New year, new competition circuit.
Prepping your students for a musical prize in 2025? If so, we have thoughts.
But…spoiler alert:
We won’t give you a definitive thumbs up or down on competitions. The “pro and anti” debate has been raging for what seems like forever, and we’re fairly certain ours won’t be the final word on the subject.
What we will offer is a small window into the benefits and drawbacks of competition: the good, the bad, and the (sometimes) ugly. Our goal is to help you reach a decision on whether competitions are a healthy option for your students, but we don’t want to sway you in either direction.
As with everything, there are positives and negatives to consider.
We’re just here to lay them out for you.
Here's our rundown of the top three pros and bottom three cons of entering your musician in a vocal or instrumental contest.
We’ll start on a positive note:
PRO: Competitions boost repertoire.
It’s a rare competition that doesn’t place some conditions on rep. Violinists might be obliged to hone their Baroque skills before applying, say. Pop singers may need to program their ballads alongside their up-tempo numbers to showcase versatility. And then, of course, there are those competitions largely dedicated to the works of one composer, as with the storied biennial International Mozart Competition or Warsaw’s prestigious Chopin Competition, devoted exclusively to the Polish master.
Whatever the repertoire requirements, competitions are a straightforward way to expand those infamous audition packets and/or get new pieces firmly under students’ belts. And, if part of your goal as a teacher is to hone musical craft across a wide range of genres, competitions can be a useful shortcut––effectively taking “nice to tackle down the line” pieces and filing them under “must learn in the next few months.” Plus, rep immersion can have the happy side effect of strengthening students’ connection to a specific style or composer. One recent high-profile example: Peabody Institute graduate Victoria Young credits her unique understanding of J.S. Bach to a series of Bach-centered competitions that forced her to study the composer’s music in vivid detail.
CON: They only capture a snapshot in time.
Much like our political polling system, music competitions can only measure for very specific markers under a very specific set of circumstances. For this reason, competitions are probably not the best judge of how talented your student is, how far they’ve come, or whether or not they perform at a higher level than their peers. Instead, these kinds of contests can only assess how well your student presents a relatively small subset of material on any given day.
And, even then, results can be debatable (more on this later).
Performance science researcher and Royal College of Music, London faculty member Dr. George Waddell warns musicians of this snapshot phenomenon, noting how difficult it is to infer “future performances [or] a wider area of performance” from a single showing. Flutist and educator Victoria Jicha echoes this sentiment, highlighting the dangers of placing too much emphasis on competition rep at the expense of overall technique. Peabody Professor of Piano Steven Spooner has similar concerns, summing up coveted competition wins as revealing “just a couple” of indicators:
“Number one, [a win] does not mean that you’re the best candidate among that group of people. It does mean you’re probably well-prepared. Number two, the jury liked you. Beyond that, I’m not sure.”
PRO: They offer opportunities for networking and exposure.
No matter what they “say” about your students, competitions put pupils in front of an audience.
Full stop.
This provides teachers and students with a virtual win-win: Novice musicians clock performance hours while simultaneously strutting their stuff before panelists who can push fledging careers to the next phase. So, whether the aim is to keep things low stakes (i.e., just practice being onstage) or something more ambitious (get heard by influential industry ears), you and your students are bound to get something out of the competition route. What’s more, simply placing in a competition sometimes affords students the chance to perform on a grander scale, as with Canada’s Banff International String Quartet Competition, in which finalists “play multiple works in their entirety [for] hundreds of adoring fans” before the winner then embarks on a series of “pre-arranged” international tours.
And if your student doesn’t place or win? There are still networking advantages to be had.
Decorated pianist Ching-Yi Lin, for example, found competitions to be a “natural opportunity” for networking with colleagues while on the circuit in 2022. Unlike one-off solo recitals, competitions are shared experiences. There’s no doubt they provide exceptional opportunities for mingling with fellow musicians, exchanging tips with experts, and putting out feelers for potential jobs. Meeting new faces and widening musical circles are part of the price of admission.
