Essays - Dr. B. Replies (THE THREE DEADLY CULTS) - 1972

OPUS - Faculty of Music Student Journal

(Vol. 9 No. 6-9, 1972-73)

The First Deadly Cult: OPINION
The Second Deadly Cult: COMPETITION.
The Third Deadly Cult: SECURITY, or Wanting to be Liked.

[Note: An undergraduate voice student who wanted to share his discovery of the dimensions of style, faithfulness to the score, and other such ‘serious’ ways of music-making, had written to OPUS. His letter had caused some preoccupation at school, and it gave me the opportunity to write this series of articles. The term “cults” shifted through the years, and therefore when presenting these arguments, I later changed the title to “The Three Deadly Myths.” However, the original title has remained in the memory of my students to this day.]

Dear G.
Your statements about humility and service vs. emotion and ego-tripping which appeared in the last OPUS were rather brief, while my reply is going to be long. Not long enough, of course, to debate all the issues you have raised, which are as old as performance itself and have kept artists, critics, and aestheticians quarrelling for centuries; but you have addressed yourself to both faculty and students, in a somewhat crusading tone, and because this has left many perplexed if not irritated, I feel this gives us all an opportunity to start a dialogue - I hope.

In your well-meaning zeal you have approached the question as if it were a matter of right and wrong; and in the conciseness of your writing you have implied that the argument is a clear-cut one. In trying now to interpret and comment upon your line of thought, I do not intend to reach any conclusions, nor to persuade you that I have answers which alone are right: I rather want to raise questions, in the hope that you and other students - the curious ones, whose minds have not been totally atrophied by spoon-feeding - will ask more questions still, as they search for their own answers.

The central point of your article was the need to serve music instead of using it. Unfortunately, your advocating the abolition of emotion in order to achieve it has disconcerted most readers. It is a matter of semantics: I think is was Maurois who said that the warning "Dynamite!" should be placed on every dictionary…Words mean different things to different people, not only when they are translated (Khruschez's "We'll bury you" unduly upset the Americans, when in Russian it signified only that "We shall likewise prevail;" when on an American TV show someone said "Drop dead," Khruschev was shocked, for what it literally meant in Russian), but also in the same culture, the same school. Among us, teachers and students alike give different, sometimes opposite, meanings to terms such as "musical," "technique," "fundamentals." Words such as "feeling," "shape," "line," are differently understood according to individual background and cultural formation. In commenting on your statements with Prof. Bracey, I mentioned how in the simplified version and misleading jargon of students' lounges he stands for "emotion" first of all, while Dr. B. favours the "intellectual" approach - and doesn't that mean pedantic, unmusical? Tsk, tsk. Few admit the existence of different artistic intentions and are able to listen within those intentions; few have the ability and the desire to ask questions when they do not understand. It is so much easier to dismiss as wrong what is different, and not to care. Lukas Foss, during a workshop in Toronto last week, pointed out "the democratic tendency to wipe out what is different instead of holding it dear and fruitful." In your article you have shown you cared enough to take a stand and provoke some reactions, but you have equated emotion with ego-trips in order to defend your opinion more strongly. The word carries a different resonance for different sensibilities (e.g. the Italian "emozione" has a far subtler meaning than in your use of the word-the distinction, I would say, such as between feminine and female). If I understood you correctly, you wanted to attack autobiographical emotions which disregard the true content of the score and make of the performer, as the Italians say, a "traditore" instead of a "traduttore" (= traitor instead of translator, interpreter).

What distinguishes the student of music from the ego-tripper is intelligence, a faculty as much of the heart as of the brain; for "intelligere" means 'to choose between,' 'to select,' and - to paraphrase Emerson - a performer needs to play but a few bars to disclose to intelligent ears precisely the quality of his "choice," the amount of reflection, the richness of thought; whether his sensitivity is called upon to reveal the happenings in the music, or it is merely self-directed, exhibitionistic; whether he distinguishes, and has striven to liberate, fact from opinion; whether he can penetrate the nature of different modes of expression, i.e. knows style. "Only so much do I know, as I have lived" said Emerson. "Instantly we know whose words are loaded with life, and whose not."

