20th Piano Composition Competition Fidelio via the Internet 2026

[fideliocontest]

20th Piano Composition Competition Fidelio 2026

A unique contest where participants vote for the best works from home and receive feedback on their own creations

Competition details:

. Categories: Tonal (any style) and Atonal (Contemporary style)
. Máximum Duration: 5 minutes 30 seconds per piece
. Submission: Récord your piano sólo composition and send the audio file vía email to [email protected] (no score needed)
. Voting: Participants vote for the best works and results are sent vía email with comments from fellow contestants

Prizes and Fees:

. Prize: Prize in cash + diploma certificate + sheet music + CDs.
. Entry fee: €25 per one composition submitted (maximum 3 compositions per category)
This year, by submitting two compositions for 35 euros, you are entitled to submit a third one for free.
Competition Format:
. Rounds: First, second, third, fourth, and semifinal rounds decided by participants; final round decided by participants and an external jury
. Anonymity: You can participate with your name or pseudonym
. Authenticity: You must be the author of the submitted composition

Important Dates:
. Registration open: Now
. Entry deadline: June the 30th 2026
. Competition starts: July the 6th, 2026

Join the Competition:
. Global participation: Pianists from over 20 countries participate every year
. Registration Link:
Click here to register: https://concursodecomposicionparapianofidelio.com/inscripcion-forma-pago-2/
Click here to hear the winning pieces from previous years:
https://concursodecomposicionparapianofidelio.com/ganadores-ediciones-anteriores/
20th Piano Composition Competition Fidelio 2026

[liszt-and-the-galops]

. Categories: Tonal (any style) and Atonal (Contemporary style)

How do you define tonal vs. atonal? There's a vanishingly thin number of pieces that fall completely in to either "category;" almost everything falls somewhere in-between. If there's only two categories, then you presumably draw the line somewhere and call everything to one side "tonal" and everything to other "atonal."

Do you consider the works of Impressionist composers e.g. Ravel and Albéniz "tonal?" What about Sorabji et. al., who many consider "atonal" but in actuality are closer to the likes of Ravel than to Xenakis, or even to late Scriabin? Speaking of late Scriabin, what about his pieces, which often have a tonal center but would be a stretch to call "tonal?"

What about pieces that are completely tonal but follow a non-Western version of tonality? And what about prepared or re-tuned pianos? Are pieces utilizing extended technique even allowed? If so, where would pieces like Cowell - The Banshee or Lachenmann - Guero fall on the tonal-atonal spectrum? Or do they exist outside that spectrum altogether? What about polytonal pieces like Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka, which are technically "tonal" but use multiple tonal centers at once?

You specifically label "atonal" as "contemporary style." Does that mean that anything contemporary (roughly since 1945) counts as "atonal?" What about Neoromantic composers like Debargue and Viner, whose works are typically tonal despite being written in the 21st/late 20th Century? On the other side of the cutoff, Schoenberg's first atonal works date to before 1910, which is before the contemporary period by any definition.

Apart from that glaring oddity, there's a few other things that make me hesitant about submitting something.

1. A limit of five minutes and 30 seconds seems way too short. For example, Sonatas and Concerti are often considered the best pieces by a given composer, almost universally (e.g. Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, etc.). Their lengths typically range anywhere from 10 to 50 minutes, far more than a mere five-and-a-half. Even individual sonata-form movements are usually longer than that. Obviously everyone submitting 50-minute pieces would make judging nigh-impossible, but I feel like 10 minutes would allow for more well-developed pieces while still not making judging too burdensome?

2. Your site doesn't seem to have a terms of service. Essentially that means that, if I submit a piece that I wrote, I have no guarantees that you won't e.g. claim it as your own.

3. You say that participants vote for "the best" (read: "their favorite," or presumably "their own") pieces. Does this mean that each participant gets one vote, or do participants who submit three pieces get to vote three times?

