Image Thinking in Music: Emotion & Mastery
The power of music can be truly transformative, allowing us to connect with our emotions and express ourselves in a way that words cannot. But as a music teacher, I often see my students struggle to fully engage with the music they are playing. They get bogged down in technicalities and lose sight of the emotional connection that is so vital to a truly compelling performance.
Its essence lies in the fact that I create a figurative picture of a particular moment in a phrase or in a whole passage of a piece of music, associating it with some situation that the student can imagine or that he has encountered in life. For example, in one technically and rhythmically difficult spot, I saw that my student was focusing his attention on technique and trying to win the rhythm and play the right notes, which were not in a simple combination and were very inconveniently connected. Trying to play accurately and correctly, the musical aspect was leaving – the image that the composer had created. The performance sounded overly simplistic and academic, and I was on edge, waiting for it to finally snap and fall out of rhythm.
Then I stopped the student and gave him an example of what I see as an image in this passage. I asked him if he had ever seen the reaction of hens with chickens in a barn when a person came to them. The student said that they begin to fuss, run in different directions, panic and make sounds: squeak and cackle anxiously like they’re really scared or something. I asked him to imitate this by playing the same excerpt from the play. To my surprise, the music passages were played without tension or panic, even though the task was to perform like panicked chickens in a barn. Technical moments faded into the background and did not fall out on the ears of the listener. Everything sounded harmonious and easy. The student himself admitted that by thinking about the image and not about technical difficulties, he easily overcame them.
Another example is оne of my students was having trouble playing a piece of music that required making a contrast in dynamics. He was struggling to make abruptly quiet (subito piano), and it did not sound as expressive as it could be. So, I asked the student to imagine themselves standing outside a room and listening to the sounds coming from within. Then, I asked them to imagine the door suddenly slamming shut, and the sound becomes muffled. I encouraged them to focus on the dynamics, making a soft sound without preparation and imagining the music being played from behind a closed door. The student began to play the music with more feeling and emotion, using the imagery to connect with the muffled sounds in the music.
My students said that such a technique (image thinking) makes their studies more interesting and motivates their music lessons.
In conclusion, music is not just about playing the right notes or following the correct rhythm. It’s about feeling the music and connecting with the audience through emotion. As a music teacher, I have found that using image thinking can help my students become more technically proficient while also developing their emotional connection to the music they play. By creating figurative pictures of different moments in a piece, students can associate them with situations they have encountered in life, making their studies more interesting and motivating. It’s a simple but effective technique that I encourage all music teachers and students to try.
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