Or how Music and competition don't go together.
We live
in a competitive world. Or rather, a competitive social system that would make
us believe that human nature is competitive. But regardless of whether this is
true or not, our society tends to transfer the competitiveness of our
capitalistic system to every aspect of our life, even to some that are
inherently unable to produce or support competition, like art, and more
specifically - music.
I
realize that someone will jump up at this point and start arguing that music is
indeed inherently competitive, but I beg to disagree, and it is the purpose of
this essay to prove why music is not only inherently UNcompetitive, but also
why is it ultimately damaged by the introduction of competitiveness.
Let's
start with the purpose of art in general. The Encyclopædia Britannica Online defines art as
"the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects,
environments, or experiences that can be shared with others". If we try to
produce a less scientific definition, one that is derived more from everyday
encounters with art, then we could say something like this:
"Art
is something that we create and use to please our senses in ways that can't be
found in our everyday life, may it be enjoy a painting, listen to music, or
watch a theater play or a movie."
But whether
we use the exact definition of the Encyclopedia, or the broader, simpler one I
gave you above, we have to agree that nowhere in these definitions is
suggested, implied, or even allowed that competition could enter the picture.
In sports, the very goal of the activity is to finish first, or beat another
team; at work, you compete with your colleagues for a promotion (although we
could argue that this isn't actually a part of your job, but imposed on you by
your boss and the system). Retail stores compete with each other by
offering better prices, or products others don't have, which ultimately benefits
the clients.
But art is
supposed to please us, give us some joy in a gray and repetitive world,
entertain or amuse us. Not make us run against other people for some prize.
And yet,
when you look at today's art world, you see competitiveness introduced
everywhere. Starting by the omnipotent musical competitions, the box offices'
lists and charts for music, cinema, and about every other performing art
possible, and ending with the newest trend of gathering 'Likes' on social
networks and using them to rate and classify most other art forms. Some will
say: 'If people do it, then it makes sense'. Again, I beg to disagree, and
here's why:
1. Art doesn't depend on any
quantitative measures.
Surely,
you can say that this music piece is longer than the other, but that doesn't
mean it's necessarily better. Or it may contain more sounds (notes) per second,
but that doesn't matter either. You can say that this picture is larger than
the other, or has more colors, but again, this doesn't make it inherently
better. Same goes for every other art form, in all their aspects.
So,
while it's easy to time a 100 m sprint and pronounce the one that made it first
to the end line winner, we can't do the same for art.
2. The quality of art is
relative.
Another
aspect we could use for rating is, of course, quality. But how do you decide
quality in art?
When
rating a piece of jewelry, you could measure its gold contents, or the size of
its stones, etc. When evaluating a piece of furniture, or a car, you can again
rate a number of elements and materials according to their quality. But what
are you gonna rate in a painting? The quality of the paint used? Or the quality
of the frame? Are you gonna rate the quality of the materials used for the
costumes of the theater actors? Or the cost of the instruments the musicians
played on?
The
truth is that each art has so many variables that it's practically impossible
to evaluate or rate a single art work fairly. When we listen to a piece of
music, we hear the quality of the sound produced; the way the interpreter
treats the different parts of the work, how successfully he performs all the
notes, what pauses he makes, even the sounds he makes while playing (or the
other sounds around us that are not a part of the music piece); and at the same time our listening is affected by
our own feelings and mood at the time, or by previous impressions (or lack
thereof) of the performer, of the place of the performance (surely it's more
prestigious to listen to something at Carnegie Hall than at the local library),
of the level of our musical experience..... Suffice to say, if you gather 100
people with different background in a hall and ask them after the performance
'How was it?', and if they answer honestly, you may hear as many as 100
different opinions. And every single one of them will be justified, within its
own framework.
Here's
where experience and 'experts' come in play. Because the truth of it is that
art is not purely a sensual experience, it is an intellectual one as well. For
example, if two people hear an aria of an opera sung in Italian, and one of
them speaks Italian and knows the story of the opera and all of its background
(musical and factual), while the other is ignorant of all of this and doesn't
speak Italian, then the first one will understand the aria much better than the
second one. And while the second person will only hear pleasing (or not that
pleasing) harmonies and melodies, the first one will attach to this a whole
story, filled with emotions and significance - all of which will be lost to the
second one. Or, if you want a more simple example, if you watch a soap opera on
the TV, and you don't speak the language, you'll only be able to enjoy the
superficial parts (setting, beautiful actors, etc), without understanding any
of the story.
Logically,
the person that has more background information about a piece of art will be
able to understand and evaluate it much better than the other. But even then,
the evaluation will be so complex, based on so many variables, that we could
safely say that 5 different experts may give us at least 2 or 3 different
opinions, all of them well founded.
