The Art of Sensuality and it's Impact on Great String Playing
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If I were to ask you to verbally define the word “sensuality” what would your response be? This is a question I have asked many students, colleagues and friends over the years. Interestingly almost 80% of the responses have been sexual in nature. Although sensuality can and often does work in tandem with sexual thoughts and actions it truly is an art of it’s own. I have found that typical academic definitions of the word “sensuality” go something like this: “SENSUALITY – Having to do with the function and physiology of all of the human senses and their connection to the emotional system of a human individual.” For the purpose of our initial exploration into this subject I have elected to completely isolate sexuality from sensuality. Eventually (in Chapter VI) we will indeed make the connection and show the dynamic impact created by the joining or merger of the two. I am quite sure that at some time in your life you have learned that the typical human being generally uses but a very small percentage of his/her brain’s potential. One vivid example of this theory is the relatively small amount of thought we afford our very own human senses! Think about it for a moment. How many times during a day do YOU put a great deal of thought into every single thing you see, hear, smell, taste and touch as you travel through life? I would wager to say…very few! On the other hand it is really amazing how numb we become to our senses and how we take them for granted until we are actually faced with losing one of them. In reality we truly do tend to go through life as though we are looking at an older style television screen filled with fuzzy images enhanced with vague and diluted colors. Just imagine if every minute of your life appeared as it would on a bright, new, glossy flat screen HD TV! How awesome would that be?? VERY! Unrealistic you say!! Well…it doesn’t have to be. With proper awareness and a sincere effort to sensitize your senses….you too could make YOUR daily life truly come alive! Hopefully the following few examples will help to support my belief in this concept: 1) If every time you headed from point A to point B you made a conscientious effort to widen your fully functioning visual range from 45 degrees to the right of point B to 45 degrees to the left of point B, your potential for data input would increase tremendously. Now take this widened field of vision and make an effort to take in as many details from within this entire visual range as possible while still maintaining a focus on your target of point B. Such details may perhaps include such things as: a) number and types of trees b) unusual tree and branch formation c) leaf colors and shapes d) wildlife (ie. Deer, horses, squirrels, birds chipmunks, etc) e) sky, clouds and general weather conditions (ie snow, rain, wind, etc) f) human activity 2) Another excellent exercise focuses on hearing and listening: a) Whenever you can take a few minutes, try to stop whatever you are in the middle of doing and focus ONLY on everything you can hear at a given moment. Generally there will be more than one sound within your hearing range at a time so try to isolate each one and listen closely enough that you are able to identify it’s purpose as clearly and as definitively as possible. 3) Lastly, when she was twelve years old, my granddaughter, Allie, had become extremely interested in cooking. One evening she and a friend invited Grandma and Grandpa to an elegant dinner they had collectively prepared. Much to our surprise, the catch of the day turned out NOT to be fish…but rather the requirement of eating our dinner while remaining totally blindfolded. The purpose was to force us to use our sense of smell, taste and texture to identify each course they presented. This, by–the-way, is a technique employed by many excellent cooking schools in an effort to help serious cooks develop their own sense of taste, texture and smell. It is a great way to focus attention on these senses and I strongly recommend it. Can be great fun and really rewarding on many levels!! After experimenting with these examples a couple of times I feel confident you will begin to see, hear, taste and smell life in a totally NEW way! Now contemplate creating similar sensitizing exercises for ALL of your senses and then just imagine the vast possibilities that could result from such a collective increase in sensual function! WOW….. What amazing potential lies within your own being!! Furthermore….what about the amazing potential that exists within our students?? Fantasize for a moment, if you will, about the significant impact this process could have upon the detail, creativity, self-involvement and emotionalism of the entire storyline process we discussed previously. Trust me, the cultivating of this power within our students will greatly facilitate their creation of stories and characters that truly come ALIVE! I know it! I guarantee it! I have spent years helping students to maximize their potential through the incorporation of this concept.
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About the Book
One of the major frustrations of my professional musical life has been the continual reminder of how few talented young string players, even those with exceptional instrumental skill, seem to truly understand the importance of reflecting their very own personal emotional experiences within the fabric of their musical interpretations and performances. Consequently I have devoted a great deal of my teaching efforts to helping these potential artists better understand the critical importance of this element and to develop the skills necessary to facilitate the natural merging of their inner-most emotions with their instrumental facility. My original purpose for authoring this book was to create a lasting way in which to share my resulting theories and methodologies with regards to this ever so critical ingredient to the process of successful musical communication. Interestingly, after a reasonable amount of academic research, it quickly became apparent to me that in spite of the existence of numerous available publications dealing with the need for musicians to play their instruments in an expressive manner… and a myriad of additional books and articles attempting to describe and analyze the elements of “sensuality” …no one had previously made any detailed connection or addressed, in writing, the impact of “sensuality” on music performance from either a technical or musical perspective. Now that this project is complete I must agree with the opinion of a number of my trusted colleagues and friends: “many theories, concepts and methods described in this book could indeed provide benefits to a far broader audience than those exclusively focused on string playing.”I am hopeful that performers from all of the arts as well as any interested and receptive individuals from all walks of life may find the thoughts I have expressed in this publication helpful in achieving the lives of their dreams.
About the Author
Author, Alan de Veritch, has managed to maintain an enviable position within the World of Classical Music for almost half a century. Initially receiving international acclaim as a performer while still in his teens his reputation as a world–renowned pedagogue and recording artist was soon to evolve shortly thereafter. What really set the young Mr. de Veritch apart from many of his colleagues was a rare innate ability to communicate expressively and dramatically with his audiences through his music while producing an exceptionally brilliant but sensual sound that often projected so much like a human voice audiences believed they could hear actual words coming from his instrument. Many of Professor de Veritch’s students have either held or currently hold some of the most prestigious positions within the musical world and attribute their successes in large part to his creative and unique teaching methods. This most unusual book wonderfully details the background, motivation, development and execution of one such insightful method. This specific methodology revolves around what Professor de Veritch considers to be “the true purpose of music” and focuses on helping students to cultivate two of the major attributes that set the professor apart as a performer. The first, the professor’s ability to openly express his deepest and most intimate emotions through his music-making followed by an in depth study of the elements necessary to potentially produce one of the most sensual, colorful and communicative sounds to originate from a viola. “The Art of Sensuality and it’s Impact on Great String Playing” provides an amazing opportunity for those other than students, colleagues or friends of Alan de Veritch to have access, in detail, for the very first time, to many of the musical and pedagogical beliefs and ideals of this outstanding, world-class artist and teacher.