The SOSPIRO Story
SOSPIRO owes its genesis to a second-hand bookstore in Highgate, North London
- "Ripping Yarns", and to a tattered piece of piano music bought there, on a whim, in 2002.
There isn't much music in the shop, and sometimes they get venerable old concert
programmes of the likes of Henry Hall or Paderewski - but on that day, underneath the
vocal selections by Gilbert and Sullivan and incomplete, torn editions of Beethoven piano
sonatas, there was an attractive, if dog-eared copy of Liszt's Three Concert Studies, which
I knew to be amongst the most difficult pieces of piano music to perform.
I bought it for £2.50, and took it home, casually thinking I might, one day, try to play them
to bolster up my ailing "composer-style" piano technique.
It took two years for me to think that a realistic prospect and to look at the music again.
Leafing through the fiendish A flat major and F minor preludes, I had decided to give up
and put the music back on the shelf, when I glimpsed the D flat major prelude, "Sospiro" -
and saw all that I"d been teaching, composing and performing for 25 years summed up in
the first page of this remarkable piece of piano music.
Moments of epiphany are central to all our understandings of what motivates us, drives us and inspires us - sudden manifestations of the essence or meaning of something we've thought about for some time. Now, in a flash, I saw a complete picture of my work as a composer-performer and teacher come together in the work of a master composer-performer - Liszt.
The title, "Sospiro" (a "sigh") connects to breath - the breath is the engine room of successful performance. The shapes of the arpeggios, looking like sound waves - structures, Fibbonaci, magic squares and the golden section. And "grazia" itself meaning "grace" - akin to epiphany and one of the three fundamentals of great performance from the Renaissance. This was exactly my own musical world.
In a second I was motivated to make notes. Liszt had found a way through the hazardous battleground of musical theory and academia into the ecstatic expression what is essentially a simple tune for piano. He had distilled and focussed his experience into a "totality of expression". I would do so with my teaching. "Sospiro" is a simple tune, but reveals itself only by being played through ferocious musical and technical difficulty - it's the hardest sort of simplicity to find. It's summed up in a phrase I had been using for some time - "the concealment of art" - making difficult things appear easy. In my early years, I'd been taught how to play the saxophone more by singing teachers than saxophonists (the breathing system is the same), and had been teaching breathing, stage presence and stress control to performers both at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and privately. I was certain of one thing. That breath, breathing, and developing an understanding of its full use is the key to successful performance. Speakers, singers, musicians and even dancers need to be in control of themselves under the huge pressure and adrenalin rush of public performance. Breath is the key to the professional performers "ease" with what seem like impossible pressures. "Sospiro" summed it up.
Liszt's musical indication 'dolce con grazia" brought to mind 'The Book of the Courtier" by
Baldesar Castiglione, written in 1528 - a book I"d been recommended to read by the
lutenist Anthony Rooley when we met at the York Early Music Festival in the 1980"s.
The book is something of a Renaissance 'self-improvement" book for aspirants to the
court, politicians, professional people and merchants eager to polish their skills of selfexpression
and communication, and enjoy success in society and in life.
Castliglione defined the two principles of successful personal performance as 'Decoro",
which means technique - all that the student of life, or the performing arts, can control,
study and develop, and 'Sprezzatura", which means a 'calculated carelessness"
- a boldness, even a rashness that carries excitement, a sort of improvisatory delight in
the moment that conceals the preparation, the practice and the artistry behind a 'casual"
delivery of words or music.
But Decoro and Sprezzatura were merely the building blocks of great performance. The
third of Castiglione's concepts was 'Grazia", the highest level of performance.- a state of
grace between performer and audience - a 'divine frenzy', where all knew that they were
in the presence of a truth or a manifestation of the divine that was undeniable, profound
and happening at that moment. Total Performance.
Grazia is a moment of epiphany for both a performer and an audience. Complete unanimity. Complete buy-in to an idea, a speech or a piece of music. Most importantly, Grazia is not under our control. It can descend only when the energies between performer and audience are supremely balanced. We can't expect Grazia and we can't make it appear. But one thing is certain - without the performer being highly skilled in both Decoro and Sprezzatura, Grazia doesn't stand a chance.
Castiglione's book was, not unnaturally, thought often in the 20th Century to be a tutorial system for musicians - lutenists mostly, as the "divine frenzy' had been attributed to the great lutenist of the Medici court, Marsilio Ficino. But Ficino was also a singer and an orator - a charismatic speaker who held audiences spellbound with his words.
Surely the same hierarchy of performance skills applied to speakers, politicians, and professional people, who undergo the same stress of performance - perhaps even more regularly than musicians - on a daily basis. Surely this was what Castiglione meant anyway? After all, there are only five pages devoted to music in the long book.
A brief overview of the subject titles covered in The Book of the Courtier provides a more
comprehensive view of the scope attributed by Castiglione to Decoro, Sprezzatura and
Grazia. “Acquiring grace, the good monarch, great commanders, the search for honour,
true greatness, the role of reason, the orator, the function of language, telling stories, a
good reputation, praise for others, avoiding affectation, first impressions, respect for
women, brave deeds of women, eloquence and wit, how to please, sports and games, the
power of music, the painters skill, the dance”.
My immediate thought was to speak to my brother, a senior executive in Shell Aviation. He was aware of the need for solid, tangible performance improvement techniques in the business and professional worlds, as much of what he'd experienced in that field was lightweight. As a popular, highly successful leader in his own field, he was also aware that fulfilling the potential of performers in business came down to heightening their selfawareness. That was the catalyst for the beginnings of the translation of my teaching to the worlds outside music.
Self-awareness is about being aware of your affect on others, and being able to "read' them - essential information in developing trusting and successful relationships in business and the professions, where crucial decision-making is often based on visceral, emotional reactions between people, often within the first few seconds of meeting - invisible, secret messages that are understood intuitively by all - clients, colleagues or audiences. Everyone has the potential to be successful in this area, and the first part of the process is to make all aware that the skills they need, they already have. The potential to be skilled communicator needs to be "released from within', rather than have new "training' ideas "superimposed' and "applied' - a sorry state that we see so regularly watching our politicians on the television. Performers in any situation shouldn't look trained - that's the point'
An old friend, David Heslop, former CEO of Mazda and Expotel, saw the link between Sospiro and the need for innovative thought in our leaders. ʻGrazia and humility seem to be in short supply these daysʼ, he said - ʻpeople at the top canʼt offer two dimensional responses to three dimensional challenges anymore - they need to be great communicators, inspirational performers and motivational leadersʼ. I realised that music could be turned into a resource for leaders in business and the professions - fulfilling Castiglioneʼs original vision for us all.
One year later, the SOSPIRO System was born.
John Harle 2008.