"The Quest for Perfection Is Stunting Our Society"

[GeorgeH]

Interesting short opinion piece from Jonathan Biss, a concert pianist. Worth reading the whole piece (link below).

Excerpt:

"Classical musicians are not trained to talk to God. We are trained not to make mistakes.

There are many reasons for this. Few of today’s classical music performers have written music; ideally we strive to be creative in our interpretive work, but primary creation is a thing we’ve only studied, not experienced. That can lead to paralysis. If you don’t understand how something is made, you fear you might deface it merely by engaging with it.

The problem is made worse by the vast recorded history that precedes us. Marketers like to use the word “definitive” to describe venerated recordings, turning them into part of the canon, as much as the pieces themselves are canonical. For young musicians, it is tempting to sidestep the complicated work of discovering and internalizing these works, blood and guts and all. It’s simpler to declare a specific performance sacrosanct and aim to reproduce it."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/opinion/pianist-music-performance-perfection.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

[matesic]

This reads to me like a musician having a breakdown.

"Mastery is a prerequisite if one is to communicate the essence of a piece of music. ". But then "Perfection is stagnation."  

"The point of a concert is for performer and audience to share something genuine and unrepeatable." I'd settle for "enjoyable".

"We erred often but we sought the truth and, at times, we found it. Maybe we talked to God." Oh purrlease.

[Altgeiger]

2 hours ago, matesic said:

This reads to me like a musician having a breakdown.

"Mastery is a prerequisite if one is to communicate the essence of a piece of music. ". But then "Perfection is stagnation."  

"The point of a concert is for performer and audience to share something genuine and unrepeatable." I'd settle for "enjoyable".

"We erred often but we sought the truth and, at times, we found it. Maybe we talked to God." Oh purrlease.

This reads to me like a musician who gets the point of performing. I think your cynical response to it is sad. Sure, a section string player in an orchestra should mostly strive for perfection over transcendence, but if a soloist or chamber musician isn't trying to create something greater than "I played exactly what I planned," they're missing the point. I have never played perfectly even once, but a few times I have talked with God on stage, and the audience noticed.

[Jacobus Drainer]

6 minutes ago, Altgeiger said:

I have talked with God on stage, and the audience noticed.

I bet they did!

[rickpmills]

Cynicism, atheism. Two curses of modern society.

[Jacobus Drainer]

^And extravagance beyond your means.

[matesic]

My response wasn't at all cynical. This man seems to be undergoing a musical crisis. 

[Altgeiger]

6 hours ago, matesic said:

We erred often but we sought the truth and, at times, we found it. Maybe we talked to God." Oh purrlease.

This may not be cynicism, but it's sarcastically dismissive of someone expressing their idea of successful artistic expression. I wonder what cynicism would look like!

[matesic]

Fair enough. I've been there too and have no need for that hypothesis. Isn't that what a footballer feels when his bicycle kick hits the back of the net?

[Jacobus Drainer]

10 hours ago, Altgeiger said:

I wonder what cynicism would look like!

A hall of mirrors?

A look at his wikipedia entry says he's been open about his mental health issues.  Look at references 53 and 54 in particular.  You'll need to use the Wayback Machine to read 53.  It's always possible he's adopted this as his performance brand, madman as modern romantic symbol.  Now that's cynical!

Regarding the article, the right attitude and the one most people seem to have, is to sound perfect occasionally (talking to god?), awful most of the time, with a high enough threshold for awful that the audience can't hear it.  Always striving for more of the first case.  The real modern problem of perfection doesn't involve performance at all but rather technology that creates note perfection out of a human's high level awful.  I guess the measure of ability to promote your artist in a competitive environment is by something objective you can point to, even if fake.  Striving for perfection but accepting high-level less than perfection like a normal person is the way to go

[ctanzio]

Lack of skepticism, believing in things without evidence. Two curses of both modern and ancient society.

And here is a third: believing in things despite evidence to the contrary.

Musical perfection is a standard that is relative to the mind listening to it. There can never be an absolute standard until there is one mind left to experience it. Whenever I see something described as "perfection", I take the description as hyperbole or metaphorical.

[GeorgeH]

I am privileged to hear some of the best young classical string players in the world each summer at the Perlman Music Program (PMP). Most of these young people perform extremely difficult repertoire with phenomenal dexterity and skill. A few can even convey the deep emotional meaning in their pieces with a maturity that seems decades beyond their age. That ability is rare, and it goes far beyond playing the notes on a fine instrument with superb technique and tone.

Like modern Olympic athletes, the physical abilities and training for top musicians have advanced dramatically over the past century. If live musical performances could be scored the way Olympic performances are, I’m convinced we’d be seeing “record-breaking” achievements. Today’s musicians are trained to deliver near-perfect performances; so if scores existed, the margins separating the very best would be fractions of a point.

And yet, while these young musicians excel at playing the music composed by others, most of them are frightened and intimidated when asked to improvise. Each summer, PMP brings in a quartet coach to teach newer works that include improvisational sections, and many players are openly nervous about it. But by the performance time, most of them manage to create their improvised parts beautifully and they’re proud of having stepped into unfamiliar territory.

Returning to the article, John Coltrane was known for his high-intensity music he described as “the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being.” I think this is what Patti Smith was getting at. One cannot improvise freely without first overcoming the fear of making mistakes. As Jonathan Biss said the fear of making mistakes leads to paralysis.

