Words For Musicians To Live By John Pursell, D.M.A. Senior Ceremonial Trumpeter, United States Air Force Band, Retired johnpursell@msn.com Reprinted from Maryland Music Educator
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all them slogans, adages, mottos or whatever you want. Most people have heard a particular saying that they have taken to heart and may think of on occasion when making a decision of some kind. They find wisdom in the ideas of other people, perhaps from centuries ago. These words of wisdom may come from a philosopher, a scientist, a president or they may come from a simple, common person. The important thing is that, for some reason, the words speak to us and help us understand our lives or our situations a little better. The adages or ideas in this article are those that I’ve learned over the years and I think they have particular application to musicians.
American army in World War II. The above statement sums up his belief: the harder you train, the more successful your performance will be. But it’s not just a matter of putting in long hours. You must put in productive hours. This means your practice session should always have a plan; you should begin with a clear idea of what you want to accomplish and how you’re going to go about it. Merely repeating technical studies day after day may offer some small improvement, but real progress only results from a thoughtful, organized session.
“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war.” General George Patton, U.S. Army, World War II Commander of the 3rd Army.
“We will relentlessly pursue perfection, because we will never achieve it. But along the way, we will achieve excellence.” Vince Lombardi, legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers and winning coach of the first two Super Bowls.
As musicians, we might translate this as “The more you sweat in the practice room, the less you’ll bleed on the recital stage.” General George Patton was one of the most successful military leaders in American history. He was a strict believer in hard, rigorous training and he drove his troops mercilessly, which resulted in overwhelming victories for the
Lombardi was a legend even during his lifetime. Like Patton, he was obsessed with hard training and discipline, and his methods resulted in victories in the first two Super Bowls. In his book Instant Replay, Packers All-Pro offensive guard Jerry Kramer wrote, “No other team trains as hard as we do; of course, no other team wins as often, either.” After their
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football days were over, many of his players went on to great success in other fields. They took the lessons of hard work, discipline and teamwork he had instilled in them and applied them to their post-football careers. This quote is interesting in that it seems to speak to a different approach. In the pursuit of perfection, the emphasis may not always be on the accumulation of higher abilities, but on the elimination of simple errors. Eliminate the errors and we are as close to perfection as we can get. Talking about professional music, Philadelphia Orchestra trumpeter Seymour Rosenfeld stated, “If you can triple tongue the finale to Steiger’s Carnival of Venice, that’s great. But if you can’t play a simple quarter note figure exactly the same way a hundred times in a row, we can’t use you.” In other words, the accumulation of a high level of technique is useless if you can’t deliver a simple figure consistently over a long period of time. “The whole world is a store and you can have anything you can reach on the shelves. But there isn’t a thing in the store that hasn’t a price set on it and whatever you take, you’ve got to pay the price.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, American author. OCTOBER 2018
