Energy Begets Energy
Or, Keeping Up With Clifton
Since launching Pride & Practicing in April, it has been a delight for me to watch it grow. At the start, most of our readers were people connected to me in some way; but now, a few months in, I have no idea who the majority of you are. I wish I could sit down with each one of you and get to know you a bit and talk shop! We have readers now in the US, the UK, France, Croatia, Portugal, New Zealand, Finland and….. where else? If you feel like it, drop me a line (by replying to this email) and let me know who you are and where you’re from, and what your practicing life is like in a nutshell. I’m happy you’re here!
Although Pride & Practicing is gaining readers every day, we’re still small. Small but mighty—but, for example, you won’t yet find large numbers of comments. There are some, though! Do you read them? Has anyone taken note of a witty and apparently knowledgeable reader named Clifton? The one who quotes Wanda Landowska in the comments (and Darrell Rosenbluth) and who (I will share with you) felt that the proper title for this publication should’ve been Practice or Perish? In celebration of Father’s Day, allow me to introduce you to Clifton Matthews, professor of piano at the (University of) North Carolina School of the Arts for 43 years, faculty at the Festival Tibor Varga (now the Sion Festival) in Switzerland for a quarter of a century, beloved mentor to countless pianists over many decades, and yes, my father. Clifton—though his doctor assures him he has the vital signs of a man many decades younger—is approaching that most auspicious age for a pianist (leaving aside the Bösendorfer Imperial, because 97 keys is just really too many). He came to Juilliard in the 1950s from a small town in Kansas, where as a boy, he spent every Saturday taking the train 3 hours each way to Kansas City for his piano lessons. He went on as a Fulbright scholar to Munich, where he stayed through the early years of his career, and where (importantly for Pride & Practicing), he met and married my mother. (No, she wasn’t German; she was a Fulbright student from Juilliard too! I’m not sure how it is that their paths had never crossed at school before they each crossed the Atlantic in an ocean liner, but that is how the story goes.) My parents are a link for us to the heady, elevated world of music study in New York and in Germany in those mid-century years. Or—maybe I romanticize it too much, through the stories I heard and mental pictures I formed growing up. Time passes, everything changes, and certainly music study looks very different now. And surely we would say “good riddance” to some of what has been lost from that era. Other changes we may deeply grieve, longing for the way (we imagine) it was. (Brahms felt something similar in his lifetime, expressing a painful sense that he had been born too late….) But—other seeming “losses” perhaps haven’t been lost at all! For that is how it works! Clifton absorbed the best of that atmosphere in his formative years, and added the best of himself to it. (At risk of embarrassing him, here we might enumerate some of that Clifton-ness: his poetic sensitivity, pianistic brilliance, unshakeable commitment, seriousness of purpose, humility and wit and generosity and all-around humanity…. Shall I go on?) And all that he carries, from within himself and from his training and his life experiences, is passed to his countless students and his students’ students, fanning out all over the world. And inasmuch as I have absorbed a great deal from Clifton all my life, and inasmuch as I am sharing whatever is in me with you, dear readers: now you are in the Clifton circle too! So let’s all wish him Happy Father’s Day!
He recently shared with me a document, a sort of manifesto, that sums up his approach to playing the piano, teaching, and practicing. It encompasses technique, musicianship, and ways to frame and understand the whole thing; subscribers can look forward to some upcoming posts exploring this material in depth. (And guess what? There’s a Fathers Day special if you’d like to subscribe right now!) For today though, I’d like to share just one brief but profoundly important thing I’ve learned from Clifton. It’s something I’ve heard him say many times, and something that encapsulates much about him as a musician and teacher. Here it is, in three words that I think of as the Clifton-mantra: ENERGY BEGETS ENERGY.
The thing is, I have observed many times that Clifton leaves his students in the dust. Where getting your playing to sound beautiful is concerned, he is a bulldog. He does not let go until it sounds better! He does not give up on the project of improving your playing, which translates into his not giving up on YOU—much as you might at times wish he would! (How many hours has this lesson gone on?) Clifton does not measure lessons in hours! He is, as I mentioned, approaching (but only approaching) that most auspicious age for a pianist, and here he is: leaving you in the dust. As you are feeling increasingly faint from effort, nearing the point at which you fear you may crumble into a useless, quivering heap right there on the piano bench, Clifton, it seems, is just getting warmed up. How does he do it?