The central point of my reply to you is the need for the acceptance of differences, for the understanding of diversity as the life-giving element in the musical world. Old Quantz already wrote about it, and nothing changed; but somehow I think that the sense of coexistence is, or should be, so "Canadian" a trait…After an agonizing decade America is beginning to discover the validity of difference in modes of thought and ways of life. The concept that there are many shades between black and white is penetrating the American psyche. Because I was born between two cultures and have been marked by several others in my life, my forma mentis does not allow me to think in terms of "for" or "against". I remember how often Americans found it perplexing to converse with me since, for instance, they could only interpret as assent what was on my part the simple acknowledgement of other modes of perception. Vertical mentality not only freezes human relationship, but it is most harmful in artistic life. I do not think it possible to awaken in music students the sense of service you wrote about, as long as thinking remains rigidly black and white, right and wrong; no student body can become a center of radiation for the love of music, for the spread of musical culture, as long as students listen only in order to approve of disapprove instead of asking "why?"; as long as opinions are a substitute for thought, and words are used as labels; as long as things are viewed from one angle alone.

In my teaching experience, both in the U.S. and in Canada, I have learned that there are what I call the three deadly cults (the way Peter Brook speaks of 'deadly theatre') which prevent most students from truly loving music and music-making, from striving "to liberate facts from opinions," from immersing themselves totally in the musical happening and thus finding themselves, and discovering their uniqueness. The first deadly cult in that of OPINION, or, wanting to be right. The second is COMPETITION, or, wanting to prove oneself. The third, SECURITY, or, wanting to be liked. All three are responsible for much warping and destruction of young talent.

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The First Deadly Cult: OPINION

It is a most extraordinary moment for those who have experienced dictatorship to hear for the first time on this continent a child being asked "And what's your opinion, Johnny?" But the spell is broken when years later one discovers that Johnny has grown up believing that to voice an opinion is more important than its quality. It is, of course, a much easier mental process than thinking, with which it is usually confused. Thinking brings about uncomfortable doubts and confrontations and the unease of having to ask questions. It may even cause one to change one's opinion, admit that improvement is so much more important that being consistent, more important than being right. Consistency, which Emerson called "the hobglobin of little minds" is as limiting of growth is life and in art as is that colour-blindness which sees reality only in black and white. How does a student of music learn to liberate the musical fact from the opinion, that opinion which Northrop Frye calls "nothing but an amalgam of countless prejudices, limitations, and psychological factors"? We can only do it by learning the terms of the musical fact, and bringing it to life on its own terms, by decoding certain symbols. Because this “decoding” is a learned process, most students believe that there is but one was to do it, the way we have been taught, and ignore the whole process behind a certain choice. "Decoding" involves the opposite process than "applying" predetermined rules, standards, and ideas. The information we have about musical symbols conditions all "what we look for and hence what we perceive" (L.B. Meyer) Alas, as F.L. Lucas warns, "men's power of seeing the non-existence is equalled by their power of not seeing the existent;" and as most of us "see what we want to see and only what we want to see" we likewise hear what we want to hear. (An anecdote about Arthur Rubinstein comes to mind: a friend once played some old recordings, versions of the same Rachmaninoff concerto, asking him to guess who the performers were. Upon hearing a few bars of the first version, which he liked very much, Rubinstein recognized his own playing: same for the second version, after some hesitation; but the third version, why, the playing was so pedantic and uninspired, "it could only be Egon Petri" "…Not at all", laughed his friend, and showed him the name Rubinstein as the performer of that version too…)"

