Review: Mackie: Just Play Naturally

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Alexander Technique Review 8.23.18

Reviews

Vivien Mackie* + Joe Armstrong*

“Just Play Naturally”
- In conversation with Joe Armstrong

164 + xiv pages, pb, 2002, illustrated, 228 x 152 mm, USA, Duende Editions. 0971700400. In print: Novis or e-mail: Vivien Mackie.

"An account of her cello study with Pablo Casals in the 1950s and her discovery of the resonance between his teaching and the principles of the Alexander Technique."

1. Review by Alexander Murray

2. Review by Andrea Matthews

1. Review by Alexander Murray

First published in AmSAT News, no. 58, Winter 2002.

Vivien Mackie’s personal journey as told to Joe Armstrong in Just Play Naturally is a sensitive account of the changes that come about when a talented, misguided young student is fortunate enough to discover inspiring personal teaching and example. Learning to discriminate what is truly natural from what is ephemerally fashionable and habitual is the rest of the story. Her lesson-by-lesson account of her relationship with Pablo Casals is unique, as far as I am aware, in the biographical writings on Casals. Accounts of lessons with Alexander are available from a variety of different sources, some well known. This is the first time two such important influences in the world of “natural” education have been brought together in the sympathetic environment of a conversation between friends. It is a valuable contribution to available writing on the Alexander work and music.

In her quest for the art of “playing naturally,” Mackie was guided by one remarkable teacher and the spirit of another. Alexander was born in 1869, seven years before Casals. He died in 1955 18 years earlier. His mature wisdom was expressed in the words, “Stop doing what is wrong. The right thing will do itself.”

Mackie’s initial encounter with Casals demonstrated his mature teaching to be based on the same fundamental truth. He takes his metaphors from nature and describes the action of the fingers on the cello “like a frog’s tongue.” His own technique developed naturally in spite of brief encounters with traditional teaching. His early development owed much to his discovery and prolonged study of the Bach Suites (discovered at age 15, first performed 13 years later). Alexander was similarly inspired by a love of Shakespeare. His wish to do justice to his magnificent poetry motivated him in a constant search to find a natural way to use the voice.

His discovery was “the use of the self,” the primary instrument in any activity.

Alexander once said: “The human organism is an instrument. It responds to the player.” Alexander’s legacy can no more be experienced from the written word than swimming can be learned from a book. Then what can be gained from reading Just Play Naturally? A retrospective of the learning process - or perhaps, more correctly the un-leaming process - personified. Mackie’s three years of study with Casals and then 15 years later her Alexander training, also of three years duration, followed by 30 years learning, teaching, and integrating these great formative experiences.

2. Review by Andrea Matthews

First published in ExChange, vol. 13 no. 2.

With its apt subtitle - An Account of Her Cello Study with Pablo Casals in the 1950’s and Her Discovery of the Resonance between His Teaching and the Principles of the Alexander Technique - this relatively slim volume tantalizes the reader with the meeting of two remarkable approaches to pedagogy in the person of Vivien Mackie. Having come to study with Casals in Prades, in the south of France, to put the finishing touches to her collegiate training (or so she thought!), her first encounter with Casals was a startling revelation:

“. . . I played him a page or so of the Schumann concerto . . . I started off, and I wasn’t giving a very good account of myself at all, and then Casals stopped me and said, ‘Just play naturally.’ I said, ‘I am,’ but he shook his head and tried to find another word. But he couldn’t, so he said, ‘I mean naturally.’ I thought, ‘My God, does he mean that at twenty-one I’ve lost the ability to play naturally?’ The thought was just too awful to contemplate, and I buried it, fast. So after I finished playing, he thanked me nicely, and then he said [very kindly, and perhaps even with a sorrowful shake of the head], ‘You do not know what you are doing.’”

The marvelous thing is that, despite the shock (“no one had ever said that to me before!”), she was in fact willing to go back to the very beginning, to a degree that, as she learned later, surprised even Casals. For in her shock, she recognized something that she had been hiding from during her teen and college years: “. . . I felt I’d got into a deep hole, and I wanted to get out of it. So when he said ‘You do not know what you’re doing,’ I felt I’d never heard more welcome words in my life. The relief was enormous. I knew we were going to get down to business. . .”

What was to be ten lessons over a year turned into three years of intensive study, eventually to be followed by lessons and then training as a teacher of the Alexander Technique. “That idea that I had lost ‘naturally’ stayed hidden until I had my first Alexander lesson when it popped up again. I thought, ‘Ha! - This is how we get back to ‘naturally!’ And now, on occasion, I feel ‘I’ve got there.’ It took Casals, and the Alexander Technique, and the passage of time, to get me back to it.”

