An interview with Dr. Adina Mornell
This week’s blog post features an interview with Dr. Adina Mornell. Adina attended Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music in Ohio (USA), studied musicology at the Technical University of Berlin (Germany) and got her doctorate in music psychology and instrumental music education through a joint-degree program of the University of Vienna and the University of Music and Performing Arts (Austria).
Parallel to her career as a concert artist, she taught piano while running the keyboard department at a music school in Berlin before becoming professor at the music university in Graz, later accepting a tenured position at the University of Music and Theatre Munich as Chair of Instrumental and Vocal Music Education. Her solo piano CD’s were released internationally and she is author of many publications that reflect both her empirical research and her teaching philosophy and methods.
Please tell us about your background and how you came to be a pianist?
If someone tells you that they were born with music in their ears and began to play the piano as soon as they could reach the keys, you would probably think that this is the plot of a corny Hollywood movie. I should know, because I was born there, literally, in a Los Angeles hospital in that part of town. And yet, that’s the true beginning of my story. My mother practised the piano and I “played along” next to her until I began Kindergarten. That’s when I started lessons with a neighbourhood teacher.
The rest of my music education can only be described as a wild and windy path upon which I encountered multiple piano instructors with various levels of eccentricity and competence. From early on, I found their motives and methods questionable. I guess, I became a teacher who tried to transcend my role models first, and a concert artist second. On stage, I went my own way, with theme-centered programmes which I moderated using my own stories.
What lead you to pursue the field of performance psychology?
By the time I finished my Masters thesis – a literature review of the performance anxiety research to date – it had become clear to me, that everything that goes wrong on stage was being labelled “stage fright”. It was truly disappointing that in the over 500 sources I had viewed, almost no one had ever asked the question: Could a great performance have been expected given the strategies this musician used to prepare for this concert?
I noticed, too, that most studies had been conducted by psychologists who saw musicians as “convenience samples” – easy to conscript for their research, because we’re almost all willing to admit to some level of stage fright. Yet, these psychologists were primarily non-musicians – they had little idea of what it took to perform in public. Conversely, there were books out there from musicians with no background in psychology. They were giving advice while passing on a whole slew of rituals, usually based upon superstition and rarely grounded in fact.
The dearth of serious research actually applicable to musicians helped inspire me to take my knowledge as an artist, my curiosity as a scientist and my academic-yet-creative approach to writing and combine these three in my future teachings, studies and publications.
What sparked your interest in aviation psychology?
Although life is usually messy and there are seldom straight lines in one’s autobiography, the answer to this question picks up where I left off before, in the fallacy: “Stage fright is everything that goes wrong on stage”. I believe the aviation psychology spark was ignited by flights in a small airplane piloted by my best friend and discussions had at small airports with aviators, mechanics and investigators.
What’s striking about aviation is that it’s safe. No passenger would stay aboard an airplane, if – before take-off – the pilot announced that the probability of a safe landing was questionable. Yet, when asked before a concert how it will go, almost every musician will hem and haw and mumble something about hope and luck.
The fact is that international organisations and national government agencies work together with human factors researchers to ensure the safety of flight by learning from past mistakes instead of vilifying the individual. Behaviour patterns across human beings are similar and errors occur for a reason – examining the why and how they happen could help us minimise the chance of repeating those mistakes over and over again.
What can musicians learn from accident investigation?
Musicians have teachers, an audience and friends for advice – but seldom coaches and most certainly no agency conducting an official investigation into our performances. Left to our own devices, we are more likely to drown our memories in a glass of wine after a concert than to watch the video recording to enjoy what we’ve played well and to learn from what we felt was sub-par.
We are notoriously uncurious. We don’t want to hear what went “wrong” because we’ve convinced ourselves that fate is involved and that we are not in control. In psychology, this is called learned helplessness. And that’s exactly how we behave after performances we felt went less well than expected: helpless and often demoralised.