The danger of labelling, the deadly propensity to judge instead of stretching one's powers to see more, to hear better, the comfort of believing oneself to be right, are corrupting forces to be constantly checked. R. Kirkpatrick gives us two questions to ask: "Have I looked at this piece in such a way as to understand its inherent character, or have I rendered it the victim of my preconceptions?" And, "Am I using (this music) as vehicle for my instrument, or am I using my instrument to play (this music?)" And then there is the question implied in your OPUS article: "Am I performing in order to serve my ego, using the score in order to impose effects and exhibit my powers, or, am I using all my powers, emotional, intellectual, imaginative and physical, in order to serve and reveal the world contained in the score?" Urtext editions have liberated us from the various editors' opinions as to the meaning of the symbols contained in scores; they provide us with the best tool with which to distinguish between our knowledge and insight, and our conditioned preconceptions. It is not humility, as you called it, which should assist us, as much as reverence for the world behind the notes.

There is a lesson in love to be learned from Eskimo carvers. They spend a long time looking at the stone, carefully, from all sides, waiting for it to reveal the hidden form it contains. "Who is in there?" they ask. "Are you a seal, a bird, a man?" When the stone reveals to the carver its hidden treasure, all he does is to remove what obstructs it, so that he may bring it to light. He neither imposes his will on the material, nor uses the product of his skill to prove his powers: he is only the middleman in "the passage from the real to the unreal," the Eskimo definition of art.

What I called the deadly propensity to judge, blinds most of us to the power, which habit and conditioning have over our mind and our emotions. We much prefer to consider ourselves in possession of personal wisdom and unique insight; above all, as Quantz already said, "we are unwilling to be regarded as ignorant." Students arrogate themselves the power to know, instinctively, blissfully ignoring whatever the composer may have expressed about his intentions and aesthetics in letters, essays, biographies. Piano students, as Horowitz said, "are concerned with 88 keys, while they should learn 88 other things," in order to nourish, to cultivate that mind and that sensitivity which are in charge of their performance of the music. They practice in a vacuum, like an unprepared orchestra conductor learning from his orchestra players what cues to give them and when. As Krenek said, piano playing and teaching should be less concerned with dexterity of fingers than with "nimbleness of eyes, intelligence, and mental agility." In reading about great performers, past and present, we always find them stressing the importance of giving more, or, at least equal, time to studying the score away from the instrument. It is naïve, and frustrating to approach an unfamiliar piece, a new style, first from the tactile point of view. Unless the inner ear be educated in advance and be in charge of the practicing, unless the effect of symbols, of notation be already known, they have no meaning. Only familiarity with what they stand for makes them codes of a sentiment, factors in evoking certain responses. The ability of a student to synthesize at once the process of decoding and of rendering it tactile, depends on the degree of his readiness, awareness and experience. But starting with a tactile approach cannot be creative; there can be no musical nor technical insight unless there is first visual dexterity, because the hand is always literally 'here' where it moves; the eye alone sees the 'there' also, recognizing musical clues and the necessary relationships present in the score, when the ear can then perceive.

I have observed that most students come late to the realization that there is some connection between what they learn in their theory and history courses and what they practise on their instrument. They do not possess that sense of perspective and correlation which would enable them to recognize and distinguish musical "facts" in their different usage and articulation by different composers, as one is taught to recognize in literature the patterns and rhythms and cadences which distinguish the language of one poet from another. It is possible that what Krenek and L.B. Meyer say in regard to history and analysis courses is true, namely, that they usually aim only at enhancing prejudice? Of what possible use can all historical data be in the practice room if in the students' mind they are divorced from his music-making? What insight can the student gain as to the different grammar and syntax of the pieces he studies if he analyses them in terms of A, B, etc.? All skeletons look alike. Where can he learn to see the differences between, say, Hummel and Mozart, and Clementi, in a few bars, so that, like an actor, he may distinguish the various meanings of their punctuation? As Krenek said, musicians are not taught to read music as if it were speech. What is needed in the practice room is that cultivated musical intelligence which alone can select, can re-compose, and recreate. No actor builds, composes, his character by endlessly repeating words and sentences! He does it by penetrating into the character's experience and by acquiring his "manner", his "gesture".

