This physical space between the notes, as individuals and as the entire row, is something the player must grow to hear for himself, after he has come to grasp the facility of projecting sound out from oneself; the two are deeply linked; our nervous system, extending into the hands, being part of our life, part of us, is perceptible to us, as a space in itself; player must set those notes out in a line, with tangible mass, within that spatial dimension available to us; open the body to the music-generation you are acting out so that you can feel the notes as solid objects inside your lifehood

This ‘essai’ is taken from my work-in-progress website, where I hope to share, and make easier to learn and understand, the music and philosophy of the unique pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, I a long-time and very passionate student of his. I am not sure how readable this is for people not already attempting to be immersed in his world (i.e. almost everyone) so would appreciate comments.

Feel free to peruse my playlist of his music (my YouTube channel being dedicated to him), and take a look at his unsatisfactory Wikipedia page, if you have absolutely no idea who he is. We would appreciate any support you can lend to his music. It is unique, but his students are few: his legacy, endangered.

Lubomyr's technique typically comes in two flavours: "static position" and "arpegge" (yes, not 'arpeggio') play. The purpose of this article is to introduce these concepts, and convince the reader it is not simply a matter of: playing with arpeggios (or broken chords) versus 'not'.

To the audience, these modes are broadly categorised by the motion of the performer's hands and the shape of the sound: localised and relentless (in either an energetic or an inevitable and calm way) versus glistening and unfurling, rather than rolling around.

For the performer, they require different mindsets and modes of concentration. The main reason that I struggle to "really do" arpegge play, even in situations where I've long since been able to physically handle the notes - the arpeggios - is that I cannot properly grasp the frame of mind. In Lubomyr's language, the most fundamental difference is that arpegge play requires the ultimate softening (or the opening) of the wrist; static position needs that less, and more primitively is just about asking your hand to live.

Learning his music, one begins with the static position play, as it is significantly easier; in my experience, it can be four years before one can even seriously consider learning arpegge play, and just because static position is easier does not mean it can be mastered in any short length of time.

Well, really there are three modes of play. The third is what he calls "Bel Canto", which came to him decades after starting his explorations: it is a mode of powerful singing, where in the middle of an intense arpegge piece he can essentially (and easefully) project a clear and bell-like ringing melody over the sea, even though he's only spending a few centiseconds on each note.

Of course, phrasing and emphasising a melodic theme is an essential skill for most forms of piano music, but this particular type is absurdly difficult. I will say no more about it, as I know little and have only a basic grasp on the more fundamental 'arpegge' mode anyhow.

The static position pieces are the earliest form of his music; they are the least sophisticated, too, but already beautiful. For some examples (off the top of my head): Pockets of Light, Butterfly, Parasol, Clouds 81, Cloud Passade 3 and Marginal Invitation are all in static-position. The first potential misconception to dispel is that static position pieces, despite the name, are not so static that they remain in the same register. Most of the pieces I've mention fluctuate over 3 or 4 octaves in the course of the piece - just, at any moment, the performer can be relaxed and not have a need to move very much, or very far. Your attention is focused on a small area of the keyboard (or perhaps two, if the hands are far apart) and therefore it is not focused on any area of the keyboard: you can acknowledge you are now in, say, the key of C +16va, and then turn that off, as it is no longer important; your hands are already in the right place, and with eyes closed they already see where to go; you are playing in a well-run groove. Then you are now in Dmin +16va for a few beats and then rapidly down to B flat +8va, let's say, but if you take a snapshot of the piece you will only see yourself moving under the hand. That is, the rough, general position of the hand is the same, maybe oscillating in some small circle aided by gentle support from the wrist (which is important! Rigidity in the wrist is lethal) but underneath the hand, or let's say the cloud traced out by the hand, the fingers may be very active.

Pedagogically, the 'purpose' of static position play is to teach the student how to generate energy in the hand and wrist, in the calm and easeful way, and discover the basic physical experiences of continuous music. Having the hand live and dance is already challenging, so serious multi-octave arpeggios would only add too much "difficulty": I say "difficulty" because, again, it is usually not so hard to literally play every single written note, but it is very hard to gain that feeling which makes the playing inevitable and correct and natural (and not just something the score has ordered you to do).

It is like you have struck one note which is held: there shall be beat notes (harmonics) and the natural oscillation of the sound wave, but you have just struck one note. The rest of your performance goes into realising the richness of this single note, the complexity of a raindrop. Then you will calmly reach for the next.

It is an issue of scale (zoom). Because arpegge play (at least that which I understand) is also like just striking one note at a time, but the perspective is different. Try to imagine an seismograph, and a gentle earthquake (which is the 'single note'). The needle will waver somewhat, but not very much. That is the single note which you perceive. In arpegge play, you take that image and you blow it up. You've taken a Fourier transform. You scatter that single note across the keyboard and understand the subfrequencies and beat notes individually; you imagine middle C and C+8va and C-8vb simultaneously; but, crucially, you still manage to perceive the whole thing as one package - as you should. You move across the octaves, in this blown-up regime, but hope to find it just as easeful and as simple as striking the single note with its compact waveform and small envelope of sound held in the palm of your hand. Successfully doing this is the tricky part. It is easy to tell yourself: "right, ok, let's think of it like that. Uhm. Done?" but you have to believe it, think of it as if it is obvious, let your hands think of it, or do it while asleep.

When Lubomyr first told me to think of all the notes in the three-octave arpeggiated exercise I was struggling with as all the same note, it genuinely helped. I was bloody shocked by how helpful it was. When I first presented arpeggiated motion in concert (in my little extensions to the piece 'Parasol') I was a little nervous, knowing I often fumbled the notes in practice, but as I came to the part where I would start playing in this way I just told myself to yield to it and "imagined a river", with sunlight glistening on it and a waterfall (I understand Parasol to be the song of the journey of a river, see) that just... worked. I envisioned this river - it wasn't just a mental cope where I told myself to tell myself to think something. And I pressed through it confidently, still making some small slips here and there, but not a soul in the audience noticed. It was one coherent, single sound.

“Do not reach to the sound by attempting a touch. Create the sound alongside of the touch; by living the sound, by being it, the touch becomes done without a false concern; thinking of touch without the sound will deny you your voice. ‘Touches’ are for the observer, not the doer.”

Subscribe now

This ‘essai’ is taken from my work-in-progress website, where I hope to share, and make easier to learn and understand, the music and philosophy of the unique pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, I a long-time and very passionate student of his. I am not sure how readable this is for people not already attempting to be immersed in his world (i.e. almost everyone) so would appreciate comments.

This article is for thinking, and over-thinking, the differences between my (and your) playing and his. It is about trying to get a sense for the subtleties of his performances.

Really, the title is: "what do we lack?" but I can only speak for myself, and cannot point out the flaws in students that I haven't met - but I should expect all of this to generalise. The point of this article is to stimulate some awareness of the more subtle of Lubomyr's skills and remind we the students not to stagnate and assume a piece has been learned in its fullness. The tone is not intended to be critical, but it is certainly worth knowing when we are not done.

Here I grapple with those of his thoughts I’ve been privy to, and my own experience. All unattributed quotes are quotes from him, the majority of which come from his privately published major text “Open Time: the Art of Continuous Music”.

Feel free to peruse my playlist of his music (my YouTube channel being dedicated to him), and take a look at his unsatisfactory Wikipedia page, if you have absolutely no idea who he is. We would appreciate any support you can lend to his music. It is unique, but his students are few: his legacy, endangered.

The picture you see is a random screenshot from one of our online lessons.

I'm going to make a long string of subjective claims here. I honestly don't listen to his music that much from day to day; this is because it really demands true attention to be enjoyed, and really demands the live experience. When I listen to his music casually, it is always great, but I am in danger of forgetting just how great it is. When I really pause to think, think completely about a piece I'm hearing and how he plays it (or how I play it, if applicable) I remember the initial awe I had, when I first encountered him. I suppose this article is an attempt to communicate and justify that feeling.

After two years of playing Pockets of Light, I thought I had finally learnt the piece, and I knew how to move passers-by in a coastal hotel. After three years, I could present it to my schoolfriends and find some of them moved, too. After three and a half years, I could make my debut at university with this piece, and shock a few old-timers. But I still had not, really, learned the piece. I know this because when I revisited it earlier this (academic) year, I found my playing to be much smoother still, and I noticed that I had not just an ease but an ear for subtlety of sound rather than raw, primal power; I know this because it was only this academic year that I found I could truly perform pieces before an audience without any nerves at all. And, I know that my playing was still a little too raw, too primal.

