Many, if not all of the music performers have experienced states of psychic excitement before and at the time of playing in public. Music theorists and psychologists explored the field of music performance anxiety or so-called stage fright in numerous researches. They comment on reasons for stage anxiety and excitation of musicians which may derive from various sources of psychological premises. Some reasons have to do with environmental conditions of a hall, significance of public judgment, current life circumstances of musicians, childhood traumas, social phobias, and also the level of performer’s preparation. Nevertheless to any of listed pathogens, both level and outcome of psychic excitement connected with public playing may vary depending on the personality of the performer. Some musicians report light excitation which helps them to build successful performance under any circumstances. Others require the help of professional therapists to overcome severe forms of stage anxiety. Psychologists and therapists who study these matters don’t have unified opinion on better ways to cope with music performance anxiety. Some of the main techniques for overcoming destructive forms of stage fright in modern scholarship include physical exercises and meditative practices. Pauline Oliveros’s method of Deep Listening takes the task of coping with music performance anxiety to a whole new level by combining the most innovative in all levels of matter.
What exactly is anxiety and how does it apply to music performance? Generality model of stress, described in 1920th by Walter Cannon, labels “adrenalin rush” or “fight-or-flight” response. Fight-or-flight is an automatic bodily mechanism which nature intruded to the canvas of both animals and humans psychological reactions, called to alarm and mobilize one for conflict in cases of danger. These reactions are meant to get the body ready for escape or combat. Fight-or-flight forces a chain of chemical reactions, primarily caused by the release of adrenalin into the sympathetic nervous system (Behavioral Psychology, “Stress: Fight-or-Flight Response”, Psychologist World: Psychology that Makes Sense, 2015. Web edition). The body increases available concentrations of glucose, the energy source, to a ready organism for physical activity. While physiological systems that are responsible for dealing with stress are mobilized, those of no need are suppressed (Margaret E. Kemeny, The Psychobiology of Stress. American Psychological Society, San Francisco: Blackwell Publishing Inc., 2003). Immediate physical responses to mobilization include increased heart palpitations, accelerated breathing, sweat, slowing of gastroenterological processes, etc. At the same time the blood vessels in peripheral parts of the body are constricted, which leads to the loss of control over soft tissue in such organs as, for example, glands and fingers (Diana T. Kenny, the Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, p. 21). Therefore, individuals under stress frequently report trembling, hands shaking, loss of voice and dry mouth. The intensity of fight-or-flight response directly weighs with any activity which involves the use of hands or voice, and at the same time stimulates hyperactive states of major muscles which become tense.
In addition to straightforward physical reactions to stress, fight-or-flight response makes the individual very alert and attentive to everything that happens in the environment. “Anxiety is a powerful motivator for overcoming lethargy and replacing it with intense alertness” (Paul G. Salmon, Robert G. Meyer, Notes from the Green Room: Coping with Stress and Anxiety in Musical Performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998, p.130). Mobilization of the autonomic nervous system leads to the release of immune cells into the brain, altering mood and cognition (Kemeny, p.1), and provoking the loss of peripheral vision and auditory exclusions. Vision narrows. An individual under fight-or-flight may experience “tunnel vision”. Hearing becomes much more sensitive than it is under normal conditions. Some people may experience out of body state of consciousness.
While in Stone Age fight-or-flight response helped humans to deal with real physical threats to survival, in modern days this reaction often becomes a response to a psychological pressure in the social environment. Here the anxiety, which is a completely emotional reaction for the imaginary stressful situation, substitutes for the fear of physical danger. Unlike fear of some particular physical threat, anxiety gives no obvious stimulus for the body to call for the fight-or-flight response. Consequently, nature has developed yet another type of bodily response to stressful situations which eventuate the anticipation of the stressful situation. Entirely based on emotional perceptions, this type of physical activation is called specificity model of stress (Kemeny, p.7). The specificity model of stress has similar to fight-or-flight impact on one’s body but mobilizes slightly different biological system than “adrenaline rush” – hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. This type of activation releases hormone cortisol into the circulatory system (Kenny, p.26). With all similar symptoms to fight-or-flight, the latter process acts slower than the activation of the autonomic nervous system. Instead of seconds, it requires 20 to 40 minutes to reach the peak of bodily response to the stressor. Cortisol-launched type of response happens prior to the stressful event, while fight-or-flight occurs contemporaneously with the individual facing the threat. Anxiety may be launched by any of these chemical processes, if not by both of them simultaneously.
