Psychophysical disposition for professional life and the stage
The development of an individual disposition as a psychophysical division of labour suitable for expression and the stage plays a key role in applied music physiology. Considering the complexity of the requirements when we make music, there must be diverse states of readiness in the brain, nervous system, respiratory and locomotor organs adapted to the respective goal of action rather than a single form of disposition. The division of work between the different muscle groups and the coordination of body position, breathing, movement and mental and emotional focus plays out on the stage, in an examination, in a competition or in a live television or radio broadcast at a level of energy and tension all of its own and requires a special type of balance. Moreover, under the stress of the performance situation, psychophysical self-organization also relates to the content of the presentation and to communication with the audience. Instead of general looseness/relaxation, therefore, the goal should be controlled tension in the right place in body regions that are positioned in a functionally favourable manner. However, musicians often describe their perceived physiologically optimal activity in colloquial terms as “loose” or “relaxed” to avoid using the traditionally negative word “tension”. Perceived competence on the stage with freedom for content-related artistic topics requires many of the aforementioned adjustments to largely be available unconsciously and automatically – in other words as reflexes. For example, the relationship between tone perception and an appropriate state of readiness is of crucial importance for instrumentalists and singers.
In music physiology teaching, this requires the selection of profession-specific and individually suitable exercises and strategies from the wealth of body training and treatment methods available that are generally not designed specifically for musicians.