This page has two purposes. At the top, you find some quotes of his that I find relevant, from texts that he has written ("The human reality of continuous music", and, "Open Time").
Firstly, I have found that understanding Lubomyr has been, if not necessary, very helpful for understanding his music. Reading Open Time convinced me of this, as it deepened my respect for him as a person and revealed how much of himself he has imparted onto the music (or, I am sure he would say something more humble like ~ "I was just a good receptacle for this music"). Secondly, this page exists as a prophylactic, because I have seen enough comments both online and from my own friends to believe it is common for people to misunderstand Lubomyr, which, in fairness, is partly just because the man gives baffling online interviews.
I am not at all sure how to write this, as I have to hold fictional debates, invent potential misunderstandings and then address them. I should link to the more general "who is he?" page, as well as the pages discussing his unwritten philosophy.
Just to really hammer it home, I want to make it clear that he does not fancy himself as superior to everything which came before. I have already illustrated that a great deal, but let me throw a few more quotes into the fire (many of these quotes are taken from Open Time or an interview with Mac Eagon, on a show called 'For the Record').
"There is one important facet here: ... the desire to have this music live on is mainly out of love for the piano, and for the voice of the piano; I know that the piano must not be limited to the voice that it has when it's playing Beethoven sonatas and Bach and rock and roll tunes and so on - it has a really, really nice voice when it's playing that sort of music, it's a nice voice, I'm not criticising this voice, but it's only a small part of the true voice of the piano."
"Classical pianists deserve all the adulation they receive"
"their genius of classical beauty is beyond our comprehension, ... [the great composers used a] monumental universe of velvet glue, which we hear in our soul and our intellect, ... I feel horrible when I hear those giants speak! The world really has no idea how infinitely great and inhuman those genius composers were"
"The conventional classical technique (and its music) and the continuous technique and its music are not in conflict with one another: nor do they ask for one another. Although they need not know one another, nothing in either one will hinder the other."
"If we take Beethoven's symphonic pieces which, for me, have changed tremendously from when I heard them at 12 or 16 years old... I would hear them and love them and find them super-beautiful, but I could not quite grasp the glue that made them into an enormous monument. Through the years and my devotion to music and to the piano, now it's almost unbearable to listen to a Beethoven symphonic work... I hear the glue he used, it's dumbfounding. I don't understand how people, our society [was able to accomplish this],... people like Beethoven and Bach and Mozart and Wagner and Verdi, all of this classical music, which is so difficult to compose... I mean we talk about me playing the piano in an impossible way, but these Beethoven symphonies are just unbelievable! But I can't explain it. I hear it, I taste it, I can smell it, I feel it in my fingers when I hear a few bars of the symphony; it's earth-shattering.
When people go to a concert of a Beethoven symphony, or something else - but it has to be really high quality, somebody great - you can't leave the concert hall. People should be sitting there transfixed. It should take them an hour to get out of the concert hall because they can't move, the beauty is so immense. How to express this?
In Windows XP the demo music they used to test your speakers was Beethoven's ninth symphony, the Scherzo, it's like a 2-minute excerpt, it's what I'm talking about, if you heard it.. when I hear it I go crazy. I just want to go out and become a bus driver. How can I even compose music after hearing this 2 minute excerpt of a scherzo on the XP?
If I want to explain to you, the greatness of it, .. would you hear it? ...... It reminds me of an Escher drawing, of staircases. Escher did many fantastic drawings, the ones im talking about include staircases. This is the scherzo. It's one thing for Escher to paint these figures into multidimensional extravaganzas, now imagine if a carpenter could build these, in four dimensions, not three,. this is what Beethoven could do. Nobody can do this! This is impossible. .... The beauty of it becomes unbearable.
So people don't get misconceptions... my music in no way compares to the music of Beethoven Chopin Bach and all the others... in no way. I'm a completely different level, a much much lower level. However, the quality of the composition is not so much in the relationship between the tones, the beauty that my music lacks is the incredible power ... and the glory, the glue between the lower and the higher notes that Beethoven and Bach all used. It's phenomenal. My music does not have that. The main element of continuous music is actually the technique of playing the piano, this generating of the voice of the piano... as if more than one person is playing, this enormous sound. This is the justification for this music."