It took me only a month to learn the notes and only a few months further to reliably get an approximation of the correct rhythm; certainly, within a half-year, I could "play the piece" from the perspective of traditional forms of piano music. It is not a complicated piece. And it would have sounded delightfully awful, and indeed, did. I have told versions of this story a few times, here or elsewhere, but I'm always drawn to it as a powerful reminder that even for my favourite piece, the one I've worked on the most and have loved the longest, there has been and will be an abyss of years before I could play it well, and before I can play it like Lubomyr.

I was in love with the physicality of it, the feeling of unleashing energy. Every so often there'd be a very good moment in the music practice rooms at school, and I would find a burst of speed and no longer be aware of the motion of my fingers - I could get high on that. Then, some poor music teacher would knock on my door and ask me to be quieter, and I'd grumble but agree. In truth, I did not know how to be quieter. The issue is deeper than the usual one of: "it is difficult to play swiftly and quietly", which is familiar to all intermediate-level students of piano; the continuous music teaches you to be powerful, to use almost all of your body, to forget the meanings of the terms "RSI" and "stamina"... but then millenia of wisdom have to step in and remind you that unconstrained power is tempting and lazy and flawed.
I lacked the ability to not just lock in a connection between my heart and hands, but make an active connection with my mind and control the rising seas. I still lack this, but at least I now know to work on it.

• "You are not in trance... You are shattering the resistance of your body and your mind"

• "Softness (which has nothing to do with its volume... For the volume is nothing but a whisper to the Will) ... instead of a stream, there flows a river: allow yourself to change from a river to a stream, from a trickle to a torrent: but do not let anyone see or show that change... For though the river is wet, the fish is dry inside."

At a recent concert, the professional pianist Emilie Capulet complimented me on my "poise". I'm thankful, but when I remember to think about Lubomyr's own poise I am floored. I don't exactly lack poise, but I'm certainly still finding it. When I play Clouds No. 81 or Cloud Passade No. 3, I feel glad of my speed, even my attention to softness and dynamics - the issue of "too much power" in Pockets of Light doesn't occur in the lighter clouds pieces. My performances of them are now somewhat fluid and certainly fluent; what could be better? There was a moment a few months ago where I was revising in the library and Lubomyr's official recording of Clouds 81 came on. I had a very unusual and very strong emotional response, almost instantly; I almost found myself crying in the library, and was on the edge of breathlessness. The notes came only at a moderate pace, very clearly, resonant but not ringing; every tone was calmly placed, bright but not shining; light, but unpretentious and bold enough to be properly placed, earthed to the keyboard.

I was amazed by this piece the first time I heard it, many years ago, excitedly sharing it with friends who described it as a waterfall; then I started to learn it, finally having access to a score, and I felt almost a little disappointed. It wasn't as complicated as I had hoped, and seemed very repetitive, and I could never make it sound beautiful. Some years later I stopped whining and decided to lock in, learn the whole thing seriously and present it at university - the concert went very well, and I've been pleased since; again, I can do it gently yet swiftly. But there is a second layer of amazement - I think Lubomyr's music becomes more wonderful once you've got a foot in the door and you have an appreciation of how it is played, or could be played, because then, if you are patient and find a moment to be humble, you can really see the depth of his skill and its power.

I lack the ability to play that piece with a truly honest calm, a serenity. I always want to make it sound delicate, or make it sound fluid, but I do not embody fluidity in a full way. Lubomyr prefers the word "supple". I sometimes worry about making it sound beautiful without just letting it be, letting the notes calmly ring out and follow one another. I don't particularly worry about making it beautiful for an audience, but public performance is shaped by what happens in the practice rooms and it is fun, too fun, to test the extremes of one's own fluidity of playing: it is also too tempting to undermine the aesthetic of your own performance, and thereby "ruin" it by trying slightly too hard. These days the audience mostly melts away, which makes me seem poised and at ease on stage (which is true) but my arms don't melt away, so the immersion is not complete.

I have absolutely no idea how to adjust my technique to make the piece sound as it does in his recording - the same goes for Cloud Passade No. 3, but for a different sort of reason. In his official recording of Cloud Passade for the single piano, I had a similar epiphany, listening back to the piece after already having learned it. There, the notes have a completely mysterious weight, rather than a mysterious clarity. I hadn't heard it before, and I would struggle to explain this observation to someone who hasn't heard it, but it is audible. The clouds really are rolling, and the notes are heavy; they aren't thunking or thumping at all, and no delicacy is lost, but Lubomyr is combatting the technical challenge of: "how to play this piece swiftly without destroying the mood and dynamics?" (which is a real challenge) by having iron fingers embedded in the clouds; my usually strong-feeling fingers feel thin and frail when I listen to this piece, as I imagine my own hands trying to drive the clouds forward, with whatever powerful or soft touch; it's an imitation.

The notes, for him, arrive, implacably, but not as a military march. Cloud Passade No. 3 is a very driving piece, especially when I play it. You have to output a great many notes without pause, and the physical stretches in the hand are quite enormous; the exertion in that piece is great, even for Lubomyr, at first - but we both found it very easeful, after taking a month-long break; but whereas I am using my understanding of his technique to drive the piece forward, give it momentum and drama, to force and manage the clouds so they start rolling and keep rolling gently, his playing is... unabashed, not self-conscious, not even fractionally indulging in enjoying speed or showing the audience what he's capable of, and the sound just keeps coming, each tone placed; no, not placed, but simply there; his playing is better almost because of a great difference in maturity, a wisdom, more than any matter of raw ability or technique.

And I promise the difference this makes to the sound is audible, completely. It's even visible if you are lucky enough to see Lubomyr live.

I feel many similar sentiments when thinking on the piece "Butterfly", too. The poise Lubomyr finds during the metamorphosis-climb period is honestly gobsmacking, especially once you've attempted, even become very good at, it yourself (recently that piece gave me the best concert I've ever played, and a best day of my life). The listener almost doesn't know that it's hit them. Perhaps it is not only because there is no difficulty, but no possibility of difficulty, for Lubomyr, that he can manage this so well. I know how to make Butterfly light and springy, how to mix the dry-spells with the "plaintive" with the roar of the wings, but I have to think about it. I never worry, but I do have to continually adjust my touch because I am aware it can quite easily go wrong - Lubomyr simply is. It almost sounds as if there is no true distinction for him between the "normal" main-theme section of the piece and the long climbs; there is a narrative distinction, but in either case he is simply playing, simply living. And that poise, dear reader, is extremely audible.

• "The life of the figure's flow must dance a little above the ground"

• "That our spirit is constantly renewed, that is the anonymity of our flight's motion"

• "If you focus too much of your mind upon the patterns (when dealing with discrepancies in numbers) the figures become heavy and brittle. So brittle, they will crack from the weight of the mind and the mind will go sprawling as the table collapses, and the figure is broken. The mind must sit lightly upon the flow, so that the figures can live.. In their lightness"

• "There will be times when you will feel the need to draw back from the drive, and release from your existent tension. Do so. Draw your strength back to a point of soft breathing at a distance, so that the body may regain itself anew. You can move the contact of your existence's weight behind or forward, away or nearer, within the keyboard. [...] your will shall be the humble master."

But, of course, this is not all that the music is about, or capable of - the next quote applies somewhat to "Butterfly":

• "Do not think that at all times you will flow on the gentle rolling surface. At times, the same figure will appear from you as a static driving energy coalition; it will rain in pieces falling together at a steady and heavy oneness of volume."

And there we are

Leave a comment

• "The highest attainment to which you can aspire within the technique, is to maintain one figure (or flux) in front of others, for ... minutes. It could be 5 minutes, it could be 28. It is the overcoming, and the sinking-in that counts. For this, you must have no fear. And believe completely in what you do."

Subscribe now

This ‘essai’ is taken from my work-in-progress website, where I hope to share, and make easier to learn and understand, the music and philosophy of the unique pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, I a long-time and very passionate student of his. I am not sure how readable this is for people not already attempting to be immersed in his world (i.e. almost everyone) so would appreciate comments.

This article is about one of the building blocks of his music, and how it interacts with his technique and broader philosophy.

Here I grapple with those of his thoughts I’ve been privy to, and my own experience. All unattributed quotes are quotes from him, the majority of which come from his privately published major text “Open Time: the Art of Continuous Music”.