It must be said that chronic and repeated activations of systems that deal with stress are believed to have the long-term impact of physical (inflammations) and mental (depressions, clinical anxiety) health of an individual. Over time, anxious people develop an automatic response to potentially stressful situations. Clinical anxiety is a state of mental health in which individual experiences feelings of excessive worry and anxiety about specific causes for at least six months in duration (Ibid., p. 36).
Clinical anxiety is so wide-spread in the modern society, that it ranks first in six-month and second in lifetime prevalence (Salmon and Meyer, p. 122). Approximately 43 million of adults or 18,1% of US population have been troubled with anxiety in 2015 (National Alliance on Mental Health, Mental Health by The Numbers, 2015. Web edition). It is argued that clinical anxiety is not a disorder, but a fact of life. Depression, worry, and panic, as well as various phobias, panic attacks and extreme cases of performance anxiety, may derive from multiple axes, classified by American Psychiatric Association (APA) in five main categories (Kenny, p. 34):
Axis I: Clinical disorders (clinical depression and severe anxiety disorders);
Axis II: Underlying personality disorders (avoidant, dependent, obsessive-compulsive personality disorders, mental retardation);
Axis III: Acute medical conditions (brain injuries, physical disorders)
Axis IV: Psychological and environmental factors contributing to the disorder;
Axis V: Children’s Global Assessment Scale for individuals under age of 18.
The nature of music performance anxiety has roots that are difficult to identify. It is not clear if musicians’ performance anxiety should be classified as the mental disorder since nearly every and each performer experiences some forms of stress associated with playing on stage. Prior to 1994, performance anxiety was not included in classificatory systems of psychological or psychiatric disorders but was perceived as specific social phobia (Ibid., p. 47). Now APA attributes forms of anxiety that occur in test takings, math performance, public speaking, sports, performing arts in dance, acting, and music to disorder DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), 4th edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Kenny categorizes music performance anxiety as altogether dimensional conduct, occupational stress, focal, social and panic anxiety disorders (Kenny, pp. 50-66). Yet it makes sense to believe that only severe destructive forms of performance anxiety should be treated as clinical anxiety disorders. Mellow stage fright should be distinguished by the underlying reasoning and treated dependently. For this, performing musicians should have a better understanding of the nature and severity of music performance anxiety.
First of all, mild forms of music performance anxiety are the necessary attribute to any public performance. Music is an art which is more than others connected with emotional arousal. If emotional activation doesn’t happen, performers might find their execution distant, lifeless and frozen. On the other hand, if activation occurs overwhelmingly, the efficiency of performance is wrecked. Some of the performers are unable to play at all or forget the text due to extreme levels of the fight-or-flight response. The ideal level of activation lays in between the two extremities when performing musician turns to be aurally over-alert, but keeps in control over the body (Salmon and Meyer, p.131).
However, many people, including musicians, find the state of aural over alertness unusual and somehow troublesome. In the modern world, humans use to exclude many sounds from their consciousness, such as sounds of road traffic, etc. Urban lifestyle, entirely built on human’s constant application of auditory exclusions, contributes to narrower focus and selective apprehension of aural environment. The natural apprehensive skill of listening turns into the habit of hearing. People ignore lots of sound information, in fact, any sound which they don’t find of value or concern. We don’t receive training of alert listening, although the technique of alert listening is naturally inherent in all mammals as the prime apparatus to permit survival. The experience of alert listening itself becomes stressful when every sound is accepted by conscious awareness under fight-or-flight response.