Of
course, the simpler art doesn't require much intellectual efforts to grasp and enjoy - a disco song that has
one beat, 3 or 4 harmonies and one melody line repeated over 5 minutes is much
easier to understand and enjoy than a Stravinsky piece featuring ever-changing
and interacting rhythmic formulas, tens of different melodies and hundreds of
harmonies. That's why the music commerce today is scrambling to find and make
the simplest songs possible, so that it could sell them to the greatest number
of people possible across the globe, and art be damned.
So, what
happens is that when faced with the more advanced forms of art, people are
either unable to understand, much less enjoy or evaluate them, or they simply
decide to follow the lead of the experts in doing so. After all, if the famous
expert X says this performance sucked, than it must have - 'He's so much more
knowledgeable than me'! As a result, the qualitative evaluation of the more
advanced art forms of art is left in the hands of very few people that are
qualified to understand them.
The
point is: NONE OF THIS SHOULD MATTER! All people, experts or not, should enjoy
art differently, according to their experience and background, no strings
attached. But it DOES matters, and the only reason why it matters is exactly for
competition's sake - if you want competition, you have to come up with a way to
evaluate performance and elect a winner, otherwise there isn't competition.
But what
about corruption? If there's one rule in democracy, it's that the fewer people
make the decisions, the greater the risk of corruption, right? So why should it
be different in the world of art? If the aforementioned expert X has for
example been paid to evaluate a performance as poor, or if he simply happens to
hate the performer? There he goes trashing the performance, and everyone follows
his lead. And it doesn't matter anymore if the performance was actually bad, or
if this was purely a political trick - because of the unconditional reactions
taught to us by the system, the damage has been done, the word spreads, the 'unlikes'
on YouTube pile up, and the unfortunate performer sees his image go down in the
drags. All because of the opinion of one expert.
Well, of
course, there are certain margins for evaluation: if a pianist can't play half
the notes of the piece right, then he certainly sucks. If a ballet dancer moves
like a wooden doll, then he sucks. If a painting has two colors only, then it
might suck. Although in contemporary art you can't even depend on that anymore
- some composers write pieces where there are no definite notes; some
choreographers make the dancers dance exactly like wooden dolls to make a
point, etc.- there are endless permutations of art expressions possible, after
all. How do you know the 'poor' performance you just saw wasn't actually the
very intention of the author?
That's
why it is impossible to rate art the way we rate sports, or industrial
performance, or the price of an apartment. Or at any rate, it's impossible to
rate it fairly. There are no quantitative measurements to be applied, and the
qualitative measurements depend on personal opinions based on so many factors
as to make fair evaluation impossible. And if it's impossible to rate
something, then competing about it also becomes impossible!
Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut............................................................................
As I
said in the opening sentence of this essay, we live in a 'competitive' world.
If they can introduce competition in art, then why not do it? It all becomes so
much more interesting, if you pit 20 - 30 artists against each other, and watch
each one trying to come on top. Oh, the tension, the passions, the blood!
And
because fair evaluation is virtually impossible, the outcome of these
competitions serves purposes entirely different than the ones stated:
1. The winner gains fame. Or, in fact, money - at the end, it all comes around to a cash prize and money.
The more clicks you have on your YouTube video, the more it is worth for
advertisers and such. The more competitions you have won, the more you'll
receive offers for performances.
2. Someone gets on top, be it a competitor, or one of
the judges, whose favorite won. It is a sad, sad and well-known (although well
concealed) fact that in deciding who's to win a competition, the members of the
jury fight between themselves as much as they evaluate performances. The winner
wins prestige, and prestige means more students in the future, more fame, more
respect in the respective circles, etc. The sad truth is: there are no less
deals in art then in politics.
3. The organizers win renown, the place of the event wins
trade and fame, etc. This is well-known for sports, of course, or for political
events, but it is valid for art events as well.
Of
course, we can say that it's only a part of the game, a more 'fun' side of the
art - as an artist, you don't need to go to competitions if you don't want to.
Just produce your art and let people enjoy it. Or, as an art 'consumer' (yeah!
such a fashionable word!), you don't need to pay attention to charts and 'likes'.
Unfortunately,
competition in the arts and the inertia it has created has made such attitude
impossible. A whole system has been created, where artists, producers and media
are all tied together in an unbreakable bond. The artist has to win a
competition of some sort to get the producer's interest, without which he'll
never appear on the media (or concert halls/theater stages) to reach the
public. If the artist tries to skip the first step (competing), then regardless
of his skill and talent, the producers and the media will simply ignore
him/her, so the public will never know of his/her art and be able to enjoy it.
This is especially true in the so-called higher level performing arts, like
classical music, theater and ballet, but you could also notice it in pop music,
cinema and even painting and sculpture - the most 'absolute' arts.
The
truth is that as many other things in life, art has been completely derailed
into a narrow hole, where it remains under the strict control of the powers of
the day, to be used as means of control. Where does the true purpose of art fit
into this whole scheme? The joy and entertainment that art is supposed to
provide everyone? It all turned into business, just like about everything else
in today's 'modern' life.
In the
next article, I will discuss a bit more extensively the damage that competition
does to art in general, and to classical music specifically.