Feel free to peruse my playlist of his music (my YouTube channel being dedicated to him), and take a look at his unsatisfactory Wikipedia page, if you have absolutely no idea who he is. We would appreciate any support you can lend to his music. It is unique, but his students are few: his legacy, endangered.

A flux is a passage in the music where one varies between (fluctuates) a short series of patterns, often just two, and arrives back at the start. When the flux is between two objects, he tends to denote them by the Greek capital letters for Theta and Phi (see the image).

I could have titled this article: "what is a pattern?" A pattern functions as a fundamental unit in the majority of Lubomyr's compositions (caveat: the ones that I've seen!), especially his early ones. The continuous music began with 'pattern-work', he often says. The early exercises such as the “Meditations” hark back to the origins of his music. I think it is important to note many of his more recent compositions are not so easily divisible into blocks of patterns - but they're also fantastically more difficult; Lubomyr has said that 'pattern-work' is necessary to discover the physical and mental aspects of his technique, to get your foot in the door, hold it open, and widen it further. I recommend the pieces "Illirion" and "Butterfly" for people wanting a sense of what his music sounds like when it departs from pure pattern-work.

Lubomyr did have some early influence from the ambient minimalists, especially Terry Riley, but he never wanted to recreate minimalism, which his music is often mistaken for. So! What is a pattern? It is not a minimalist's cell. If the cells in minimalism are musical ideas replacing the analogue of a bar of classical music, I think it is more accurate to say that a 'pattern' in Lubomyr's music functions more as a replacement for a note or very brief chord sequence, as a snapshot of a harmonic idea; the pattern is maintained and extended for an often "arbitrary" duration (but not really; the human player acts on their emotional whim, but their understanding of the music guides a sense of how long is too long or how short is too short) in order to let the piano sing, rather than just briefly bark and die. Maybe 'note' is sometimes wrong; what is better, perhaps, is (living) tone.

Similarly, fluxes need not be played to the letter; if you modulate differently from one to another, or change the right hand at a different time to the left, it is all fine - probably. And it is definitely fine if you are playing organically and understand the piece without feeling limited by the score.

• "Do not worry of fear when the pattern of the changing notes (in either or both hands) becomes inverted or in the 'wrong' order, either at point of change in patterns, or in flux changes; for mindlessness will restore the 'correct' order by peace and gentleness. The knowledge of the figure as a block will re-establish the figure into its true position, while the mind maintains the flow without panic or destruction. It occurs by 'remote control'."

Of course, you might be confused by the fact that the patterns in the image at the start of the article appear to be written in a bar. This confusion is artificial, because you are looking at the marks on a page and these do not represent the music. The bar is there only to divide patterns; the score is there as a crutch to help you 'perceive the music' (something Lubomyr often says) but it can only take you so far. It takes a while, but one really has to adjust to interpreting scores in a different way - coming to them with a different attitude - when learning Lubomyr's music. On attitude - in a recent interview with Lubomyr (available on my YouTube channel), he compared one of my recent concert performances with the playing of another of his students, who is an extremely well trained classical, concert pianist.

• "The most blatant difference is one of attitude"

Is what he said of that comparison; there, he was regarding me as an example of a "continuous pianist".

Although continuous music tends to be played very fast, much faster than classical music (*), in a sense this is a misperception; continuous music is in an important sense rather slower than classical music. Classical music nurtures harmonic ideas, develops them wonderfully (Lubomyr tends to refer to their development as via the "velvet glue" of the great composers), and in a sense allows them to breathe throughout a section or throughout the whole piece... but a single note tends to be plucked and cast away in favour of the next one, at a very precise rate, as the score demands. Continuous music really lets everything breathe, in the patterns, even if the breath is a short one - hence the "slowness". In Pockets of Light (say) you can still hear the first note 4-5 minutes into the piece.

(*) caveat: sure, some classical pieces feature extremely swift trills or glissandi - but is it sustained?

Livingness and Beinghood are words Lubomyr sometimes throws around; it is very important, in his technique, that the player plays in such a way that everything is living, from the body to the hand to the vibrating strings. That's a bit abstract, but one does come to get a sense of it in practice. In particular, "repeated" patterns are necessary for life; if a superb, traditional piece is like a still painting - still very full of human emotion and variation and dynamics and all of the rest of it - then Lubomyr demands that we play the painter and that everything is smeared out over time, with the brush still stroking.

A flux is a collection of related patterns, and the changing between patterns internal to a flux carries a local sense of emotion and time (being happy with changing senses of time is essential for this music); the changing between fluxes carries the overall sense of time, or tempo, through the whole piece. Not everything in a piece is a flux - sometimes there are bridges which, once crossed, aren't returned to.

In a flux, it can be that all the change occurs in one hand, or in both; it can be that the hands are playing in synchrony, or not; it can be that the two hands are playing notes of equal duration, or not; it can be that the two hands are holding patterns of equal length (e.g. both hands are repeating a 5-note sequence), or it can be that they are holding 5 against 6 or some other ratio; it can be that the two hands must start the pattern as written on the score, or it can be that you are allowed to take a different 'rate', meaning that the left hand may begin in the "middle" of the pattern when the right begins at the "start". These are in quote marks because, ideally, there is no middle and there is no start - and this is only possible under repetition and gentle fluctuation.

• "... like raindrops falling all around. Better to say it is raining [rather then repeating], and the player maintains"

What seems to be always true, as far as I can tell, is that neither hand rests, and that a lot of surprising musicality can be emergent from the sustained, living pattern. What first got me into Lubomyr's music was the piece Pockets of Light, which begins with some rather simple patterns that can generate quite astonishing overtones, submelodies and subrhythms.

I have often been asked about how the rhythm works in continuous music. It is something of a mystery to me as well. When you look at the page and see the pattern in its entirety, sometimes it is clear what the best thing to do is. But, as you can see from the above extract, sometimes there are essentially no markings whatsoever. Does this mean the piece has no intended, or correct, rhythm? Not really. It just means you have to find it in practice. Sometimes patterns are difficult until your mind views them in just the right way, and when that happens the correct rhythm is unlocked as well - the rhythm often being too complex to faithfully write down in the score. Moreover, dictating the rhythm in the score would be destructive, since the rhythm must, above all, be organic. That does not mean it can be arbitrary; rather, it means that whatever the continuous pianist generates in the moment is one of the many flavours of 'correct'. It is definitely possible to play one of his pieces incorrectly!

Though I indicated it's not always true, it is usually the case that the two hands play notes of equal duration, during one of these fluxes or patterns (and when it is not true, it is still true that each individual hand maintains essentially equal durations). This doesn't mean that one of his pieces could be faithfully scored, via traditional notation, using (say) only quavers. He has done this before, when experimenting with producing public scorebooks, but he is never happy to do it. In the above, the lines you do see on the few notes which have stems - which traditionally would mean 'quaver' - certainly do not mean quaver, which is instead a rigid eighth of the measured semibrieve, metered out. The notes tend to be of equal duration, yet this duration is not at all fixed and can either subtly or dramatically change throughout a piece. You can think of it as a form of ‘rubato’, but that’s not really right. I’ll need to think some more before I can elaborate on the distinction.

It is much better to say the notes are locally of an equal duration; now, why is that? Why do fluxes tend to have this feature, such that classically trained musicians might ask me: "so it's all semiquavers, then?" (a fair but misleading question)

It is not from a lack of imagination. There are three essential reasons I can think of right now:

• The introduction of something like "quaver-quaver-quaver-minim-quaver-dotted crotchet-quaver" into one of these patterns would be awfully disruptive to the natural flow of the hand, in this music. It would be like jogging on an highland trial, enjoying all the scenery, taking the time to delight in what you will and then having your drill sergeant bark at you to stop for precisely one second, bid you jolt forward for another two seconds, before finally allowing you to resuming again. It can be done, but it is not for this music. To be clear, I am not trying to suggest, via this metaphor, that precise rhythms in classical music are disruptive - they're part of the many forms. This music just happens to be different. Similarly, Lubomyr's music tends to not have a time signature (because "your time", whatever that means, is more important than a marked 6 : 4 ratio, and when he does mark ratios he says he does so that you might perceive their significance, not that you might sweat and strain to really make sure you perform them exactly)

• In general, notes are not played and then released in time for the next one. Classical music has a legato mode, but predominantly this continuous music operates in an extreme version of that (not always - see e.g. the 'dry spell' runs in the middle of Butterfly) and, as a part of this desire to be 'living' in every way, your fingers may be resting on a note long after they were told to do so by the score. You cannot enforce rhythms with an irregular note duration if your hand is melting into the keyboard.

