The High Cost of Perfection

Growing up in Fairbanks, Alaska I wasn't part of any marching band. Well, I was in a very "Alaskan" sort of way. I can't recall that we ever went onto the field except to stand there and play. Most of my memories of football revolve around shivering in the stands wondering when I could back into my warm car. My most vivid memory of actually "marching" was in the annual Fur Rendezvous Parade. It's the celebration that ends with the start of the Iditarod and, oddly enough, is in March. Imagine marching a four mile parade route at 25 degrees. Without a doubt, that musical experience sent shivers through my body.

You can imagine my surprise when I came to Texas and experienced the deadly seriousness of marching competitions. Perfection on the field is not something to be hoped for or to be wished for; it is expected. I'll admit that seeing a group of 200+ individuals marching with precision is a wonder to behold. I wouldn't rank it up there with Mahler's Second Symphony, but it's a distant third or fourth. The difference between a professional orchestra playing Mahler and a high school band playing Sousa is that professionals are professionals and high school musicians are children.

"Having the time of our lives."
3rd Quarter Friday Nights

For better or for worse, competitions are the benchmark by which we evaluate our music programs, our success at teaching, our students at mastering a difficult piece of music, and how we're doing professionally compared to our peers. In my experience with competitions in Texas, if you do not receive a contest rating of a I or a II, something's up. Like every other aspect of competitive life, winning or securing the highest ratings is a primary motivator for many children and adults alike.

As a testament to success, being awarded "Sweepstakes" for your marching band or concert band or choir or orchestra is like winning the Triple Crown of Texas public school music competitions. That is the ultimate goal and with one word, "Sweepstakes," you know you're doing well, your ensemble is doing well, and that you can count yourself among the musical elite of public school music directors. So, if that is the goal or the end, then the means by which we get there are of limited importance. After all, no one wants to see chaos on a football field. Marching is about order and precision. I get that.

And yet, I have to ask "At what cost?" We're talking about children and not about professionals. Children are in school to learn, ostensibly, from their mistakes. However, what if their mistakes warrant some form of punishment? Okay, I get that as well. There must be consequences. And, what if the punishment is open to the public and not in the privacy and security of the school building? Here I have some concerns not only for the child but also for music education in general.

A few weeks ago I visited an good friend in the Dallas area whose son is in a high school marching band. Towards the end of October all the bands in the state will perform and compete in the annual marching band contests. As we chatted about her son's involvement in the band program my friend told me that the head band director requires every band student to memorize their music. Okay, fair enough. Then she told that the punishment for not doing this is to stand with your back to the field going over the music you hadn't memorized at the next football game. Well, now I'm beginning to feel at bit uneasy about the situation, especially when I found out that they stand there for the entire third quarter while those who have passed this hurdle are allowed to take a break during and share food and laughter with their friends. She told me that her son said to her "I'm never going to have that happen to me." He was one of the first students to pass off his music.

I wonder...

• Was he motivated by joy for making music or fear of being seen as one of the losers in public?
• Is fear and ridicule the best way to advocate for the joy of actively making music when you're 43?

There is a lot of pressure that goes with high-stakes occupations, be it a Superintendent, a Principal, a coach, or an ensemble director. Excellence, and not mediocrity, is the watch word. I get that. However, think and reflect; at what cost do we badger and bully children in our musical ensembles to excel? To my knowledge ridicule is not one of the three Rs.

Might the child who has difficulty memorizing anything, let alone music, and, as a consequence is punished for it, grow up to sit on a school board deciding the fate of fine arts education? Are short term gains worth the long term costs to music and music education in our society?

Who Will Buy?

The second act of Oliver opens with a wonderful scene of street vendors hawking their wares as the orphan Oliver looks on. The scene is joyous and raises the question “who can buy the wonder and joy of this bright morning?” Well, no one. The joy of that scene and that moment in Oliver’s life must be experienced. No amount of money can buy his feeling and I wonder if we sell ourselves and our art short and send a wrong message to our students when pull out our pocketbook or wallet instead of pulling out a pencil and paper?

The other day I met Monica, a student of mine, in front of our local music store. I was headed inside to buy a guitar strap and she had just come out with some piano music. As we chatted I asked her about the music she bought and found out that, in addition to studying the French horn, she also taught piano lessons. Monica showed me the Halloween pieces she was going to assign her student, Hazel. Since the composer’s name was also Hazel, Monica was excited to see the joy on the child’s face when she read her name on the music. As I recall, the composition looked similar to this:

Monica is bright, as are all my students. So I asked her

“Could you have written a short Halloween piece for Hazel that is similar to this?”
“Probably.”
"How long would it have taken you to compose it?"
"Not long."
“Well I wonder how she might feel if, instead of saying ‘Here, I bought this for you,’ you said ‘Hazel, here’s your Halloween piece; I wrote it just for you’?"

