NEW PATHWAYS TO PIANO TECHNIQUE A Study of the Relations Between Mind and Body with Special Reference to Piano Playing By LUIGE BONPENSIERE $ Foreword By Atpous Huxtar PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY New YorNEW PATHWAYS TO PIANO TECHNIQUE Copyright, 1933, by Maria Bonpensiere Printed in the United Stes of America. Ab rights in thie book are reserved. No part of ashes t0 quote bri Sow in magasine or newspaper or radio broudcest. For "The Philosophical Library, Ine. 15 East Ath Steet, New York 16, N. Ys ok may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without he fom the older a hee ahs excent by @ nevi, wo pss In connection ath review writen oy in FOREWORD By Avvous HuxLey ‘THe worth is a continuum; but in order to act upon it sue cessfully, we have to analyse it into casily comprehensible elements. The cake of experience can be cut in many differ- ent ways, and none of the systems of slicing ean express the molar fact completely; each, however, may be useful for some particular purpose. ‘There have been literally hundreds of analyses of human nature, some excellent, others less good, others again posi- tively misleading. What follows is a very rough and per- functory kind of analysis which, while obviously inadequate to the total fact, may yet be of some value in the present context. For our present purposes, then, we may say that every self is associated, below the level of consciousness, with a notself—or, to be more accurate, with a merging and inseparable trinity of not-selves. There is first of all the personal and parily home-made not-self, the notself of con- itioned reflexes, of impulses repressed but still obscurely active, of buried-alive reactions to remote events and for- gotten words, of fossil infancy and the festering remains of a past that refuses to dic. Next comes the not-self of bodily Sunctioning—the vegetative notself of muscular activity, of digestion and respiration, of heart action, body chemis: try, glandular and nervous interactions. And finally there is the not-self whose manifestations are primarily mental— the notself which is responsible for hunches, inspirations, sudden accessions of insight and power, the not-self which Socrates described as his Daimon, which Christians call their Good Angel or even the Holy Spirit, which the Hindus equate with Atman-Brahman and the Mahayanists with Mind, Suchness, Buddha Nature. Di. f3-/705 07 PAYOR EE BO. nik TURCE eeNEW PATHWAYS TO PIANO TECHNIQUE A self can affect and be affected by its associated not. selves in many different ways, Here, for example, is a self which, like all too many of its fellows, reacts inappro- priately to circumstances. Such a self is apt to people the personal notself with all kinds of chronic fears, greeds, hates, wrong judgments, undesivable habits. Thus distorted, the personal notself reacts upon the conscious self, forcing it to think, feel and act even more inappropriately than be- fore. And so the game gocs on, each party contributing to the delinquency of the other in a pattern which is, at the best, a vicious eitcle, at the worst a descending spiral. Self and’ personal not-self have set up a mutual deterioration society, ef For the vegetative notself of bodily funetion, their ac- tivities are disastrous, Crazed by aversion and concupis- cence, haunted by the bogeys with which it has stocked the personal not-self, the ego starts to trespass upon the terri- tory which rightfully belongs to the vegetative soul. The result is that everything gocs wrong. Left to itself, the phys- iological intelligence is almost incapahle of making a mis- take. Interfered with by the craving and abhorring self, it loses its native infallibility. Bodily functioning is impaired and the ego finds itself saddled with yet another grievance against the Order of Things—an acute or chronic illness, none the less distressing and none the less dangerous for having heen produced by its own unvealistie thoughts and inappropriate emotions. ‘The ego and its personal not-self play their game of mutual deterioration, and the body res- ponds now with heart trouble, now with a defect of vision, now with gastric uleer, now with pulmonary tuberculosis, “You pays your money, and you takes your choice.” And whai, meanwhile, of the third not-self—the Daimon, the Good Angel, the divine Paramatman with whom, in es: sence, the personal Jiva is identical? The ego has power to ruin the hody, but can do no hurt to the spirit, which re. mains in all circumstances impassible, What it can do, FOREWORD