• We don't need to have it any other way! Having, for the most part, locally equal note durations obviously places some kind of restriction on what is possible (and all musical forms are somewhat restricted from being like other musical forms, unless you take the view that musical forms do not, or should not, exist) but the restriction is not keenly felt. Continuous music does not find itself in rhythmic poverty. While your hand is all a-running and a-flowing in a pattern (which is, again, like a note or brief chord sequence) you can mentally pluck out specific sub-notes, give them a particular voice, vary your pressure and emphasis - Lubomyr often plays with great attention given to every single note, even in a blisteringly fast run - and then in the developing of the pattern through time an emergent rhythm will come, and it will carry many other sounds you were not expecting. The music is absolutely not monotonous or robotically repeated. It is most important to be aware of this possibility, though it is not always easy to do.

Let me finish with a thought about what it is like to play a flux. In a way, the whole website could be just about this topic, so I will be brief and just leave this quote, as a crutch for your pondering - the meaning of it is best found by both thinking and playing.

"Containing the module as a whole, as a block that is flowing through time, rolling on its parts, is necessary to the peace of your playing. In order to generate the hands fluidly, in a peaceful motion (at times) you must grasp the figure in both its parts and its wholeness. To generate in peace, the mind, the self, must open a door within the self-mind

[...] almost always, the mind is in motion, flowing from one hand to the other... As the other one maintains its set course.

[...] The resulting state of consciousness, with its foundations upon your own organic being, shows no concern for changing parts in the flux or otherwise, by living out each of the block units.

[...] Your consciousness must sail on the motion and on the harmonies - part of your dimension will handle the changing notes by themselves - with or without intellectual or conscious intervention.

***

Once the door within your mind is opened, you come to sail over the top of the notes - physically, you exist both as the support of the figure, and the self that sails upon it. At this point, the notation loses all of its rigour, and the discovery of freedom becomes clear and real. Then the will of your voice is heard within the music."

Leave a comment

• “To say 'the player repeats' is to say that a drop of water is falling many times, all around. Better to say 'it is raining', and 'the player maintains'...”

Subscribe now

This ‘essai’ is taken from my work-in-progress website, where I hope to share, and make easier to learn and understand, the music and philosophy of the unique pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, I a long-time and very passionate student of his. I am not sure how readable this is for people not already attempting to be immersed in his world (i.e. almost everyone) so would appreciate comments.

This article is about the difficulties of ‘keeping going’, when engaging with an unappreciated and challenging form of music. Here I grapple with those of his thoughts I’ve been privy to, and my own experience. All unattributed quotes are quotes from him, the majority of which come from his privately published major text “Open Time: the Art of Continuous Music”.

Feel free to peruse my playlist of his music (my YouTube channel being dedicated to him), and take a look at his unsatisfactory Wikipedia page, if you have absolutely no idea who he is. We would appreciate any support you can lend to his music. It is unique, but his students are few: his legacy, endangered.

This page is, I suppose, about keeping going. And about the why.

Continuous music can appear to be very difficult, and unless you are very remarkable, for a long time you will find yourself not, in a traditional sense, playing much of note. And so much of its 'difficulty' is invisible to the average onlooker, or even to the classically trained pianist-onlooker. It will likely be invisible to you, too, at first. It can even be invisible once you have come to know the technique a little better, because no difficulty in this music is of an essential type: once you overcome it, you understand it was always something that could be done, not easy, not hard; the music is without strain, just (perhaps) with much activity and concentration - or, really, much living.

• "Continuous music is not difficult to learn. All the steps are quite small, and you take many steps and get better and better... [find] a balanced transcendence within the mind."

• "If you attempt that which lies ahead of your reach, which can not even with effort in ease and peace and will, be extend to, and grasp, then you will be in danger of poisoning yourself by the concepts of 'I can not' - the negative destruction of your self. If a figure remains out of reach, lay it aside for another day. It is better to postpone the achievement, than to admit to an early defeat."

But, with that said:

You will not be able to wow any crowds; if you are anything like me, for a long time you will struggle to truly wow yourself. You will sit at that keyboard, give an hour or so of your time to stumble through a piece, perhaps hitting all of the right notes, and you won't hear any magic; you won't hear the beautiful and strong rolling tones of Lubomyr, this sound that you aim for; you won't hear the wonderful harmonies and flashy tricks and trills of a classical piece; you also won't move between the strong sounds of a classical piece, which immediately delight but immediately die away.

You will sit before a meditation, and play simple patterns ad infinitum, wondering at how easy this must be, wondering when you will get to the good part. Your mother or your friend might say: "that's nice, dear" and go about their day. You might then go for something different, and know all the notes to Butterfly, exactly and perfectly, yet play something almost-soulless and without any sparkle (more accurately, play something very soulful but without realising/reaching the soul of it).

You will be proud to play a piece, once, and then return to it and again find it flat, find your hand too tense; you will play a piece very fast and very wonderfully, and return to it as a snail, cramping up halfway through the performance.

Where is the beauty you were promised?

• "Do not think that at all times you will flow on the gentle rolling surface. At times, the same figure will appear from you as a static driving energy coalition; it will rain in pieces falling together at a steady and heavy oneness of volume."

As a first response to the above list of problems, it is important to be find your peace with the fact that the organic piece (continuous music is essentially organic) will change everytime you return to it, sometimes in obvious ways, sometimes not. Your own state of mind is inexorably linked with the fate of the piece. When I have come to the keyboard, failed, and been upset, I have had to remember: I could do this before, and so I will do so again. The time, today, was just not right, for whatever reason - most likely a reason of my own mood, or tension in the hand.

Nevertheless, it is so depressing to struggle with something you proudly blitzed through a month before: Pockets of Light (first appearing in the album Corollaries, the cover of which is shown) and Parasol would very frequently give me thumb cramps, due to improper technique, and occasionally I would breeze through them and be so excited ... and then return, and not be as a breeze. But a piece of this music, once played, will stay played; your hand has understood the form, and you know there is no physical obstruction anymore. All that remains are the very real mental ones: of perceiving the chords, of relaxing, of using your attention in the right way, of hearing properly, of rejoicing... but, whether you were conscious of it or not, you found how to do all of that, for this piece, before: you can find it again.

And if you did not find all of that, or a part of that, then you had not truly 'breezed through the piece', so there is no particular loss - there is nothing to lament. This is a very important point: one must not be deluded by false progress. If you played very fast but were forcing yourself (even without realising) or out of control, out of sync (just to name some basic reasons) then you have done something, but it needs much improvement and is not a goal, not a high point you should try to return to.

Often in the early days Lubomyr would correct my hand posture, my thoughts, my motion, and I would find the piece much harder; I would play more slowly, and struggle, suddenly aware of my faults; playing with better technique is, at first, more difficult, because you have to override your old bad habits which lent a false-ease to the piece. Good! The false 'high-points' I might have previously attained were things to be proud of but not things to cling to. To be clear, it is psychologically very important to have moments where you go fast and feel very good about what you are doing - every student yearns for that. I mean no insult to that. We just have to understand these moments for what they are.

A related point: you might record yourself. It is good to record yourself; in making videos for my YouTube channel I have often discovered things. You might listen to Lubomyr's recordings, too. But it is important to acknowledge that, somehow, for a reason I don't fully understand, the human and live presence completely changes the picture. Your recording will always be unfaithful; Lubomyr once said words to the effect of "if I did not have to eat, there would be no recordings", and his overall distrust of machines and appreciation for humanity is related to this. One of his Circular Etudes has the funny instruction that it should not be recorded (number 14).

You might find yourself playing, and find yourself very immersed in your experience, enjoying it thoroughly, and then hear some kind of soullessness when you listen back to the recording. This partly will be due to gaps in the technique, of course; a lack of true immersion and true control; but in large part your eyewitness report of the music, at the centre of it, is far more accurate than the recording. This could sound a bit grandiose, or as a 'cope': "I sound bad because the recording didn't work, just trust me". That's not what I am saying, but it is difficult to pinpoint the real issue.

Take your recordings instead as tools to indicate where you had irregularities in your speed, a lack of control, wild dynamics, whatever. As technical issues. But they will necessarily lose a lot of the musicality which is very particular to continuous music, and you ought to be prepared for that.