I don’t believe that “technical mastery” is a prerequisite for communicating the essence of a piece of music. Across many genres, there are musicians who lack total technical command of their instrument but can fully communicate the emotional essence of a piece. And, conversely, there are players with dazzling technical mastery who don't manage to connect the audience with the emotional core of the music they are performing.

[crazy jane]

Hey George, 

My husband and I had the good fortune to attend the Banff String Quartet Competition this year. It's an event I have followed since the Colorado String Quartet won the first Banff Competition in the early 1980's (--with a player that we had both grown up with in youth orchestras). Since then we  have frequently seen/heard "under the sun the race not to the swift nor the battle to the strong"--rather, it was often the unexpected outcome, the dark horse, who won the prize and startled the audiences with their intense, personal, and direct musical communication.

This year featured remarkable performances by performers based in storied places such as Berlin, Paris, Salzburg, and Hong Kong. Yet the group that surprised, astonished, moved, and amused the audience with their humanity and freedom of interpretation was headquartered in Cincinnati, of all places. I cannot argue that  Poiesis strives for "perfection," whatever that is, though I have never heard Brahms done more to my liking.

I think what they do achieve is expression of a kind of truth, which is pretty rare.

 

[Altgeiger]

15 hours ago, ctanzio said:

believing in things without evidence

I can't even prove that musical beauty exists, or that any two people mean the same thing when they talk about their experience of it. Seems silly to believe in such a thing. Honestly, the Mona Lisa is just smudge marks on some cloth. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; I need objective evidence!

[matesic]

12 hours ago, crazy jane said:

I think what they do achieve is expression of a kind of truth, which is pretty rare.

In my music book "truth", even a "kind of truth", is a chimaera like "perfection".  I see music as being antithetical to science; no perfection, no truth, no objectivity, just irrational emotion. That's what performers should strive to stimulate in others by demonstrating in themselves. If you don't feel it, don't perform it.

[Rue]

Nothing should be, or can be, "perfect". This obsession with achieving "perfection" is flawed thinking and dangerous.

I also think it ruins performances and art that are beautiful as they are, because the audience is more concerned about criticizing than enjoying.

[Violadamore]

Biss is overthinking the issues.  It's a job, and it ain't your first rodeo.  Just approach your gig professionally, show up on time, hope the audience won't throw anything, and insist on union rates.  

 

“Farewell, Romance!”  -Rudyard Kipling     

[Jacobus Drainer]

7 hours ago, matesic said:

I see music as being antithetical to science; no perfection, no truth, no objectivity, just irrational emotion.

It might be antithetical to the "follow the science" view of science.  Didn't the sun used to go around the earth? 

You never perfected a piece, or at least a passage?  If it affected somebody, didn't it embody some truth?  Did you use irrationality to get it to that level?  Was it not an objective success?

[Violadamore]

9 hours ago, matesic said:

In my music book "truth", even a "kind of truth", is a chimaera like "perfection".  I see music as being antithetical to science; no perfection, no truth, no objectivity, just irrational emotion. That's what performers should strive to stimulate in others by demonstrating in themselves. If you don't feel it, don't perform it.

Music, and art in general, is as much of a discipline as science.  If your technique isn't up to professional standards, you're selling damaged goods to begin with.  I've read a number of scientific papers that were just empty noise, and heard a lot of music that resembled those papers.  

[GeorgeH]

1 hour ago, Violadamore said:

If your technique isn't up to professional standards, you're selling damaged goods to begin with.

Nope. 

[Rue]

Yup. Lots of empty noise...

[matesic]

Unfortunately the term "truth" has been corrupted to mean what a person believes to be true. I stick with "that which is in accordance with fact or reality". Science is about establishing fact but sadly most of the research claiming to be "science" now seems to be about persuasion rather than proof. Musicality operates in a different sphere of human cognition, owing nothing to discipline, technique, mastery or perfection. Just listen to The Fall or maybe rap, I don't know about that.

[Jacobus Drainer]

1 hour ago, matesic said:

Unfortunately the term "truth" has been corrupted to mean what a person believes to be true. I stick with "that which is in accordance with fact or reality".

Yes you do!  I challenge you to tell me a fact, and I will refute it.  If it's something I don't understand at all, then I'll just say prove it isn't simulated.  OTOH, the woman who just free climbed the mountain in Yosemite, regardless of anything else the experience of emotion was reality.  Coincidentally or not she owes being able to do it to discipline, technique, mastery, etc.  We had this conversation so many times back in college...

[crazy jane]

Delight In Disorder by Robert Herrick Next

A sweet disorder in the dress Kindles in clothes a wantonness: A lawn about the shoulders thrown Into a fine distraction; An erring lace, which here and there Enthralls the crimson stomacher; A cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbands to flow confusedly; A winning wave (deserving note) In the tempestuous petticoat; A careless shoe-string, in whose tie I see a wild civility; Do more bewitch me, than when art Is too precise in every part.

 

[Violadamore]

9 hours ago, GeorgeH said:

Nope. 

The author of the article we are talking about is a professional musician, apparently addressing other professional musicians more than he is the public, and my comments are directed mostly at that community as well.  If you're getting paid for what you're doing, and particularly if you're a union member and demanding scale, IMHO you have a responsibility to perform to a professional standard for the genre you're in.