Lubomyr is very passionate, about everything. He is of an older, much more mindful, holistic-leaning generation. The music he plays demands absolutely everything of him, a full commitment to the world of sound for 10, 20, 60, 180 minutes (yes, really) for any given piece. I can attest to a small fragment of this experience, the amazing feeling of holding a 2-bar pattern from one of his exercises for a full hour. It involves the whole mind, the whole body, and for Lubomyr this goes much deeper, involving his whole psychology and perception of time, in a way that leaks out to his day-to-day experience.
Accordingly, it is no surprise he speaks so highly of the music. If you are someone who is used to just pausing and reflecting on the great insanity that we exist, and think, you can better understand what Lubomyr is talking about when he discusses the music, because in a very real sense this music is his existence (if you are not such a person, that's fine, but I increasingly feel that this sort of thinking is necessary to play his music at a high level). Once that full immersive perception-altering experience overcame him, almost 60 years ago now, it stayed.
So, absolutely, of course, he perceives continuous music as "a completely new language for the piano, unlike anything which has existed before." Almost anyone who has heard him live would (perhaps grudgingly) agree with that statement as well. But understand him carefully: he does not say that to impress you with his discovery. He means only to urgently tell you, because it is the among the most important things for him, that this experience exists, and that it will require an opening of the mind to properly appreciate.
When he says words to the effect of ~ 'continuous music involves the Fourth dimension', does he mean to suggest that he is a master physicist identifying a new spatial coordinate? Does he mean he understands something like the 11 dimensions of M-theory, or the 26 of bosonic string theory? Does he want you to respect some incredible insight into science, and become bitter when you fail to acknowledge this? Not at all. Lubomyr's meaning is obvious, to him, but this website exists because much clear to him is unclear to the other. The essential, over-simplified, meaning of this is that continuous music invites the performer and the listener to an unusual experience, and the mind can feel stimulated in ways not really possible in the day-to-day. Construed at this level, this is a simple and, I hope, not very controversial statement. After one of my concerts, even my mere tip of Lubomyr's iceberg was enough to prompt someone to say that the experience was not so far away from one he had while taking a psychedelic. In a different concert, in order to manage an especially difficult section of a piece, I had to mentally situate myself in, and totally visualise, a running river - and it worked, and it did truly feel, in a small way, as if I were somewhere else. This, but much, much more that I have yet to experience for myself, is what Lubomyr means by "fourth dimension". External, or in the literal, old sense of the word, extraordinary experience.
He is someone who believes he has found something wonderful, but he is not someone certain of their own brilliance. He is instead certain of the brilliance of the natural world and of the possible sounds the piano can make, and these possible experiences the human soul can taste when performing continuous music, but he is not very good at making this distinction clear when he speaks; it was never about him. It just sometimes seems that way, since, unfortunately, only he does this music (properly and fully), so his self comes to the forefront in a theoretically avoidable way.
Lubomyr, like many of his generation, is a bit suspicious of technology (last I saw him, he was using a Nokia brick phone). Certainly, he does not really understand how to use the Internet or present himself well, online - I believe he struggles to imagine how easily things get misunderstood and attacked.
Above you can see a screenshot from the front page of his old website. I think this comment, which was not made by him, that you see about Lizst, is potentially an immediate turn-off for a random visitor. It is worth understanding that, to a great extent, his websites and social media are managed by friends and agents, and I do believe that the principle of praising for the sake of advertising (which literally everyone does) was taken a bit too seriously.
He has never, ever, compared himself to the classical greats in conversation, and he bows before them - as you know! The whole website is written with eccentric punctuation and very, very strong compliments (in fairness, often as quotes from other people) which certainly could make someone suspicious that some narcissism or wackiness is afoot where there is none (ok, maybe some wackiness). The website is aggrandising where Lubomyr, in person, as I can attest to with years of experience, is not. He would only place the piano itself, and its sound, on a pedestal - not himself.
When I was first looking into Lubomyr, this webpage created an impression in my mind of who he was that was completely dismantled once we started having lessons. His emails are often amusing, though, as some of my friends know: he will randomly capitalise and exclaim at anything, treating email rather like a stream-of-consciousness texting service. Some idiosyncracies abound, but his speech is always clear and thoughtful, often warm, and always humble.
