Whether any
other artistic activity has as many competitions as music I very much
doubt. There are, quite literally,
thousands of them. Competitions for
pianists, violinists, singers, organists, harmonica players, whistlers,
drummers, rock bands, orchestras, string quartets, composers…if you play or
sing, conduct or teach, research or write, there’s a competition for you. There are competitions for babies, children (usually
demoted to “Kids” to signify a classlessness which music endeavours to believe
it promotes), teenagers, young adults, middle aged adults, senior citizens,
amateurs, professionals, the blind, the deaf, the limbless…the list just goes
on and on. And there are music
competitions in any city, town or village in just about any country on any
continent. (If there was a kazoo competition
for legless Emperor Penguins of post-egg-bearing vintage, I would not be
surprised.) In short, the most rabid musical
competitors can have their thirst slaked at any time, in any field and at any
place.
Poets,
novelists, biographers, sculptors, water-colourists, oil-painters,
acrylic-on-canvas designers, graffiti-merchants, classic actors, comedy actors,
bit-part actors, bad actors, one-legged deaf mute mime artists, they all have a
competition or two in their specific fields, but none has as many on offer as
musicians. And still the list
grows. A nation can’t call itself a
nation if it doesn’t have a “National Music Competition” or two to its name; a musician
can’t call him- or her-self a musician unless they have participated in at
least a half-dozen competitions in as many countries.
There is a
World Federation of International Music Competitions based in Switzerland (as
is FIFA, but the connection ends there).
They claim to represent 120 of “the world’s leading music competitions”. Wikipedia
lists 220 “Classical Music Competitions” which excludes all those thousands of
school level, county level, regional contests as well as the dozens of Eisteddfodau and similar competitions
which are primarily, but not exclusively, devoted to music.
For some years I was a member of a panel of
adjudicators based in the UK who were called on to adjudicate at music competitions
the length and breadth of the country.
In my 15 years with them, I adjudicated at over 120 different competitions. My name remains on some list of international
adjudicators, it seems, for barely a month goes by without my being invited to
judge at some competition or other, and in the last two years I have
adjudicated at competitions in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand,
India and South Africa. In previous
years have adjudicated at music competitions
in Sierra Leone, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, not countries one might
immediately identify as being hot on musical activity. And I have colleagues and friends who do much
more of this sort of thing, to the extent they almost seem to make a living out
of it.
What is it
about music which encourages this profusion of competitions? The answer, for me, is simple. I have not the slightest idea.
I recognize
that an awful lot of people derive an awful lot of pleasure from them, and the
fact that they are (usually) held in public and the competitors perform before
an audience is certainly a big draw in an activity where public performance is
at its very core. But is that the main
reason why so many crave music competitions?
The music
world is, of course, highly competitive.
Composers have to compete to get their music heard, conductors have to
compete to get on the podium, orchestral players have to compete to get a seat
in the orchestra, singers have to compete to get a booking be it with a band, choir or opera company, pianists have to
compete to get a Concerto slot with an orchestra. But is that any different from any other of
the arts? All art involves creation and
execution, and once both have been done, the work is, in every sense of the
word, finished, and one has to compete again for the next job. I fail to see why music is so very different.
The Oxford Companion to Music opens its
entry on “Music Competitions” with the phrase, “The urge to compete is basic to
human nature and musicians are no exception. Reports of music contests go back
to ancient times”. It mentions the
famous competition in Die Meistersinger but
includes the astonishing claim that “the modern form developed in the late 18th
century in Great Britain”. Is that
true? Are the British responsible for
music competitions? If so, why did
nobody think to patent the idea? Surely
the royalties on that idea would have cleared the national debt and put enough
in the government’s coffers to weather the most stormy period of fiscal
stagnation.
Wherever and
whoever started it, music competitions have become such a fact of life that we
rarely question their value. Yes, we
point to famous “losers” who actually won (Bryn Terfel famously lost out on First
Place in the Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 1989 – and that did him
no harm) while the adjudicator of last week’s Concerto Competition finals in
Singapore mentioned that in one competition at which he had recently adjudicated,
he knew that the first place winner would never make it as a professional yet
the second place person had all the promise of a glittering career in front of
him. Every adjudicator has a similar story;
obliged by an accident of the occasion to give first place to a performer whom
one instinctively knows is inferior to those placed lower down in the rankings.
So, given
the fragile reliability of competition outcomes, what is the value of music
competitions at all?
Well, you
only need to pick up a concert programme to realize that they do provide very useful
publicity for an artist. An organ recital
I attended yesterday by an organist of whom I had never heard (and I think I am
more likely to have heard of organist than most) included the claim that he was
“winner of the 20th Grand Prix de Chartres”; and despite having
never heard of him or of the Grand Prix de Chartres, I was nevertheless
impressed and my expectations for his playing were duly raised. Even famous performers cannot escape the lure
of competition success in their biographies: Stephen Hough, who surely needs no
competition victory to reinforce perceptions of his pianist prowess, still
boasts in his biography that he took “First Prize at the 1983 Naumburg Competition”. I frequently come across artist biographies that
boast of “Second”, even “Third” place in competitions; such is the cachet of taking
part.
The trouble
is, that for a great many musicians, music is seen more as a competitive sport
than an artistic endeavour, and nowhere is this more prevalent than in South
East Asia where every opportunity is taken by pushy parents, determined
teachers and egotistical youngsters to compete in an art form where competition
should be incidental rather than an end in itself. Generations of young players have their
musical futures thwarted by an ingrained belief that the only worthwhile
musical activity is a competitive one.
Gone is the pleasure of playing quietly at home: what’s the point when
there is nobody with whom to compete?
I am a firm
supporter of competitions as being a valuable means of getting exposure, of
drawing in an audience who might not usually be attracted by the more esoteric notions
of emotional and spiritual enrichment, and of giving performers the opportunity
to play to an audience. I am vehement opponent
of competitions which have at their heart the notion that only one person ever
comes out a winner. In music competitions,
the winner is hardly ever the person who gets first prize.
No comments:
Post a Comment