THE SPIRIT THAT HAS NO PLACE IN MUSIC

There are moments in the musical world when the mask slips and the raw face of hostility reveals itself. It often happens where one least expects it.

Recently, I was observing and reading an online conversation about the piano, pianists and repertoire between what I assumed was a gathering of souls who honour the same altar. You imagine a fellowship of people who bow before Bach and Beethoven, before Chopin and Brahms, before the great mystery that lives inside a single well-placed tone. And then suddenly someone throws a remark such as “buckle up, Caucasians, the Asians are taking over your classical music scene”, and the air turns stale. What was supposed to be a sanctuary becomes a marketplace of egos. The spirit of division shows its teeth.

Such a remark is never innocent. It is not humour. It is not clever banter. It is triumph dressed up as cultural pride, and triumph rooted in identity rather than artistry always sinks into mockery. When people begin treating music as territory rather than a temple, the art's entire purpose is betrayed. Beethoven did not sit at his desk thinking, “I hope the right race plays the Hammerklavier.” He wrote for the human being who would dare to meet the highest demands. Not the German being. Not the Caucasian being. The human being.

Those who draw national borders around chords and cadences confess their own insecurity. Behind their proud rhetoric stands a frightened spirit that knows its own hollowness. A musician who is grounded in real inner work does not need to wield ethnicity as a weapon. A musician who is empty will search for armour in the most absurd corners. And that is what we hear in such comments. Emptiness is trying to sound victorious.

Yet to understand how such hostility spreads, one must speak about something more profound. Real perception in music and in human affairs is not born of cleverness. It is born of inner schooling. A pianist who works only with fingers and intellect sees life through a dusty pane. The tone may be correct. The technique may dazzle. Yet something stays veiled. Without the discipline of inner clarity, the world remains blurry. People’s intentions remain confusing. The music itself remains opaque.

The spiritual exercises that train the inner life have an uncanny resemblance to the finest piano practice. You sit with a thought the way you sit with a tone. You keep your attention still. You resist the temptation to flee into distraction. Slowly, patiently, the interior begins to clear. And when the interior clears, your relationship to music changes. Your essays change. They stop being collections of opinions. They become windows. You begin to write not about interpretation but about the living forces that pulse through sound and gesture.

The same schooling that steadies the soul steadies the ear. You begin to hear intentions behind phrases, as you do with behaviour. You listen to what the composer means, not what the pianist wishes he meant. You sense the hidden currents under the notes. You feel where the music breathes, where it hesitates, where it carries weight, where it opens like a gate. This perception is not theoretical. It is moral. It is born from purification.

And the more your inner life strengthens, the more legible people become. They reveal themselves at the piano in a single gesture. You do not need long explanations or psychological novels. Students tell you who they are by the way they touch a key. You have seen it a thousand times. One approaches the instrument like a soldier. Another, like a supplicant. Another, like an accountant. Their ego enters the room before they do. They imagine they hide it. They never do.

Colleagues are no different. The modern piano world is obsessed with spotless playing, factory-clean recordings, and the illusion of perfection. Once your inner sight sharpens, you see the real forces at work. The vanity behind the precision. The insecurity under the flawless surface. The hunger for approval is hidden behind the rhetoric of purity. And in recent years, you notice something else creeping in. A quiet nationalism. A jealousy disguised as admiration. A hypocrisy so thick you could spread it like marmalade. People speak of tradition while trampling every principle that makes tradition worth preserving. They speak of authenticity while chasing applause like street vendors calling out their wares.

Inner schooling does not erase these observations. It clarifies them. You are not irritated anymore. You see. The fog lifts. What remains is calm understanding and, when needed, a dignified distance.

It is against this backdrop that remarks like “buckle up, Caucasians” appear so tragic. They belong to the same family of spiritual poverty as the obsession with spotless execution. Both are symptoms of a world that has forgotten what music is for. They turn art into a battlefield where tribes compete for symbolic power. That atmosphere poisons both East and West. It encourages resentment in young European and American pianists who already struggle under the weight of unrealistic expectations. It fosters arrogance in some Asian circles where extraordinary discipline and artistry are hijacked by those who want to boast as if national identity could take credit for a musician’s suffering, sacrifice, and devotion.

Let us state the truth clearly. Extraordinary pianism exists in Asia today. Some of the most disciplined, profound, and refined playing comes from Japanese, Thai, Korean, and Chinese pianists/musicians. This should be celebrated. Not for nationalist reasons, but because these artists bow to the same altar of honesty and devotion that all true musicians must honour. They have brought new colours, new approaches to touch, and a level of preparation that is often astonishing. This is a gift to the musical world.

What is not a gift is nationalistic triumphalism. Triumphalism is a parasite. It attaches itself to achievement and whispers, “This is ours.” But music has no tribe. Music belongs to the one who approaches it with humility. When a pianist sits at the keyboard, they kneel before the same altar, no matter where they were born. The Steinway does not ask whether your ancestors came from Seoul or Salzburg. It asks whether you are truthful. Whether you dare to face yourself. Whether your touch is sincere.

The individual who utters such remarks insults the very Asian pianists he tries to glorify. They did not rise through arrogance. They rose through suffering, through relentless practice, through a hunger for beauty. They walked through pressure that would crush most Western students. They endured teachers who demanded everything. They matured through struggle. To reduce their achievement to a weapon in some childish racial rivalry is to dishonour the depth they bring to the art.

Music has survived plagues, wars, revolutions, famines, and the collapse of empires. It will not tremble because someone from another continent sits at the instrument. What threatens music is not diversity. What threatens it is hostility. What threatens it is the ego.

This is where the spiritual path becomes essential. Without inner schooling, musicians become prey to jealousy, insecurity, and the need to prove themselves. With inner education, they recognise these forces for what they are—passing shadows. Noise. Obstacles that dissolve the moment truthfulness enters the room.

In the practice room, the difference becomes unmistakable. You no longer ask the piano for flattery. You do not chase brilliance like a thirsty wanderer chasing a mirage. You face the instrument with calm. With reverence. With the understanding that clarity is earned drop by drop, through discipline, through quietness, through the willingness to remove your own noise.

The spiritual path does not take you away from the music. It brings you closer to its heart. It shows you that the same forces that shape human behaviour shape tone. Fear narrows it. Vanity distorts it. Jealousy robs it of strength. Hypocrisy hollows it out. Honesty gives it breadth. Love gives it depth. A pianist who has trained the inner life reads these currents the way a sailor reads the sea.

Virtus unita fortior