This is the most difficult part for me to write. Lubomyr unfortunately has a bee in his bonnet about much of modern mathematics and science, and a serious student of continuous music, when listening to things he says or reading his books, will inevitably encounter this and should learn to overcome any frustration or skepticism this might induce. I don't want to sound like I am just doing a "cope", here (in modern parlance); there are several things he says often that I smile and nod in response to and try to move swiftly on - I certainly don't agree with all of this stuff. Mathematics, and its correctness and insistence upon its correct practice, are close to my heart, so when Lubomyr occasionally talks about mathematics in a wild way, referring to how Fermat's last theorem is the most blindingly obvious thing in the world, I hold my tongue, since I know full well its proof (which has a long and interesting history, full of errors, some found even long after it was accepted) consists of extremely sophisticated ideas that I do not understand in the least (and wish I did), despite my training.
I believe (armed with additional context) that what Lubomyr really means by this is that he perceives a certain geometric clarity in this theorem that makes him feel, intuitively, very strongly that it ought to be true, and this experience is good enough for him. He thinks, I have noticed, about mathematics rather like how I imagine the ancient Greeks did; geometry (in the more basic Euclidean sense) is high art for him, but having found no beauty in calculus and the like he has eschewed all that. From the mathematician's perspective of seeking proof (we seek proof almost over and above truth, to a great extent), this is obviously not good enough, but Lubomyr doesn't care. This is fine; it is a position to take, but takes a moment to understand and, unfortunately, Lubomyr does not take a moment to understand the modern mathematician's point of view.
Maybe I am 'coping', actually, since in a way I find myself admiring that about Lubomyr. The man lives a life of great beauty, in the sense of finding beauty in everything, and finding metaphysical interpretations in almost everything around him, with wonder around every corner, and in such a life and there is just no want for the cold ugliness of long and tedious proof and formalisms, rigidifications of a world that ought to be (for him) kept liquid and mysterious. It is like the following situation, which is maybe more relatable to the general audience: in the modern era, one has a choice. One can decide to understand quantum field theory really well, but one can also, reasonably, prefer to enjoy its consequences and/or appreciate them metaphysically, rather than physically, and these consequences are more meaningful for the general reader - they include the wonderful electromagnetism powering the device with which I write this article.
He does appreciate mathematics, as I've said, just not the modern style of which I am personally so fond. I think it is worth saying he has understood several of his compositions to be mathematically inspired, and perceives some kind of ... structure, there, some kind of geometry in the music, which I have yet to understand. Mathematics and music are often linked, and it is true I and several of my colleagues at university fit this stereotype, but I have never personally come to understand the link at an explicit or conscious level. Meanwhile, many of his more complicated pattern-work pieces, e.g. the Lund St Petri symphony, he describes as difficult mainly because one has to 'perceive the mathematics' in the right way, for it to be playable. For myself, I only partially understand this comment as it refers to the challenges of holding complex 6-notes against 7-notes (say) patterns which one must play without counting. Lubomyr does openly say that this is not the pinnacle of difficulty: as mentioned on the other page, he was inspired by Ravi Shankar and Sitar music, and praises this still - in a recent interview I conducted with him, he said that: "nothing is so complicated [rhythmically] as Indian music"
Just today, I got access to a programme note for a concert he delivered in 1977, of a piece called LIMITS. It was four hours long, yet the score had only 14 pages. Lubomyr's "Arpegge notation" is fantastically efficient. Anyway, in the description of this piece, frequent reference is made to the hyperbola xy=10, with his mind dwelling on the locus of this equation coming arbitrarily close to both of the standard axes, without ever touching.
This idea has consequences in 'genuine' mathematics - this geometry is often used to give examples of non-compactness and non-properness phenomena. I would like to know what Lubomyr thought this geometry entailed for his composition (other than inspiring the title of the piece), for his idea of the musical form.
"in the film The Holy Mountain by Alejandro Jodorowsky ... there is a most beautiful scene where one of the characters is playing with these remarkable weightless 'stick-figures' of mathematical forms, that are incredibly complex, … and I realized that yes, this is what classical music creates in its velvet harmonies .. especially Joseph Haydn who relied on simplicity to create these mathematical forms."
Lubomyr really does appreciate film.