• "I'm faced with the fact that this voice will disappear... and the recordings do not really contain the voice of the piano. Very faint photographs, a very feeble attempt to recreate the voice... this is the sorrow for me."

Continuous music is not for the audience, not really. It is of you, but somehow Lubomyr will say it is not even entirely for you either. This perspective of Lubomyr's is, I think, mostly due to his extremely advanced state: when he plays, he is showing us the best, almost as the servant of the piano - the personal joys he found long ago, and though he continues to find them wonderful they are already found. Now, for us, we are still seeking (so is he, but again, he is far beyond us for the moment), and I think it is reasonable to think of the music as at least partly for you. In these developing years, you are to discover what your body and mind can do, and even to discover how you enjoy life and shape how you think, beyond the keyboard. It is important to keep in mind that the music is for the instrument, as well. You have to be able to love the sound, but you will likely struggle with this from time to time.

• “Do not deny the presence of the audience. But do not play for the audience, nor to them. Play, because you can ... Neither you nor the music possess any stage. There is no platform for adoration"

Continuous music is the music of small cafes, and quiet churches; it is a music for those who can really listen, who can sit with the sensation of their own time passing; the full majesty and impossibility of some of Lubomyr's pieces, the ones that leave me wrecked to hear them when I truly focus, or hear them live, goes in one ear and out the other, for many. And that is fine, and to be expected; and they are all good people. It can even go in one of my ears and out the other, when I do not give it my attention. Indeed, I do not listen to Lubomyr's music all that much, because I reserve it for when I can truly appreciate it.

When you do start to get good, and be amazed by not only what is possible in some abstract way but by what is possible from you, you will still not find a stage, or adoration. Not even Lubomyr truly finds this. At any of his events, some are amused, some are bemused, and then there are the others like me on the verge of tears. At your events, you may find a handful of people, some ones who could listen intellectually, and a fewer number of ones who could listen with their whole heart; maybe this "fewer number" is just yourself. And that is fine.

Once you understand the music is not about your audience, any childish (but fair and human) feelings of dismay or disappointment will go away. I recently performed at a Christmas fair, with children running around me and adults talking over my playing, with so much noise around - good noise, the noises of a community-spirit - but I had to quell that first feeling of sadness and shame, to be offering "my" music and have it "unappreciated", and I had to consciously conquer this feeling as I was playing. Someone even tried to cut my performance short. But even though I was there for them (and for Lubomyr) the music just simply was not about them; it was about the piano.

There were a handful of those around to listen to it, and sit with it, and many who weren't. Let that be as it may. What was important was to give the piano its full sound and try to be faithful to the piece, and remain calm enough to allow the piece to develop organically and allow things to happen - and I ended up giving the most swift and fluid performance of that piece that I had ever given.

You will have to grapple with this question of what you have to display. Continuous music, if you want to take it seriously, will take years of learning and unlearning, and much of that time is limited by growth in your body that you simply cannot accelerate just by practicing more. What will you have to show for it? Nothing - because you are not trying to show. You will have to learn to find the joy of it in the way it feels in your hands; in the surprising overtones and overlapping rhythms which emerge from the piece, extra depth to the sound that you yourself did not put there; you will have to find calmness and control over the notes, be able to maintain them for hours at will and not be bored by it - then, then it is joyful, and you will learn.

"Things to show for it" will come only as a side effect; be grateful to anyone who supports you, but do not look for them. Before you find the super-stunning abilities of Lubomyr, you will settle for less; you will sit with yourself - and only yourself - and with your own time (what the hell does that mean? I am using the word as Lubomyr uses it; I hope to explain it more detail in a future essai).

• "Let them [the hands] slip away unnoticed. Let them go. The song will continue, and that is most important. If it comes to that, let the hands vanish too... In the end, remain alone. Yourself, you will always be there. And perhaps something more. Find out how lonely we are. Play, by the reality of oneself. Find this one. Aloneness is much like Silence. There is no silence; there is no aloneness. There is always Existence. We are the perception of it"

You must figure out how to make the joy almost entirely yours. Your audience, if you have one, is just sharing in your joy as well as sharing in your music. That is a choice which is theirs, and only theirs, to make: you cannot be disappointed if they don't make that choice. Someone said to me, after my secondmost recent concert, exactly this; they appreciated my (experimental and, to them, alien) performance above all because they were moved by how much it moved me.

To be clear, this is not an isolationist, self-absorbed, solipsistic philosophy: of course, Lubomyr (and I) enormously appreciate any audience. We are both people who love people. But, the music is inescapably personal, and this is a strength: this page exists to discuss motivation and demotivation, and forgive the cliché but 'realising I already had everything I needed', independently of how conventionally impressive the music was, how confident I felt in my technique or how receptive my audiences were, was important and took me far too long.

Story time: two nights ago, I played into the small hours of the night, practicing NKR-22 from the Lund St. Petri symphony (see the above image) for some four hours. For over half that time, I was playing the same bar. The same bar; can you imagine it? Was that not... boring? Simple? The notes were deceptively easy, and it was not hard to me to play through that bar once. When I tried to sustain the pattern, at any reasonable speed and in synchrony, I collapsed. I kept collapsing, until I found the true song. And years ago, I would have been frustrated and bitter - how incompetent must I be, to struggle with one bar after many hours? Anyone watching me would have been confused.

But, reader, I cannot express how beautiful it was. This single bar, this "simple", static-position figure; when I brought the pace to a slow trickle, and found myself on its river, completely in the given moment, without bar lines or rhythmic marker, immersed in the song, and found that I finally "got it right" ; I cannot explain how happy I was - and "got it right" was not hitting the notes accurately: it was this particular feeling of having lost all feeling in my hands, this feeling of exact, rolling raindrops falling side by side; of a great separation yet an indistinguishability between the two hands, of hearing the tones emerge calmly, softly, not overstated, just so in sync with the calmness in my body, with the beat ticking along with my own time. There was also more to it, more in line with this, that I haven't mentioned here.

• "If you are bored by the passage of time, you will be bored by this music. You who are not bored by the sensation of your existence will find a voice for your time"

I mention this to highlight there is something quite incredible in the continuous music of even a very simple figure. It is about the technique, the mindset, your relation with what's around you, far more than it is about what is written on the page. If you can believe in that, you can overcome the doubts raised in the first section of this subpage.

I mention this also because absolutely none of that could have been perceived by someone else, or properly put into words. I have tried, and only ask you to believe me that I am trying to describe something. Those 4 hours of my life were spent, mostly, trying to understand the continuum of one single bar. A simple thing! If you have the humility and patience for it, you too can and should find something like this in your playing of continuous music, some hidden thing to delight in that only you, currently, can feel.

It is there, if you look for it; but look is the wrong word - it's more that you should be in a receptive frame of mind, able to find it when you cross its path. Even in the simplest pieces, such as Meditation 1-C, there is something to be found. When I first played that piece years ago, I would not have impressed anyone with the difficulty of the task; but the soft singing of Meditation 1-C was very joyful, in a basic way I could appreciate even then.

You will have to wallow in the sounds of a repeated, "simple" exercise; you will have to learn to hear it. You will play what seems like a wall of noise to most, and yourself be delighted it; not just by its sound, but the feeling of it in your fingertips and its presence in your mind, its shifting and surprising nature. When playing, most of the joy you will find is yours, inexplicable to anyone watching. You must remember this, and cherish it when you find it.

No-one can take it away from you. For example, when you understand that speed is an emotion, and then find your hands moving far faster than they ever could had you tried, you will find a joy. And you will listen to your recording, realise it wasn't that fast, and you will not be dismayed - because what you felt was far more important than what the recording could show; showiness will come later.

No-one can take that from you, once you find it. You should try not to let you take it away from yourself. I stayed motivated through the early years, even when I felt inept or unmusical or bland, because a part of me knew that even these "simple" things I could do were now important, and meaningful - you have to find a way to understand that what you are doing is meaningful.

So many people could also do what I was doing, with regards to playing the notes; I knew the same people could also sit with the music and play it in the same way (which is much harder to describe, but much more important), if they had the patience and humility for it - but they weren't, and I was; hopefully you, too, can sit with something like Meditation 1-C and not just blitz through the notes but find the time to really hear it, let your mind drift, and delight in the feeling.

When you do, you will need no assistance in remaining motivated. I sometimes find it is good to come back to those first exercises - as they are easy for me now, there is a certain guilty pleasure coming from not having to struggle, but in their simplicity there is enough beauty to remind me why I am doing what I am doing.