In today’s consumer driven economy, buying things can be the easy way out. Many times it’s the best we can do. However, those that have the skill set to notate melodies, harmonies, and rhythms can bypass the somewhat impersonal act of thumbing through several dozen pieces of sheet music, for example, buying one and handing it to a student.

I wonder: Do the children for whom we buy all this music receive it as casually as they do a 'kids meal toy?' Is it something to be discarded once they’ve moved on to something else? How much more personally meaningful and musically meaningful might it be for the student if her piano teacher or flute teacher or voice teacher wrote something “just for her” and no one else?

Music is a gift, our gift. We did not pay for it. We were blessed with it. Shouldn’t we give to others the best part of our musicianship, our creative mind? The music that will mean the most to Hazel, I beleive, is that which was created in a musical relationship with Monica. Long after Hazel’s Halloween song has faded from Monica’s memory, Hazel may still be heard playing it for her grand children.

Music should last a lifetime.

Is the Choice Music?

Is seems that those in music education and those who advocate for the musical arts in our culture are always complaining about the general public's apathy towards participation in music. After all, music is an enjoyable part of our lives, why can't the rest of the country get on the band wagon? Could it be that the general public has already been on the band wagon and took the first chance it could to jump off? If music is a band wagon, then getting on the wagon represents a choice. Likewise, deciding to jump off is also a choice. Do we need to reconsider musical participation from the standpoint of choice?

From where does music emanate? Is it external or internal? Is it an external action or an internal choice? Without choice there is no action. Without action there is no voice, only silence. Action is not a given; it is a choice. The choice we all make is whether or not to participate in music or to make music. It is the choices that people ultimately make about music in their lives that are a testament to our efficacy as musicians who serve our art. Consider my adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s famous soliloquies:

Sir Laurence Olivier
as Hamlet

      To choose or not to choose: that is the question:
      Whether ‘tis nobler in their minds to suffer
      The slings and arrows of short-lived perfection
      Or to walk away from a sea of troubles,
      And through distance end them? To make music,
      No more; and by this say they end
      The heart-ache and the thousand emotional shocks
      That soul is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
      Devoutly to be wish’d. To make music, no more.




Choose Music and You're Saddled with Perfection 

Music is akin to sport and sport is akin to dance or theater. All of these require a demonstration of competence or excellence. In sport we judge performances against a norm. On any given day the best team will have a superior performance and will win that competition. Even if the two worst teams competed against one another, one of them will win. However, the standard for evaluating the performing arts is not a norm but a criterion. Excellence is the standard in the arts. Winning is the standard in sports. Therefore, if four mediocre baseball teams compete, one of them will eventually win. However, if four musical ensembles present mediocre performances, they all lose in their quest for excellence. For you see, when we compete against fallible humans, there is a good chance we will win. But when we compare our performances against a perfect art, eventually,we all lose.

There is nothing inherently wrong with striving for excellence. Pushing ourselves to perform better than we have ever performed has many benefits, which include persistence, patience, and dogged determination, to name a few. And yet, when striving for a personal best is equated with perfection, the chances of turning someone away from every wanting anything to do with music increase dramatically. And because involvement in music in secondary school and throughout a lifetime is a choice, there is an excellent chance that the choice will be to avoid the emotional pain of musical participation at all cost; to make music, no more.

 A Different Road to Follow, A Path Less Traveled

Whether anyone embraces the notion that a rich and varied life should include musical action will depend on many things. Realistically, most of the things that will influence and impinge on musical decisions are out of our control. And yet, to throw our hands in the air and wash them of any responsibility for the musical future of our culture is untenable. We can make a difference if we choose to think about things differently. The central message here is choice—theirs and ours. A road ahead for us is to use “choice” as our watchword. Since we can’t force anyone to participate or make music, it makes sense that we musically educate others about the choices that can be made, and that they can choose to make, about music.

It’s a choice as to the types and styles of music we listen to, move to, or participate in making. You can get through life quite easily without interacting with music. Therefore, from an early age, children need to know that they can make decisions about the music they actively participate in. Music is about choice. A lifetime of active musical involvement is not a given; it’s a choice. The question that we must ask ourselves each and every day is “Will the music they make today make it more likely or less likely that they will choose to participate in music when they are 43?”

An Education by Choice

In the world of music, choices are neither black nor white. The appropriateness of a choice depends on many different things, such as style, context, and musical resources, to name a few. Educating students to make more appropriate choices is a matter of degree or successive approximation. Over time, and with support and guidance, students’ choices will gradually adhere to the standards of a particular style of music. However, they must recognize that 1) they are making choices, 2) they control the music that they make, and, in the end analysis, 3) they are responsible for the music that comes from their minds and through their bodies.

Active participation in music is a choice we can only make for ourselves. Choice is a personal decision. If we hope to alter the choices the public makes about music, might we want to consider limiting the number of musical choices we make for them when they are in our classes? Perhaps allowing students to make choices throughout their music education will inspire them to participate in music for the rest of their lives.