The Gestalt Approach To Music

The Gestalt Approach to Music is an approach I have developed over the years which integrates my learning and training as a Gestalt Psychotherapist with my work as a concert pianist and a teacher.

What is The Gestalt Approach?

Gestalt focuses on awareness. Awareness is like a torch pointed in one direction. It is similar to concentration. As Gestaltists, we are concerned with concentrating our awareness on whatever is most important in our present experience in order to make full and vibrant contact. We do this by engaging all of our senses - our bodily sensations, hearing, touching, seeing, noticing, thinking processes and emotions.

How does this work for musicians?

As musicians we usually practice by focusing on our thinking processes and on our performances. In terms of interpretation, we try to understand and perform in the best and the most proper way. This intellectual way of seeing and examining things can be interesting and valuable at times. However, it also brings certain limitations to creativity and deeper empathy. Unless we let go of our intellectual and fixed knowledge of what is written, the living music that underlies the composition remains inaccessible. Only then can we start to make contact with what is actually there. The learned but unassimilated knowledge (introjections in Gestalt terms) is insidious in that it builds an invisible yet thick wall between the composer`s experience and our potential contact and empathy with it.

How does a Gestaltist approach Music And Life?

A gestaltist listens to the other by being with and staying with whatever emerges in the moment. In this process, it is essential to be able to slow down to meet the music with active curiosity and to value every aspect of this meeting equally. Here, the focus is not on shaping or manipulating the experience, but is on surrendering to whatever that experience might bring. It is facing the moment with an open heart and mind. Every energetic experience happens in the now. Much of the discovery takes place not through thinking or doing, but by simply being with and letting be what is. The is-ness of the moment, however ordinary it may sound, carries with it the richest and most complex ideas, which can then be expressed spontaneously. This has the power to unite the listener and the performer in full and nourishing contact through music.

How does full contact happen?

In therapy groups, or in casual social interactions, wherever talking about overwhelms embodied experience, contact inevitably diminishes - its energy weakens. On the other hand, whenever self-expression is rooted in authentic feeling something striking takes place. The experience is very real. It is born rather than conveyed. The feeling of the listener is one of witnessing something novel, rather than encountering the predictable. That moment is unique. The more we dare and practice being in the now, with awareness, the more our energy becomes free and flowing. This way of being lives at the heart of sincere music-making. The process out of which one`s own way of music making emerges can only start with a genuine intention to make real contact.