In opposing the 'emotional' approach, I assume you disapproved of its most naïve manifestations, such as the performer who wallows in his own sentimentality; the pianist for whom proof of felt emotion is 'motion', one totally unrelated to the 'gesture' written in the music; and similar examples of self-indulgence, of inhabitating the composer's home and not only not paying the rent, but also breaking the furniture. Emotion, however, has many definitions and categories; it has different codes by which it is expressed and responded to in different cultures. It can be purely aesthetic; it can be displayed; it can be transcended; it can be implied through symbols which are shared and recognized. Tastes, temperaments, inclinations differ and so do responses and expectations of listeners, who may respond to different components not only of the music, but of the performer's art. Responses are learned; for instance, the French, who favour the particular emotion of what is left unexpressed, do not respond as readily as the English to the music of Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, or to Rosalyn Tureck's Bach. As M. Cooper writes, the French consider emotion a by-product, the revelation of a composer's or a performer's character being inevitably contained in what is said, without it having to be an aim in itself. Isn't it fascinating that the temperamental French should be more concerned with subtlety and with "intellectually satisfying" music-making, while the more inhibited, repressed, Anglo-Saxons find more important the baring of one's emotions? I have selected the French example on purpose, because I see that Canadian music students are in such an enviable position to have, so to speak, a double mirror at their disposal in which to view their culture: with it an infinite variety of views, of insights and perceptions is possible, infinitely enriching. I do not need to add what an unforgivable loss it seems to me, when anyone among you neglects this perfect opportunity to add another language, another cultural dimension to your heritage. As only a mirror can reveal our image to ourselves, so does familiarity with another culture alone enable us to distinguish what is our true self, and what just a cultural product. This discovery is most strengthening of one's personality, human as well as artistic.

But back to the weakness of vertical mentality, which sees a dichotomy intellect/emotion, as something never to be reconciled. If art, however, "consists of giving form to feeling and feeling to form" (Lucas), the so-called expressionist and the formalist viewpoints are complementary rather than incompatible. "They are considering not different processes but different ways of experiencing the same process, "since affective experience is just as dependent upon intelligent cognition as conscious intellection" (Meyer). Both viewpoints seek musical truth, the different being that that the defenders of emotion want the "whole truth" (the total involvement), the defenders of intelligence want "nothing but the truth" (the awareness of the world and the humanity already abstracted in the music itself). L.B. Meyer argues that the same stimulus may arouse either the affective or the aesthetic intellectual response, depending "upon the disposition and the training of the listener." In between the two extremes of obvious emotional clichés and of frozen academia, stands what you called service, which depends on both the heart and the brain. It does not oppose emotion, nor invite inhibition especially in these times of dire "sensitivity training."

The confusion arises from considering 'feelings' in performance more important than the manner of their expression. Applying to performance what Malraux says of a work of art, its value "depends neither upon its emotion nor its detachment, but upon the blending of its content with the method of its expression." It is not Juliet on stage, but the listener who must be moved to tears. Whether the performer be 16 or 50 (as the great Uljanova was), whether the settings and costumes be traditional or contemporary, the experience evoked must be that of Juliet, a teenager expressing her feelings of love in a 'manner' that was different from "I dig you."

The confusion similarly arises from considering intellect as the negation of personal involvement, of the individual humanity of the performer, of the emotion born of communication. In talking about electronic music, L. Foss stressed the almost mystical experience derived when a performer immerses himself in another man's world, not to lose himself, but to find himself in it; no machine will ever stop audiences from going to hear a live performance and witness the miracle of that transformation. The intellectual's striving toward fidelity "the other man's world", his 'passion', are not a matter of rules and arid reproduction but of giving music (as has been said of Kirkpatrick) "the human characteristics of the culture which gave birth to it; "it is a matter of awareness, that the freedom from the letter in order to convey the spirit, the emotion, depends not on ignorance of what one is departing from, but on a thorough knowledge of it. There is a ring of authenticity to the freedom taken by someone who is familiar with the entire output of a composer, and has therefore a strong sense of perspective and proportion; how different the opinionated liberty-taking of someone who knows his piece well, and no related work at all.

