Composer and pianist Lubomyr Melnyk seems, at times, to have
landed from another place or time. It’s possible, too: He claims that
his “continuous music” technique lets the pianist “transcend all limits
of time and space,” and that the “continuous pianist operates at speeds
beyond human capacity.” Melnyk has been clocked in as the world’s
fastest pianist, playing at speeds of over 19 notes per second.
Deriving from a minimalist tradition, Melnyk’s rapid arpeggios bring
to mind contemporary classical composers like Erik Satie, Philip Glass
or Terry Riley, as well as traditional classical music. “You could call
it Chopinesque, or machinelike,” he says, “the music changes faces,
creates different worlds.” He perhaps has most in common with
20th-century American composer Conlon Nancarrow, who composed rapidly
played scores for player piano, finding the limits of the human player
overly imposing. Melnyk takes this one step further, aiming to
transform himself into the machine or superhuman pianist.
“I was interested in my youth in perfecting and advancing the art of
the physical technique,” he says. He lived in Paris in the 1970s, where
he worked as an accompanist to contemporary dance performances at the
Paris Opera, and developed the technique of “continuous music.” Melnyk
was trained classically at the University of Manitoba. “Around the age
of 20 I devoted my life and soul to the piano as an esoteric goal,” he
says. He lived what he refers to as a “Buddhist monk’s life,”
developing his musicianship and physical capability.
Melnyk is a man of superlatives. “The piano has been waiting for
over two centuries for this,” he states emphatically. Continuous music
entails a rapid flow of notes, played with the piano’s pedal sustained
throughout, creating a resonant sound that listeners at performances
have sometimes claimed to hear entire orchestras in. “What I do on the
piano is impossible for any pianist to do,” he says. He strives to
create beautiful music, and to advance the world and capabilities of
the pianist. The physical aspect is half the battle of performing. When
he decided to devote his life to the piano as a young man, it was “not
a career, but a profound physical development, in a religious
sense.”
Mastery of continuous music is a life’s work, one that will never be
complete for him. In continuous music, the performer’s two hands act as
separate entities, playing distinct patterns—this and the speed of
playing require a high level of physical commitment and concentration.
He calls the process more of a discovery than anything, deriving in his
youth from his monastic lifestyle—fortuitous, perhaps, like
Archimedes in his bath. Melnyk claims that the body’s flesh is altered
by the playing—both the performer’s and the audience’s. He aims to
overcome physical limitations. “When I’m playing, I feel as though I’m
literally flying…I see the notes below, and they mesh into a
road.”
Melnyk studied philosophy, and was inspired by Eastern philosophy
and the idea of making time stand still by transcending physical
barriers. Raised in Winnipeg, his parents were Ukrainian refugees, and
his heritage is the source of many pieces. His 1983 work,
POSLANIYE, is based on the work of 19th-century Ukrainian
nationalist poet Taras Shevchenko. Others derive from folklore,
mythology and fantasy, including authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S.
Lewis. “I’m a big fan of Tolkien,” he says. “It’s sad that people focus
on the storyline rather than the quality of the writing…I’m inspired
by the feelings of the Lord of the Rings.” He relates this too
to his heritage: he sees the land of Lothlorien in the saga as an
allegory for the oppression and struggles in Ukraine’s history. “I
watch the destruction and death of the country, my land, my
people…”
These days, though, Melnyk says, “I read very little; music takes so
much time. Now I’m getting older—I can’t say up until two in the
morning any more.” He speaks from Winnipeg, where he’ll spend the next
few months before returning to a yet-undecided location in Scandinavia,
his adopted second homeland. Though he’s performed worldwide over four
decades, this will be his first Halifax performance. Prepare to be
altered.
This article appears in Mar 26 – Apr 1, 2009.