Reconsidering Piano Pedagogy from an Evolutionary Anthropological Perspective
The following was given as a lecture presentation at the IPPA Piano Pedagogy Conference at the University of Kansas, which took place from July 6-9, 2024.
INTRODUCTION
This presentation explores the physical and gestural aspects of piano performance (basically, how people move in expressive ways while they are performing). Historically, pedagogues such as François Couperin, C.P.E. Bach, Muzio Clementi, Franz Liszt, and Ferruccio Busoni had vastly different views on the role and even acceptance of body language and certain mannerisms at the instrument. Couperin and Busoni both viewed musical performances as “audio presentations” in which the sounds themselves could not be threatened by any “earthliness.[1]” Although they lived centuries apart, their similar views led both to advocate for the most minimal movements at the instrument. On the other hand, CPE Bach, Clementi, and Liszt believed that performances could center around the individual technique and artistry of the performer, allowing for more bodily freedom and involvement from the pianist.
I propose an interdisciplinary approach to this specific concern of piano performance grounded in research from pedagogy, musicology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology. Drawing on evolutionary theories of the emergence of music and language in the human species, I argue that a musician’s gestures should not be guided by showmanship or virtuosity, as often emphasized in the performance world, nor limited by purely intellectual concerns. Instead, they should be motivated by the shared evolutionary origins music has to language and communication.
Reconsidering piano pedagogy from an evolutionary anthropological perspective situates music performance in an evolutionary context, using the information we have about how and why musical behaviors evolved to inform how we can approach musical performance now. But first, before delving into this perspective, I would like to begin by examining the canonical pedagogies of the well-known names I mentioned earlier, as these texts have established the inherited conceptual framework of piano pedagogy.
PEDAGOGICAL VIEWS
Aspects of keyboard and piano pedagogy were presented in early treatises spanning back to the Pre-Baroque era. From these documents, we can see that physical expressiveness at the instrument and its necessity, or lack thereof, is a topic that has been contended since the invention of at least the harpsichord.
In Francois Couperin’s 1716 treatise The Art of Playing the Harpsichord, he writes: “One should not allow your face to reflect any experience associated with the performance of music. You can get rid of grimaces yourself by placing a mirror in front of you.” From these sentences, we understand that Couperin wanted to keep the focus of each performance on the sound; everything the body did was in service to the goal of playing the music in the most efficient way possible. Anything that was not necessary for this outcome, such as making facial expressions, was extraneous, and should be avoided at all costs.
On the other hand, Carl Phillipe Emmanuel Bach famously wrote in his Experience of the True Art of Playing the Clavier (1787): “The true art of playing the clavier predominantly presupposes correct fingering, good manners, and good performance…You cannot play like a trained bird – music performance should come from the heart.” We all know about CPE as the “sentimental rebel.” In order to stand out in stark contrast to his father JS Bach, he preferred to approach music from an emotional perspective rather than his father’s adherence to precise logic and measured counterpoint. If a music performance truly came from the heart, we can guess that CPE Bach would not have minded a few grimaces or body motions here and there the way Couperin might have.
The Muzio Clementi School of Piano Playing during the second half of the 18th century emphasized technical drills and etudes, establishing traditions in piano pedagogy that persist today. These traditions include the belief that a performer should dedicate many hours to technical practice to develop hammer-like fingers, strict rhythm, and contrasting dynamics. Of course, other factors were at play here, most importantly, the specific developments happening to the instrument after the introduction of Cristofori’s fortepiano. Clementi’s approach shifted the focus in a performance setting to the display of one’s technical skill, and it paved the way for pianists like Franz Liszt in the 19th century. Liszt’s attention-capturing performances (at least during his younger years, older Liszt is a whole different story) and virtuosity made the showcasing of prowess and bravura regular staples and expectations in musical performances. In stark contrast to Couperin, who opposed even the slightest facial grimace in a performer, Liszt advocated for complete bodily freedom at the piano, a philosophy that has undoubtedly influenced modern performers.
During the 20th century, piano performance was discussed as both an intellectual and physical endeavor, encompassing far more than just the mechanical training of the fingers or the sheer strength of the arm. Ferruccio Busoni emphasized the spiritual nature of piano playing, believing that the mechanics behind it should involve minimal movement and effort. Busoni viewed music as a child that “...floats on air! It touches not the earth with its feet. It knows no law of gravitation…It is sonorous air.” His fascination with the purely sonic qualities of music led him to believe that the performer’s role was not to “showcase” the music, but to “...raise it and re-endow it with its primordial essence.[2]” Though two centuries stand between Busoni and Couperin, they hold similar views: that the essence of a musical performance lies in the sound itself, and the performer’s motions should be limited to those in the sound’s service.
In the words of Heinrich Neuhaus, whose school of piano pedagogy is rightfully considered one of the best of the 20th century, “To speak and have the right to be listened to, one must not only be able to speak, but above all have something to say.[3]” Just as words mean nothing if they are spoken without prior intention, a musical performance fails to communicate if the performer approaches the instrument solely to produce sound through physical actions. If we consider Neuhaus’s views, a pianist’s facial expressions or body language can be seen simply as specific communication styles, (just like how some people speak with their hands while others don’t), not relevant concerns in and of themselves. In other words, the root of the issue with excessive or inauthentic body gestures in young pianists has nothing to do with the physical gestures in and of themselves.