however, and what it actually does do for almost everybody, almost all the time, is to eclipse the spirit, The self sets up a screen between the inner light and the waking conscious- ness—a sereen not, indeed, perfectly opaque, but so nearly light-proof as to render the visitations of the third not-self rare, fleeting and ineffective, _A fully integrated person is one who is at peace within his own being and at peace, in consequence, with his envi- ronment. He accepts what happens and makes the best of its and he knows how to make the best of it because his self and his personal sub-conscious are not insane and therefore do not interfere with the working of the vegetative soul and the spirit. Such fully integrated persons are very uncom- mon. To a greater or less degree, most of us are the victims of the ego and its personal notself, We make ourselves ill and stop up the source of all wisdom, And being sick, unin- spired and pathologically self-centered, we get on’ hadly with our fellows and live in a state, not of creative harmony with our fate, but of futile and destructive rebellion against it. All the world’s great cultures and religions have devel- oped their special disciplines of integration—integration with persons and integration of persons with their sub- human, human and spiritual environment, ‘Thus, in the Far East, we find the disciplines of Taoism and Zen; in India, the various yogas of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism; in the Near East, Sufism and its derivatives; and, in the West, the ‘ways of perfection’ Iaid down by the masters of Christian spirituality. For the last twenty-five centuries, at least, all the world’s seers, all its saints and wise men have agreed that the ubimate purpose of human existence is complete integration; and for the last twenty-five centuries the great majority of their fellow men have been content to say, “Amen”, and go about their business and pleasures as usual. Their attitude is all too comprehensible. Distant goods tend to shrink into insienificance when comparedNEW PATHWAYS TO PIANO TECHNIQUE immediate pseudo-goods. Common enough in times of crisis, persistent heroism is rare when things are going even tolerably well, For the average sensual man, the ideal of complete integration seems unachievable and the way to it, forbiddingly arduous. What is needed, if more people are to be led in the right direction, is the setting up of pre- liminary objectives, easily attained and, when attained, im- mediately rewarding. From the experience of such limited but very real goods men and women may perhaps be tempted to advance a stage further towards their ultimate goal and consummation. The present volume treats of one of these preliminary objectives. That its remarkably gifted author should not be alive to demonstrate his discoveries, and to pass on to others the methods he developed for his own benefit, is greatly to be lamented. We must be content with his legacy—this curious, interesting and, as I helieve, very valuable book. Let us consider a few familiar and yet astounding facts. Here, for example, is a parrot. It listens to a phrase spoken by its master and experiences a desire to reproduce it, Something associated with the conscious parrot-self—some amazingly intelligent not-sel proceeds to make the bird use its beak, tongue and throat in such a way that from these organs—organs, let us remember, radically unlike the organs of human speech—there issues a copy of the phrase good enough to deceive dogs, cats, children and even wary adults into believing that it was spoken by the person whom the parrot has chosen to imitate, ‘And here is a baby. We make a funny face at him, and the child is sufficiently amused to wish to do likewise. His second notself responds to this wish and the remembered image of what he has seen by manipulating the muscles of checks, jaws, mouth and forehead in such a way that the face as a whole reflects our origin: i Feats such as these cannot be attributed to ‘instinet’s for Sinstinet’ is a built-in tendency to perform some specific act » FOREWORD (such as nest-building in birds, or sucking and clinging in infants); whereas these activities of the parrot’s notself and the baby's vegetative soul are ad hoc manifestations of some kind of intelligence capable of adapting means to ends in the solution of unique and unforeseeable problems. In experimenting with himself at the piano Mr. Bonpeu: siere found that the not-elf, which can do these things for the bird and the haby, is able to perform feats even