jwilzewske: Mortensen: Artistic Expression and Absence of Tension

Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Fintan Damgaard photo

CMT: There is nearly as much beauty in watching Lars Ulrik Mortensen play as there is in hearing him play. The near total absence of tension in his hands and arms is impressive. Almost zero tension, even in extremely rapid and difficult passages.

DSM: He’s a phenomenally gifted artist, it’s true. I think also that careful videography and biomechanics analysis of his playing could be valuable for other performers and teachers. There’s a great deal to be gained by dissecting and understanding how he does what he does.

CMT: Beyond the ordinary pedagogical aspect, I believe too that videography and analysis of Mortensen’s technique might hold significant therapeutic value for harpsichordists who develop focal dystonia or other injuries. And not just harpsichordists—pianists as well!

W hat is the ideal in music? It is to create phrasing that arises organically from as many details as possible. The overall lines are the sum of the details; the detailed rhythm, intonation and rhythmic swing… The aim is to create the impression that the music materializes in the here and now—not because it says so in the notes, or because it is something that we are doing for our own pleasure. It is something we do to communicate, to involve the listener.”
— Lars Ulrik Mortensen, 2007

DSM: What do you think of the notion that if you can play keyboard instrument ‘A’ well, you can probably play keyboard instrument ‘B’ well? I tend to think this is refuted by the ‘A-B’ pair ‘piano-harpsichord’.

CMT: Yes, well, many harpsichordists may have hardly the musculature to depress the piano keys, or lack the stamina to do it through an entire program.

DSM: And pianists may inadvertently tend to man-handle harpsichord keys.

CMT: In other words, the ‘the muscle memory’ you’ve spent many years acquiring in pursuing mastery of your primary instrument can’t readily be unlearned. The neural and musculoskeletal pathways are ‘set’.

DSM: In similar fashion, you don’t see highly accomplished brass players switching between brass instruments. The embouchure for each is very different from the others, and switching to another one tends to cause injury or difficulties when returning to your primary instrument.

CMT: Is it the sheer hand strength required to play the piano that’s the issue? By contrast to piano, the harpsichord’s played with the fingers only—or mostly. The only role for anatomy that’s proximal to the proximal interphalangeal joint is to position the fingers over the keys. There’s very little force exerted from the hand, arm, shoulder, or back—nothing beyond what it takes to get the key down accurately.

DSM: The piano, on the other hand, takes considerable strength to play—a large proportion of the weight of the back, shoulder, arm, hand, and fingers is projected down into the keys. The forces are considerable.

CMT: But the big difference is how you get the key down, don’t you think? How you get the piano key down determines the attack—the rate at which the hammer rises to strike the string. How you release the piano key is somewhat less critical. You don’t find people afflicted with pianists’ cramp complaining about their release. The problem is primarily with the attack.

DSM: Moreover, a pianist never really touches the string directly. The hammer mechanism is a step removed. With the harpsichord, it’s the opposite—it’s ‘pedal to the metal’ all the time. As the harpsichord key does down, your finger communicates directly with the string through the plectrum—you feel the plectrum stretch the string, you feel the string as it’s released.

CMT: And there’s a very long decay until you release the harpsichord key. With harpsichord, your release is critical—you have to maintain finger independence even more rigorously than with piano. What’s remarkable with Mortensen’s playing is not only the absence of tension in his hands but also the amazing finger independence that he has. Watch his fourth and fifth digits and you’ll see what I mean...

DSM: So with piano, the action is mainly downward, using your whole upper body—essentially ‘into’ the keyboard. And, with harpsichord, the action is mainly upward, more or less ‘out’ of the keyboard—using your finger from the tip to the proximal interphalangeal joint.

CMT: Learning how to play a keyboard instrument is a long process of training neural pathways. I wonder if there’s any difference between keyboard instruments—between piano and harpsichord, say—with regard to susceptibility to focal dystonia or other injuries.

DSM: To date, there’s really no research literature addressing that. The rarity of the cases makes the systematic study of possible statistical associations of that kind very difficult. There are, though, some recent papers in the journal MPPA that touch on it, albeit in an anecdotal way.

CMT: I wonder, too, whether—since the finger action is so different between harpsichord technique and piano technique—switching instruments might be helpful for a player who has developed a disability that is specific to one keyboard instrument. Are harpsichord and piano sufficiently different, do you think, so that the injured central and peripheral neuroanatomy involved with focal dystonia affecting the performance on one instrument would be distinct from the neuroanatomy pertinent to performance on the other instrument?

DSM: Again, there’s no published research literature concerning that possibility. Interestingly, the percentage of left-handed professional musicians isn’t significantly different from the percentage of ‘south-paws’ in the overall population, except for keyboard musicians. The percentage of ‘lefties’ among piano, organ and harpsichord players is very low—primarily because of the right-dominant literature. For a left-handed musician to play piano is comparable to writing with her/his right hand—awkward, uncomfortable. Consequently, lefties tend to play non-keyboard instruments professionally. So my hunch would be that the neuroanatomical pathways that are relevant to harpsichord playing and piano playing overlap a great deal. It would be surprising that switching instruments would offer respite from something like dystonia, unless there were a different laterality-dominance.

CMT: There is the example of Leon Fleisher and the left-handed piano literature. And Reinhard Goebel gave up being Konzertmeister of Musica Antiqua Köln in 1990 at the age 38 because of focal dystonia. He obtained a left-handed instrument, re-learned the violin left-handed, and resumed playing from the second violin desk (second-chair not because of diminished ability, but more probably to prevent collisions with the bows of the other violins). The literature was, obviously, the same as before. But the pathways were sufficiently different so that the switch was successful.

C ould anything be more absolute than Bach’s faith in God? Well, the means that Bach employs to express his unswerving faith in God are revealed more by way of hints. If the word ‘God’ makes sense in the case of Bach; providence or meaning may be better words. His trust in authority does not give rise to the need to shout out some truth or other, but rather to suggest it. There is a very wide framework for interpretation in Bach, but he is much more challenging, because he is less blunt. He appeals much more to my temperament than the broad statements of the Romantics.”

— Lars Ulrik Mortensen, 2007

DSM: Mortensen is the artistic director of Concerto Copenhagen. He studied with Karen Englund and Jesper Bøje Christensen at The Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen and with Trevor Pinnock in London. From 1988 to 1990 he was a member of London Baroque, and from 1990 to 1993 he was a member of Collegium Musicum 90. He has recorded for Archiv Produktion, Harmonia Mundi, Kontrapunkt and DaCapo. His recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations won him a Diapason d’Or. He directed the European Union Baroque Orchestra in 2003. He was professor of harpsichord and performance practice at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich from 1996 to 1999. This year he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize, Denmark’s premier music award.

jwilzewske

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Mortensen: Artistic Expression and Absence of Tension

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