Let me not be misleading and over-trivialising. The player can maintain more than just a simplicity, a never-ending little flux, however, and find joys that are visible to another. Just, probably not at first - and it will always be more amazing for you, the performer, than for your audience. Or maybe 'amazing' is the wrong word, because often you have already known what you are about to do.

You can learn to play with an unnatural fluidity. You can learn to play so fast and for so long that people will ask you, wide-eyed, about your stamina, not understanding that it was made easy and easeful; as I have said, you will eventually start to have these moments where you play faster than you actually can. You will learn to find a persistence of motion that, yes, others will be able to hear and be surprised by. Lubomyr, of course, has learned to play in such a way that renders me speechless.

But I implore you to understand that this should not be your goal. Instead, find a way to have respect even for the simple seeming things, and appreciation of the innate simplicity of the more complex things (and yes, you can hold these two 'incongruous' ideas in your head in a sane way; continuous music is already driven by and learned through incongruous patterns in the two hands).

• "There's still hope because continuous music comes in a flash. So even though one might be doing something else, walking down the street, cutting the grass, picking apples, I don't know, something will speak, somehow, a flash will come silently in the body. And when they return to the piano they will be different, and their hands and fingers will be different. There is no one threshold, there's a constant growth of many small thresholds. And they depend on the devotion of the pianist .. not just to the music but the feeling within their body."

The above is also very, very true. I have experienced it multiple times. I have taken breaks as long as two months, struggling with a particular piece (Cloud Passade) and return from my holidays suddenly able to make immense progress; Lubomyr has experienced it, too. One should hold out hope for this. However, this should not encourage laziness! If you find peace during your break, think about music still, and exercise your hands somewhat - manual labour of any kind, or using handgrips such as the ones climbers use, to practice - then there is the possibility for sudden, inexplicable progress.

Let me finish with a passage from the introduction to Open Time:

"Let us say that we are setting out (in the present-day) to change the pitch of our voice. It has been for some time now at one pitch; steadily; that is good; it is a wonder to sing at this pitch. When a new pitch is given, let us sing with that one too. Perhaps some day we can sing with three or even four. Our voice could sing at one pitch; now it can sing at two; but the journey to reach this second one is no shorter than that which led us to the first.

No matter; we are always learning; our time is for learning; so let us learn well to sing with this second voice. One thing is sure: we never know when we have learned it. That is a strange thing; that, too, is a part of time. All we can know is that we have taken a step; certainly the view has changed; perhaps we can rest here and look at how far we've climbed. But do not be fooled into thinking that this step has put you at the summit. We are always facing away from the summit, out, with joy at the height; perhaps we can enjoy this altitude; far away we see other mountains; but they are not the mountain which we are climbing; that one we must take one step at a time, never knowing when and if we have reached the top.

...

No-one has yet mastered anything; even ourselves; because we are everything that matters.

No words can find this pitch for you; only practical discovery will; practising; we still do not know the meaning of this word; because it is understood as something painful; the sunlight, too, is painful to the mole (I suppose), but "painful" is not the essential meaning of the word, though sometimes it is that, for sure. Bring oneself to practise. Practise so that you can know again what you have seen yesterday; if you knew yourself yesterday, you must practise today to know that again; if you can do today what was done yesterday, then you are already doing it better; and it is no pain to meet again the old friend; keep him as a friend; you are older too.

So, I have forgotten this question I once asked about this voice; certainly I am still aware of questions; I just don't know how to ask. It has something to do with one step; not along a different way; it is still the same way; we are just one step farther along; let's not call this new; this taking of one more step; to take this little step, we must take many, many tiny-tiny steps; these tiny steps are deceitful; they look so terribly big every time; before, and after too. They, too, come and go in perspective. These steps are only as big as our reach can handle; the step of doing it is never "at-once"; because it is made up of many smaller steps, each along the way, to coming to reach that step; every step is immense; because we have done it.

It is neither hard nor easy; those words are meaningless in practice; what is hard cannot be done; only what is done is easy; therefore, simply do it."

I acknowledge that much of what is said here has been said before. The mountain-summit analogy is old, and I first heard it from my oldest friend. But I find it reassuring and humbling that even the ... star, let's say, that is Lubomyr, feels this same, human way.

Leave a comment

“No words can find this pitch for you; only practical discovery will; practising; we still do not know the meaning of this word; because it is understood as something painful; the sunlight, too, is painful to the mole (I suppose), but ‘painful’ is not the essential meaning of the word, though sometimes it is that, for sure. Bring oneself to practise. Practise so that you can know again what you have seen yesterday; if you knew yourself yesterday, you must practise today to know that again; if you can do today what was done yesterday, then you are already doing it better; and it is no pain to meet again the old friend; keep him as a friend; you are older too.”

Subscribe now

This ‘essai’ is taken from my work-in-progress website, where I hope to share, and make easier to learn and understand, the music and philosophy of the unique pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, I a long-time and very passionate student of his. I am not sure how readable this is for people not already attempting to be immersed in his world (i.e. almost everyone) so would appreciate comments.

I'm not really sure what this particular essai is about, but after a good day's practice, the other day, I felt tempted to dump some thoughts here.

I think a good day's practice of continuous music is a little different to what you might consider good, normally. You don't find yourself playing warm-up scales, that's for sure. The practice was good if you loved the sound, and could sit and listen to it as it was generated. But not only then. You might be a mite dissatisfied with your play, or (less emotionally) just conscious of what it lacked. It was a good day's practice if the time completely slipped away. You perhaps felt like waking up from a dream, resurfacing; it does not have to be this way, as the highest levels (which I have not attained!) of this music require extreme concentration and mental activity, but it is fine to be this way, and almost ideal for someone stuck, as I am, at the tip of Lubomyr's iceberg. If you could give an active attention to the sound as it unfurled, allowing yourself to be surprised by new emerging tones and rhythms without losing sight of the main, prescribed ones, then it was good.

You do not have to push yourself to play something extraordinarily fancy in each practice session. If you can aspire to sit down and make some peace with the keyboard, being gentle to, and aware of, your body, then it was good. But a good day's practice could mean something fancy. You might have naturally played something far more easefully than you ever have before, or finally overcome some kind of obstruction in the hand. You could have given your best performance ever, and have it unrecorded, a moment passed. Or, you could have played something old, and not much better, but appreciated your contact with the piano more, or found some new awareness in it, or a stronger hand.

A good day's practice can mean playing a song that's familiar, and now that it can be confidently done you have your consciousness resting above the notes, with eyes closed; you might close your eyes a second time, and focus on the darkness, keeping only half a mind's eye on what you are playing, preferring to experience the sound and rolling physical sensations; and then colours will emerge. If you have had your vision swirling and fading, pockets of light dancing around, visions either fuzzy or clear (recall what it's like when you wake up suddenly somewhere with bright light, like sleeping and waking at a beach, and then shutting your eyes again) then it was a good day's practice. It took me a long time to access this, but now it occurs whenever I play a more challenging piece. If your eyes feel heavy and gummed, as if very, very tired, it was a good day's practice.

"If you are bored by the passage of time, you will be bored by this music. You who are not bored by the sensation of your existence will find a voice for your time".

A good day's practice could mean maintaining the same two-bar flux for two hours, and doing little more than that. And you would enjoy it, if you did it earnestly. I have done this more than once, and it feels glorious. This passage of time is not really two hours; even with active concentration, my internal and external clocks differ. Again, it is as lucid dreaming. And as the external time ticks on, if you are doing it right, you will notice your touch and attention thickening, your fingers changing in thickness and strength, not tiring out the more you play but becoming energised, drawing some kind of energy from the sound they generate and the way the keys push back into your fingers; this will leave some kind of after-feel. This feeling may last for hours after you have played. In this time, your hands will feel as rocks, in some sense, two stones sliding off one another. You may (I did not, for a long time) notice a springboard sensation in the hand, with fingers unconsciously snapping back to the central, closed hand position. If you are very lucky, you may find yourself struggling to pick up objects (this happened to me only once, so far, but happened to Lubomyr for a year). Then, unless you are extremely lucky, this feeling will fade, and your hands will feel empty and unthickened again.