Neuhaus’s pedagogy, with its emphasis on the piano as a proxy for the human word, allows us to shift our focus away from various physical concerns at the piano and understand the overall goal of a piano performance in a new light. His philosophy places piano performance in a communicative context, rather than defining it as an aesthetically pleasing auditory experience in itself or a display of showmanship.
AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH
If we look at the evolutionary origin of music and language, we can see that Neuhaus’s intuitions were there in his analogy of a musical performance to communication of spoken word. Similarities between music and language are often acknowledged both in common thought and academically.
The most identified similarity between language and music is syntax and phonology; musical structures have hierarchical organizations like that of linguistic sentences and forms. In the most obvious example, a sonata is made from individual notes to phrases in period form to formal sections (exposition, development, return) just like words make sentences which make paragraphs which make chapters. In both music and language, the phrase is the basic unit of structure and function, which is why speaking and singing are different from grunting and screaming. Beyond syntax, both language and music function on two separate levels: phonological and meaning. This means that in each system, sounds are produced and then interpreted.
Acoustical Similarities between Music and Language and their Origin
According to neuroscientist Steven Brown’s research on “musilanguage,” it is not a mere coincidence that music and language have so much in common. “Musilanguage” contends that music and language evolved as specializations from a common ancestral stage of communication. In other words, while our earliest ancestors wandered Africa millions of years ago, they utilized a communication system that featured properties of both music and speech. Acoustically, this communication system consisted of lexical tones, which were semi-pitched utterances that could convey some sort of meaning; these tones featured the most basic qualities of both music and language.
Music and language ultimately diverged throughout the course of human evolution, but the musilanguage model forces us to consider that they are two functions on different ends of the same spectrum, not two different disciplines entirely. At one end of the spectrum is the function of “sound reference,” in which particular sound patterns convey specific referential meanings the way language does. (There is no way to say “I’m getting eggs from the grocery store” in music; thus, language is referential in a way music is not.) On the other end of the spectrum is “sound emotion,” where specific sound patterns convey emotional meaning like music does. (We can argue that it is also impossible to use words and speech at the same emotional level that music can operate, and that we feel the desire to play piano because the piano feels like an extension of expression for us that cannot be brought into fruition with words. In the words of Arthur Rubinstein, “The piano is my voice. It speaks for me when words fail.”)
As musical performers, the most important takeaway from the musilanguage model is that it is the particular emphasis rather than fundamental nature in which music and language differ from one another. This is why various aspects of both music and language continue to exist in the middle of the spectrum today. From the language end, sprechstimme, rap, and poetic meter have many musical qualities. From the music end, ritual, musical symbolism, musical narration, and program music have many linguistic qualities. The features of music and language are ever interweaving across the spectrum of musilanguage because both are essentially streams of communication. This is where Neuhaus’s idea of piano playing as speech can come into play – before we strike a key at the piano, we must always remember that we are first and foremost taking part in a complex communication system; all other technical aspects of the performance come after an initial intention to communicate.
Gestures as Connection Point between Music and Language
Reinforcing upon the fascinating model of musilanguage, archaeologist Steven Mithen begins The Singing Neanderthals by arguing that the vocalizations, gestures, and body postures we see and hear in non-human primates today are most likely analogous to the musilanguage used by early humans during the Pliocene, roughly dated from 5 to 2 million years ago. These vocalizations accompanied by gestures evolved into human language and music over the course of evolution as the musilanguage model split apart. Therefore, the origin of language and music can be posited as a synergistic relationship between vocalization and gesture. In this way, it makes complete sense why, when we speak, we still feel the urge to make gestures, why, when we listen to music, we also feel the urge to move along, and why, when we play music, we often involve our bodies more than the amount necessary to just produce the sound. According to these evolutionary theories, it is all in our genetic code that has been formed throughout the course of millions of years of evolution.
CONCLUSION
When we tie the perspectives of all the musicians and scholars mentioned in this presentation together, we can lay a groundwork that approaches issues of piano performance from a perspective that is both scientifically and traditionally informed.
Many teachers, performers, and music critics still believe that gestures are a type of interference with any musical performance, but they are missing the root of the problem. Afterall, when we move our hands and our bodies while we speak, this is rarely seen as a problem. We know language so well that there is never a time when our gestures interfere with what we’re trying to communicate. However, if a piano student does not understand the entire cultural context behind a piece of music they are playing – the harmonic language, the music history behind it, the rhythmic pulse – this creates a situation where gestures do get in the way and create a problem. It would be like if I decided to come up here and read off this paper a language I didn’t even know and just added in random hand gestures myself. It could work, but chances are, something would look off.
Instead of viewing gesture as something that either belongs or doesn’t belong in a performance, we can approach gesture as a connection point between music and language. After millions of years of evolution, it is the remnant of the original musilanguage communication system. Therefore, there is no reason to restrict the gestures of young pianists as long as these gestures are a natural outcome of the effective communication of an emotional essence.
[1] Ferruccio Busoni, Sketch of a new Aesthetic of Music (New York: Schirmer, 1911).
[2] Ibid.
[3] Heinrich Neuhaus, The Art of Piano Playing (London: Barrie & Jenkis Ltd, 1973).
[4] Ibid.