Hit or Miss

Selma Gokcen

“Under the ordinary teaching methods, the pupil gets nineteen wrong to one right experience. It ought to be the other way round.”

—F.M. Alexander

A young instrumentalist aiming for a professional life onstage puts in a staggering number of practice hours during their formative years. I heard the director of our Conservatoire recently state the figure of 8 to 10 hours a day for the 18-24 year olds at undergraduate and graduate levels. Does he think that’s what’s happening in the practice room or wish that it were so?

Either way, it’s alarming to think that so much time is spent sitting and using the fine muscles of the fingers in relentless repetitive motions. Were we, are we designed for this kind of activity? Maybe the better question to ask is: is it necessary?

F.M. Alexander discovered that most repetition is a complete waste of time (and harmful besides) unless it is founded upon what he called “the means-whereby.” Repetition is usually geared to obtaining an end result and that’s where so often the “hit or miss” approach comes in. We go after what we want without a full understanding of the necessary means to achieve it; we work parts without a grasp of the whole of ourselves in movement.

The “means-whereby”—the relationship of the head, neck, back, pelvis and feet, also referred to by Alexander as the Primary Control, affects the use of the arms, hands and fingers. By paying attention to the “means-whereby” we can be taken reliably to the end result on the printed page. True control is a result of another level and quality of thinking in activity, as he called it.

Missing or muffing a passage in performance that one has practised over and over again…it happens to most of us, but in his long and in-depth discussions about the “means-whereby,” which can be found in his marvellous book, “The Use of the Self,” F.M. is saying something revolutionary about learning. He is asking us to look at how we learn, at the very learning process itself. If we spend 10,000 hours practising our instrument, shouldn’t our delivery be reliable? 10 times out of 10?

My experience in the Alexander Technique has revealed that once the coordination is working properly, the fingers can deliver accuracy. It’s not a battle, it’s a conditioning of sorts, learning to place our attention differently. The means determine the ends, and the main difficulty, as Alexander used to say, is in the breaking of the habit of going for what we want directly. In the practice room we can continue marching to Rome according to a destination map to Berlin, or we can stop and ask: which way are we really headed?

The shift that never quite worked can be accurate time and again if the neck remains free and the spine lengthens instead of contracts as we initiate the movement. It is simple, and it works. But easy? Revolutions are not for the faint-hearted!

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.

www.welltemperedmusician.com
www.londoncellos.org

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