CON: They’re not 100% accessible to everyone.
Speaking of prices, however…
There are lots of factors that can put competitions logistically out of reach. Here are just a few:
- Cost – A quick overview of Musical America’s 2024 roundup for “Top Competitions” indicates most application fees hover somewhere in the $30-$150 range (even for theatre kids), with some competitions charging extra for participation in more than one category. Not every student will have enough disposable income to spend on entry fees, and, though several grants and scholarships are up for grabs, students might feel the benefits just don’t outweigh the added effort. (And grants are never guaranteed.)
- Distance – Similarly, how far students need to travel can affect total time and money spent. (You’ll note lots of the “Top Competitions” specify they won’t cover transportation expenses.) If your student is just starting out and/or has a full-time job, it’s probably best to stick with local competitions within your city, county, or state to help save on transport and cut back travel hours.
- Age Limits – Sadly, much of competition culture is built around “next generation” musicians, meaning students over 35 can find themselves disqualified before they even get their foot in the door. Studio adults who come to music later in life might have to brainstorm with you on different avenues for exposure.
- Environment – Each student’s situation is naturally different. They may have home lives, social obligations, or prior commitments (or some combination of the three) that make competing impossible. One responder to an informal LinkedIn survey from composer, educator, and pianist Dr. Sheung-Ping Lai also called out parental support as playing a role, as did a 2020 psychological study on German music students. Extrapolating from this, it’s safe to conclude students without adequate support systems may be less inclined to compete.
PRO: They can yield tremendous growth… And, as Victoria Jicha says, “Growth is learning.” Lessons learned from competitions can include:
- Mental Fortitude – No one expects students to be robots, but we’d be lying if we said music doesn’t require a lot of resilience. The “win or lose” aspect of competition, though problematic if handled inappropriately, can help train the psychological muscles necessary for a lifetime of music making and all its many slings and arrows (feedback, criticism, ungracious colleagues, etc.).
- Stress Management – Competitions are stressful. But, then again, so is performance. When students acclimate to high-stakes contest situations, they can strengthen their coping skills and become accustomed to performing under any condition. Whatever emotional tools students employ in the runup to competition (the Calm app maybe? a YouTube meditation? the 4-4-8 breathing exercise?), these methods are all transferrable, and can be used ahead of any recital or show.
- Self-Improvement – A productive way to frame competitions is to imagine students are merely competing against themselves. If each new contest is seen as an opportunity to improve on what’s come before (e.g., more precise rhythm, better command of pitch, greater evenness of phrasing), competitions become an exercise in personal development, rather than a grueling cage match that pits student against student.
CON: They’re subjective by design.
“Thanks, Captain Obvious,” we hear you saying. But you knew this con was coming. And we won’t lie: It’s a big one.
The implicit “ranking” in competitions runs antithetical to art as a whole, which is supposed to transcend all that “good, better, best” business and get at what it means to have a beating heart. And the more seasoned a student is, the harder it becomes to adjudicate them through an objective lens of right or wrong. As Dr. Waddell observes: “At some point, everyone's playing all the notes right. At some point, anything that we could hope to call objective is now met as a baseline for entry.” Yet once that baseline is established, the very nature of competition invites all sorts of human failings to creep in and skew results. Bias, politics, personal history, and more can tip the scales unfairly in an applicant’s favor––often without the judges realizing. Even worse? There’s nothing to stop panelists from picking favorites based on preferences that are downright indefensible. (The less said about Randy Jackson’s arbitrary dislike of American Idol contestants with audible vibrato, the better.)
So, the question becomes: How do you and your students want to think about music? As a method of pure expression? A superior discipline with anointed “winners” and “losers”? Or maybe a bit of both? We genuinely don’t have an answer. Our best advice? Find a musical philosophy that works for your studio. (Hint: Your philosophy can change based on the needs and motivations of each student.) As you’re well aware, music making can be a lifelong journey toward emotional truth in addition to a pursuit of excellence in achievement. Which aspect should students focus on from one day to the next?
We’ll let you be the judge.