[fideliocontest]

Tonal Music: Music built around a central pitch or "key" (tonality), creating a sense of harmonic stability and resolution.Atonal Music: Music that lacks a central pitch or key, often avoiding traditional harmony to create dissonant or unpredictable sounds. All I ask is to submit a work according to this rule. If you submit three works you vote in three different groups. There are six rounds of voting and of course you cannot vote for your own work.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Tonal Music: Music built around a central pitch or "key" (tonality), creating a sense of harmonic stability and resolution.Atonal Music: Music that lacks a central pitch or key, often avoiding traditional harmony to create dissonant or unpredictable sounds.

What about pieces whose "tonality" is built around specific (perhaps dissonant) chords, e.g. Scriabin - Sonata no. 8? And what about pieces that are "tonal" within their own system of tonality, e.g. a re-tuned piano or something using 24 TET or 10 TET? And what about polytonal pieces like Stravinsky - Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka mvt. 2, which are "tonal" but built around multiple tonalities at once? All of these examples will "sound" very dissonant to most people, but are technically "tonal" according to some definitions. Someone used to 24 TET might not even think it's dissonant at all.

And again, where does extended technique like this fit in?

You also didn't answer my other questions. I'll quote them here for you:

Apart from that glaring oddity, there's a few other things that make me hesitant about submitting something.

1. A limit of five minutes and 30 seconds seems way too short. For example, Sonatas and Concerti are often considered the best pieces by a given composer, almost universally (e.g. Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, etc.). Their lengths typically range anywhere from 10 to 50 minutes, far more than a mere five-and-a-half. Even individual sonata-form movements are usually longer than that. Obviously everyone submitting 50-minute pieces would make judging nigh-impossible, but I feel like 10 minutes would allow for more well-developed pieces.

2. Your site doesn't seem to have a terms of service. Essentially that means that, if I submit a piece that I wrote, I have no guarantees that you won't e.g. claim it as your own.

3. You say that participants vote for "the best" (read: "their favorite," or presumably "their own") pieces. Does this mean that each participant gets one vote, or do participants who submit three pieces get to vote three times?

[perfect_pitch]

Ahhhh... the annual shitpost advertising a piano competition no one has any interest in entering.

I've done my bit in the past to highlight the atrocity that is this users entire purpose here... I pass the torch onto LatG.

Good luck.

[fideliocontest]

I wish you the worst, I never tried to destroy your life, I do not understand why you talk like this as if I had done something bad to you.  This competition has been held for 20 years and pianist and composers show their talent and enjoy exchange ideas with others.

[perfect_pitch]

You've gone out of the way in the past to answer other peoples questions, so this contest seems to have as much validity as a black panel van with tinted windows, and a sign painted on the side saying 'Free Candy'.

[fideliocontest]

I swear you that it was not my intention, in fact all the past years winners names appear in my website published, Most of them have facebook website so that future participants can contact them if they want to know about their experience in participating in this competition, they are all from different countries. More than 40 winners. Any question you want to know about this competition will be a pleasure for me to answer you. I apologize  for having not answered your questions correctly in the past about this competition. I am here now at your entire disposal.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

You still haven't answered my other questions. I'm quoting them here for you (again).

Apart from that glaring oddity, there's a few other things that make me hesitant about submitting something.

1. A limit of five minutes and 30 seconds seems way too short. For example, Sonatas and Concerti are often considered the best pieces by a given composer, almost universally (e.g. Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Rachmaninoff, etc.). Their lengths typically range anywhere from 10 to 50 minutes, far more than a mere five-and-a-half. Even individual sonata-form movements are usually longer than that. Obviously everyone submitting 50-minute pieces would make judging nigh-impossible, but I feel like 10 minutes would allow for more well-developed pieces.

2. Your site doesn't seem to have a terms of service. Essentially that means that, if I submit a piece that I wrote, I have no guarantees that you won't e.g. claim it as your own.