Let me return to his comments about additional dimensions, and how continuous music involves the fourth dimension. He partly means, if he may forgive my paraphrasing, that continuous music requires an acceptance that this bizarre reality of consciousness has more to it than a clinically analysed world of protons and electrons (which are still yet to be fully understood), that there are emergent properties we do not understand; he puts the human at the centre of reality, and this is little more than the difference between (forgive the overused example) saying: "when a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" versus "... does it make a longitudinal pressure-wave in the air which is affected by the material properties of the nearby solids?"
There is a way in which the difference between these two questions is obvious, but hard to state clearly, and Lubomyr is a victim of this lack of clarity. This relates to music because the mental 'game' of continuous music is very important, but also the player (I can attest to this) experiences a sense that their hands are doing things which are not really possible. When performing, I have moved my hands far faster than I ever could if I consciously paused and made an effort to do so. There are many rational-empirical possible explanations for this, which I accept, but the important explanation one has to understand in order to actually learn to do it is, well, what Lubomyr is getting at. It has been understood by so many cultures over the centuries that the mind is capable of much, and that "mind over matter" has a very real grain of truth to it, and this .. additional space, in the human experience, is partly what Lubomyr means by "fourth dimension". ""
You have the choice of chalking this up to the powerful human imagination and psychosomatism and whatnot, or you can give all of that (which is inherently wonderful, is it not? Consciousness is a constant wonder that we tend to overlook) names and more airy-fairy sounding concepts, such as the name of 'dimension'. If the mind is finding a free space, a new space to exist in and do good things within, it is reasonable to call this a dimension, just so long as you don't read that in a super literal spatial-coordinate sense, and one does benefit from this new language.
As many people recognise, human understanding is tightly bound with the language we use (and there are moments in Open Time where Lubomyr talks about language) and if Lubomyr has found a helpful language to understand what he does and feels then good for him! And the reason any of this is on this site is to remind the potential student not to be too skeptical of this, since I was, but the less skeptical I became - the more effort I put into trying to believe there was something to his language - the better (in every way, from technical ability to musicality to joyfulness) my playing became.
Lubomyr has said more than once that scientists "lie" about the nature of clouds, or sound. What does he mean? He does not really mean that the relevant empirical observations which a scientist might model and understand, with meteorology and the physics of pressure-waves and so on, are false, but that they are by far the least interesting or meaningful aspects. He has several pieces dedicated to clouds, in particular, and of course all of his pieces are dedicated to a love of sound, not of pressure-waves but of sound, the human phenomenon. Placing human experience at the centre of it all is very important for him.
Similarly: it is unfortunate that Lubomyr also tilts against Galileo, for similar-sounding reasons to the ones used to place Galileo under house arrest. There is a piece of his, whose title says it all, really: "It was revealed unto us that man is the centre of the universe, but now few can remember". How should we take this? In some sense, it's not important, because you're reading this (hopefully) because you want to learn continuous music and such opinions have little bearing on music. But, we can treat with Lubomyr in some good faith. There is the fact that we have overwhelming observational evidence that the Earth orbits (and rotates) around the sun, but what I believe has angered Lubomyr is the idea that followed this, in the Renaissance, the idea that humans, or that solipsism and individual experience, are not important, and he has, unfortunately, attributed all of this to Galileo. Everything seems to be in motion (the Solar system as a whole is also in flux, moving along one of the arms of the Milky Way, a galaxy which is also expanding and in motion) in such fantastically abstract ways that are profoundly unimportant (outside of philosophical implications) for day-to-day human living, and Lubomyr is not interested by any of it.
He is afraid of "the men in white frocks". This pejorative description does not come from a fear of knowledge, but a fear of the effects of the Enlightenment, with rational thought overriding (as it very often does, in Western culture) softer understandings of human, of soul, of mystery, which are more important to Lubomyr. Indeed, even some of the "men in white frocks" share this opinion: for me, most notably, the celebrated neuroscientist, psychiatrist and philosopher Dr Iain McGilchrist seems to share this view.
I would like to personally interview Lubomyr to better understand the origin of this sentiment, but know that, as one very respectful of science and as a rational mathematician, I take absolutely no offence in what Lubomyr is saying here. He just leaves something to be desired in how expresses these sentiments.