How can we prevent the deadliness of our opinions, our intolerance of others' tastes? First of all by developing what R. Sessions calls "a willing ear - the accent being on willing.” An ear, he says, that is free of prejudice, "that is attentive, curious, and persevering." The willing ear enjoys variety and differences, and increases our capacity to see things from different points of view, to widen our vocabulary of choices, Secondly, like N. Frye suggests, by following Socrates' percept of "unsettling the mind." by increasing the doubt on what we knew before. The fluid state this brings about is most uncomfortable for the vertical thinker, but infinitely fruitful to the creative mind.

"God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose… He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, and first philosophy… He gets rest, commodity and reputation; but he shuts the door of truth. He in whom the love of truth predominates will keep himself aloof from all moorings, and afloat. He will abstain from dogmatism, and recognize all opposite negations between which, as walls, his being is swung. He submits to the inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion."
(Emerson)

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The Second Deadly Cult: COMPETITION.

Dear Gordon,

In an interview with Jon Vickers you suggested that it takes a great man to have the humility to admit another man's greatness. Allow me to point out what is in my view rather "vertical" in your observation: you imply that humility signifies a "lowering" of oneself and that the relationship among artists is naturally a competitive one. I think instead that Vickers could recognize his colleague's greatness not because he is humble, but just because he is great himself. "Who, but one of large format, will recognize the format in another" (E. Bacon). You will see that those who pride themselves in being humble and modest are the ones who find it most necessary to belittle and dismiss the efforts and achievements of others, thus reassuring themselves as to their own worth. The ability to appreciate others is in proportion to knowing who you are, knowing your power, to that inner strength and confidence which, far from making you feel threatened by the strength and the powers of another, enable you to salute and to "honour God's gifts in other men."

How much misery I have witnessed among the young because of this North American cult of competition. For most of the students it is the only propelling force they know. Ah, to be considered better than so-and-so; to beat the other guy; to win. Ironically, in a culture, which so stresses individuality there seems to be so little care for uniqueness, and no joy on the part of the individual student in recognizing it, nurturing it. There is no hope for an artistic personality to develop as long as all energy is channeled toward "proving" oneself, misspent in endless comparisons.

Lucas Foss said recently that today's composers seem all to be working on one piece; theirs is a team-work, which, according to him, resembles the medieval construction of a cathedral where someone was doing the angels, and another the pillars, and others were carrying stones, and so on, and no one knew how the complete structure would look… I realize it is undemocratic on my part to wish for a greater spirit of team-work of cooperation, rather that of competition, among our students, but had Liszt been "competitive," less music would have been composed by all the composers he helped and supported, less concerts would have been given by colleagues he encouraged and admired, less pedagogical insight would generations of teachers have gained through the disciples he formed, some of whom, he believed, would surpass him. If the word "competition" was in his vocabulary, it must have meant to him, according to its etymology, "seeking, striving together." And just imagine, he never even won a "contest"!

It is the cult of competition which encourages the talented young to rush and push like an express train instead of growing like a plant (N. Frye); which has created a system of short-range tests and their required cramming as a substitute for learning, according to one's own pace; and has developed IQ "measurements" which focus on the speed of one's development rather than on how far one can go (Piaget). It is this concept of competition as a virtue, as being ""right"" which forces music students to aim at short-range goals with so much anxiety: the test, the grade, the recital, the "associate," the job. Accordingly, they limit their preparation to the needs of these goals: the chapters assigned, the pieces from the syllabus, the book-reports. Of course, recitals, exams, are important, but only as single steps of a long journey, the essential being ""where?"

