Running a Numbers Game

Running a Numbers Game

In the absence of frequent performances, feedback from competitions (even if that feedback is nothing more than a thumb up or down) might be the only feedback one can reliably expect.

Written By

Colin Holter

To date, as a composer, I’ve never had very good luck with competitions. I haven’t sent my music away to too many of them, but (not counting a three-minute pop song in the Squeeze vein that netted me a sweet gift certificate a year or two back) I’ve yet to win one. One problem I keep telling myself it’s time to overcome is my fragile musical ego: If I don’t circulate my pieces, I’ll be spared the bitter sting of rejection. Another is my hesitation, given the changes my music has undergone in the past few years, to saturate the new music adjudication community with a product I won’t be willing to stand behind in another few years’ time.

The reality, of course, is that competitions are a numbers game, and if you want to win some, you just have to flood the market: Throw piece after piece against the wall, and some of them might eventually stick. I’m half-remembering Charles Wuorinen’s story about finding rejected scores in his mailbox and immediately repackaging them and mailing them right back out again—that’s probably the best way to do it. By the same token, though, I know a few composers who’ve succeeded despite (or maybe because of) their refusal to hop on this humiliating merry-go-round. Is it possible to break into the new music world at 30, fully formed? Is it better to wait to be noticed than to shamble, cap in hand, toward the doorsteps of organizations to whom you’re entirely replaceable?

It’s easier, certainly. But I doubt that it’s better. In the absence of frequent performances, feedback from competitions (even if that feedback is nothing more than a thumb up or down) might be the only feedback one can reliably expect. Although I’d be the last to suggest composing for the juries of competitions, monitoring such verdicts might furnish a more concrete answer to the question at the end of the previous paragraph. Perhaps you’re the kind of composer who’s just not going to win competitions. Did Cage get an ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award? (Seriously, did he? Maybe he did. It just seems unlikely, given that the program began in 1979.) On the other hand, if people are receptive to your work, why not get it in front of as many eyes as possible? And to answer that question, of course, you have to hit the post office. It feels dirty, frankly, but I think it might be time to buy a bunch of padded envelopes.