But it was also a good day's practice if the hand felt as a cloud enveloping the music, but, somehow, not really there. It was good if you forgot that you were playing, and you were only listening (this is insufficient for the full play or performance play, but just fine to find in the practice room). It was good if you became (briefly) aware of feeling your motion only in the sense of pressure at the fingertips, and not via any presence in the palm or knuckles etc. That's me, anyway - Lubomyr says this:

• "The hand must die to the player. It shall be as dead matter through which living desire must pass through five channels to contact with tone. The dead hand becomes soft and pliant. The dead hand has no awareness of distance, shape or horizontal space... For these are static intrusions to thought... But has its own lump-like indefinable mass, with living energy bulging from it.... Only the hand which is not present will be able to touch the music"

Similarly, it could also mean struggling and finding tension in a shoulder or a wrist or a thumb, and giving this some mindfulness and attention, carefully adjusting yourself until the tension dissipated. You could let yourself sink entirely into the weight of one thumb note, focus on some one particular physical sensation and ignore all else (good for practice, not performance).

• "The technique manifests itself as a pressure-tension in the back... the act of overcoming this tension revitalises everything."

It was a good day's practice if you could struggle, take a brief break and come back to it. It is important to acknowledge your own mental resistance, if it exists on a particular day; to acknowledge that you weren't in the right mindset, and peacefully withdraw. I've sometimes struggled with something, switched to some other, more tame practice piece, then switched back 20 minutes (or something even ONE minute later) and become suddenly able to play again. Even if you are an old hand, you can still experience tension in the hand. It's good to remember that it can be strong and weightless (the feeling in the hand), if you have worked for long enough at this music, and give yourself some space to find that again. Really, it might feel laughable when Lubomyr talks about playing with no hands, or with a disappearing hand, or words to this effect, but it does and can feel that way. And you first discover this only after maintaining practice, of something reasonably but not extremely intense, for hours.

It was good practice if you slowed yourself down to an icy trickle, and did not run "like wild horses" (Lubomyr said this once to me, admonishing). Synchrony is very important for most of this music, and it's extremely easy to lose it, or lose it but deceive yourself and pretend that you have it. The action of slowing down a repeating pattern and paying keen attention to the synchrony is an important one, and developing the muscles of attention is important. Adjusting touch until the fingers gently but confidently fall together. If you could find that feeling, even for a few minutes, it was a good day's practice. And you might find that the faster play has become easier, once you have understood how the hands can fit together at the slower rate. This may seem like an obvious point, but it's very easy to override it. Even in Lubomyr's more difficult pieces, individually straightforward-seeming patterns can occur for one 'bar' (typically to be repeated for several units) and it's tempting to run swiftly over these, because, well, it's straightforward! But very often the slower pace, but with better attention and synchrony, is more difficult and more important to try to attain. The wild horses can be deceptively easy to let loose. It's good to feel that, too, of course, but not if you are straining for the speed - only if you are letting it happen (perhaps at the cost of some musicality). It is more difficult still to have the continuous speed and fluidity and weightlessness and touch-synchrony control all at once, and it cannot be found by focusing on it.

"It is true that for the player who has developed quite far within the continuous technique, there is no obvious visible change, no special feeling, nor any sudden or glorious power; we can liken it to a man who through some state of mental and bodily ignorance, is unable to run - it had never occurred to him that he could run; through practice and guidance, he is quickly made capable of running; on the first day he may be jubilant, but on the second, we should find him running at the slightest whim, without a second thought on it, taking it all as calmly and insignificantly as we do ourselves, who can run".

Leave a comment

• “What mattered to us all then, was that they, I, all of us as audience, were listening to human things; our presences there were being washed by human waves of what-we-can-do... you can't give people more than that”

Subscribe now

This ‘essai’ is taken from my work-in-progress website, where I hope to share, and make easier to learn and understand, the music and philosophy of the unique pianist Lubomyr Melnyk, I a long-time and very passionate student of his. I am not sure how readable this is for people not already attempting to be immersed in his world (i.e. almost everyone) so would appreciate comments.

Lubomyr has thought much about the nature of audience, and most of these thoughts are locked away in his head, his words to students and his writings. He has experienced confused audiences, unhearing audiences, empty audiences, and absolutely astounded audiences, in his over 50 years of unique play. Here I grapple with those of his thoughts I’ve been privy to, and my own experience. All unattributed quotes are quotes from him, the majority of which come from his privately published major text “Open Time: the Art of Continuous Music”.

Feel free to peruse my playlist of his music (my YouTube channel being dedicated to him), and take a look at his unsatisfactory Wikipedia page, if you have absolutely no idea who he is. We would appreciate any support you can lend to his music. It is unique, but his students are few: his legacy, endangered.

Lubomyr's stance, as I understand it, is essentially a delicate balance between considering playing before, and giving to, an audience as very important, and considering performing for an audience as unimportant, a distraction, even a danger. Yet, he was grieved when I told him of a time when I played before an audience that mostly was not listening, saddened by his perception that I was "the only audience member". So, this might lead us to believe he thinks playing for audience and getting listeners and praise and so on is important.

• "Neither you nor the music possess any stage. There is no platform for adoration. For the concept of 'stage' is the denial against the truth of our active time"

Ok, so maybe we should just not expect, or hope for, praise. But even that he is not especially happy with:

• "Do not deny the presence of the audience. But do not play for the audience, nor to them... You are not entertaining"

Yet, he once wrote this to me:

• "Dear Nathan, that is so nice to hear! It is great that you play in front of people, and very important for your development mainly in the body and the mind because when you play for a public, your body and your mind are set to "Maximum Output" - very good for the body and for the Mind!"

This essai is an attempt to bring these three, perhaps “at-odds”, comments together to a common (but vague) understanding.

Lubomyr has said that beauty is the goal, and that self development is another goal, of the pianist - but both of these ideas ought to be understood carefully. Continuous music is neither selfish and self-absorbed:

• "Do not tempt people with concepts of your beauty. The profession is infected with the sub-conscious tantalisation of the audience - and the audience cries for it, begs for it, feels cheated without it... Dressing in the permitted costumes of sexuality, he perches atop the stool, exuding the false skin, ... what has your organic self to do with this beauty?"

Also in relation to appearance, he writes:

• "We have seen this already, this loss of time - people go to concerts not so much to hear a piece of music, as to see a certain performer. After all, they already 'have' the music on record"

And it's not self-absorbed:

• "The player who plays to know himself is already at poverty with the world... know that there are no great men, so that you do not aspire to be one of those who does not exist"

So what is it? What is the audience for? I'm tempted to wheel out the tired old line of 'if a tree falls in a forest with no-one around to hear it, does it make a sound?' Though tired, the question still has some merit. When the continuous pianist plays 'alone', they can find the space to listen very deeply to the sound of the piano, and allow hidden overtones and rhythms to emerge - to love the sound - and to hear their own sense of time ticking along, imparting emotion to the playing. When there is an audience, now the player has to adjust from allowing only their sense of time to tick along, but balance the sense of time of the other humans in the room. This makes almost no sense: the reader may expect a specific remark, something concrete to do, some certain adjustment in attitude to make.

But it can make a great deal of sense, if you sit with it. In practicing his Meditations (his most basic exercises), say, you may repeat the same passage for an hour. Few audiences would appreciate this. While this act is not necessarily self-absorbed, if done properly i.e. with a view to exploring the touch and sound of the piano, it is an act of self-development above all else; you are practicing. The audience member is not playing alongside you and feeling what you are feeling, so you are not giving them much more after the fifth minute. In playing Pockets of Light, you might maintain the fluxes for a very long time, enjoying your control over the patterns and the emergent sound, but again after a while the benefit is going solely to you, the student and player - because you’re definitely going to support me in preserving his music, right? :)

It is important to remember that continuous music is much, much more wonderful for the performer than the audience member. This is not a defect. What is also important, but significantly harder to describe, is that "time" here is not just the meted, allocated number of seconds you held a section of the piece for. The audience member's function is not limited to forcing you to play faster, or less languorously.

To perhaps add more confusion, here are some quotes about time and audience both, both drawn from "The Human Reality of Continuous Music":

• “The first question: is it possible, or even necessary, to generate the real act of continuous playing before an audience? Because in the real act, the idiot player falls asleep to time, and what audience is interested in that? For the activation of a continuous playing, the most necessary elements have been fixed to constitute a 'piece': already the full material has been notated from which the player must shape the singing of the music. The only fundamental element left unspecified is time."