My students have wondered why I teach Music 20 and 30. I always answer that these classes represent our best future audiences, without which our work as performers could not survive. But I also cherish the contact with young people for whom the study of music is not a means to an end. For students in performance, especially, the express train type of work is most harmful; by not allowing them to develop their total artistic personality it leaves them unprepared for the reality of a performer's life; by conditioning them to expectations of immediate rewards, it leads them to inevitable shocks and suffering. It is comforting to read the same complaints we voice against illogical pressure in our schools, expressed by the late H. Neuhaus of the Moscow Conservatory against the Russian system. Yet, because of their disciplined early training, young Russian artists do appear to survive in great number whatever pressure they encounter in the higher levels of study. The essential is to have met one's pace of growth, one's readiness, with the appropriate nourishment. First the ear, what Neuhaus calls the "inner music". (It is just too absurd that this gift to humanity which alone has allowed Beethoven to become Beethoven is in our schools relegated to remedial university courses, which are too late anyway.) Then the repertoire, to include daily sight-reading of symphonic literature, which makes it possible, as Neuhaus says, for music itself to become the teacher. And then the infinite attention to technique, that "test of man's sincerity," as Ezra Pound called it. (The Greeks would look in disbelief at the transformation of their concept of techne, i.e. Art, has undergone in Canadian conservatory syllabuses)

What is one to do, you will say, if one has missed the proper stages of readiness? Here is the true test: whether one loves music, understands it as a way of life, and wants to serve it with whatever powers one has or whether one considers it an investment which must "pay" - in opportunities, fame, success. In the first case, character and will alone can determine how far one can go; in the second, the outcome is nothing but heartbreak. Do I know of any antidotes to the deadly effects of competition? I have attempted some practical suggestions in an article available, I believe, in the library ("La pyramide a l'envers" - Journal of CAUSM); here are some suggestions of a more psychological nature: Remember that "The superior artist is not always he with the largest capacity; he is usually the one who has realized what has been given him to the fullest. The public senses this, and favours fulfillment over dimension." (E. Bacon) It is therefore necessary to avoid any tendency toward comparison - be it of yourself with others, or anyone. Milstein tells how young students "lose communion with the artist as he plays" and disregard his "originality and personality" because they compare performances and count the errors. Piatigorsky told about one of his students who always played poorly at the lessons, until the day the master demonstrated by playing poorly himself: then only the student could play beautifully. The desire to "win" is, unfortunately, stronger in some students than that passionate desire to communicate which is the mark of the future artist: it shows even in their inability to listen to their teachers, listen with empathy, that is, experiencing with the speaker. Their questions are not motivated by curiosity but contain "Implications (whether in tone of voice or in wording) of skepticism or challenge or hostility" (Hayakawa). This inability to be receptive rather than competitive prevents the student from drawing from the teacher's experience what he needs; as Hayakawa writes, "while the result of communication successfully imparted is self-satisfaction, the result of communication successfully received is self-insight."

As far as contests are concerned, they are an inevitable part of today's musical life; but of no greater importance than gambling, and, like gambling, not the only way to a "happy" life. I strongly suggest that you read in Szigeti's On the Violin what the old master has to tell about his experiences as an adjudicator of international competitions: the sight of the same candidates appearing over and over again, squandering their time learning the required pieces, in the vain pursuit of luck, often, as he says, adding a new teacher to their list, whom they may trust until they fail again.

Another way of competing and corrupting one's artistic spirit, is by trying to "impress" rather than express; by "providing oneself" through dexterity and easy emotion, by tackling harder works than one is equipped for. Remember what E. Bacon says: "When you have nothing to say, you can always become complicated." A form of competition with oneself is also the desire to be a perfectionist. Alas, as psychologists tell, most "perfectionists" remain in life only that, never become anything more.

Is there any place, you may ask, for some positive competition, in my view? Of course there is. One has to earn one's talent, for instance. Like Maria Callas, who attended the lessons of colleagues less gifted than she was in order to learn how they did their best. One "competes" well when one uses obstacles and hurts as spurs for achievement. One can always tell those who will succeed, wrote János Starker: any disappointment, any rejection, only makes them work harder. Not even our environment can "alter our nature, though it may condition it "(Frye) and if one is born a tree, like the one described somewhere by St. Exupery, no matter how high the wall, how permanent the shade, one will grow, no matter how twisted, in the direction of the sun.
"speed and fever are never greatness; but reliance and serenity and waiting."
(Emerson)

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The Third Deadly Cult: SECURITY, or Wanting to be Liked.

