Why One Mistake Can Ruin an Entire Performance
1. Failure
Anyone who has performed will have had that imminent fear of making a mistake and the whole thing falling apart. For those that have watched/read for quite some time, you may (or may not) be familiar with my own personal experience of this exact concern becoming a reality.
I was due to play Beethoven’s C minor sonata (not the Pathetique, but the other one - his 5th sonata) in a Beethoven Sonata competition. In preparation, while listening to the other pianists before me, I thought it would be a good idea to mentally run through the piece in my head one final time, visualising the hand movements and the character of the piece.
However, in my head I got to a certain section of the music (towards the bottom of the first page) and I just couldn’t visualise what notes I was supposed to play there. So, 2 minutes before it was my turn to perform, I took a look at the sheet music and reminded myself of that part.
As I began to play, I was entirely focused on that section of the music that was coming up. However, when I got to it my mind went completely blank. I tried to fumble through and at least play something, but then I stopped, stared at the keys for what felt like 5 minutes (probably 15 seconds) and then tried to start again. I got to that same section and once again couldn’t get through it. So I skipped ahead half a page and continued the piece, only now, because I was panicking, I played it at about 150% of the speed that it should have been.
This type of experience is what every performer fears and I would be lying if I said it isn’t something that can happen. However, knowing what I know now and having performed hundreds of times since then, I think it is very much something that can be avoided if you prepare in the right way (and not in the way that I did for that performance).
2. Attention
The biggest mistake I made while preparing for that competition was that I was focused on trying to be as accurate as possible. I thought that by trying to practice how precise my fingers were being, I would stand a chance of doing well in the competition. However, this meant that I was heavily reliant on my fingers remembering the exact keys that I was supposed to press throughout the piece of music and, if I forgot that (like I did), then the entire piece fell apart.
Instead, I should have divided my focus between three other things and let the technique and accuracy take care of themselves.
Firstly, I should have focused on larger structural anchors within the music. If I had spent more time thinking about how it was in sonata form (Exposition, Development, Recapitulation), where the music changes key, where the phrases repeat, which sections are furious and which are sentimental, then I would have had a much better chance of layering the muscle memory on top of something conceptual.
Secondly, I should have focused on larger shapes. The opening of that piece starts with a kind of angry C minor ascending arpeggio. At the time I knew this, but I didn’t realise how much that information prevented me from ever forgetting what that series of notes was. I did’t think about the individual notes in that arpeggio pattern at all, I thought about the chord. Had I done this for the rest of the piece, especially those parts that felt less secure and that I was simply letting my hands play through, then I would have had yet another memory point to layer the muscle memory and the overall structure onto.
Lastly, I should have thought much more about the sentiment of the music. Throughout the piece I was attempting to “execute” the notes in the way that the music told me to. If it said “f” (forte), then I played loudly. If it said “.” (staccato), then I played short and spiky notes.
However, what I didn’t think about was: why?
The entire point of the music is to convey some kind of meaning, right? Yet, as players, we can often get lost in the mechanics of how to play. For that competition, if I had spent my practice time thinking about the narrative (how the staccatos feel bouncy and like tiptoeing and the fortes feel like a teenager stomping up the stairs), then I would have been on stage telling a story rather than trying to execute individual notes.
Instead of thinking about the exact notes that my hands should press, if I had spent my practice focusing on these three things and let the technique become a byproduct of understanding the structure, the larger shapes and the sentiment, then I would have almost certainly not had my performance ruined by a mistake.
3. Recovery
However, mistakes themselves are somewhat unavoidable. Even the best pianists in the world make mistakes. But usually these mistakes are not disastrous for the entire performance. Most of the time you might not even notice that they happen. This is because the mistakes they make are typically one of two types.
Firstly, finger slips. If you are playing a piece and accidentally catch a note you didn’t intend to, then this is not a problem if your focus is on the overall meaning of the music. These types of mistakes only throw off the entire performance if all of the surrounding notes depend on that note being correct.
Let’s say you have your hand over 5 notes. If your thumb lands on the wrong note, then the rest of the notes will also be wrong. However, if you practice in a way that focuses on the larger shapes (the chords, the sentiment), then this makes that initial mistake much less likely and also allows you to adjust very quickly and continue without any real issue.
Secondly, musical mistakes. This is really where professional pianists make most of their mistakes. Controlling a piano they have never played before, for example, can mean that they have to adjust in real time. This might mean that their “p” (piano) wasn’t as quiet as they hoped for or their staccato didn’t sound because the key is heavier than they are used to and they didn’t press it enough.
These types of mistakes are not critical to a performance and it is entirely possible to get to a point where these are the only types of mistakes you are concerned about.
If you focus on telling the story of the music and practice in a way that facilitates all of the various forms of memory that come along with telling that story, then a mistake doesn’t need to impact your performance in the same way that it did for me.
Matt
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