Becoming a Better Educated Artist

The legend of the great Chinese warrior Lü Meng has taught me a great deal about how to approach learning and performance.

Lü Meng, while brilliant in battle, was not a particularly well-educated man. His predecessor, Sun Quan, encouraged him to become more learned in order to improve his skills as a competent leader, which led to him becoming an even better warrior.

It seems to me that part of that education also helped him to be a better communicator, which made his talents on the battlefield more valuable, because he could then tell his soldiers in more precise terms what he wanted them to do. Also, and perhaps even more important, he was able to articulate to himself what he felt was needed to win battles, so he became better at getting others to understand what was required to achieve success.

For a musician, education accomplishes these same goals.  By having a stronger sense of the music and what the composer has intended, an artist then has a much better idea not only of the message they want to communicate to the audience, but how to go about doing it.

A better educated musician becomes a better artist, learning what the notes of the piano can say, and how to use them to communicate the language of a work.