Years ago, a young Slovenian violinist, now a leading artist and teacher [Igor Ozim], went to his first lesson with a master teacher abroad. After he played, the teacher expressed his satisfaction and praised him a lot. Do you think he left the studio beaming, telling what a "good lesson" he had, and how "fantastic" was the teacher? No, he packed his violin never to return. He told the man he had come o learn, not to please. He wanted to become a master and the road could not be that easy. Reassurance had only offended him.

The word security, like competition, success, is not part of the vocabulary of great artists. The sense of security derived from being liked, which is a peculiarly American psychological manifestation, has been explored by Arthur Miller in all its tragic consequences in the character of his "salesman," Willy Loman. For our students who always express themselves in terms of liking or disliking, the important thing to consider should be who does the liking. And those so anxious to please should remember that "understanding is the only real praise"" (Bacon). Recognition, of course, depends on an existing cognition. Therefore David Milne, the painter, wrote about his audience being limited, since "very few can get a purely esthetic emotion from painting." But those who want instead to meet the expectations of the majority will corrupt their work with "effects" and with making things "interesting;" longing to be liked and understood by everybody, they will wear the dress they are supposed to, and of it is ill-fitting they will adjust not the dress, but themselves to it … As Hayakawa would call it, "denying one's own uniqueness and cutting one's self to the common pattern."

But uniqueness conveys aloneness … and who is brought up to seek security in that …? Some find it in it, like Glenn Gould, who even as a young man said that he always performed for himself alone.
"Happy is he who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public opinion; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale who writes always to the unknown friend." (Emerson)

Speaking of public opinion, as far as the arts are concerned, it is in North America still very much dependent on critics' opinion. One man in New York "dislikes" a play, a production, an actor, and careers are affected, huge sums are lost. It is not so in England, where the audiences' tastes are not influenced by press reviews. It is not so in Italy, where readers enjoy some cantankerous critic's articles the same way as people enjoy over here "Your Morning Smile." Any student who believes that there is security in glowing reviews and doom in bad ones should read Slonimsky's Lexion of Musical Invective, with all the "demolishing" attacks on composers, from Beethoven to Schoenberg; and, as a counterbalance, the annual issue of Musical America in which concert agents advertise their artists, who are each and everyone "the greatest" and "phenomenal" and "genial."" (How do Gilbert & Sullivan's Gondoliers sing… "Where everyone is somebody, no one is anybody …")

Wanting to be liked by critics is corrupting if one does not bear in mind whose is the opinion expressed in a review. Mischa Elman said touchingly that "unfortunately …newspapers are not as careful in choosing a music critic as they are in picking sports writers". And Bartok in exile wished he rather had negative reactions by an educated critic from which he could learn, rather than the illiterate reviews against which there was no defense. A critic is an interpreter, a mediator, an advocate; in order for him or her to understand how a work or a performance has been put together, he must be a "poet", a "composer" himself, as were all the great critics of the past who have shaped the tastes of generations, Shaw, Heine, Schumann. And his work must also be under scrutiny, so that one may know whose is the "critical" opinion. It is not important at all that one agrees with a critic, but that he teaches to listen and hear. Canadian critics seem to reverse the "dress" idea mentioned above: if their mental dress does not fit, instead modifying it they cut-up the performer, or composer who is supposed to wear it. I am told that John Beckwith used to be a critic in Toronto; what has happened since? Why do students protest about cafeteria food and do nothing about other poisons, which affect the public, and their own activity? In the present situation, when so much young talent is being trained by better schools, there should be greater awareness in Canada of the power "to strengthen or to poison" in the critics' hands. "A society in which artists are socially isolated or have to live off the charity of patronage will do all the damage it can to all the genius that appears in it" (Frye)

For the creator, the composer, there may be some comfort in the thought that he is ahead, and may eventually be understood. A young performer is more dependent on public acceptance and reaction for his growth. But, anyway, as Schumann said, "Nothing worse can happen to a man than to be praised by a rascal."

