I have written before about the dimensions of music—the layered, sequential depths a student passes through on the way to something that can no longer be called simply “playing.”
Today, in a lesson built around Chopin’s “Prelude in E minor”, he touched something just beyond what I had spoken about before.
And I want to say this again: he really, really invested himself in practicing. His progress has been truly remarkable.
He had been working on Hanon, beginning with the First Dimension: touching the very essence of each individual sound.
From there came the Second Dimension: the right note, at the right time. The skeleton of the piece began to take shape. Each sound gained direction, and the sounds began to form a line, carried by impulse.
Then came the Third Dimension—the moment when the space between the two hands became part of the music. He began carefully weaving a story through the relationship between his two hands, each carrying its own voice.
At our last lesson, he crossed into the Fourth Dimension.
He began to breathe with the music—not just metaphorically, but literally. His chest rose and fell with each phrase. There was air between his body and the piano, and he had begun to sense, control, and incorporate the density of that space into the music.
And then, all of a sudden, the music began to include what lies beyond our physical space.
It was a mountain.It was an ocean.It was everything all around us, and everything beyond us.
It contained everything, and yet it was none of it at the same time.
We caught a glimpse of the next Dimension—a place beyond language, beyond anything that can be explained.
There is no end to the depth waiting within each dimension, if only we are willing to invest ourselves—our time, our hearts, and our practice.
— Yoko Matsushita
Valle de Bravo