Wed May 09, 2018 4:05 pm
I have observed in my own playing that it is indeed the case that one knows if one is about to make a mistake. This can be refined into: when your playing is at a high level and you can actually play all the bits of a piece correctly, but not all at the same time, there is another mechanism at work.
My hypothesis is that at this level, the origin of mistakes is at the conscious, not the subconscious, level, because I have noticed that if I memorise a piece and play it on "autopilot", as it were, I can get through without mistakes, but as soon as I concentrate either on the printed notes, or try to visualise them if playing from memory, my conscious mind starts to remember different versions or, rather, mistakesI have learnt. It also undermines my confidence by reminding me to be careful at such and such a point.
I have sometimes reflected that there may be a connection here with the point that the German writer Herinrich von Kleist seemed to be making in his famous essay "On the Marionette Theatre" in which he says that grace of movement disappears when movement becomes self-conscious.
The answer answer may be, therefore, either play on "autopilot", or improve your level of focus and concentration to the point where the movement between subconscious and conscious awareness is prevented.
The first solution is useless, however, because then playing is just about behaving like a machine. Surely we need conscious focus to ensure a human "interpretation" of the music. The second requires a huge amount of self-control and self-discipline. At a high level of performance I wonder whether this ability (or skill, call it what you will) is what marks out the really outstanding performer. I believe we can all achieve it, but in the end we always come back to Bach's maxim that anyone can do what he did if they work as hard as he did.