Discovering that one can look at human behaviour patterns rather than individual short-comings, I was motivated to study the attitudes, tools and solutions employed in aviation psychology in order to help musicians better influence their own lives.
Why is there not a direct correlation between the amount of preparation and success and what are some of other common misconceptions around stage fright?
We pianists spend countless hours at the instrument, but what we practise rarely includes preparation strategies geared at keeping stage fright from being inevitable. We perpetuate a legacy of default practice methods: a mix of run-throughs to check progress, repetition to “engrain” the right notes, more error detection and self-criticism when all of this doesn’t work.
We consider the quantity of practice as a badge of honour, as if time spent equals effectiveness. Quality of practice, on the other hand, takes more energy and produces long-term results, not short-term rewards. That’s what motor learning experts have been saying for decades, but most musicians haven’t come to that realisation.
Concepts such as deliberate practice and flow are gaining recognition, while theories regarding desirable difficulties, focus of attention, and self-regulation have yet to make the menu in piano studios. I see myself as a translator between science and art, sometimes typecast as a crusader, trying to convince the unwilling to try new things. In truth, I’m excited to share what I’ve discovered!
Self-talk seems to be an important part of having the right mindset for performing. How does this apply to teachers and how should a teacher foster a healthy mindset in their students?
Years ago, I ran a self-experiment during a solo concert, using devices hidden from the audience to measure heart and respiration rate as well as skin conductance (aka: lie-detector) and a camera to capture musical accuracy and expressive quality. With a short questionnaire, I rated my thoughts and mood during preparation, pre-performance and post-performance phases.
The result? I “failed”: I’ve never played better, so I didn’t have any musical hiccups to connect to physiological data. Seriously, I was able to verify the phenomena of fear inhibition and stress mastery first found in parachutists in the 1960’s – but that’s a topic for another time. Why did that concert go so well? In part, because I had given myself permission to play as best I could, eliminating the usual subtext of criticism. I realised later, that I should have assessed self-talk, which I now believe to have a deciding influence on performance outcomes.
Thus, I believe that one of the best things teachers can do to promote emotional wellbeing, is to encourage their students to use positive thought. I’m not talking about self-deception. This is about imagining one’s music leaving one’s fingers, the sound floating out to reach the audience (external focus), all the while enjoying the performance oneself.
Leaving correctness and criticism behind is key to being in the moment when one takes the stage, yes, but it’s just as important during practice beforehand. As with any skill, we can only depend upon what we’ve rehearsed, including self-talk, to be repeated when “it counts.” That should be obvious and logical.
If we spend our practice time scouring our playing for problems, that mindset will continue on stage (who hasn’t seen a child shake their head at a wrong note?). Not only does the error-detection-mode undermine one’s confidence, it costs energy needed to play expressively. Yes, I believe it’s time for us to rethink teaching methods and reframe practice tasks.
Many pianists avoid performing. Is there anything you would say to encourage them to do so?
Naturally, if you spend your practice time eliminating mistakes, you are tricking yourself into believing that a performance is about the reproduction of correct notes and rhythmic precision. Unsurprisingly, you are your own worst critic, so why risk additional judgment by an audience? This mindset should sound crazy to you.
What about the composer’s creation, its beauty (even in dissonance) and the emotion it conveys? Shifting your inner spotlight away from perfection and towards music making not only helps minimise anxiety, it can be liberating. Yes, it’s easier to avoid something than it is to accept a challenge. Rather than measuring yourself against an invisible opponent, aim to have your playing be a reflection of yourself. If you can focus your energy on communication through music, you’ll be ready to take the dive and perform.
Further links & resources
- Bulletproof Musician Interview: On Learning How to Practice So as to Make Performing Something We Can Enjoy, Rather Than Fear
- Art in Motion – Adina organises this multidisciplinary international symposium where every two years, researchers, educators, and practitioners in sport, dance, and music gather to share their perspectives and insights on topics related to performance excellence.