more remarkable. Distinguishing V (the conscious ego’s will to perform an action) from V2 (the vegetative soul, which sees to it that the body does all the hundreds of things that have to be done, if the action is to be carried out), he formulated the relationship between self and notself as follows: “V proposes, V2 disposes.” The infallibility of V2 in regard to such involuntary activities as digestion and respiration has always been recognized. So long as we leave it in peace, the second not-self does everything as it ought to be done. Interfered with by the anxious or greedy self, it does Tess well or even fails altogether, leaving the body a prey to psycho-somatic disease. Bonpensiere’s experiments led him to the conclusion that, even in the field of voluntary action, it is better to leave V2 to its own devices. He discovered “the paradoxical truth that, if instead of transmitting the per- forming volition, we withdraw it (another phase of specific volition) from any possible combination with the physio- motor apparatus, the act is inexorably bound to be per formed in the most ideal realization—that is, immediately and without the slow bnilding up of progressive conditioned reflexes; for, thereafter, the physiological guidance of the act is entirely assumed by V2, V having relinquished its interference.” In the physical life, precisely as in the spi itual life, the proper altitude ean he summed up in such phrases as, “Not my will, but Thine” or, “T live, yet not I, hut Christ liveth in me.” The highest, the most useful func- tion of the sell’s conscious will is to will itself out of the way, so that the beneficent and infallible not-self can workNEW PATHWAYS TO PIANO TECHNIQUE through the psycho-physical organism in the best possible manner. “So far as our conscious volitional life is con cemed, the physiological has become a negation. It is minus to the self of the individual. It is plus to life as whole.” The language resembles that which has been used by all the great masters of the spiritual life. Ils novelty resides in the fact that it refers, not to “union with God” or “Liberation”, but to every day bodily skill, Even in this field the function of V, the will of the conscious self, is to refrain from inter- fering with the not-self. Its positive action should be con- fined to proposing the end to be attained, either in the form of an image of the desired achievement, or of a symbol standing for that image. The difference between ordinary willing and what Bonpe alls IdeoKineties can be summed up as follows. ‘The unreflecting and untrained ego says, “I want to perform such and such an act.” ‘The more enlightened ego inhibits its first impulse and says instead, “I want such and such an act (represented by an image or the symbol of an image) to be performed by the not-self in charge of my body.” Among the teachers of every kind of skill there is a con- stant insistence on the need for letting go, for somehow combining activity with relaxation, not-doing with the most strenuous doing. The great merit of Bonpensiere consists in the fact that he has clarified and systematized notions that were previously obscure and even mutually inconsistent, and that he has devised and deseribed in detail a praxis hhased upon his theory. It is interesting to compare this theory and its related practices with the theories and practices developed by two earlier workers in fields less highly specialized than that of piano playing. I refer to Dr. W. H. Bates and F. M, Alex. ander. Bates, an oculist, was concerned with seeing. Could defects of vision, he asked himself, be corrected by other than mechanical means? Were spectacles the only or suffi cient solution to the problem? In the course of years he + FOREWORD worked out a method for the functional re-education of sensing eyes and seeing mind, The basic principle underly- ing his theory and practice was the same as that which un- derlies Bonpensiere’s: namely, that V must be prevented from interfering with V2, Perfect seeing is the work of the notself; the self merely gets in the way. The harder you, the ego, try to see, the greater the strain and nervous ten- sion and the worse the vision. The various drills and pro- cedures devised hy Bates and his followers ave the practical corollaries of this proposition. With F. M. Aloxandes’s work on ‘the use of the self’, ‘ereative conscious control” and ‘the fundamental constant of living’, we pass beyond the field of specific actions or single functions, The problem here is fundamental and general. What are