To Change or Not to Change — by Selma Gokcen

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To Change or Not to Change — by Selma Gokcen

“Change involves carrying out an activity against the habit of life.”

“You can’t do something you don’t know, if you keep on doing what you do know.”

—F.M. Alexander

Summers take musicians to new places where teachers and students meet for the first and sometimes the only time, and within this one or perhaps two or three encounters, Chance and Fate can open unexpected doors. Being out of our familiar circumstances and roles and away from the people we see every week in the same place—and for the same reason—provide just the right marinating sauce for Serendipity.

It was during a summer festival in Belgium that I met two Alexander teachers and had my first lesson. I wasn’t aware of the effect of that lesson at the time but four years later I was deep in the books and looking for a teacher. Six years later I was in a teacher training course in London. It all began in the dark; gradually as the journey winds its way forward, I can look back and understand the logic of the change. The heart knows the necessity but the head wants to know the reasons.

So back to the point of this piece. Change always visits from the Unknown, we cannot control it, we cannot predict it and we certainly cannot welcome it without some discomfort. What’s unfamiliar always feels wrong and sometimes frightening. That’s one of the tenets of the Alexander Technique. You cannot change and yet remain the same.

This summer I worked with a cellist who clutched her instrument, tucking it in so close that her breathing was affected. I used the analogy of ballroom dancing—First Principle: don’t hang onto your partner, otherwise you cannot move around the dance floor. And move we must with our cellos, but for someone who has learned to keep the cello close in, letting go of it and letting oneself be free at the same time felt so awkward and uncomfortable that it was hard for her to contemplate playing. I helped her to have the experience; whether she wants to go in that direction of more freedom depends upon her tolerance of the discomfort that such change inevitably brings.

Of course, the acceptance of change has to happen in small increments, gradually. That’s Nature’s way for living things, unless it’s destruction we are after. Change is disorienting, but how else can the New make itself known?

As musicians, our bodies are changing and ageing continuously, which means we have to find a way to go up against the force of gravity bearing down on us. I recently watched a film of Pierre Fournier playing Bach—already a man of a certain age, he nevertheless is beautifully lengthened upwards as his arms and fingers move towards and away from his back. It’s a sight one rarely sees on the concert platform today, but it was normal for cellists of that period, who had grown up in the pre-automotive and pre-digital age. Today we have to take lessons to recover what was once normal and natural. My teachers refer to this as degeneration, not regeneration—a loss of the life force.

I treasure the Alexander Technique because it provides a principle, a point of reference by which we can keep our own instrument, the Self, in good working order. And it is a constant principle, allowing us to accommodate ever-changing life without losing our upward orientation and therefore our way forward.

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Leap Before You Look

The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.

—W. H. Auden

By Selma Gokcen|2021-11-22T14:18:43-05:00September 16th, 2015|Categories: Alexander Technique for Cellists, Playing Healthy, Self Discovery|Tags: change, Alexander Technique, Pierre Fournier, CelloBlog, Selma Gokcen, cellobello|

About the Author: Selma Gokcen

Selma Gokcen, born in America of Turkish parentage, has received critical acclaim for her imaginative programming. Along with Bernard Greenhouse and Jonathan Kramer, she presented a programme at London’s South Bank Centre, in New York and at the Kennedy Center entitled Pablo Casals: Artist of Conscience, celebrating the life and music of the legendary cellist.

Ms. Gokcen has performed with L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Presidential Symphony in Ankara, the Istanbul State Symphony Orchestra, the Houston Symphony, the North Carolina Symphony, and the Aspen Philharmonia, among others. Her recital appearances have taken her to such cities as Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Charleston, S.C., and to Belgium, Italy and Turkey. In South America, she has toured under the auspices of the U.S. State Department. She has concertized in Australia and New Zealand, and given master classes in Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

In addition to solo appearances, she is an accomplished chamber musician and has participated in the Chamber Music West Festival in San Francisco, the Southeastern Music Festival, the Hindemith Festival in Oregon, and the Accademia Chigiana in Siena.

Ms. Gokcen holds the Doctorate of Musical Arts, as well as a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the Juilliard School, where her teachers included Leonard Rose, Channing Robbins, William Lincer and Robert Mann. She was awarded a First Prize from the Geneva Conservatory of Music as a pupil of Guy Fallot, and also studied privately with Pierre Fournier. In 1999 she was chosen by one of Spain’s greatest composers, Xavier Montsalvatge, to record his complete works for cello. She has also recorded Songs and Dances in Switzerland for the Gallo label.

In 1988, Ms. Gokcen became interested in the Alexander Technique, prompted by a lifelong fascination with the roots of habits and the difficulties of modifying them. Students often entered her cello studio seeking changes but unable to resolve their problems.

Eventually her reading brought her to the Alexander Technique, a discipline described by its founder as “learning to do consciously what nature intended”. She came to London in 1994 and enrolled in a teacher training program at the Centre for the Alexander Technique.

Ms Gokcen was qualified as a fully-fledged teacher by the Society for Teachers of the Alexander Technique in 1998. In September 2000 she was appointed to the faculty of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, where she is also a professor of cello. She works with string, wind and brass players, singers and composers. She also incorporates her Alexander Technique teaching as part of her cello studio.

The Alexander Technique embraces what is today called holistic thinking–an indivisibility of the mind-body connection and the awakening of awareness of what Alexander called the “use of the whole self”, which affects our functioning in all our activities, especially the highly complex skill of music-making. It is particularly useful in addressing breathing, coordination, and muscle tensions. Most importantly, the quality of attention developed through the practice of the Technique can transform a musician’s relationship with their instrument and their audience.

Selma Gokcen is also the co-founder and Co-Chair of the London Cello Society.