The other day I finished writing my piano method, and I sent it off to my editor at Oxford University Press: 450 pages, about 150 compositions, 45 video clips, three jokes. If all goes well, the book will go into production and be published in—nobody knows when. Editing and publishing take time. Placeholder publication date (I mean, I’m just making this up): December 24, 2022.
What’s the method’s philosophy?
It’s a quaternity—that is, a group of four principles.
1. Acknowledge the Universe. It doesn’t take much; it’s enough to listen to the rain, or smile at a passerby, or eat a banana. A supply chain involving dozens of steps and hundreds of people made sure that the banana would arrive in my hands at the exact moment when I’d be hungry and looking for something delicious, nutritious, and fun to eat. That’s the Universe at work, and I’m terribly grateful to it, or It. Capitalize The Important Stuff, Okay?
Suppose you sit at a piano, an upright Yamaha. Designed in Japan, built in Indonesia, shipped to France, delivered to your living room in your second-floor walk-up in Paris. Supply chain, right? But the piano embodies more than that. With only a few hyperlinks, you can go from your Yamaha to anywhere in the world and in the history of humanity, or Humanity. Japan, Indonesia, engineering, math, music, piano, pianists, Beethoven, Liberace. Or Yamaha, motorbike, Hell’s Angels, angels, hell. Or Japan, sushi, the first time I ate sushi, age 17, back in Brazil where my then cello teacher-mentor and now favorite adoptive older brother Barney took me to a perfect hole-in-the-wall sushi bar at the heart of Liberdade, the Japanese neighborhood in downtown São Paulo.
From Wikipedia:
Liberdade was known as Campo da Forca (Field of the Gallows) until the late 19th century, and was an area reserved for the execution of slaves and convicts. Death was considered the only path to liberty (liberdade) for slaves. The condemned were led to the Igreja Nossa Senhora da Boa Morte (Church of Our Lady of Good Death) to perform a final prayer for a rapid and painless death. The church remains on Rua do Carmo at the corner of Rua Tabatinguera. Slaves and other convicts were executed in the Largo da Forca (Gallows Square), the public square now known as Praça da Liberdade. Cemitério dos Aflitos (Cemetery of the Afflicted) was created in 1774 to bury executed slaves, those who had committed suicide, and others who could not be interred elsewhere.
This story lives in my Yamaha upright, together with all stories ever told. Play one note at the piano, one single note, and you’ll tell all stories, if only you’re alert to the workings of the Universe and grateful to It.
2. It’s your own self sitting at the piano, your own sweet self, your childhood and adolescence and adulthood sweet self, your butt self, your brain self. A Unique Human Being who, as it happens, represents All Humans in the Universe, because a simple chain of cause and effect connects you to everyone else, living, dead, and yet unborn. You’re sitting at the piano with your needs and wants, your strengths and weaknesses, your hopes and fears, your Inner Monkey and your Inner Banana From The Martinique Of The Imagination. You can’t play any one note at your Yamaha without Peeling the Banana. Have you ever listened to a pianist in Banana Denial? It’s painful. My method doesn’t explicitly talk about the Banana per se, but it invites you to be constantly alert to the workings of your inner self as you play The One Note That Tells All Stories.
3. Your butt and your brain, which are The Center Of The (Known) Universe, are confronted with a creative situation. Play a note. Play this specific note. Play this chord. Now invent the next chord. Play these eight bars. Now transpose them to a different key. Play loud, play soft. Play without looking at your hands. Play faster, play slower. Play All Stories, andante moderato. The creative stimulation may come from my method, from pieces written by other composers, from your own imagination. It doesn’t matter; what matters is that you’re being presented, again and again, with a creative situation that invites a creative response. Peeling The Banana Is a Creative Undertaking.
4. And now that you’ve said hello to the Universe, and hello to your Sweet Self, and hello to the Creative Situation, you can start fashioning your response. Orientation in space, timing, direction, meaning, reactions, choices, decisions, thoughts, emotions, thumbs and pinkies. Thumbs And Pinkies Are The Squiggly Bits That The Universe Uses To Peel the Banana With, or what most musicians call “technique.”
Let’s Post-It-fy the quaternity at the core of my method.
The Universe.
You.
The creative situation.
Your creative response, fashioned.
Incidentally, this is a life principle. It applies to every endeavor, not just playing the piano. Uh-oh—I feel a surge of capitalizing coming on. Life Is You, At The Center Of The Universe, Responding To A Creative Situation And Fashioning Your Destiny, Banana!
©2021, Pedro de Alcantara