Could you consider performance as a vehicle for continued learning ?

[m1469]

I am just thinking.  I know there is this idea that an artist is "supposed" to have everything all sorted out by the time they perform, and I think that many people who play repeated years of performance actually do (for the time).  But, I am curious if when you "look back" over your years of performing if you can actually see some big changes (or small) in your overall concept of music and ability, which can be attributed to your experience(s) in performing ?

The reason I am asking this is because it seems to me that people never stop learning, at least if they want to continue to get better.  While we may learn in various ways, I wonder if perhaps we as individuals feel our particular vehicle for learning "looks" like a profession within the musical world.  For example, I think composers grow over their years of composing.  Even though people may think they have something all figured out in order to be able to compose in the first place, they get better (and understand more) through the act of actually doing it.  I think it's the same thing with teachers, too.  So, why would performing be any different ?

[Bob]

I don't think it ever ends.

I think performance can be used as practice too.  The audience always care or even notice mistakes some times.  If you want to improve and are essentially practicing in front of them, what's the harm?

[mike_lang]

For me, performance is a great means of securing a piece, as well as developing new ideas.  I notice that my rendering of a piece improves infinitely more from three performances of it, than it does from the same amount of time, or even much more, spent practicing it.  Whereas practicing secures things intellectually and technically, the performances help me to internalize the music. 

When I was younger, my piano teacher would not let any of us play in a competition until we had performed the pieces in two consecutive Saturday night performance workshops.

[ramseytheii]

People better get better all the time, or they are a waste as artists.  If artists do not continually develop, you can just write them off.  All the great musicians in history spent their lives' energy on the improvement of their musical vocabulary and abilities. 

An old friend of mine met Glenn Gould once after a concert where he had performed op.109.  My friend complimented the performance, and Gould reportedly replied that he didn't feel like he knew it, as he had only performed it 30 times.

Walter Ramsey

[leonidas]

Wrote a long reply, accidentally clicked back, lost it, won't repeat it.

[rc]

People ought to be performing even when they're beginners playing simple 8 bar diddies.  So long as the student can handle the piece and make it sound good, they are making music.  Music is meant to be be heard so any musician who can play a tune ought to be performing (even if it's for grandma).

It would be too long, tedious and unrewarding to wait until meeting some criterion of being a 'finished product' before performing.

What's nice about student recitals and festivals is students can play for and hear people around the same level as themselves.  It reminds me of skiing: I'd injure myself and feel like a chump when skiing with people too much better than me, and I would get bored waiting up for people I was much better than - it was always more fun being with people close to the same level.

[richard black]

I don't think one every really knows a piece until it's been aired in front of an audience at least 2 or 3 times, so definitely, yes.