The Fourth Wall

There are so many reasons to love music.  One of them: the fourth wall.

In the theater, the fourth wall is an imaginary wall which separates the audience from the action which is occurring onstage.  Sometimes the fourth wall is broken, either in irony or in something like children's theater when the actor speaks directly to the audience.  With the fourth wall intact, however, what happens onstage is a bubble, a world unto itself.  The presence or acknowledgement of the audience would effect this world, the authenticity of the story and message would be undermined.  Ironically, the communication which occurs from the stage to those in the house can be jeopardized without the fourth wall.

And yet the fourth wall is only an imaginary construct, one that we pretend exists.  People are people, the actors can feel the audience and it effects their performance.  There is applause, there are bows, there are laughs.

For the orchestra, we also have a fourth wall of sorts.  In Japan I think we elevate it to a greater status by walking onto the stage as a group, not warming up onstage beforehand as individuals which is the tradition in America.  The stage is a place upon which a performance occurs, one upon which a full audience stares before the performers enter.  We step upon it and exit from it in such a sacred ritual.

It is from this space that we break the fourth wall that exists in another realm beyond theater and music, the realm of people.  There are pores in the plaster of this fourth wall; it is not so impermeable as we would like to believe.  Beyond applause and bowing and the occasional mistaken eye contact that happens with the cute child in the front row, we are connecting with people in a subtle and powerful way that we do not normally have the occasion to do.

And this fourth wall is broken, not least of all, between ourselves as we play with one another.  Perhaps this is one of the magical things about watching and experiencing a music performance.

I think this is something that we as musicians forget in the midst of getting upset about bowings and balance and intonation.  We can forget the connection we are trying to establish with one another as human beings- not as instruments, technical abilities or disabilities, awareness or lack of it, the way someone makes reeds, or plays a down bow.  

But it is also something which is fundamental to why these things offend us so strongly.  Why doesn't my stand partner notice that we are using different bow speeds?  Or that we have a shared figure with another section which is playing it quite differently than us?  Why does the second player in my section play louder than me and out of tune?  Why are the strings playing so loudly that no one can hear my solo?

I feel as though there is an ultimate goal in music, to dissolve the fourth wall entirely.  The wall that exists between us and the audience, and the wall that exists between us as human beings.  And to do so without words, without explicit acknowledgment, to seamlessly merge with another individual or group of people.  To become a part of them, to end ourselves and become limitless within one another.  And it hurts very deeply when we want this, and somehow, can't quite get there.  Music is a way to practice it.    To listen to one another more deeply so that our listening becomes us and we become another.   To find the edge of who we are as individuals and to try to transcend that.  It's a very personal thing.

It's one of the many reasons why I love music.  It highlights this pursuit and gives us a way to explore it.  Sometimes it feels amazing to be in the space and sometimes it's very frustrating to want it and be blocked for various reasons.  But there are so many ways to explore it.  As many ways as there are pieces by different composers and different people with whom to play them and different audiences for which to perform them.  It's this goal of touching one another that I think perhaps all people yearn for in some way.  To somehow cease to be separate.  To break all fourth walls.