3. You say that participants vote for "the best" (read: "their favorite," or presumably "their own") pieces. Does this mean that each participant gets one vote, or do participants who submit three pieces get to vote three times?

[dizzyfingers]

Geesh, give the guy a break.
Why does he have to hold to your high standards of detailed information?
It is what it is, whatever that may be.
If you're not interested, move on.

These posts by P_P and L_G are bordering on harassment.
This is a form of bullying.
Some of us are trying to raise the bar of engagement here, if you can't treat people with a modicum of respect in the regular posts, stay in L.P.W.

[perfect_pitch]

Given you're new here compared to many of the other members who know well the history of this 'competition', I'm just going to ignore you as being naive and not having a clue about what has happened in the past with this guy.

There were many important questions raised about this, that he could never answer. I'm not going to backtrack and mention them for you, because this was all done years ago - before you even got here on this forum.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Geesh, give the guy a break.
Why does he have to hold to your high standards of detailed information?
It is what it is, whatever that may be.
If you're not interested, move on.

I am actually interested in submitting something, but before I do I mainly want to know:

1. which category I need to submit to. I've been toying around with a bit of extended technique and polytonality (nothing significant in this case; mostly just major at the same time as relative minor), and it's not at all clear which category those fit in to, or if they're even eligible to be submitted.

2. that this competition isn't pay-to-win, i.e. that people who pay more to submit more pieces don’t get more votes/a bigger say.

3. why the length is capped at only 5.5 minutes.

4. that a piece that I write is protected from being stolen by someone. There's seemingly no ToS on the website, which means that fideliocontest is legally allowed to take any submitted piece and claim it as their own, and all that that entails. There's also seemingly no protection against other people stealing it. This is a deal-breaker for me.

I've posted these questions and they have been more or less unanswered (aside from a copy/paste of dictionary definitions that did not answer my questions), so I reposted them each time OP didn’t respond. Though I suppose I can simplify them a bit rather than try to get other information out of curiosity:

1. Which of the two categories (tonal and atonal) do pieces involving extended technique and polytonality fall in to? Or are they not allowed for the sake of convenience? The answer is fine regardless; I have plenty of undoubtedly tonal pieces that I could submit instead.

2. Do people who submit more pieces get more votes? OP has already stated that you can’t vote for your own pieces, and I thank them for that.

3. Where is the Terms of Service page? I am not comfortable submitting anything without reading it.



To fideliocontest: I’m deeply sorry that the straw that broke the camel’s back happened to fall on your thread.

The rest of this post is replying specifically to dizzyfingers.

These posts by P_P
... 
if you can't treat people with a modicum of respect in the regular posts, stay in L.P.W.

I can't speak for p_p, and even if I could I wouldn't. I've had him on the ignore list for at least a year and a half, if not longer, and I'm not reading his posts. The same is true of all of the people who post constantly on LPW, because all of them are insufferable human beings regardless of anything they have to contribute to a discussion (which, certainly as of late, is next to nothing). The toxicity of that thread is also the reason that I left it years ago and have repeatedly advocated for its removal (if you remember, I was the person who posted the "hide certain threads from the recent posts list" thread).

(Also, your most recent post on LPW was more than a year after I left it.)

I've stayed on STLPW because the people on that thread aren't awful people, at least from what I can tell (though two users from LPW have recently been trying a "hostile takeover" of sorts; I have them both on the ignore list and have been telling the other users to ignore the trolls until they get bored and leave).

These posts by L_G are bordering on harassment.
This is a form of bullying.

Ah, I get it. You, who seemingly has the luxury of presenting as an Everyman, are so familiar with what harassment is that you can confidently call out anyone asking (in this context) incredibly simple questions as harassment.

Since you’ve clearly never actually been harassed (or if you have it clearly hasn’t affected your way of thinking), you clearly don’t understand that there’s a difference between being persistent and harassing someone. So let me lay it out for you.