the intra-organie circumstances in which the physiological not-self can perform its multifarious la- ours with the highest possible efficiency? Alexander estab- lished the fact that there is a certain relationship between the trunk and the neck and head, which is normal (in the absolute rather than in the merely statistical sense of the word). Given this relationship, functioning of the autonomic nervous system hecomes perfect and the body as a whole works (lo pul it authvopomocphicully) “as it was meant to work.” The circumstances of civilized life are such that most of us have come to adopt # wrong, unnatural ‘use of the self, ‘The head-neck-trunk relationship is abnormal; consequently the functioning of the entire organism is ab- normal. But abnormal habits, if persisted in long enough, come to seem normal. If normal functioning is to be re- stored, the debauched and deluded self must be taught to inhibit its tendency to unreflecting action along the accus- tomed Lines. (In Bonpensiere’s termivology V must be pre- vented from interfering with V2). The fatal habit of what Alexander calls ‘end-gaining’ musi he broken and the scious self taught to consider ‘means-whereby’, In the Incid interval created by voluntary inhibition of debauched im-NEW PATHWAYS TO PIANO TECHNIQUE pulse, the self can be taught to use the right means of doing ‘what it wants to dos and when this has been learned, general bodily functioning will be normalized, When the self is used wrongly, no act can be performed gratuitously: there are always psy more ot less high according to the nature of the act. For this reason nobody can obtain the fullest possible benefit from a system of specialized train- ing, unless he has first undertaken a basic training in the use of the self. Because they are based on fundamentally sound principles, both Ideo-Kinetics and the Bates Method can do a great deal of good even in persons untrained in the techniques developed by Alexander. On those who have mastered the proper use of the self, the beneficent effects of these specialized trainings are likely to be still greater. When, however, specialized physical training is based upon wrong principles and given to persons unacquainted with the proper use of the self, somato-psychie costs are unduly high and the net result is apt, in the long run, to be more harmful than beneficial. Vast sums are spent on education (nearly as much, if 1 remember righily, as is spent on alcohol) and, along with money, prodigious quantities of time and devotion. Are the ssulis commensurate with the outlay? Many people are in- clined to doubt it. Then how is the educational system to be improved? The Progressives have offered one solution; the advocates of Science mitigated by a year or two of the Humanities, another; the Hundred Great Books people, a third. All the prescriptions strike one as being curiously naive, inasmuch as they tacitly assume that fundamental improvements in human beings can be brought about by do- ing something on the surface of experience. Consider, for example, an education based upon the reading of a hun- dred, or even two hundred, of the West’s Great Books. What can this do for twentieth-ceniury pupils? No more, surely, than it did for those who actually wrote the Great Books, for those who used to read them as a matter of course be- FOREWORD 1) they had no alternatives in the way of comic strips and television, That it did something for these people is obvious; but no less evident is the fact that it did not do nearly enough. Half the chapters in the history of man are the chronicle of enormous follies and the most horrible atrocities, If we are content with behaving as peo- ple behaved in the thirteenth century a. p. or the fourth century B. C., then by all means let us pin our educational hopes on the reading of Aristotle and Aquinas and Dant But we would like to have something a litile better than the old conglomerate of slums and cathedrals, the immemorial amalgam of self-satisfied reason and systematic senseless- ness, of brutal squalor and the occasional sublimities of art. We would like something hetter, and our only hope of get- ting it Ties in devising a system of education, in which sur- face training in science, arts, handicrafts and Great Books shall be combined with a training in the means whereby such surface learning can best be accomplished. And this deep-level training in the use of the self and Ideo-Kineties would serve, so to speak, as an opening wedge for an even profounder training in dovility to the second and