Klarinet Archive - Posting 000285.txt from 2004/04

From: "Karl Krelove" <karlkrelove@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Competitions and Juries
Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 23:08:48 -0400

I think there's a great deal of insight in both posts. I certainly can't
speak for Tony Pay, but I don't think he and Lelia are talking about the
same kind of performance or performer. Certainly, the rush for any available
hole in the floor will prevent a truly panicked player from hearing what the
judges have to say, and if the performance was *really* that poor, the
judges are probably trying their hardest to find something gracefully
constructive to say instead of "that really sucked!" or "why are you here?"
But there are also the nearly victorious, the runners-up, those who played
respectably, even well, but were judged not as good as the winner. I have
sat as audition judge at any number of regional school competitions (not the
playing level Tony was talking about, either, but the point is the same, I
think), and often the top three or four players were musically and
technically pretty well equal. What makes the difference between 1st and 2nd
through 4th place may be very minute details that one takes care of better
than the others, or it may be a very subjective reaction to the players'
approaches to the musical task at hand. Whatever the difference(s), I doubt
if any feedback from the judges to the contestants, whether in the form of
subscores or verbal comments, is very often taken constructively.

Karl Krelove

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lelia Loban [mailto:lelialoban@-----.net]
> Sent: Sunday, April 18, 2004 10:27 PM
> To: klarinet@-----.org
> Subject: [kl] Competitions and Juries
>
>
>
> Tony Pay wrote,
> >Just to say something about this topic from
> >the point of view of the jury member, which
> >I have quite often been:
> >
> >It's very, very difficult for an unsuccessful competitor
> >to hear usefully anything you say to them afterwards
> >about their performance. I'd say that's because in that
> >particular situation, they hold your criticism not as
> >*something they might improve in their playing* -- as
> >they would in a lesson -- but as *the reason why they
> >weren't successful*.
> >
> >And then it's so tempting for them to say: the only
> >reason that that jury member could come up with for
> >why they didn't like me was X (where X is something
> >fairly trivial).
>
> All of that rings true (and reminds me of similar scenes at forensics
> meets), but, based on my own experiences with performance anxiety, I think
> there's another reason why many music competitors fail to hear what judges
> say, and it isn't defensiveness, but the opposite: shock, shame
> and urgent
> desire to get out of there, away from all those *staring eyes*, coupled
> with an equally urgent desire to conceal this reaction for fear of looking
> like even more of a loser. In such cases, the student may look stoical,
> bored or even arrogant, but can't hear anything except his or her own
> self-assessment that drowns out any competing soundtrack from the judges.
> In the student's mind, they might as well be saying, "You just
> made a total
> fool of yourself in public, and nothing we say here will help you improve,
> because you're a no-talent jerk and you're wasting your time and ours."
>
> Such a student can't *respond* to criticism. The student simply wants to
> stutter out anything that sounds half-plausible -- anything that will
> satisfy the judges enough to *end* the discussion. All this
> student really
> wants is permission to disappear, preferably straight through the
> floor. I
> think it may be difficult for a successful musician (who experiences
> heightened tension or alertness, but not destructive panic) to comprehend
> that someone with serious stage fright is in no condition to learn
> *anything* -- not there and not then, anyway.
>

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