Being persistent is being very interested in a competition whose rules have been left unclear, and repeatedly asking the person running the competition in the appropriate channels when being given nonresponses.

Being harassed is half of the people you know trying to talk, guilt, and coerce you in to conversion therapy (an exceedingly polite name for “torture”) because you’re transgender in rural Oklahoma.

You’ll note that one of these two is a lot worse to be on the receiving end of.

Some of us are trying to raise the bar of engagement here

This is a bit hypocritical, isn't it? Let’s see, your most recent posts (at time of this writing) are:
1. this one.
2. going out of your way to trash one of someone’s favorite pieces.
3-4: rude criticism of a user on here (admittedly fair, given the context).
5. spending most of a post explaining why a piece has “compositional problems” after someone has said that they like it.
6. criticizing one of someone’s favorite pieces after it was mentioned
7. referring to one of someone’s favorite pieces as “late romantic trish-trash.”
8. this one is fine

In fact, the three posts that you’ve made that have really stuck with me are (not direct quotes because my memory isn’t that absurdly good):

1. in response to someone asking if they’re ready to try their hand at Rachmaninoff - Concerto no. 3, telling them to “compose their own concerto instead; I’m sure the orchestra will be so impressed that they’ll pay for the part writing etc.”

2. all of the dozens of times you’ve just quoted predictive text at someone asking a legitimate question, as if that accomplishes anything.

3. claiming to be “a changed man” or something after you saw a sign in the bathroom at a party saying “don’t yuck someone’s yum.” Not only has this proved laughably untrue (see above), but IIRC it was also framed in such a way that it was very clear that you were saying this instead of “yucking someone’s yum.”

It seems like most of what you post is slimy and/or tearing others down when there is absolutely zero reason to, and I’m sick of it. Ignorelisted.

[fideliocontest]

What about pieces whose "tonality" is built around specific (perhaps dissonant) chords, e.g. Scriabin - Sonata no. 8? And what about pieces that are "tonal" within their own system of tonality, e.g. a re-tuned piano or something using 24 TET or 10 TET? And what about polytonal pieces like Stravinsky - Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka mvt. 2, which are "tonal" but built around multiple tonalities at once? All of these examples will "sound" very dissonant to most people, but are technically "tonal" according to some definitions. Someone used to 24 TET might not even think it's dissonant at all.

And again, where does extended technique like this fit in?

You also didn't answer my other questions. I'll quote them here for you:

Here are my answers:
1. I understand what you are saying about time, but the entries cannot exceed 5 minutes and 30 seconds for the exact reason you mentioned. In each voting round, voters evaluate a group that contains 5 or 6 entries. If the works lasted 10 minutes, it would take too much time to listen to that many pieces. Furthermore, if you submit three entries to the contest, you have to vote for three groups, which means a lot of time must be dedicated to voting. It is important that you are able to condense a composition into the required time. This is how this contest works, and hundreds of works have participated over the years. I don't think it's that complicated to compose a 5-minute piece to participate. That's why they can't be longer, otherwise, the time for each voting round would drag on way too much.


2. I have no intention of claiming any work as my own, nor do I believe the participants will do so, since they don't know if the displayed works are registered by the authors. If you are concerned about this, you can register your works as the author on your own. All I do is display them during the voting process; although, if they win a prize, they stay on the website forever. But of course, you can do whatever you want with your work—it is yours. By the way, during the voting process, they are protected and cannot be downloaded from the website, only listened to.

3. Participants naturally cannot vote for themselves; they only vote for groups that do not contain their own work. If you participate with one work, you vote for one group; if you participate with two, you vote for two groups; and if you participate with three works, you vote for three groups. Each voting round is a fresh start, and votes obtained in previous rounds do not count. In this contest, to reach the final round, you have to face practically everyone and get through the rounds. Clearly, whoever reaches the final is because the majority has decided so in each round.