ENERGY BEGETS ENERGY. That is how! I believe I have mentioned recently that I’ve been feeling tired…. So it has been a useful time for me to remember these wise words, and to use them. They work. A cup of coffee is one thing, but it’s even better to find and tap into the inexhaustible energy source that we all have within us. We don’t have to get all New Age-y about this to find it and use it. We have it even when we’re tired, even when we’re sick, even when we’re sick-and-tired—if we can just find it. We have it by virtue of being alive. To find just a little bit of energy, just enough, just that tiny smidgen—it can get us going! And I have seen from my own experience, over and over and over, that it does not only get us going, but it grows. Ugh, I don’t want to practice, we might think. (Even Clifton may have had that thought once or twice in his life, though I am not sure.) We could give up and go do whatever else it is we do instead. But if we don’t have the energy to practice, we probably don’t really have the energy for that other thing either! So, unless that other thing involves taking a nap, maybe we could decide we’ll just try. Just sit down at the piano. Do something—doesn’t matter what. We remember the wise words: energy begets energy. As best we can, we bring our attention to whatever it is we’re doing. We just do something, just really do that one small thing, and we start to feel it. Energy! Then we stop noticing it…. Is it because it’s not there? No—it’s because we’ve gotten swept away on its currents! It renews itself and builds on itself. Energy begets more energy! So that once we’ve found it, we don’t have to worry about it any more. It’s more simple than we thought: we have the energy we need. It takes care of itself, and we can just practice. All we have to do is start in good faith. How many hours has this been going on? The question now is one of genuine curiosity rather than desperation—and the answer brings wonder, when we look at the clock and remember that a couple of hours ago, we hadn’t even thought we could practice at all.
When we think we don’t have any energy, what is that? We are still alive, right? Sometimes, it may be that we confuse energy with mental or physical stamina. We may truly not have the stamina right now to play through a long, hard piece up to tempo. But stamina is not the same thing as energy; we just need to be realistic and choose something that fits. We might not be able to run around the block, but we can probably play one beautiful phrase. Or—we set the bar as low as we need: just one beautiful note! (And since we’ve made it this far, gone to the trouble of hauling our moribund selves over to the piano, we’ll probably soon find ourselves stringing together two or three….) If we were not capable of recognizing our own energy unless-or-until we were capable of running a marathon, there would be even more lying around on the couch in this world than there already is. (And I do love my couch. But I love being alive much more!)
Other times, maybe our thinking gets in the way of our ability to access the energy we have. We can almost crowd it out, or block ourselves to the point where we can’t find our second finger, much less the innate, inexhaustible energy source deep in our core. Then it’s probably a matter of taking a deep breath. Take a moment, give it some space! Then we can just state an intention: okay, time to find some energy. Or we say the Clifton-mantra. Say it three times and click your heels if that is what it takes! Energy comes.
It is true that we have different access to energy at different times. That’s fine, right? That is not a problem. We do get to lie on the couch, and when that’s what we need, we should enjoy it wholeheartedly and without apology. But right now I’m assuming that we want to practice! So, the two points to remember:
1) energy is always there, somewhere, as long as we are alive. SOME level of energy is there. Are we willing to find it? Do we have enough commitment to our practicing to try and find it?
and
2) let’s don’t forget the second part of the Clifton-mantra! If the first part (“energy…”) I am basically translating as “energy exists,” the second part (“….begets energy”) reminds us that it grows when we use it. It builds on itself in an extraordinary way. Even if the level of energy we can access at first is infinitesimally small, it begins to grow as soon as we tap into it. That tiniest smidgen can get us started, and the next thing you know…. This, to me, is one of the great miracles of practicing.
But—maybe energy used in some endeavors does not grow. If we spend our energy doing something that isn’t right for us, or if we put energy towards something that causes harm, it seems the Clifton-mantra might not hold. Maybe in that case, energy spins itself out, exhausts itself, through checks-and-balances applied by the forces of the universe. But Clifton would not know about that, because he has spent his life using his energy for good! He has taken the opportunity to direct his formidable energy into something that not only resonates with every fiber of his being, but that makes the world more beautiful, more connected, more compassionate. Yes, music does that. And as musicians, we all have our own version of this extraordinary opportunity, the one that Clifton has seized all his life. The one that still keeps him at his beloved Mozart sonatas for a few hours every morning. However that opportunity looks (and sounds) for us, are we going to take it? Say yes!
Thanks for reading Pride & Practicing and happy Fathers Day!
Happy father's day Mr. Matthews. I remember only too well our lesson on Bach's Sinfonia 5. You kindly but repeatedly urged me to play slower to get the rhythm; and then your daughter took up the beat when you returned home. A few years later, and many hours of some joyful, some frustrating, practices later, by George -- I think I've got it. Thank you for this wonderful gift. PS I owe you some chocolate chip cookies when you visit Seattle next.
Having grown up with you, I have memories of listening to your father practicing with the doors and windows open on summer days, the music drifting down the street. I loved reading your words about him. Clifton has always been a force of nature!