Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Teachers Forum Fair Piano Competition - by age or by level?

It IS kind of court trial. For some (many?) their future (getting a grant, or being accepted for conservatory) depends on it.

As mentioned above, I think the rationale behind 'age' is that at a certain age the kids leave school and have to decide to make a living with music or not.

Don't auditions exist anymore? I mean, are university decisions being made by competition results? Is this prevalent mostly in the U.S. or does it exist elsewhere? Neither of my relatives went anywhere near such a thing.

keystring, you seem hung up on a particular kind of audition and/or what your family has experienced. If you look at the site I linked, which is a rather normal type of "competition," it is unlike anything you seem to be talking about. Most competitions are about selecting the best performers in certain age categories, because they presume that all entrants are serious students. They have no interest in adjusting for lack of training. They do understand that 9 year olds who have been studying for four years shouldn't be compared to fifteen year olds who have been studying for ten. But a fifteen year old who has only just started playing is simply out of luck. They shouldn't be at such an event, and it is not illogical for the organizers to behave in exactly the manner that they are behaving.

It's one tool, but you have to take into account other things. There are teachers and, ahem, "music schools," who don't teach theory. At all. Zero. All they teach are hard pieces so they can send students to competitions. They can spend an entire year on one Liszt piece that the student plays at five different competitions!! This stuff really happens!!

I heard several of these kids playing Liszt recently. They were just horrible. Jaw-droppingly horrible. They missed a bunch of notes, played at wildly different tempos, and OBVIOUSLY the pieces are WAY TOO HARD FOR THEM!!!!!!! They were horrid in July. They were horrid again in November with the same Liszt piece. I can't believe their parents can be duped into (really expensive!) lessons when all they do in a year is one stupid Liszt piece. It's like winning a trophy is all piano lessons are about.

In all my years of teaching, I've taught exactly two Liszt etudes. My students generally aren't advanced enough to play Liszt. I don't even like Liszt (can't you tell by the Liszt-bashing I'm typing so far?). However, stuck in the same competition category as these Liszt kids, guess who won?

When you obliterate idiotic judges who automatically hand out trophies to kids who dare to play Liszt--no matter how poorly--then competitions start to make sense. And "fair."

P*D, I am not "hung up" on anything. I've asked questions to understand. My last question was about university entrance in music because someone said competitions were a gateway to that. Since several people I know went the professional route, and a few of them are practicing musicians with degrees, and we looked into it, I was surprised because competitions were not part of the equation. That is why I asked whether this is geographic. It is also possible that things have changed in the last 5 - 10 years. The people I know who got into university passed an audition which was administered by the university, and also had to write a theory exam as part of the auditioning process. That is all I know of first hand.

I have encountered very few events like that, AZN. I'm sure they exist, and I'm sure that all too many families think of piano as a trophy sport and not as a tool of education. But I can't say I have seen very many piano events in which the outcomes were skewed in that manner. The horribly mangled, overly-difficult work is usually trumped by the very-well-played difficult work.

It's one tool more than I have now. <grin>

But it's not an ideal tool. Not all teachers enter all their students, and I can only hear a competition prepared piece.

It's a little like home schoolers taking college boards. They tend to do slightly better than average public school kids. But less than 1% of home schoolers take the boards, so you can't really draw meaningful conclusions one way or the other.

The ideal tool is the pop quiz.

We take all 3 year students, give them a new piece and an hour to prepare, and rate that.

Hee, hee.

Well, when you keep referring to age categories as illogical, seemingly without wrestling with the reasons why (and situations when) they can be quite logical, I begin to wonder ...

Have you read all of each post, and succession of posts? As more is learned, they change? A problem in Internet reading is often a tendency to skim and react to impressions. I have done that myself at times.

Hee Hee.... I like that too. I prepare my students extensively in ability of sight-reading, I am sure they can do well in this pop quiz.

This reminds me of another competition I attended. Organized by a few local teachers. There was plenty of accomplished playing at the elementary and middle school level. But the high school level had only two entrants. These two couldn't remember their piece, had poor stage presence and made the audience as miserable as they were. Yet they both got a trophy (1st and 2nd place). It looks like an accomplishment on paper though.

So this is another problem that can arise. There's the question of whether winning means anything.

It is a trend that most kids quit piano before high school; however, in my MTAC branch we always have excellent players at the high school level, even going past Level 10 and doing higher-level competitions and auditions. It's tragic that very few of them actually become piano majors! They just keep playing piano because they like it.

What is tragic about this?

Hmmm, sounds like MY son.

It is tragic because those talents will go to waste once they're done with lessons. There is a huge difference between having college-level piano training and not having it.

The problem is that the employment outlook of the music majors is not particularly bright. Financially it is probably better to be a dentist (or even a programmer) and amateur musician. As much as we love music, we have to face the real life.

You can be a music major and still go on to dental or medical or law school, or whatever. Lots of graduate programs look favorably upon music studied in undergrad years.

Still, what's the tragedy?

The kid 'coulda been a contendah' but chose to pursue a professional career outside of music?

I don't think you can be sure about that. Just speaking from my own experience, even though I have degrees in music, they're not in performance, yet I ended up with an immensely satisfying career as a performer. If the passion and motivation are there, they'll do something worthwhile. If it's not, a performance degree probably won't do it for them.