Then there is wanting to be liked more than someone else … The idea of security gained through beating, humiliating someone else. Or gained through receiving "confidence" from somebody. Alas, the hardest lesson is to learn that no one can either give or take away self-esteem. As hard as learning that "the capacity for joy increases in direct proportion to the increased capacity for woe" (R. May). What is commonly called sensitivity, even artistic sensitivity, is only the result of that capacity. It is necessary to remember Camus: "When a man has learned and not on paper how to remain alone with his suffering, how to overcome his longing to flee from it, how to overcome the illusion that others may share in it, then he has little left to learn." I have observed that this is a difficult notion to accept by most students, since it does not fit into the "pursuit of happiness" idea. Difficulties for them do not "exist to be surmounted" as Emerson said, but as excuses not to work. Only artists know that it is not whether one is happy or unhappy - that is important, but how one cultivates one's garden besides being happy or in spite of being unhappy …Neuhaus, the great Russian teacher, calls "odious" the idea of having "rights", of seeking the "easy" path. He would agree with Lloyd Percival that life is obstacle and that there are two basic types of performers, as there are athletes: the one who thinks about how he feels, and the one who thinks only of his objective. The latter wins…Winning, understood as overcoming the obstacle, not the adversary. I quote Virginia Woolf: ”…it is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. And this susceptibility of theirs is doubly unfortunate … because the mind of an artist, in order to achieve the prodigious effort of freeing whole and entire the work that is in him, must be incandescent…” There must be no obstacle in it, no foreign matter unconsumed …When people compare Shakespeare and Jane Austen, they may mean that the minds of both had consumed all impediments; and for that reason we do not know Jane Austen and we do not know Shakespeare, and for that reason Jane Austen pervades every word that she wrote, and so does Shakespeare.

This is echoed by Applebaum when writing about the discipline of Heifetz, how, "unimpeded by personal agitations or physical idiosyncrasies, he becomes a better medium to transmit the gift that is uniquely his." The conquest of such discipline has nothing to do with what is called "being a perfectionist." It is, as Neuhaus says, a matter of perfecting "the thought" or, what Szigeti, borrowing the term from football coaches, calls "skull practice." For the majority of the students, to perfect means to repeat in a kind of stupor in the practice room, only to finally become conscious, on stage, of all what is missing!

”All young artists must go through a discipline so incessant and grueling that only genuine talent can supply the energy to drive through it and the ambition to emerge from it a master and not a plodder. Plodding, or mechanically repeated imitation, of course gets nowhere: but it will usually be found that the plodder's inability to turn a fully balanced imagination on his practice will make it even mechanically imperfect.” (Frye)

The aim in the practice room should not be that the performance be perfect, but that it be impeccable - in its original sense of sinless. That there be no omissions of search and research. On the other hand, there has to be room for spontaneity, for that which comes alive during a performance. As Kirkpatrick suggests, one must decide very clearly what must remain and what can change. But one must not seek safety (if a performer were off the tightrope "we would not cross the street to hear him. Who wants to listen to a 'safe' reading of the Appassionata?" asks E. Bacon.) In fact, the etymology of the word virtuoso means courage.

Can university help in neutralizing the three deadly cults of opinion, competition, and security? It is a little like putting fertilizer on the foliage of an ailing tree … but it can be done, and must be done. Of course it would be better to start with Johnny… to encourage his independence, by exposing him to different sources of advice, different points of view; to encourage his capacity to change, to explore, so he would not come (as Matthey sighed) to any teacher "as an empty bottle to be filled;" to fill his mind not with needs to be liked and reassured but with reverence which young Gould manifested towards the keys of the piano, those magic tools which made music live. Above all, one should give him Knute Rockne's secret for making his football team so strong. It was a mater of intelligence, of discipline, of sincerity; i.e.-brain, will and character. He said: "Think square, live clean, and never have an alibi."