Well written. Yes, in my experience a lot of the driven kids you mention, the competitive ones (which to a large extent IMO is the parents), can often flare out/burn out/be disappointed.Music is competitive in its traditional form, admission to summer programs/youth orchestras as a kid, music schools, if you want to get into a traditional orchestra. The problem there is that gets translated into being personal competition with other musical students/musicians, where anyone else is your rival/enemy kind of thing. I translates into the music student/musician into being a disagreeable person or so focused on themselves that quite honestly, it hurts their chances of doing the thing they want, to get into music. And yes, there are teachers and people ‘in the industry’ who promote that idea. Some studios I have heard of are like Lord of the Flies mentality, where the teacher sets their own students against each other, which is ridiculous. That was a very old guard mentality, in the violin world it was the stereotype of teaching, the old European teachers were notorious for that (and teachers who studied with them were notorious for continuing on in that tradition, fortunately that is something that is dying out).
I also agree that there is a lot more than deciding “I need to go to school X to succeed”. Yes, if you want to get into the Philadelphia Orchestra, going to Curtis can be a big edge…but if a kid does that, and doesn’t like the environment, doesn’t enjoy it, they likely won’t reach that goal. There is real life in music, and being able to enjoy it rather than see it as a beast to be tamed is important. The musical monk approach (as my son called it) may create someone who is proficient on their instrument, perhaps at a high level, but they often lack the curiousity about things, and they have been so isolated they don’t interact well with people and that can be problematic. On the violin that is common, these are the kids who are striving to be a soloist, they end up on the competition circuit looking for the holy grail of a soloist career, and when they fail many don’t know what to do and have a hard time shifting gears. My son and his group have found that there are chamber groups who see others as ‘the enemy’ (this was especially true at competitions), but they are relatively few, they when they can go to the performances of groups they have met and vice versa, because they realize it isn’t a zero sum game.
The thing about music is it isn’t deterministic, set of inputs=outputs. I think it was the Jazz great Charley Parker who said you can’t put it through the horn until you have lived life, and I agree with that. If music is this thing that separates you from real life, stands apart from it, rather than being part of it, I think the person will struggle to figure out what it even means (to them) to make it in music. My S and his group recently had a gig at Princeton U as part of some classes there. The person who runs it conducts music there, and also conducts a community orchestra there that is full of people who do other things, but many of them studied music in various ways, and still have it in their lives even though their vocations are outside music.
My S’s group is doing well, and one of the things audiences comment on besides their energy and playing ability, is how together they are up there, how the energy is they enjoy being there and playing together. They are all intense about music, when they arent on the road performing they spend 6,7 hours a day 6 or 7 days a week rehearsing. That said, it isn’t their whole life, and as a group they interact on many levels. They all have interests out of music, and even in rehearsal there is time to have bs sessions or talk about what is going on or who knows what. We have had them stay with us when they are in the NY area where we live, and it is hysterical watching them interact as people. Despite the intensity of their existence, with all the traveling and navigating their future, they find time to enjoy what they are doing and each other.
And if the kid has a life, enjoys other things besides music, it will flow over into the music side. One of the things about music is I think you have to enjoy music but also enjoy the life around it, because music has to be part of life, not this weird thing off in space.
I sometimes think that instead of talking about making it in music, that we should talk about making it in life where music is part of that, whatever that part is:)
