Competition & Conflict

Supporting Your Piano Pathway
Written by Andrew Eales

In an interview in International Piano, January 2014, the marvellous concert pianist Maria João Pires suggested:,

“To compete always damages your soul.
If you compete you are not a musician any more.
We old musicians should perhaps give the new generation alternatives. I think our mission is to transmit what has been transmitted to us. This competitive world, this marketing world, has destroyed a lot of that transmission.
Competitions are not the way, that’s for sure!”

We are frequently presented with the spectacle of competing pianists pitted against one another by an industry that would have us all believe that there is no other way to launch a career. But like Pires, I have long felt uneasy about this competitive spirit, and the toxicity that too often accompanies it. And like Pires, I believe there has to be a better way, for sure!

The climax of any competition is of course the victory of the winner. Everyone knows what the opposite of a winner is, and competitions usually produce lots of them, too. There are far too many bright, aspiring pianists for whom these events prove to be a truly crushing experience.

Mitigating this perhaps, multiple medals and accolades are sometimes awarded. But when players are divided up into good, better and best, they have still fundamentally been divided.

Ironically, professional success actually depends on forming creative partnerships with others. For classical music to have an assured future, it is therefore essential for us to work together and find more positive ways to support and promote players.

But if we determine to change performance culture for the better, we will need to start by rethinking the events we put on for children.

Damaged souls

Around the world, even young beginners are taught to compete against each other, and from a very young age. Their parents and teachers enter them for school and local ‘Music Festivals’, regional and (“when ready”) national competitions, all instilling an indelible sense that sharing music in performance is fundamentally competitive in nature.

Making matters still worse, these events are very often characterised by their rather arcane, ritualistic settings. Ushers in drab uniforms escort players to their place, where they await their turn to play for a small, nervous audience of parents, presided over by a judge behind a large desk, scribbling criticisms on a form that will soon be presented publicly to the entire audience.

The aim of these events may ostensibly be educational, but in reality they offer a strange, intimidating, and surely inappropriate introduction to the very real potential of live music.

However broad children’s smiles are as they compliantly try to fit in, the lesson that piano playing is fundamentally competitive leaves its mark, and can often lead to a loss of motivation, crippling anxiety, and chronically low self-esteem.

To remind ourselves of Maria João Pires quote:

“To compete always damages your soul.”

Concert pianist Maria João Pires — International concert pianist, Maria João Pires

As piano educators, we need to ask ourselves whether it is any wonder that young performers’ souls are quietly damaged, or that our own outlook has been critically distorted by this competitive legacy. Frequently, I meet adults who tell me they had piano lessons as children, but that they weren’t very good at it. I ask, good compared to whom?

With more creative thinking, collaboration, and compassion, we could do and be so much better. But some will object: surely competition is natural, part of the real world that children should be rigorously prepared for?

Competition in Nature

Whether the sibling rivalry of Cain and Abel set the tone for the rest of the human race that have followed, or the ‘survival of the fittest’ determined by evolutionary imperative who we have collectively become, the point is often made that we are hard-wired to compete.

I have read several scientific definitions of competition as it exists in nature, all of which go something like this:

“Competition is most typically considered the interaction of individuals that vie for a common resource that is in limited supply.”

In the case of the big international piano competitions, that “common resource” amounts to prize money, and a promotional boost. While these can hardly be considered life-or-death resources, it can at least be argued that they deliver some tangible advantage.

But in the case of children’s competitions and local amateur ‘Music Festivals’, it is difficult to identify any commendable reason why an authentic sense of positive affirmation, one which rings true and promotes confidence in all who perform, should be so wilfully rationed to just a few.

While examples of individuated competition exist in nature, they can usually be understood in the context of the wider needs of the herd. Not only so, but we see plenty of species whose very survival depends on cooperation, teamwork and socialisation.

Human beings are one such species: our ingrained state of perpetual conflict presents an existential threat to us. Nature demands empathy, cooperation, and collaboration to meet the challenges we collectively face. Across society, education, and the arts, we should surely be reinforcing these positive qualities and fundamental values.

Encouraging children to love music, and to find joy playing and sharing it with others, should come naturally and easily to all parents and educators. It simply isn’t natural or right for children’s first attempts at public performance to culminate in a public take down.

Clearly then, there has been a damaging shift towards an artificial construct of competition that is not found in nature. To put it bluntly, the human ego seems to have taken over where evolutionary progress left off.

Beyond Competition

Most of us deplore the endless battles that develop between individuals and people groups as opportunities dwindle or egos inflate. We shake our heads sadly, and wonder how such conflict was ever allowed to develop. We understand at a very deeply intuitive level that competition is to blame.

But overcoming the competitive spirit can seem to be an uphill struggle. We might conclude that avoiding competition is unrealistic, an idealistic delusion, or even a smokescreen for weakness. We join our peers in agreement that competition is the normal state. We redouble our efforts to prevail.

Perhaps none of us can individually change the world, but we can change ourselves. We can make space to process our own negative experiences of performing, and of competitive criticism. As we do so, our deeper insecurities and swirling thoughts can start to settle and clear. Making peace with ourselves, we understand:

We don’t need to beat others to have personal value.

The anxiety caused by the competitiveness of others, their ceaseless self-promotion and petty conflicts, starts to exercise less of a pull on us. Our natural empathy can reawaken, along with our ability to more sincerely support others, rather than viewing them as rivals.

A commitment to regularly playing our active repertoire for our own personal enjoyment, with no need to impress others or compare, can be the dynamic catalyst that unlocks years of imprisonment to negative self-talk.

Beyond Conflict

Finally, looking beyond ourselves to our local piano community, we can be ambitious to promote a more healthy performance environment: one which welcomes players of all ages, levels and abilities without public judgment or comparison.

As caring parents, humane teachers, and enthusiastic community musicians, we have an important role to play in helping the next generation of piano players to have a more healthy, less competitive attitude.

I believe we can be winners together by being the best that we can collectively be, through cooperation, teamwork, collaboration and mutual respect. Between us, we surely have the creative imagination to develop far more positive opportunities and pathways into a lifetime of music-making.

Let’s keep our eyes on the real prize: a world less driven by conflict, and more in love with the transformative power of shared music.

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