At moments of solemnity and tension, I tend to giggle nervously, and sometimes laugh uncontrollably, although I can’t ever remember having done this in a muscial performance.

The more I read these stories and think about my own meltdowns, the more I think that Lynnette may have known something the rest of us didn’t in her refusal to take up an instrument. (Of course, too, she was going to be a theologian, engaging the mysteries of God and the universe. In the context of such weighty matters, we sometime church musicians are merely a commerical break.)

You win.

So, my brother’s senior recital. He’s on cello, I’m on piano, we’re doing Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise.” Right after the interlude at the second “A” section. COUGH. COUGH COUGH. Yes, I had to get up, walk off the stage, abandoning my brother mid-measure, search frantically for water backstage, gulp down great draughts and pray furiously for a miraculous healing. After a minute I walked back out, apologized, and we picked it up right there.

But my take-the-cake story is even worse. The day before a big concerto competition, I was slicing some cheese at the counter and took off a big flap from the tip of my left index finger. Pressure was applied, bleeding was stopped, bandaid was administered, and the decision was made to go on with the competition tomorrow. Rehearsal went pretty darn well, considering the BANDAID ON MY LEFT INDEX FINGER. So when we arrived at the venue, I decided I’d play without the bandaid. I took it off before sitting down at the piano, and by the second movement I started seeing handfuls of blossoms of red blooming all over the keys. At the end of the piece, the keyboard looked like a particularly ill-executed Jackson Pollock. To this day I’m haunted by the thought of the poor hapless kid who played next, entering to find the Texas Chainsaw Massacre on his Steinway.

And my favorite of all — the time that I didn’t realize that transpose was on, and inadvertently took a very bewildered and out-of-breath congregation through four verses of Scatter Sunshine, all of them five (or was it seven?) half steps higher than the Green Book actually recommends. All the while thinking, gee, I’ve never realized how high this song goes. I think we lost most of the congregation at the high D — err, high G-sharp . . .

Kaimi,

This made me laugh more than I have in weeks. Thank you.

…my mind enters an almost REM state.

When we think about poise under pressure we should also think of athletes. Tiger Woods always plays his best golf on the last day of the tournament, when it really counts, and when his competitors are falling apart. It is common to hear the announcers say that “Tiger is in the zone”, and everybody knows what they mean.

Which isn’t to say he never makes mistakes. At the PGA championship last month, he sliced a drive, bounced it off the roof of a building and into an adjoining fairway. He also missed a couple of gimme putts. It is almost enough to give us mere mortals a measure of comfort. Almost.

On the positive side, think of how many young musicians were actually inspired by you. They could proceed confidently with their lessons knowing that even great musicians like those on this thread can forget their notes. You spared them all the humiliation of thinking they were the only one who make mistakes.

My only experience with music performance came when I volunteered for the ward choir because they said they needed male voices, but after three practices the conductor took me aside and wondered if I wouldn’t mind sharing my talents in some other way than singing. He told me I was mixing up the other basses. I actually felt relieved rather than embarassed.

It would seem, from my extensive participation on this thread, that I have, or had, a lot of unresolved musical performance trauma. No wonder I quit.

Seraphine, I’ve had very similar experiences. (Playing without music is always a little scary, I think.) There’s something about the physical memory of performance that’s so unconscious that if I suddenly think too hard–or if I’m too nervous–my fingers can’t remember anymore. (Isn’t it strange how the fingers, and not the brain, do the memorizing?)

Playing music somehow unhooks my brain in the same way that long drives do, and I can find myself playing through pages and pages without entirely being aware of what I’m doing while my mind enters an almost REM state. And then suddenly, I’m jerked back to reality when I realize, in a panic, that I have no idea if I’m on the second verse or the third.