The two modes of play

Lubomyr's technique typically comes in two flavours: "static position" and "arpegge" (yes, not 'arpeggio') play. The purpose of this article is to introduce these concepts, and convince the reader it is not simply a matter of: playing with arpeggios (or broken chords) versus 'not'.

To the audience, these modes are broadly categorised by the motion of the performer's hands and the shape of the sound: localised and relentless (in either an energetic or an inevitable and calm way) versus glistening and unfurling, rather than rolling around.

For the performer, they require different mindsets and modes of concentration. The main reason that I struggle to "really do" arpegge play, even in situations where I've long since been able to physically handle the notes - the arpeggios - is that I cannot properly grasp the frame of mind. In Lubomyr's language, the most fundamental difference is that arpegge play requires the ultimate softening (or the opening) of the wrist; static position needs that less, and more primitively is just about asking your hand to live.

Learning his music, one begins with the static position play, as it is significantly easier; in my experience, it can be four years before one can even seriously consider learning arpegge play, and just because static position is easier does not mean it can be mastered in any short length of time.

Well, really there are three modes of play. The third is what he calls "Bel Canto", which came to him decades after starting his explorations: it is a mode of powerful singing, where in the middle of an intense arpegge piece he can essentially (and easefully) project a clear and bell-like ringing melody over the sea, even though he's only spending a few centiseconds on each note.

Of course, phrasing and emphasising a melodic theme is an essential skill for most forms of piano music, but this particular type is absurdly difficult. I will say no more about it, as I know little and have only a basic grasp on the more fundamental 'arpegge' mode anyhow.

The static position pieces are the earliest form of his music; they are the least sophisticated, too, but already beautiful. For some examples (off the top of my head): Pockets of Light, Butterfly, Parasol, Clouds 81, Cloud Passade 3 and Marginal Invitation are all in static-position. The first potential misconception to dispel is that static position pieces, despite the name, are not so static that they remain in the same register. Most of the pieces I've mention fluctuate over 3 or 4 octaves in the course of the piece - just, at any moment, the performer can be relaxed and not have a need to move very much, or very far. Your attention is focused on a small area of the keyboard (or perhaps two, if the hands are far apart) and therefore it is not focused on any area of the keyboard: you can acknowledge you are now in, say, the key of C +16va, and then turn that off, as it is no longer important; your hands are already in the right place, and with eyes closed they already see where to go; you are playing in a well-run groove. Then you are now in Dmin +16va for a few beats and then rapidly down to B flat +8va, let's say, but if you take a snapshot of the piece you will only see yourself moving under the hand. That is, the rough, general position of the hand is the same, maybe oscillating in some small circle aided by gentle support from the wrist (which is important! Rigidity in the wrist is lethal) but underneath the hand, or let's say the cloud traced out by the hand, the fingers may be very active.

Pedagogically, the 'purpose' of static position play is to teach the student how to generate energy in the hand and wrist, in the calm and easeful way, and discover the basic physical experiences of continuous music. Having the hand live and dance is already challenging, so serious multi-octave arpeggios would only add too much "difficulty": I say "difficulty" because, again, it is usually not so hard to literally play every single written note, but it is very hard to gain that feeling which makes the playing inevitable and correct and natural (and not just something the score has ordered you to do).

It is like you have struck one note which is held: there shall be beat notes (harmonics) and the natural oscillation of the sound wave, but you have just struck one note. The rest of your performance goes into realising the richness of this single note, the complexity of a raindrop. Then you will calmly reach for the next.

It is an issue of scale (zoom). Because arpegge play (at least that which I understand) is also like just striking one note at a time, but the perspective is different. Try to imagine an seismograph, and a gentle earthquake (which is the 'single note'). The needle will waver somewhat, but not very much. That is the single note which you perceive. In arpegge play, you take that image and you blow it up. You've taken a Fourier transform. You scatter that single note across the keyboard and understand the subfrequencies and beat notes individually; you imagine middle C and C+8va and C-8vb simultaneously; but, crucially, you still manage to perceive the whole thing as one package - as you should. You move across the octaves, in this blown-up regime, but hope to find it just as easeful and as simple as striking the single note with its compact waveform and small envelope of sound held in the palm of your hand. Successfully doing this is the tricky part. It is easy to tell yourself: "right, ok, let's think of it like that. Uhm. Done?" but you have to believe it, think of it as if it is obvious, let your hands think of it, or do it while asleep.

When Lubomyr first told me to think of all the notes in the three-octave arpeggiated exercise I was struggling with as all the same note, it genuinely helped. I was bloody shocked by how helpful it was. When I first presented arpeggiated motion in concert (in my little extensions to the piece 'Parasol') I was a little nervous, knowing I often fumbled the notes in practice, but as I came to the part where I would start playing in this way I just told myself to yield to it and "imagined a river", with sunlight glistening on it and a waterfall (I understand Parasol to be the song of the journey of a river, see) that just... worked. I envisioned this river - it wasn't just a mental cope where I told myself to tell myself to think something. And I pressed through it confidently, still making some small slips here and there, but not a soul in the audience noticed. It was one coherent, single sound.

"a degree of separation between each of the notes, felt right down into the body's muscles, that are felt by the player as a texture within the mind and hand's space, recognisable as space and in space, taking into account both the initial thrust of the total harmonic structure, and too, its component notes, in their order, each being well-defined and separate (not only in respect to all the notes, but even to the separation between the chordal format, the harmony, and its components).

This physical space between the notes, as individuals and as the entire row, is something the player must grow to hear for himself, after he has come to grasp the facility of projecting sound out from oneself; the two are deeply linked; our nervous system, extending into the hands, being part of our life, part of us, is perceptible to us, as a space in itself; player must set those notes out in a line, with tangible mass, within that spatial dimension available to us;

open the body to the music-generation you are acting out so that you can feel the notes as solid objects inside your lifehood; all of these seemingly hostile touches will then lie easily and instantly, at-hand to the player, available in any mixture, because the body and mind will be able to differentiate these into their own spatial dimension"

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