third not- selves—an education in the art of getting out of the way, of dis-eclipsing the vegetative soul and the Spirit, in remov- ing the barriers of ego-centricity and permitting Life to flow, unrestricted, through the organism. Of the procedures will have to be employed in this higher and deepe edueation of the human person T cannot write in this place. Suffice it to say that, between them, modern psychology and ancient autology (as Coomaraswamy called the traditional science of the Self) can be relied upon to provide the means whereby some real improvement in individual and (at one remove) social behavior might be achieved, Meanwhile let us be thankful for any contribution to the methods of thi more effective education of the future, Among these contri- butions Bonpensiere’s will surely find a place, cause (poor wretch xiiiACKNOWLEDGMENTS 1 Am pexpiy indebted to Mr. Alduus Iuxley for his Fore- word and also for his invaluable suggestions and encourage- ment. Also I am most grateful to Mz. Denver Lindley for his siv- cere, umtiring interest in my husband’s work and for his friendly advice. To Mr. Georg Hoy, my co-worker in the selection and ar- rangement of these excerpts from my husband’s Notebooks, T owe a great debt of gratitude for his profound, steadfast interest and assistance in putting these excerpts into book form. OF Mz. Hoy I can say unreservedly that he is an on- lightened exponent of my busband’s work; that he has a thorough comprehension of the science of Ideo-Kinetics and is fully conversant with its principles and its application to the technique of piano playing. Mr, Hoy first met my husband, Luigi Bonponsiere, in 1926 und # true friendship ensued hetween them. In 1939 Mr. Hoy retumed to New York after an absence of several years, and it was during this visit that Luigi Bonpensiere spoke to him about his discovery of Ideo-Kinetics and com: manicated io him his findings as of that period, At this time he instructed him in the actual application of [deo-Kineties to piano playing, and he is the only person, besides the present writer, who learned by word of mouth from the eu- thor himself the facts about his diseoveries. Maria Bonpensiere TABLE OF CONTENTS: Part I Tre Discovery ov Ipeo-Kinerics Introduction... CaapTer I DEFINITIONS Mechanics Dynamics. Kinetic Volition V and V2 Defined Physio-Kineties Volitional Ideation Pre-Ideation Symbols . Self Release. will Crapren I ‘Towanos Inso-Kuveric CONSCIOUSNESS Cuapren UI ‘Anarysis For Finsr Inzo-Kiveni¢ Exerninents.. Cuapren IV Horrise 4 Manx in Pavsio-Kinertes Cuarran V Hrrrine 4 Mark w Ipzo-Kinencs.. Cuarren VI Basic Exrsnaman7s 1x Syaponianion ann Hrrrinc THE MARK ern . Caapren VIL ANALYSIS oF a First EXPERIMENT ON THE PIANParr II ‘Tis Screnex oF Inxo-Kinstics AveLinp To THE An oF Piano PLaviNG CHAPTER Ts Cuaprer TT “Giemine vie Mark” Apprizn To 715 PrANo... Cuarrer HD Ruyrua ano INTENSITIES... Cuaprer IV Syamors Charter V Sysrmus oF Pours i Space. Cnaprer VI RELease Guapter VIL IDEATION AND VOLSTION nue Crrarces VIL Pracriciné witn Ong Hano Aton BeNRwts THE OrneR ss CHAPTER PRACTICE ennvne ne Carrer X FINGERING osomnomnnnin Cuaprex XL SruptEs IN SIGHTLESS PLAYING Caper XID READING sceroncnnnnn Cuapren XUT Iuprovisnsc, Memory AND Hanir Cuarrer XIV Conciusions INDEX eenseanann Excerpts from the Notebooks of Inigi Bonpensiere, selected and arranged by Maria Bonpensiere and Georg Hoy.INTRODUCTION Giwar principLes are not discovered for the glorification of the individual man, He who would cherish this thought would be, indeed, a poor servant to the Power of Life. In- stead of launching a challenge to his fellow men and de- clating his primeey in the field, it would be much wiser and moze practical for him to say, “Here is this new thing, What can we do with it? I feel that if a new bit of knowl- edge is to be of extended use and benefit, it must be pre- sented with utmost simplicity. Come, Help’ me,” Therefore, nothing, in Uhis treatise is prosented with a elaim of finality as to definite theories or unassaileble hypotheses, On the contrary, all of the experiences and, at times, astonishing statoments of facts are offered only as a contribution to fur. ther study and investigation, Even the terminology of phenomena had to be improvised for the convenience of discussion sud any appropriate revi- sion of the temporaty ierminology will he welcome, We have been obliged to study the unknown in texms of things known-—in terms whose symbols recall other established meanings, Much to our ike, we have had to use and to abuse such