A Toolkit for Performers

Classical music performance exists in a culture of perfection. There’s no room for a wrong note or a bad day. Whether it’s for a competition, an audition or a concert, any performer worth their salt wants to be flawless. Trained musicians have this ideology stamped upon their psyche early on, and the intense scrutiny under which they function can become a heavy burden. It’s understood among classically trained artists that they must attain the unattainable: perfection. They’ll spend hours a day at their piano, or their cello, or their violin, with that goal of perfection in mind. As a pianist friend once told me, “When I play a wrong note in a concert, it feels like a bullet.”

Pianist Vladimir Horowitz was one of the 20th century’s most celebrated performers. His technique was dazzling. His renditions of difficult concertos by Liszt and Rachmaninoff made headlines. But critical acclaim and adulation didn’t save him from the terrible stage fright, which prevented him from performing for years at a time. In 1953 he retired from the stage altogether.

Soprano Renée Fleming is arguably one of the most beautiful operatic voices of the last 100 years. Yet after a performance of Donizetti’s Lucretia Borgia at La Scala in Milan, she was booed. Profoundly shaken, she spent the following year experiencing terror before her performances, and she needed therapy to work through the anxiety. In an interview for CBC radio she described singing at La Scala as a “blood sport” and continued: “You know when it happens, a lot of people never go back.”

As I reflected on these stories, I wondered why performers put themselves through such agony. How does it serve them? Searching for answers, I turned to the online community. I put out the question: “Why do you perform despite your nerves?” Overwhelmingly, the answer that came back was: “Love.” I received an avalanche of messages: declarations of love from people who sing, act, and make music. They wrote about how performance made them feel, how it connected them to the audience in a way that went beyond words. One actress said it was the closest thing to giving birth she could imagine. Interestingly, while many professed love and devotion to their artistic craft, their most intense feelings of passion were associated with the experience of being onstage. For some, it was a love-hate relationship. For others, it was a near-mystical experience. Still others found it to be hard work, but amply worth it.

Okay, so artists love their craft. How can they find the mental space to create art and not let their nerves consume them? I spoke with Montreal psychologist Vikki Stark, who suggested creating a mantra to help rewire the brain. “The brain can’t think two things at the same time. So, if you’re thinking ‘What if I forget my lines, what if I screw up?’ that’s going to become the pre-eminent thought.” Stark suggests replacing it with a choice of three words that describe the ideal state of mind. She continues: “In all kinds of anxious situations, people get preoccupied and think about worst-case scenarios. But if we flip that on its head and think instead about what would be the ideal frame of mind, then you might come up with words like calm, confident, strong, knowledgeable, relaxed… a whole bunch of different words. Each individual has to choose three words, and that becomes his/her mantra. When you’re thinking about giving the speech, or singing the song, you think calm, confident, knowledgeable, and repeat your mantra over and over again. It has a very powerful effect. Words have so much power. Your mind attaches itself to those positive words, and the other fears that are lurking behind take a back seat.” Stark recommends repeating your mantra in the days before the performance, as well as on the way to the venue, and while waiting to go onstage. She is convinced that “it totally re-centers your body.”

Dr. John Skidmore, professor of performance psychology at Brigham Young University, advises getting “out of the mid-brain and putting it into the frontal cortex where we get to choose, plan and organize.” Like many learning theories, Dr. Skidmore suggests “looking at a performance in the context of stages.”:

1. Designing your mindset. He emphasizes the importance of re-establishing what it is you love about your art. Asking yourself questions like: “What am I doing? Why am I doing this? What’s my attitude about this?”, helps reconnect to the reasons why you started in the first place. Build a foundation through positive self-talk, visualization, relaxation and breathing exercises.

2. Revising and re-evaluating. Dr. Skidmore stresses: “Preparation doesn’t have to be perfect to be complete,” and adds that the statement My preparation is complete allows the performer freedom to go onstage with commitment.

3. Pre-performance preparation. Everything that needs to be done physically and mentally before you step on the stage.

4. The Performance.

5. Review. Skidmore says this is where performers often miss an opportunity. They beat themselves up and “drag around the carcass of that last bad performance into their next performances,” they aren’t “taught to see that as a developmental experience.” When past mistakes are viewed as a learning tool, performers can then “re-write that as a victory.”

Performers may not be able to completely extinguish feelings of nervousness, but they don’t have to experience crippling anxiety either. Incorporating mental preparation into practice through visualization and positive word cues could be an important link. And that love-hate relationship with the stage that performers speak about? It has the potential to evolve into a solid, healthy marriage.

References

Smith, J. (2013, Feb. 13). 7 Famous Classical Musicians Who Suffered from Stage Fright. CMUSE. Retrieved from http://www.cmuse.org/famous-classical-musicians-who-suffered-from-kstage-fright/

Palmater, C. (Host). (2016, September 21). Renée Fleming on success, stage fright, and giving up [Arts and Entertainment]. In S. Johnston (Producer), q. Toronto: CBC.

Helding, L. (2016). Mindful Voice. Music Performance Anxiety. Journal Of Singing, 73(1), 83- 90.

Brady, L. (2016, September 15). Personal interview. Skidmore, Dr., J. (2017, March 9). Personal interview. Stark, Dr. V. (2017, March 7). Personal interview.