That she showed up in such a “muddle,” and in need of such remedial work, turns out to have put Ms. Mackie in a position to be taught by Casals in a more fundamental way than he appears to have tried with more established, reasonably functional players, and thus to benefit more than anyone from his profound musical discipline and insight.

There are some interesting things going on “between the lines” one might like to know more about. For example, toward the end of her third and final year with Casals, she somehow slipped into what she called drawing on her capital, in terms of energy, to what seemed to be an alarming degree, while at the same time they had begun to go through repertoire very rapidly. Her own methodology in lessons seemed to change, too. Where she had initially had to observe closely and could only note down afterwards on paper what had happened in the lessons (which had had a profound effect of “stretching” her perceptions and awareness), she moved to making the notes during the lessons. One wonders if that had an effect on the quality of her attention and stamina, and if there was any connection to the fatigue she began to feel. Also when she came back to England, she notes, it was almost impossible to maintain the same approach to study and practice (i.e., not “practicing” the pieces per se).

While it is clear that she feels her playing has continued to improve and mature along the lines of the work with Casals, particularly because of learning and teaching the Technique, it seems a tremendous challenge to work and teach consistently along those lines, because, quite frankly, the approach is so “out there” and on some fundamental level it seems to pose such a risk. This is not a criticism in the least - it is in fact a challenge that we’re all facing: When do we cut a corner here or there to accommodate a student, an academic structure, a rehearsal schedule, or an incompatible worldview? But then, when the opportunity arises, do we choose to take a chance and stick absolutely to principle and see what happens? She and Mr. Armstrong describe just such an episode, in a cello lesson he had with her. It would be fascinating to hear more examples of how Ms. Mackie finds herself resolving that conflict. Importantly, though, one understands from her that one’s life conditions do change; that sometimes truly meeting the conditions present is not being so doctrinaire or punctilious about what we as teachers or students can adhere to in our application of principle, but when we occasionally are completely present, really miraculous and profound things do happen.

I found very little to quibble with in the book - more illustrations might have been nice, and as always, I’m big on indexes, which this book lacks. As someone who preceded her by a year in training, and has evidently known her for a long time, Mr. Armstrong seems to feel he is as much a partner as an interviewer, and perhaps that is as it should be. He occasionally inserts his own views a little more strongly into the conversation than I would like, however. For example, in the section where they give some background on the Technique for the reader, he insistently brings up “hands-on” as a key part of the work, whereas Ms. Mackie doesn’t. I would have preferred to find out whether she felt it was necessary, and if so, how she would have discussed it. She agrees with him, but it doesn’t seem uppermost in her mind. She seems to be looking beyond purely Alexandrian procedures to a personal experience of being fully present, much as one looks beyond the finger pointing at the moon to the moon itself, not mistaking the former for the latter. Perhaps this stems from her experiencing this presentness not only through the Alexander Technique, but through Casals’ insistence on presentness, vitality, and direction in each moment of each note she played. It gives her observations a satisfying universality, that goes beyond Alexander buzzwords, and beyond the bounds of music alone. By and large, however, he does an excellent job of eliciting Ms. Mackie’s fascinating story, and of providing additional context for it; and indeed, she credits him with prompting her to reflect on her experiences in greater detail and in new ways.

Anecdotes that particularly caught my fancy as a student and teacher of the Technique included: Casals’ resistance as a child to technical and physical ideas he felt didn’t make sense (“as soon as I got home I created a technique of my own,” he later said in Corredor’s book, Conversations with Casals, Dutton, 1936). His seemingly unorthodox approach to technical matters (“keeping to my ‘natural’ line of approach and observation of life and nature, which can always teach us anything, if we are prepared to observe with patience and humility”). How he was able to work so slowly and methodically with Mackie (clearly a special meeting of minds and wills, as she doesn’t know of anyone else who experienced their lessons with him in quite the same way). Of course, Ms. Mackie’s experience of the many ways in which Casals’ teaching and Alexander’s complemented each other. It’s even interesting how Armstrong’s and Mackie’s recollections of their shared experiences differ. There are so many quotable gems in this book - but I don’t want to spoil the fun of discovering them for yourself. As with all the really good books on the Technique, it bears repeated reading. (Not to mention a trip to the library or store for some recordings of Casals’ playing!) I can’t recommend the book more highly for any musician, or those who teach musicians (be they teachers of voice, instrument, or Alexander Technique), and for the interested layperson.