I was listening to an interview with Joan Ryan, a sports journalist who wrote Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters, and this his quote from the interview stopped me in my tracks: “When a judge’s score decides who wins or loses, perfection becomes the goal.” If you are in the classical music world, you know that perfectionism is a huge issue. The culture values “perfect”, yet it is never attainable. How does maladaptive perfectionism present in classical music?
Being overly critical of your performances, to the point where you can’t objectively evaluate your work
Working/practicing excessively in order to be “perfect”
Setting excessively high standards for performance (if you don’t sound like a Deutsche Grammaphone recording artist, you suck)
Experiencing high levels of anxiety because you believe that you won’t belong/will be shunned if you don’t play well enough.
Believing that bad playing=bad person, good playing=good person
Debilitating anxiety brought on by the fear of making mistakes in lessons, master class, or public
Think back to your music education. From the very beginning there were all region orchestra auditions, seating auditions, all-county orchestra auditions, all-state auditions, college auditions, and eventually, professional orchestra auditions. It seems strange to think about “winning” music. But, we have been ranked since the very beginning, and our self-worth often becomes tied to our placement. “When the judge’s score determines who wins, perfectionism becomes the goal.” The only thing we learn to focus on is the lack of mistakes. All of this in the pursuit of belonging. It is a primal need, and the fear of not being good enough to belong is real. We hustle to do whatever it takes (playing through physical pain, taking verbally abusive feedback from teachers focused on high performance results, playing it safe so that we don’t “mess up”, thus never reaching our potential as whole individuals), so that we will belong and be worthy.
I was talking about the Joan Ryan quote with some orchestra colleagues, and we all agreed that we do need a high level of “perfection” in order to be together or syncronized. But then I thought, we need precision, but not perfection. We all agreed that we are happy to rehearse and work hard to get the orchestra playing well together, but in the interest of the music, not perfection. I’ve worked with conductors who focused on perfection, and the culture often felt somewhat punitive. It did not take the humanity of the musicians into account. (ok, granted, there is a spectrum…)
To me, precision is something we musicians are happy to work for. Perfection has such bad connotations and baggage, often because we have felt, in our bones, the deep fatigue and anguish that comes from the hustle of trying to appear perfect.
This brings me to another quote I was introduced to recently that speaks to precision vs perfection:
“It is possible to recover from work. But it is impossible to recover from the pressure to perform.” Byung-Chul Han
We’re not afraid of hard work. In fact, I’d say most of us enjoy the challenge. But, we can’t thrive under the constant pressure of trying to be perfect. Valuing perfection above all becomes a cage.
The next time you find your inner perfectionist kick in, can you trust the precision that you’ve practiced, thus freeing you up to enter into the process of connecting with yourself and the music, creating a richer and more fulfilling experience? It’s a practice.