There is a marvelously direct and encouraging article by Joan Caplan, a mezzo-soprano teacher based in New York City, at http://www.joancaplan.com/art_read.html. In many ways this article touches on certain issues I am facing at present, with preparation for a competition creating burdensome stress that is now spilling into other spheres of my daily life, and it is satisfying to read her thoughts because they inspire both agreement and further questions.
One of the important points discussed is that of success. According to Caplan, success comes in variable forms and extents and can be defined by the individual. Fundamentally, however, success (in the particular case of music) is when a performer serves as the carrier of a composer and is able to touch the audience with the message contained in a certain piece. Now this essentially implies that the composer's will and intentions are of more value than the performer's own to the audience: only when the message of the composer comes through does it seem that a particular performance is doing the composer justice.
What kind of a place should a performer have? In my opinion, it is difficult to understand how a performer should negotiate his or her performance preferences or stylistic considerations with the seemingly transcendental messages of a certain composer's creation. Precisely because the performer is the carrier, and an ambassador of sorts of a piece of music, at a particular point in time, on stage in front of an audience, that ......
* to be followed up.
"perfectionism is the last resort of the amateur". the real star is one who is aware of his own imperfection, and the audience's, and does not let slips affect the general picture of a performance. it is important to distinguish "perfectionism" with "being meticulous" (or striving the do the best that one could). Is it because being "perfect" has too much to do with the performer's self-esteem than his awareness of his role as carrier?
What is wrong with self-criticism?
"Learn and serve your art. Keep in your heart that the real reason for singing is to be faithful to music, and to reach and touch an audience with the composer’s intention." Again, this raises the question on the role of the performer, and why it necessarily needs to be put away from the spotlight
Stanislavsky: "you must love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art". in essence, this means that one should derive joy from the fact that one is capable of creating art, of "serving" art. One is not to put the focus of attention on one's self-image when one is engaged in the process of doing art, making art the subject of higher importance. How realistic is this statement?
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I don't think it is unrealistic but I am not a big fan of suggestions aiming at the pure or correct performance. It is an old-fashioned way and the way of a theorist and teacher of drama to give a method of authenticity. But it is only a question of the expression in my view because it is highly interesting to examine ones bones and nerves and senses and aspiration-system as well as the different channels of concentration an freedom of mind in order to build and repeatedly reconfigure a tool or machine which might be the most beautifully working medium where art can go through: me or better: you which doesen't end with the outside of skin but is already in interaction - in the same field of action as the room of let's say music.
So it is in my eyes possible to try to love tthe art within oneself but I would rather say try to listen with all the years of experience you have with stage and you will know the point of exciting seduction where you are art and you don't reflect and it remains if you do well and if you "start loving yourself in this moment" the peak of impossible concentration is gone. Or do I stick to a far too banal point there?
It is more complicated isn't it?
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