Piano and PsychanalysisFebruary 27th, 2009
First of all, let me start with a quote from pianist Claudio Arrau: “We frustrate ourselves constantly. Out of fear — fear of failure and, strange as it may seem, fear of success as well — we artists suddenly fall sick before major appearances. We create frightful emotional upsets (…). Singers suddenly become hoarse, can’t make their high notes (…). Instrumentalists suddenly lose the use of some fingers or suddenly can’t play the simplest (or the most difficult) passages. Or out of competitiveness and the wish for almightiness, as it were, the least sign of imperfection can cause one to give up in the middle of an otherwise fine performance. Worst of all, the struggle may suddenly lose all meaning, and the artist, lost in a terrible maze of conflict and despair, may give up performing altogether. This giving up is a real death, the death of the soul. One descends into the abyss and the return takes the most heroic battle with the Furies (the dark aspect of the unconscious) which man is ever called upon to make and which requires all the remaining power of his soul to overcome.”.
The importance of mental wellness for a musician goes without saying. However, in conservatories, no psychological support is offered and no one will advise us nor help us in our musician’s inner life. In our profession, which is actually our life, we are subjected to an incredible pressure. A specialized help in time could have certainly avoided dramatic situations.
The most obvious manifestations of this fragility are what some call the artist’s excentricities before a concert, which are in fact rituals designed to chase the stage fright away and to ensure a fragile stability in the extreme conditions of a concert. It is not, in any case, a whim…
Only a little is enough to destabilize an artist. For a pianist, the duality solitude (with the piano) / public exposure (performance, disc…), almost even a public exhibition, is not always easy to handle. Some, unable to understand our work, this difficulty to which we face, or just by mere jealousy, prefer to ruin years of work by writing witticisms from their ivory tower.
The artist’s life is not an easy one!