In the life of performing musicians, shock from experiencing aural activation onstage is the first aspect of the construction of music performance anxiety. The very act of an actual listening to themselves playing onstage often surprises performing musicians and sets them off guard. If trained to “listen” to their execution, musicians are able to easily keep on track while public playing. However, many music majors don’t realize the difference between “hearing” and “listening”. Therefore, much of the practice time musicians tend to “hear” themselves playing, rather than “listen” to phrasing, intonations and environmental acoustics. But, when onstage and under bodily response to the stressful situation, ears automatically start to “listen”. Pauline Oliveros clearly states the difference between “hearing” and “listening”:
“I differentiate “to hear” and “to listen”. To hear is the physical means that enables perception. To listen is to give attention to what is perceived both acoustically and psychologically… Sound pressure patterns assist hearing but cultural history and experiences influences listening ” (Pauline Oliveros, Deep Listening: a Composer’s Sound Practice. New York: Deep Listening Publications, 2005, pp. xxii-xxiii). “Hearing represents the primary sensory perception – hearing happens involuntarily. Listening, on the other hand, is a voluntary process that produces culture through training and experience. All cultures develop through modes of listening” (Pauline Oliveros, Sounding the Margins: Collected Writings 1992-200. Kingston, NY: Deep Listening Publications, 2010, p.73).
Pauline Oliveros, a major American composer, writer, and philosopher, isn’t content with simply acknowledging the difference between the physical process of hearing and conscious mental work required for the process of listening. “My interests turned to the field of consciousness and the study of attention. Listening involves the direction of attention” (Ibid., p. 29). Oliveros developed an entire concept of Deep Listening and Quantum Listening, based on the implementation of awareness into the daily life of music performers and composers. “Deep Listening is a practice that is intended to heighten and expand the consciousness of sound in as many dimensions of awareness and attentional dynamics as humanly possible” (Oliveros, Deep Listening, p. xxiii). The practice of Deep Listening trains humans’ receptivity for any activity connected with art performance by increasing global attention and awareness. Deep Listening method includes breathing exercises, energy work, bodywork, vocalizing, dreamwork and listening (Ibid., p. 1). The most well-known collection of Deep Listening exercises is “Sonic Meditations”. Here meditation is defined by Oliveros as a “steady attention and steady awareness for continuous or cyclic periods of time” (Pauline Oliveros. Software for People: Collected Writings 1963-80. Baltimore: Smith Publication, p. 138). “Sound, both inner and outer, real and imaginary, is the stimulus for Sonic Meditations” (Oliveros, Software for People, p. 141). Oliveros clearly states that sounds carry intelligence which may simultaneously happen in imagination, be perceived with attention or be excluded from conscious comprehension as garbage. The practice of Deep Listening includes all sounds of the environment and imagination without any exclusions. “Deep listening is listening in every possible way to every thing possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds” (Oliveros, Deep Listening, p.18-19). As, for example, in Sonic Meditation V: “Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottom of your feet become ears” (Pauline Oliveros, Sonic Meditations. Baltimore: Smith Publications, 1974), a performer is supposed to globalize their attention in a way that the skin all over the body and around it starts to perceive all sounds of the environment. “The skin listens too. In fact, the whole body listens in this heightened state of awareness” (Oliveros, Sounding the Margins, p. 88).
It is a good question, how many musicians are willing to hear the sound of their execution with the very skin and bottom of their feet when heading to play on stage to play for auditions? Very often, the stress is causing musicians to forget about the quality of their sound before entering the stage. If musician’s hands are trembling, the heart is pounding and throat is dry, it is a complicated task to actually move on stage and perform learned the program. Therefore, many musicians on stage count on an automatized routine of playing their instruments, rather than concentrate on value and beauty of sound art which they create. And here is the point of no return, where all the bodily responses to stressful situation come to power and person succumb to severe states of fight-or-flight. Instead of enjoying the occasion and creating the art of music, musicians may find their entire performance ruined by nerves. Even experienced performers pass through stage fright and a certain level of anxiety. The difference between success and failure of music performance in public frequently lays in the amount of care for the quality of sound and readiness to allow all sounds to draw the first breath on stage, contraposed to focus on substantially overcoming physiological activation of stress.
