Nobuyuki Tsujii (born September 13, 1988) is a Japanese pianist, who won the Thirteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in 2009 along with Haochen Zhang of China. Tsujii was born blind. Watch his performance of Liszt’s La Campanella:
I remember at a master class of Marietta Orlov, she emphasized that for pianist, the utmost important sense is hearing, followed by tactile (touch), and the last is eyesight. However, I used to rely too much on eyesight, thereby sacrificing ability to hear while playing the piano. Tsujii has proven that hearing (and tactile) is the most important, whereas eyesight can even be totally abandoned.
Ever since I started playing the piano again in 2005, I have struggled with the ability to hear while I play. Lately, I have been practising without looking at the keyboard or the music. Instead I either close my eyes or look away. The goal is to allow my ears to hear, and my body to feel the movements and touch of the piano.
A friend of mine, Mandy, forwarded me the below lines from the film Dead Poets Society - which I think illustrates how creativity can be unleashed when not chained by eye-sight:
John Keating: Close your eyes, close your eyes! Close ‘em! Now, describe what you see.
Todd Anderson: Uh, I-I close my eyes.
John Keating: Yes.
Todd Anderson: Uh, and this image floats beside me.
John Keating: A sweaty-toothed madman.
Todd Anderson: A sweaty-toothed madman with a stare that pounds my brain.
John Keating: Oh, that’s *excellent*! Now, give him action - make him do something!
Todd Anderson: H-His hands reach out and choke me.
John Keating: That’s it! Wonderful, wonderful!
Todd Anderson: And all the time he’s mumbling.
John Keating: What’s he mumbling?
Todd Anderson: Mumbling truth.
John Keating: Yeah, yes.
Todd Anderson: Truth like-like a blanket that always leaves your feet cold.
John Keating: [some of the class start to laugh] Forget them, forget them! Stay with the blanket. Tell me about that blanket!
Todd Anderson: Y-Y-You push it, stretch it, it’ll never be enough. You kick at it, beat it, it’ll never cover any of us. From the moment we enter crying t-to the moment we leave dying, it’ll just cover your face as you wail and cry and scream.
[long pause then class applauds]
John Keating: Don’t you forget this.
A game I enjoyed when I was a child was at night, when in bed, I closed my eyes and visualized seeing light! I read this from some book on “how to gain the ability to predict the future”. The book taught that in order to gain such power, all you need to do was practise closing your eyes and visualizing lights, and soon you would start seeing the future! But it failed to work for me as I was sound asleep before the light appeared.
Closing my eyes when I practise piano and even during performance transport me to another realm of existence. I can leave my ego behind and be one with the music. I am gradually learning to use my eyesight as a safety net to fall back on, but not as the guiding light. Hearing, and hearing alone, should be the guiding light for any musician. This sounds obvious but it takes me many years to realize it during a live performance.
Milton the poet was blind when he composed Paradise Lost. His blindness prevented him from seeing any light except God’s light. God’s light continued to illuminate his mind and was the inspiration behind Paradise Lost. Homer, the great classical epic poet, according to tradition, was also blind. I now believe that eyesight can be a liability for musician. Only when one sees inward can he truly see the beauty of music.
Below is a quotation from the Prologue to Book 3 of Paradise Lost, which to me is a powerful image of one descending into his inner soul:
Thee I re-visit now with bolder wing,
Escap’t the Stygian Pool, though long detain’d
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight [ 15 ]
Through utter and through middle darkness borne
With other notes then to th’ Orphean Lyre
I sung of Chaos and Eternal Night,
Taught by the heav’nly Muse to venture down
The dark descent, and up to reascend, [ 20 ]
Though hard and rare: thee I revisit safe,
And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou
Revisit’st not these eyes, that rowle in vain
To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;
So thick a drop serene hath quencht thir Orbs, [ 25 ]
Or dim suffusion veild. Yet not the more
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt
Cleer Spring, or shadie Grove, or Sunnie Hill,
Smit with the love of sacred Song; but chief
Thee Sion and the flowrie Brooks beneath [ 30 ]
That wash thy hallowd feet, and warbling flow,
Nightly I visit: nor somtimes forget
Those other two equal’d with me in Fate,
So were I equal’d with them in renown,
Blind Thamyris and blind Mæonides, [ 35 ]
And Tiresias and Phineus Prophets old.
Then feed on thoughts, that voluntarie move
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird
Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid
Tunes her nocturnal Note.
