Life and Habit | Page 3

the piano as an example of the kind of
action we are in search of, we observe that a practised player will
perform very difficult pieces apparently without effort, often, indeed,
while thinking and talking of something quite other than his music; yet
he will play accurately and, possibly, with much expression. If he has
been playing a fugue, say in four parts, he will have kept each part well
distinct, in such a manner as to prove that his mind was not prevented,
by its other occupations, from consciously or unconsciously following
four distinct trains of musical thought at the same time, nor from
making his fingers act in exactly the required manner as regards each
note of each part.
It commonly happens that in the course of four or five minutes a player
may have struck four or five thousand notes. If we take into
consideration the rests, dotted notes, accidentals, variations of time, &c.,
we shall find his attention must have been exercised on many more
occasions than when he was actually striking notes: so that it may not
be too much to say that the attention of a first-rate player may have
been exercised--to an infinitesimally small extent-- but still truly
exercised--on as many as ten thousand occasions within the space of
five minutes, for no note can be struck nor point attended to without a
certain amount of attention, no matter how rapidly or unconsciously
given.
Moreover, each act of attention has been followed by an act of volition,
and each act of volition by a muscular action, which is composed of
many minor actions; some so small that we can no more follow them
than the player himself can perceive them; nevertheless, it may have
been perfectly plain that the player was not attending to what he was
doing, but was listening to conversation on some other subject, not to
say joining in it himself. If he has been playing the violin, he may have
done all the above, and may also have been walking about. Herr
Joachim would unquestionably be able to do all that has here been
described.

So complete would the player's unconsciousness of the attention he is
giving, and the brain power he is exerting appear to be, that we shall
find it difficult to awaken his attention to any particular part of his
performance without putting him out. Indeed we cannot do so. We shall
observe that he finds it hardly less difficult to compass a voluntary
consciousness of what he has once learnt so thoroughly that it has
passed, so to speak, into the domain of unconsciousness, than he found
it to learn the note or passage in the first instance. The effort after a
second consciousness of detail baffles him--compels him to turn to his
music or play slowly. In fact it seems as though he knew the piece too
well to be able to know that he knows it, and is only conscious of
knowing those passages which he does not know so thoroughly.
At the end of his performance, his memory would appear to be no less
annihilated than was his consciousness of attention and volition. For of
the thousands of acts requiring the exercise of both the one and the
other, which he has done during the five minutes, we will say, of his
performance, he will remember hardly one when it is over. If he calls to
mind anything beyond the main fact that he has played such and such a
piece, it will probably be some passage which he has found more
difficult than the others, and with the like of which he has not been so
long familiar. All the rest he will forget as completely as the breath
which he has drawn while playing.
He finds it difficult to remember even the difficulties he experienced in
learning to play. A few may have so impressed him that they remain
with him, but the greater part will have escaped him as completely as
the remembrance of what he ate, or how he put on his clothes, this day
ten years ago; nevertheless, it is plain he remembers more than he
remembers remembering, for he avoids mistakes which he made at one
time, and his performance proves that all the notes are in his memory,
though if called upon to play such and such a bar at random from the
middle of the piece, and neither more nor less, he will probably say that
he cannot remember it unless he begins from the beginning of the
phrase which leads to it. Very commonly he will be obliged to begin
from the beginning of the movement itself, and be unable to start at any
other point unless he have the music before him; and