Musicians who experience strong performance anxiety can be cured by practicing Deep Listening exercises. Practicing global listening in practice room will benefit any performer when their perception of reality widens under hormonal arousal onstage. But there are additional grounds for strong fight-or-flight responses in musicians’ careers. Precisely the technique of Deep Listening, a lifework of Oliveros, organically explains all the aspects of music performance anxiety and proposes the natural and fluent way to cope with any of its unwanted consequences. For a better understanding of these grounds, we should underline the schemes which compile the matter. Generally, music performance anxiety in suggested to consist of four initial components (Andrew Steptoe, “Negative Emotions in Music Making: the Problem of Performance Anxiety”, Series in Affective Science, New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 292):
Affect/feeling – worry, anxiety, tension, dread, panic;
Cognitions – loss of concentration, memory failure, misreading the score;
Behaviors – failures of technique, loss of posture, tremors, trembling;
Physiological hormonal reactions – disturbances in breathing, salivation, heart rate.
Although these factors tend to develop synchronously, the above sequence best mirrors their cause-effect progress. First, of the main principles of music performance anxiety is the affect, which arises from the perception of danger. Stage fright and anxiety are self-perpetuating, easily spiraling out of control when individual generates catastrophic expectations about the future failure. Therefore, affect and emotional suspense builds on cognitive dysfunctions, which provoke behavioral component of performance anxiety. At the end, when the performer is anxious about future failure and realizes their dread is coming true in real life, hormones of stress finish this cycle up with a chain of heavy physiological activations (Salmon and Meyer, pp.131-133).
This is how it looks in reality: “I’m worried to make a mistake before going onstage. I’m so fixed on the possibility of making a mistake that my memory fails me in an unexpected place. I realize that the performance is already ruined; my hands start to shake, my fingers tremble, and I miss another passage. The realization of my fear is so real that I experience blackout: I don’t feel my body anymore, I can’t breathe, and I don’t remember my text at all. I wish I was never born. I may pass out right in the middle of playing onstage”. All these are more or less familiar to anyone who experienced public playing. Musicians often forget that a little worry about what might happen may launch the hardest of fight-or-flight responses during playing on stage.
Fear is irrational. Musicians’ fear of performing is “profoundly related to fear of foolishness, which has two parts: fear of being thought a fool (loss of reputation) and fear of actually being a fool (fear of unusual states of mind)… Let’s add fear of ghosts” (Stephen Nachmanovich, Free Play, Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1990, p. 135). Suggested interpretation of the “fear of ghosts” is the fear of authorities, which might be no longer present in performer’s life but still have influence on them – parents and teachers who “use their children to gratify their own narcissistic need or to humiliate them for failure to conform to parental desires, rather than understanding, accepting, and nurturing their children as separate individuals” (Kenny, p.78). Musicians are usually raised in the atmosphere of restrictions and occupational demands of “following the rules” which lead to amplification of multiple types of music performance anxiety disorders. Fear of negative evaluation by others, which often takes place during auditions as well as public playing; fear of “being a fool” that has to do with self-esteem, narcissism, and shame. In addition, “fear of ghosts” may have the connection with the legacy of music left by great masters in the past. This is the type of fear which every perfectionist experiences. Many musicians idolize great masters and never feel enough self-worth to add to what is already been done (Kenny Werner, Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within. New Albany, 1996, p. 52).
Fear of negative evaluation by others and loss of reputation in its turn is a straightforward component of social anxiety disorder. However, if common people with social phobias regularly apply escape and avoidant behaviors in stressful settings, musicians have to remain in the threatening performance situations and to deal with severe forms of fight-or-flight response (Kenny, p. 63). Musicians should realize that the fear of negative evaluation is connected with the lack of self-trust and inability to play by ear. Letting go onstage happens only if the musician is spontaneous and improvisatory in real life situations. “Musicians who complain of being unable to “loosen up” onstage discover upon reflection that they feel equally constrained in their daily lives” (Salmon and Meyer, p. 101).
Oliveros is the first academic musician who points the necessity of gaining basics of improvisation and spontaneity both with musical instruments and generally in life for performing musicians: “the improvising musician has to let go of each moment and also simultaneously understand the implications of any moment of the music in progress as it emerges into being” (Oliveros, Sounding the Margins, p. 48). She adds: “the denial of the validity of improvisation has a racist tinge and origin” (Ibid.). Isn’t the social constriction of improvisatory arts, which took place in 20c, – yet another collective manifestation of fear?
