Many of the unforgettable experiences of my life have occurred while performing works of Robert Schuman. Their music is poetic, emotionally direct even in its strangest moments, and suggests deep vulnerability – a unique and potent combination. On a concert stage, where everything takes on greater intensity, it can be overwhelming.
Earlier this month, I played his piano concerto with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I walked off stage feeling upset, as I often do after performing Schumann’s music, as if I had seen his innermost self; In the process, I would have accessed my own. Moments later, in the dressing room, I heard the questions I’m used to hearingbut I still refuse to answer: Had Schumann already gone crazy when he wrote this work? Can I hear the madness in the music?
Schumann did suffer from a serious mental illness and was hospitalized in an institution during the last years of his life. And it cannot be denied that, as his condition worsened, the character of his music changed: it folded in on itself and became more and more static, still transmitting the essence of the composer; somehow, more distant from the listener. These questions always bother me. They reduce this beautiful, complicated, amazingly talented person to a pathology.
More dangerously, they indicate a persistent and pernicious stereotype: the tortured artist. Consider the popular perception of the furious Beethoven, the anguished Van Gogh, the volatile Caravaggio, the idiosyncratic Vladimir Horowitz, the guitar-smashing rock star.
It is a myth that has been useful for the promotion of artists —madness, like sex, sells—but deeply damaging to the artists themselves.
It is a myth that turns the artist into someone superhuman and at the same time less than fully human. He (the mythical artist is historically a he) does divine things; He doesn’t control his impulses. He knows how to tame lions or conjure infinity; You can’t be expected to know how to tie your shoes. He is completely at home in the art world and completely out of place in the real world.
It is paradoxical that this presumption of emotional instability does not facilitate usbut it makes it more difficult for us artists to be frank about our mental health. We fight against a preconceived idea that disembodies us and can reduce our job opportunities. Giving an air of indomitability is romantic; Revealing the sometimes profound effort that goes into making music and living life isn’t all that appealing. Maybe Schumann knew it: He often went back to his music after it had been released and removed many of the stranger (and sometimes more characteristic and beautiful) details. Perhaps he was too afraid of what they might reveal. I do know it.
The stigma of the psyche
In 2015, when I broke my arm and had to cancel several weeks of concerts, no one suggested that I not tell the truth about why. A few years later, when I suffered from acute anxiety and had to cancel appointmentsno one suggested me to reveal the reason. A physical handicap was an unfortunate fact of life, a psychological one was out of place.
It’s not a good situation. When you feel the need to hide a part of yourself from the world, you first try to hide it from yourself. to yourself. When that proves impossible, you try to make it go away. And when that invariably fails, because you can’t be someone different by sheer will, all you’re left with is shame. Shame about something that you could have handled perfectly if you had given yourself the opportunity and that, in any case, is not shameful.
The psychological toll of stigma around mental health is serious enough. No less regrettable is the artistic one. Despite the years that we classical musicians spend seeking a more sophisticated understanding, a more refined listening and a more flexible technique, in the end, all we have is openness and honesty. Or, to be more precise, without that openness and honesty, all the technique, listening and understanding the world is of little use.
It is said that the dancer Martha Graham spoke of the artist’s obligation to “keep the channel open,” to remain attentive to one’s instincts, even when we don’t understand them or don’t like them. There is no surer way to close that channel than to deny a part of ourselves.
Today, the winds could be changing. Just as athletes, politicians and actors have made their mental health problems public, so have musicians. On its own, this is an unequivocal good: it is good for the well-being of the musicians, good for the music and for the public who come to hear it. The shame dissipates, the channel reopens.
Unfortunately, this progress, like many others, has a double edge. If we are not careful, it may not be an advance at all, but rather a new variation on an old theme. Whereas artists were once pressured to appear invulnerable, impervious to the pressures of a professional career and the vagaries of life, today, social media has created an equal and opposite pressure: to be available.
open doors
The institutions that train and promote today’s young musicians tell them that they have to draw back the curtain. They are told that the public has the right not only to hear their most sincere art, but also to see everything behind it: the preparation, the blood, the sweat and, above all, the tears. They are asked to perform authenticity, which is different and sometimes directly opposed to an authentic performance: a new kind of mask replacing the old one and a new threat to the emotional well-being of the artist.
The enormous and peculiar power of music comes in part from its abstraction. Except for vocal music, it does not include words or images. It can’t tell us what time it is, if it’s going to rain, or if we need to buy toothpaste. But her inability to be prosaic is linked to her extraordinary capacity to be poetic.
As Schumann understood so well, music has a unique ability to communicate fragility that we all have in common. It is not necessary to pathologize it or value it, hide it or display it. It’s inevitable, whether you spend your life on stage, backstage, in the audience, or without going to a concert. Like music itself, this fragility is complicated, difficult and reminds us that we are human.
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