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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000030.txt from 2005/01

From: "Frank Jordan" <frank@-----.com>
Subj: [DR-L] Why do musicians hate themselves??
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 15:11:20 -0500

=20
Hi all,

Last night, my roommate (a very talented clarinetist) and I
participated in a chamber concert for our local Philharmonic, performing
the Richard Strauss Suite in Bb for 13 winds. The group was a mixture
of semi professional and purely amateur performers, and overall went
very well (certainly one of the high points of the program)

The problem is that, when the concert was over, and we were all in the
reception, my roommate came to me almost in tears telling me he ruined
the whole performance, that he wanted to quit the clarinet, etc. Turns
out his reed was slightly misaligned, and he couldn't get the full tone
he wanted in the first movement. Keep in mind, the conductor, members
of the audience are coming up to us and congratulating us, telling us
how wonderful the concert was, telling us things they liked about the
performance. I knew the performance had some glitches, and in my
college or early "pro" days I would have probably been beating myself up
for the small mistakes ("Oh my God, I can't believe I cracked that A in
the fourth movement! I am worthless!!!"). I was thinking about past
performances (my roomie and I both are involved in a woodwind quintet
and gig together a lot) and was shocked to realize I had NEVER heard
anything positive from him after a performance. He actually shuns
praise... it makes him feel uncomfortable. In some ways, I empathize, I
can be the same way sometimes. But my roommate is the best clarinetist
I have ever known. His old college teacher still keeps a picture of him
in his office, and nine years later tells his students about the great
Matt Hanna, the one that got away (Matt went into computers full time,
partially because he flubbed an audition and couldn't handle it). I can
sometimes be hypercritical myself, in fact, because we were in charge of
recording the concert, we listened to it after we got home last night. I
noticed myself dismissing the nice moments and focusing in on the parts
that could have been better, noticing intonation issues, etc.=20

Why do we do this to ourselves?? Isn't making music supposed to be
a joyful thing? Striving for perfection is a good thing, but at what
point does it become destructive?

I am very worried about my friend. He was still upset hours after the
performance, and is still upset today. I feel his technical problems
were not very noticeable, other than he was a bit softer and thinner in
tone than I am used to hearing him. Anybody else dealing with this
problem?

Frank Jordan
Principal Bassoon
Foothills Philharmonic
Papageno Quintet - http://www.papagenoquintet.com - feel free to
listen to our sound clips!

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