• “In this freedom, the listener and player are united together by one acknowledgement: that what will event from the ‘concert’ will surprise both of them in time - by their own presence within it”

Lubomyr has referred to sleep more than once. A common mistake, that I made for a long time, is to think this music is just about falling into a trance. And when you read:

• "The most difficult is to fall asleep in front of your audience" - [after a long passage about many things, all of which were called 'the most difficult']

It's hard not to develop this misconception. But I suppose when we sleep, we dream.

So the audience member encourages you to focus not just on the joys found in practice, but on the sound and the communal wonder. Lubomyr might add some more spiritual comments here. We love to see performers live in part because it is amazing to see your fellow human do something, something organic and current, here and now, there and then. I could listen to a recording of jazz improvisation and be somewhat impressed, but I am much more moved when I see my good friends play in this way; I get to be confronted with people whom I know, having a human skill completely beyond my comprehension, and I can share in that wonder - and they, surely, will find a joy in it that I cannot. Continuous music isn't any different, in that sense.

• "If you pretend to delicacy, the walls of inertia will collapse upon you... you cannot make contact with your voice if you dangling a lure in front of the audience. Do not expect to speak the truth through a mask"

Continuous music is very, very personal. Most music is, but I'm not sure that most music demands the same personal contact with the instrument as a basic prerequisite for playing well (of course, in all music personal contact is required for playing masterfully, but it is not the first advice given to a beginner). Lubomyr likens it to singing, and said once that this music is like the 'operatic voice' for the piano. So you do have to present yourself to the audience, but it has to be in a very honest way. This is partially what he means by "your voice"; again, this is an abstract comment. I am not recommending any specific action as necessary. I make and repeat these comments only because, when I read Lubomyr, when I read his main treatise, Open Time, I was moved to understand something I hadn't 'known about' before, and all my subsequent performances were better because of it.

“Whether the piece is 2 hours long or 17 minutes long, the player is to play from his own being, and more to himself than to any Other. This does not mean that the player is to ignore the presence of an audience, be it one or more people - not at all - (for what the player creates and recreates is given to himself and to the audience) rather, the player is sounding himself, as though he were himself the strings that are vibrating… for nowhere on the path is the player to stand still… the sound of his creation is constantly shifting, the overtones consistently climbing over one another, changing place, in time”

But, we must be careful to strike a balance between sharing and showing the personality. Contrast:

• “If you speak to others from the drama of your time, then you give to them your greatest gift. It matters not whether it is rejected or accepted... What matters is that it has been given.”

With:

• “There is a fashion in clothing as well as in music… to play, one must be faceless. you shall be glad for the clothing that comes your way”

I will finish this section with a quote having a slightly different focus. It adds a little context to the next section, too.

"Remember that your playing is a gift, so do not hurry the giving of it. Wild flowers are growing everywhere. They too are gifts... But how many stop to look at them? If they hurried to come to flower, would that change anything? Or make them dearer? Do not wait for audiences to roar in approval; if someone has stopped to pick the flower of this moment, that is a gift for you. Many moments will fall to the ground, as unpicked fruit.

Let them return to the soil. Play on. Do not bother too much to change the shape and colours of your flower to try to dazzle those who are walking by. The sun too tis dazzling, more than any weed flower, but [do] many people bother with it? Keep playing. No, forget to play. Keep thinking. No, forget to think. Keep living. No, forget that too. Just go. On."

It is important to not be too deterred if a certain performance misses the mark, if you 'failed' somehow (you didn't) or if the people there weren't ready to like the music. Not everyone will. This is not because your playing is inherently amazing and is, by default, valuable, no matter what people think. That is not what the above quote means. I leave it to you to figure out a different meaning.

My experience

Speaking to the hypothetical continuous student, I would say: when you do start to get good at this continuous music, and be amazed by not only what is possible in some abstract way but by what is possible from you, you will still not find a stage, or adoration. Not even Lubomyr truly finds this. At any of his events, some are amused, some are bemused, and then there are the others like me on the verge of tears. At your events, you may find a handful of people, some ones who could listen intellectually, and a fewer number of ones who could listen with their whole heart; maybe this "fewer number" is just yourself. And that is fine.

I never really had an audience, for a long time; frankly, I was unworthy of one. Perhaps I still am. I never hear my own recordings and imagine wanting to listen to them. I only know how they sounded for me, at the time of playing, and how it felt, and there came a point where performances consistently started to feel, for me, as wonderful, relative to my own expectations. If you have never had an audience, it can feel bold, arrogant maybe, to play your strange, mysterious 'continuous music' before a crowd who don’t know, and can't be expected to enjoy, this strangeness. This is closer to ‘imposter syndrome’ than genuine stage fright.

What I have observed, and what has been confirmed by people who've seen me play live, is that the performance of the piece, both in the sense of its sound, goodness and its capacity to engage (rather than entertain), is much better when I and the listener both understand that I am sounding something - giving brief life to an existing song - which goes forth with my full attention and some piece of me, and that the something, and the attention I've given it, may both be shared by the listener.

That was wordy. I'm struggling to get at exactly what I mean, but it is true when I play (or, rather, when I play best) my mind is not on sounding good but rather it is on the good sound (hopefully!), and with eyes firmly closed I just perceive the audience at the edge of consciousness and adjust my time and tone so that I don't dwell too long on a repeated phrase and so that I smoothly (hopefully) pass over any note inaccuracies; it is best when I perceive specific aspects of a piece which I think are more beautiful and give those aspects more weight, when giving the piece to human listeners.

I accept that this may be "wrong" i.e. not quite the optimal relationship, or the relationship Lubomyr has developed. I have found the relationship to be more of the following form:

• The audience is trying to understand what I have put into the piece, and trying to share a bit of humanity with me (and sometimes appreciate that more than the sound itself!)

Rather than of the form:

• I am trying to give the audience the best possible sound, and best possible experience they could have that night, and the audience is expecting me to do this

For example, I might have had stage fright, or an anxiety I would not be able to achieve a certain more difficult part of a piece, or trembling/tiring hands that might not be able to cope with the rest of the piece or its speed. But it is not important to give your audience anxiety, and instead more important to give them a taste of the potential sound; it sounds a little crazy, but having that thought actively in my mind has saved me from collapsing at the stage more than once.

Lubomyr once told me, when I was struggling in a lesson we had, something along the lines of: "if your hands can hear the beautiful sound, they won't want to make a mistake". What I just said is not the same, but the sentiment is similar. My playing is worst when I have actively thought about looking and sounding good for the audience; I have only really done this once, and I lost my place and stumbled in a piece I ordinarily know very well.

Finally, I would like to share a story Lubomyr tells, which echoes that last paragraph, in Open Time.

• "A campfire story now: about my first 'public' concert in Paris; it was 'public' because no public came"

He speaks of playing some music for two pianos (i.e. playing over a taped recording of himself); after a long time, a delay of a half hour, nothing was working, and none had come to help him setup. When things were eventually working, the amplifier was at top volume, bellowing, roaring; he maintained his song for approximately 15 minutes, finding that the (live) piano could not be heard at all.

"All the while asking: what was more important to give these people? Finally, I went over to the wall plug, and pulled out the cord; at each step to the wall, I saw better and better what the word 'technique' meant, and why it was important to everyone... I began to play again... our pleasure at the space we were alive in, the space our beings occupied in body and soul and on Earth, our space within the room returned to us, and our beinghood spread out from us... what I had then to give was quite different from what I had given 10 minutes before; the human beingness that was capable of playing at the instrument began to play again...

Free of its prison of self dimension that... silenced the happy drone of our livingness, blinded our feelers, cut off our arms and legs... free, we were able to share our existence in the room; and the technique of a living player was speaking from the human dimension, from the body of its soul...

What mattered to us all then, was that they, I, all of us as audience, were listening to human things; our presences there were being washed by human waves of what-we-can-do.... this living presence was playing at the piano; the spaceless knowledge of the self was playing at the piano; you can't give people more than that"

When, two months ago, I dared to perform "Parasol" with my own ‘arpegge’ (not arpeggio!) variations at the end, a technique I had only begun to learn just a few weeks before, at my college, I was most nervous. I was speaking with one of my closest friends right up until the concert started, getting some reassurance; in practice earlier in the day, my arms had shaken and my hands had fumbled. But as I came to the stage and started playing, I felt calm. When I approached the arpegge variations, and decided to go through with them, I remembered Lubomyr's story and consciously thought about what was important to give, and I gave it. Aye, I fumbled a few notes, but kept rolling; it mattered not. The personal confusion was not mine to selfishly impose on the audience; there was a song to be had.

Leave a comment