terms as mind, consciousness, volition, will, thinking and intelligence, All of these terms might be taken as synonymous of the same psychic activity, only differing among themselves in their funetionel aspect, ‘These discussions ave also Full of assertions which seem to bo taken for granted aad in complete defiance or igno- ance of the latest verdicts of bivtogieal observation and of scientific and philosophical inquiry in geneval. The trith is that they heve been compiled in the spivit of deepest humil- ity and of reverence for everyone's effort iowards the ad- vancement of knowledge, The absclute and direct possibilityNEW PATHWAYS TO PIANO TECHNIQUE of demonstrating the postulates of this study experimentally js indeed a grace. Otherwise they might be deemed fantastic or impossible and refuted a priori. This study jinplies three different steps in intimate se- quenve: the discovery of a new aspect of the forces of Nature, the foundation of a new branch or sub-branch of science and the invention of @ method by which both the new principles and the nev science ate applied to @ widely extended activity of man, We have discovered, in our human physiology, special aspects of energy which are tho immediate projection of our thoughts, By thinking alone, our hands, with utmost faithfulness and without the least conscious effort, can re- produce the most elusive and complicated products of our mnusicel volition. ‘We designate this system of dynamics by the name of Heo-Kinetics. Tt was discovered during an exploration of Yolitional acts and motions, especially motions requiring Jong training and leading to the attainment of great skill. Tdeo-Kineties, in itself, would amount to very little if it were Limited to the few experiments available (a peculiar behaviour of volition as applied to ranscular motions). Tt is hweauce it can be applied to one of the geeatest skills attain~ able by man (and because of the fortuitous coincidence that that ekill is exercised on @ man-made instrument, the piano, singulazly adapted as a luboratory of the highest endow: ment) that Tdeo-Kineties ean reveal some of the deepest se- crets and unsuspected capacities of the nervous system— that it ean, in other words, offer suck an immense field of investigation to both psychology and physiology, apart from iis sublime contribution to the art of mus Scientife investigations based on individual Feelings and expericnces are possible only becanse a degree of mutual agreement has bec rcacked about the specific meanings of peycho-physiologieal values, A reciprocal help, through @ Foforence to standard values, is not possible until individual = INTRODUCTION experiences aro studied end correlated. The addition of a convenient vocabulary, grown out of a coramon understand. ing, becomes of immense value. Until such a stage of knowl edge about Ideo-Kineties is reached, the scholar must be- come his own psychologist amd physiologist and build his systom diligently ont of the baste and positive data, whick are, unequivocally, sufficient to illumine im about the new categories and dynamics, Man will get in deoKineties whatever dynamic possibilities he may happen to knows and whatever marvels he ignores will he lost to him. A spark of the very fire which Prometheus brought can not be handled with a too ostentatious simplicity—not swith out a reminder of what that fire was and is, If a new Dis pensation is looming on the horizon, whick will deliver to man a great many graces, he must make himself eady or is, This principle is elealy ilustrated in all of the func- tioning of Ideo-Kineties in relation to the mind of man. Ideo-Kinotice gives an unlimited amount of help in attain- ing what would, normally, be considered impossible; but, in order to get all of the benefits, man must think of them, When the Scriptures say “God is no respector of persons”, besides many other Uiings, they convey the thought that man does riot deserve more than he makes himself worthy of; end he shall get no more, There is no rubbing of talis- mans in the regions of Life. Here is anounced the Beginning of an ers when man can he, spontaneously, what he thinks he is. Encouraged by the first findings, we should explore the fields where man has only to think and Life will realize his thoughts. Here. the Eternal Poet, the One whom beauty feeds in light and in darkness alike, in dearth and in plenty, sings an appeal to all mystics, men of good-will, men who have surrendered their ego and who are ready to work for the glory of God and Life stone. Iuigi Bonpensicre xxi