performer.

‘...teachers are not performers in the traditional sense of the word in that our work is not meant to be a spectacle. Yet it is meant as a catalyst that calls everyone to become more and more engaged, to become active participants in learning.’ 

According to hooks, giving knowledge as a form of freedom, is to let your students find their own path. When we give students the power to investigate and excite themselves to research the topics we teach them, they can become powerful and independent. Though it may also, or maybe have a great chance of, overpowering us teachers or digress strongly from the topic we teach (Hooks, 1994). I think this very important to keep in mind when creating a musical performance. In this performance, it is thus good to avoid binding people to a definite outcome. Instead we should empower people to be independent learners. As a performer this is scary: freedom in your audience, or pupils in any way, will likely result in other things than you planned (Wallace, 2018).

Last, hooks talks about the teacher as being a vulnerable human being, as opposed to an, as I would call it, ‘untouchable saint’. She makes a kind of distinction between the teacher as a person with feelings and shortcomings against the academic who is infallible. To include this vulnerability in the classroom your students may appeal to your story much more than in the passive way of looking at an unreachable goal (hooks, 1994). Me personally as a pupil myself can relate to that feeling, and when a teacher shows their flaws or insecurities I know it helped me in the past to activate myself to get better myself. This is also an important part when giving a lecture or lesson to students or an audience, whether they are an experienced audience or a beginner.  

Engaging the Concert Audience: A Musician's Guide to Interactive Performance

We can stay in the theoretical realm, but since this research has a more practical goal, it seemed suitable to discuss this practical guide for musicians to create an interactive performance. The book is written by violist David Wallace Wallace who is head of the String Department of Berklee College of Music, composer and viola player. Having engaged many types of audiences with many different genres, he has been approaching different kinds of audiences throughout his career (Wallace, 2024). In his book I found many phrases which resonated with me in the journey in finding how to construct a concert whilst also teaching, or talking about the music itself (Wallace, 2018).

In his book he calls a concert where there is active engagement with the audience an ‘interactive performance’. Wallace also talks about the mind state of the audience member: “When you enable an audience to listen with a focused mind, a full heart and active ears, there is a palpable electricity in the concert.” (Wallace, 2018). He describes this moment as an absence of critical thinking, just the moment and the music exist in this moment. In this situation the audience and performers alike are able to learn and enjoy at the fullest. Wallace calls this state of mind: heightened musical perception. This state of heightened musical perception relates closely to the other two sources which I discussed earlier. When we take the concept of the beginner’s mind from Suzuki, or the excited student from hooks, I see similarities in the way of striving to find a space for a mind which is open and ready to learn. Heightened musical perception might be a suited term for when we talk about concert settings. 

Wallace’s book is a useful guide into creating your own interactive performance and creating space for possible heightened musical perception. There is a lot of talk on how to implement your concert in the real world, how to sell your ideas to companies and many tips for do’s and don’ts on stage. I drew practical information; like how to take the stage in a proper way, talking techniques or what to avoid. In the next chapter I will discuss the parts of the book useful for my research question.