Posts tagged life

I’ve been really enjoying watching the Olympics this year.  I’m not a huge sports person, but I get so into it!  It’s so cool to me to see people from all different countries coming together for (mostly) friendly competition.  It’s inspiring to watch all the people that have worked incredibly hard, followed a dream, and dedicated their life to being there.  As a musician, I really relate to all of that.

Also as a musician, I can’t help but compare the Olympics and the sports world in general to the music world, specifically “classical” music.  Inevitably the question I have is this: Why isn’t classical music as important to our culture as sports?  

There are “big” national and international music competitions like the Tchaikovsky, Rostropovich, and Fischoff competitions, to name a few.  Some are for solo players, some for chamber groups, etc.  But pretty much only musicians know about them.  They’re certainly not televised.  Why aren’t big competitions and concerts nationally televised on NBC?  Why doesn’t the President call up the winners of the Tchaikovsky competition to congratulate them?  Why don’t little middleschoolers squeal over how they follow on Twitter that new, young and upcoming violinist who just won the Queen Elizabeth Competition?  

None of this is to downplay sports.  Sports are fun, admirable, and important to our culture—and like I said, I love the Olympics.  I just wonder why music isn’t such a central part of our American and world culture the way sports is.  Yes, the Olympics are super old and all that.  But music, like sports, has been a huge (and I would argue vital) part of human life since the beginning of time.  And sure, I guess depending on how you define “classical music,” even Baroque music isn’t as old as those ancient Greeks chucking stone frisbees in the first games.  But age is not really the issue that I see.  I can’t even imagine human life without sports or art, in any time period.  

Why isn’t artistic beauty, passion, emotion, and expression as important and exciting to the majority of our culture as muscles, physical agility and skill are?  I see sports and music as parallel in a lot of ways.  They share incredible commitment, vision, inspiration, motivation, mental training, physical training and agility, competition, and self expression, to name a few aspects.  Music and sports are simply two different directions a human being channels those things.  

So yes, as I watch Olympic athletes and teams do great things for the US on TV, I watch with great admiration, but probably also a little jealousy.  I can’t imagine the honor of representing your country by performing in front of the entire world like they do.  No, I’m not trying to claim that I would be qualified to compete in a “classical music Olympics” if there was one. The true joy of playing music comes not in beating thousands of people for a gold medal but in making an emotional/musical/intellectual/spiritual connection with an audience, even if the audience is just one old lady.  But it would sure be nice if the classical music world could enjoy the Olympic attention, appreciation, and honor that the athletic world receives.