Feeling of little self-worth is common for musicians of all ages. Ideas like “I should play better” align with general self-evaluation. Musicians tend to perceive their personal worth dependently on the way they sound. Moreover, they expect themselves to perform well under any circumstances, and the very fact of such expectation brings fear to fail onstage and anxiety. Worrying about the catastrophe in the future most likely is connected to neither past experiences nor to present level of preparedness. Each performance becomes “the acid test of apparent worth” (Werner, p. 30), and so does the very fact of practicing. Musicians frequently discard the idea that no matter how well a piece of music is learned, its readiness for a public performance is not a presumption (Salmon and Meyer, p. 97). Physical and emotional state under which music composition is learned in practice room is very different from the states of over alertness and hormonal arousals when public playing takes place. Instead of planning ahead to be able to tolerate the major stress of public performance by appearing in a systematic progression of smaller events, some of performing musicians count on their skill to adjust to the situation as it occurs. Some people are better in instantaneous adjustment, some are not, especially if they are classically trained musicians. Remarkably, some performers are ready to condemn themselves unworthy rather than face their strengths and weaknesses and rationalize the performance in advance. When in practice room, these musicians often avoid fixing problematic issues, which hit them hard under fight-or-flight response onstage. Performers assess their self-worth with every note and with “each stroke on canvas” (Werner, p. 51). In this way, exaggerated worry about self-esteem often determines the very quality of individual’s playing and their readiness to practice. Fear to look inadequate, “be a fool”, pushes performers to avoid reasonable practicing and, when onstage, forget the ideas that should come naturally during playing in public.
In fact, all fears of “foolishness” and “ghosts” which performing musicians experience, have one common root: obsessive need to sound good (Ibid., p. 37). “If you are speaking, singing, performing with the instrument or otherwise sounding, then you are sending. Are you receiving what you send?” (Oliveros, Deep Listening, p. 13).
The “receiving” is the appreciation of the ability to sound good. Sounding good lets individual to reconnect and appreciate the creation itself; every musician understands it subconsciously. Sound, which constructs any language of humans and animals, is the foundation of communication. “The original purpose of music was worship, divine intelligence, and basic communication. Music intoxicated the human soul. [Vibration of] music is our bond between the material and the eternal… Sound, when seen in this way, is no less than a gift from God” (Werner, pp. 32-33). Religious practices are rooted in musical chants and rhythm. The most important skill which all shamans, priests, and monks are expected to possess is the skill to sing and/or play drums or other musical instruments. Chants and rhythms allow people to experience religious trance – altered state of consciousness (Mickey Hart, Planet Drum, a Celebration of Percussion and Rhythm. New York: Harper Collins, 1991). Therefore, sounding good is humans’ natural way to explore own spiritual capabilities. The desire to sound good predominates in all musicians. And the fear to sound bad straight contributes to most impotent performances. Fear to play poorly, make mistake and give a bad impression by sounding bad, very often takes away the strength from the execution of music.
Paradoxically, only when musicians are ready to give up on the way they sound – even if it ruins the performance, their fear of failure onstage is gone. “The easiest way to do art is to dispense with success and failure altogether and just get on with it” (Nachmanovich, p. 135). Bad sounds are still sounds and consequently should be allowed to be. In the concept of Deep Listening, every sound is sacred. “Deep has to do with complexity and boundaries, or edges beyond ordinary or habitual understandings” (Oliveros, Deep Listening, p. xxiii). When musicians expand the boundaries of their “Listening” into the field of “Deep”, they stop expecting. When not expecting themselves to play like gods, musicians learn to perceive themselves as humans – and forgive themselves imperfections. If to name every sound, even ugly one, “the most beautiful sound I ever heard”, the door to allowing the incorrect will be open. Observing any sound as it is with no judgment leads to creation and spontaneity. Only at this point of allowance, fears of music performance dissolve. “Without fear of wrong notes, the body is craving for more air, and a new posture would emerge spontaneously” (Werner, p. 40). “Without “fear of ghosts”, you might make music of real depth. Without fear of sounding bad, you are free to be real” (Werner, p. 56).
