Are music competitions necessary?

musicprnt
Tue, 30 Jul 2013 13:20:40 +0000

I agree with Lawmom on her thoughts about competitions. I think the idea of doing them for the performance opportunity, to have a goal to prepare for, are all wonderful, and yes, you can meet people at them. However, I also will add that there are negatives, at least in the violin world a lot of those competitions are not exactly collegial, and it can make the experience negative. Parents and sadly kids can view this as war, and you won’t see much networking or sharing of ideas there, and their teachers are often as bad. You do run into nice kids and parents, of course, but it also can be a disquieting experience, there is a difference between the real world and what happens in a competition, and IME the real world is competitive in different ways. It also can give a kid a false impression of how good they are, it can make them think because a panel of judges who may or may not know what they are doing decide on someone for reasons that may have nothing to do with how you are evaluated ‘in the real world’…I think with the right mentality going in they are fine, but if you go in with the idea the only thing that matters is winning,it can be a negative. Yo Yo Ma claims he entered one competition and finished dead last, and if you look at some amazing musicians none of them ever won a competition, or even did many…which should tell you a lot.

I also have found the competitions where they give feedback to be of dubious value, a lot of the judges on these things may not be at the level to really help decode where someone is good and bad, and private teachers often spend a lot of time getting their students to understand that the feedback may be bogus (one true story: Violinist I know, who both teaches at a high level and is a member of a world class orchestra, went to a violin competition for a nephew…kid played I believe the first movement of the Mendelsohn, and 2 of the judges told him he was playing it wrong, that he was playing it in a baroque style when it was romantic…the violinist when he heard that went nuts, and told his Nephew, who was upset, that he played it in a Romantic fashion, and pointed out the two judges who wrote that were people who probably wouldn’t know the difference, might not even be violin specialists…).

As far as the influence of competitions on admissions and financial aid, I think as a reason to do them it may not be so strong. If you are trying for an academic admit, then it might weight strongly as an EC, especially since academic admissions people don’t know the Queen Elizabeth from the Elizabeth competition in anywhere, USA, so yeah, it might help there. In terms of music school admissions and merit aid, I would contend it does little, at least at the big music schools, and I am pretty certain of it. Sure, if a kid comes in having won the Queen Elizabeth or finished strongly in a major competition, they probably will have a good shot at getting into a school and getting strong merit aid, but that shouldn’t be a surprise, you win a competition at that level you are playing at an incredibly high level, and the school may want you because of that…but winning competitions won’t get you in for most other competitions from what I have seen, the audition does that, and likewise, merit aid comes about by how well you play on the audition, if anyone is there to speak for you (teacher, administrator), and also how much your family needs the money.

Could winning a competition get you more aid in some schools? Potentially, but I would hazard a guess they are not the top schools in terms of competitive admits, the CIM’s, Rice’s, Juilliard, NEC, etc, etc, but rather a program trying to attract a high level student who otherwise might not go there…