Competition ?

[MrGongGong]

(Probably best to put it here to start with ? )

Following on from a comment on the Rest is Noise thread about how i

It's a competitive world being a composer.

I was wondering how we got into this state (if we are in one ?) where being "competitive" is seen as the solution to more or less everything

Education and Health and Energy generation spring to mind as current examples where maybe a bit more of a collaborative approach would be useful.

When folks are at school it's drummed into them that somehow they always have to "compete" regardless of the context (it's useful if you are playing football but probably not if you are playing Brahms)...... should we blame the Tories ?
or is the aim of every composer to wipe out the "opposition" ?
I'm not sure that people who know about evolutionary biology think that the aim is always to eliminate potential competitors ...... and there are many examples of collaboration as a successful strategy.......

Any thoughts ?

[ahinton]

(Probably best to put it here to start with ? )

Following on from a comment on the Rest is Noise thread about how i


I was wondering how we got into this state (if we are in one ?) where being "competitive" is seen as the solution to more or less everything

Education and Health and Energy generation spring to mind as current examples where maybe a bit more of a collaborative approach would be useful.

When folks are at school it's drummed into them that somehow they always have to "compete" regardless of the context (it's useful if you are playing football but probably not if you are playing Brahms)...... should we blame the Tories ?
or is the aim of every composer to wipe out the "opposition" ?
I'm not sure that people who know about evolutionary biology think that the aim is always to eliminate potential competitors ...... and there are many examples of collaboration as a successful strategy.......

Any thoughts ?

I am at least as aware and despairing of this kind of thing as you evidently are. Composition competitions, just like singing, instrumental and conducting ones. have been fostering this kind of thing internationally for years. NO, I don;t blame the Tories, not even those of the Eden / MacMillan / Hume era, for the Tchaikovsky competition as won in the early 1960s jointly by Ogdon and Ashkenazy. OK these kinds of even can launch caeers and not only those of the winners, but it seems to me that the spirit of it is plainly wrong-headed.

The only "competitiveness" in the world of composition seems to me to be one of "competing" for commissions, royalties et al, but is that really "competition" as it is generally understood?

Commenting on what he felt to have been one of his best performances, the organist Kevin Bowyer once said that he'd like to be able to play as well as that, implying that he might try to "compete" with himself to become so; says it all, perhaps...

[teamsaint]

The best football teams cooperate better than the bad ones. Any rubbish team can compete, like my old pub team.

Its a simple part of the divide and rule system.
I work in sales in a "competitive environment", but most of our discussions about doing better are about how we can work better, amongst ourselves, with our customers etc.
We seldom talk about the competition.

.

[MrGongGong]

The only "competitiveness" in the world of composition seems to me to be one of "competing" for commissions, royalties et al, but is that really "competition" as it is generally understood?

When done well (and what that means is a debate in itself ) people can be encouraged by things which appear to be straightforward "competitions" but it's a tricky thing to pull off. I was always a great fan of the Expo festivals that Sonic Arts Network used to run , anyone could come and present their work so you would get a 16 year old playing with a heap of guitar pedals in the same gig as a professor of electroacoustic composition.

CERN also springs to mind............

[teamsaint]

To return to our Basildon friends, its about getting the balance right.


The balance is hopelessly out in our society. Cooperation should be the thing we turn to first.

[jean]

The best football teams cooperate better than the bad ones. Any rubbish team can compete, like my old pub team...

I don't know much about football, but I'd have thought that any football team that decided to cooperate with the team they were playing against would be bound to lose.

[teamsaint]

I don't know much about football, but I'd have thought that any football team that decided to cooperate with the team they were playing against would be bound to lose.

depends on how they placed their bets....

[jean]

I was wondering how we got into this state (if we are in one ?) where being "competitive" is seen as the solution to more or less everything

If there's a limited amount to be had of whatever it is you want, then the situation you're in is competitive, even if your own behaviour isn't.

[jean]

depends on how they placed their bets....

Exactly. And trying to lose is illegal, isn't it?

[MrGongGong]

If there's a limited amount to be had of whatever it is you want, then the situation you're in is competitive, even if your own behaviour isn't.

Sometimes if we all have a little less it means that everyone can have something....... which seems a better strategy than the one usually adopted.

[jean]

How does that work if you are a composer and you would like your work to be performed?

[MrGongGong]

How does that work if you are a composer and you would like your work to be performed?

You organise it yourself
You maybe think about the scale of what you want to write in relation to what forces are likely to be available
You maybe try to encourage more people to commission music
You suggest that instead of an ensemble commissioning a 40 minute work from one person they commission 4 x10 minute pieces from different composers
You try to avoid killing other composers in the hope that you get their gigs !

[Richard Barrett]

Indeed, MrGG. The situation is in no way improved by people behaving in competitive (= mutually antagonistic) ways. I can't help but compare the competitiveness of so many composers of notated music with the lack of competiveness (despite the far more limited institutional support) among people involved in free improvisation.

[jean]

But however much you put into practice these admirable behaviours, the situation you are in is reasonably described as competitive, since not everyone's work is going to be performed.

I am trying to point out that the word is used is different ways according as it's applied to the individual and to the context.

[ahinton]

I don't know much about football, but I'd have thought that any football team that decided to cooperate with the team they were playing against would be bound to lose.

Sure (subjecxt to TS's #7, though!), but the purpose of the mere presence of a competitive element in team sport is hardly to set some kind of example to the world of composition, is it? Well, maybe in the opening movement of Elliott Carter's Symphonia: Sum Fluxæ Pretium Spei, which he once likened to a soccer match, but not in general terms...