Any fear originates in the “little mind”, rather than in “universal mind”, “over mind” or “collective unconscious” (Ibid., p. 52). The “little mind” is something that people usually call “ego”, limited and separatory “I” consciousness. “Separateness invites comparison and competition… We think we need so much. Desires multiply, and we know nothing of real inner happiness. Fear sabotages us at every turn” (Ibid., p. 53). While the attribute of consciousness of this “little mind” is focal attention, Oliveros explains “universal mind” as a product of global awareness. She constructs the concept of global awareness that should widely complement focal attention: “Attention is narrow, pointed and selective. Awareness is broad, diffuse and inclusive. Both have a tunable range: attention can be honed to a finer and finer point” (Oliveros, Software for People, p. 139). She assumes that focal attention is produced by mental activity, aroused by interest or desire. “The proper relations between attention and awareness can be symbolized by a circle with a dot in a center. The dot represents attention, and the circle, awareness. In these respective positions, each is centered in relation to the other. Awareness can expand, without losing the center of its balanced relations with attention and simultaneously become more inclusive” (Ibid., p. 141). But awareness “equates with body’s sensory receptivity. It is activated, or present, during pleasure and pain” (Ibid., p. 139). Awareness is present when the individual is in pain or feeling distressed; evoking awareness means to surrender of ego for the larger scale of mental receptivity.
In the context of performing arts, it is easy to lose focused attention onstage under hormonal arousal, distracting environmental factors, multiple reasons to worry and fear the possibility of future failure. Conscious presence of awareness may eliminate overwhelming fear and build on the success of public playing. Global awareness doesn’t just happen to performing musicians as it doesn’t just happen to anyone unless repeatedly practiced through various meditative exercises. “Meditation both religious and secular is attention engaged in particular ways. There are emptying, expansion and contraction of the mind; there is ‘letting go’ and focus (attention to a point). Meditation implies discipline and control. There is something to practice!” (Oliveros, Deep Listening, p. xxiv).
Oliveros explains that both religious and secular meditations are helpful. But there is a reason to suggest that musicians need to spend more time with secular meditative exercises which are focused on the development of listening, rather than implying yogic and general religious practices. Most of the religious and yogic meditations were developed centuries and millennii ago when the societies were different, processes of hearing and listening happened differently than now, when musical instruments were different and so were both occupational goals and expectations for performing musicians. But secular meditations are modern. They are susceptible to the needs of people today, especially professionals who need to cope with the plentitude of social anxieties and phobias. For performing musicians, systematic application of Sonic Meditations and Deep Listening exercises may be the thing, since Deep Listening was created by contemporary composer and performing musician, who is highly proficient in opening the sound field. “These exercises are intended to calm the mind and bring awareness to the body and its energy circulation and to promote the appropriate attitude for extending receptivity to the entire space/time continuum of sound. This kind of receptivity is essential for creative in the arts” (Ibid., p. 1).
Without receptivity, spontaneity, global awareness and experience in meditation, the very career of performing musicians may turn into a nightmare. The occupation in music performance is overwhelmingly stressful. Anxiety awaits performer everywhere, both in practice room, at home and onstage. Vulnerable to stress musicians suffer from extreme levels of fight-or-flight response in every public playing event. Some music performers require the help of psychologists and psychiatrists to overcome stress and social anxiety disorders in their career. Even though some of the professional musicians have a subconscious comprehension of how to succeed in public playing, it is not enough to rely on intuition: too many people are taught to deny themselves in it. There is an utmost need to provide performers with a proper education in coping with music performance anxiety. Every music student should understand the difference between ‘hearing’ and ‘listening’, ‘attention’ and ‘awareness’, – as explained by Pauline Oliveros. Only the light of comprehension and consciousness will help musicians fight the demons of music performance anxiety and bring out the very purpose of music making.
Stasie Fomalgaut
for Mills College, Oakland, CA
December 2015
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