Mmic in educationof infallible methods, guaranteeing the best possible results compatible
with his personal abilities and the amount of effort which he puts into
the work.
I base my piano teaching on reliable data, objectively valid for all
pupils and worked out to the last detail. It is in this connexion that a
film played a part of prime importance, as a source of inspiration and
as a means of testing the correctness of my views. As a pianist, I had
always allowed myself, like all pianists, to be guided by instinct, intu-
ition, sensibility, the advice of my teachers and such research as I
happened to do. To put it briefly, I concentrated on music as such,
without taking account of the human psycho-physiological, or rather
neuro-motor, factor which inevitably intervenes in the playing of any
musical instrument. This went on until, one day, quite by chance, I saw
a slow-motion picture of a racehorse galloping. The superb strength
and grace of the thoroughbred’s movement struck me so forcibly that
it changed my whole life. Two facts caused this sudden revelation:
(a) the interdependence, in the animal’s movement, of conscious deter-
mination, suppleness, strength and rhythm; (b) the progressive evolu-
tion of each of his movements, which threw sudden light on the
problem of every living gesture and the internal musculature upon
which it depends. I realized that there was an immense gap in know-
ledge of our own motivity, and that it was solely due to the congenital
inadequacy of our visual capacity. Hence, it was easy to discern the
causes of the fundamental mistakes which have been made in piano
teaching ever since the instrument was invented. Such mistakes have
cost countless pupils and pianists a great deal of fruitless effort and
have made them consume their time and energy in a constant process
of struggle.
It is obvious that such a state of affairs must have a disastrous effect
on the pupil’s mentality and nervous system. While music, when
rationally taught, has an excellent effect on a pupil’s general balance,
it may, on the contrary, destroy that balance at source if the teaching
is contrary to the basic laws of motivity. Obsessed by the memory of
the thoroughbred’s perfect movements, and thinking of those of
pianists, which are so often imperfect, I immersed myself in research,
in an attempt to discover the natural law which the animal has obeyed.
I was convinced that the discovery of this law would make it possible
to free a pupil completely from all muscular hindrance, thus producing
perfect co-ordination of his instinct and sensibility with voluntary and
conscious control of his motory system. It took me a long time to find
this law, which is that of muscular antagonism, as well as to discover