Competition

Note

A verseny lovaknak való, nem embereknek.

Racing is for horses, not people.

–Béla Bartók

In homage to Bartók, Compe­ti­tion begins at a gallop.

All the subse­quent music in the piece stems from its opening rhythm. At various points, this trans­forms into a gigue or a taran­tella. The layered, contra­pun­tal textures of the piece constantly shift tempo gears, one voice comment­ing, inter­rupt­ing, or leaping ahead of the other, until the piece explodes outward into a rowdy, bombas­tic coda.

Compe­ti­tion and the arts have always made for an uncom­fort­able mix; certainly the sorting of artists into ranked tiers of winners and losers can be dispir­it­ing. It’s custom­ary among musi­cians, even those who’ve found success within these insti­tu­tions, to view them with ambiva­lence, suspi­cion, or outright scorn. But I think there’s some­thing healthy and even neces­sary about compe­ti­tion in the arts. Even if the contest is imag­i­nary or one-sided—or simply with one’s own limits—the compet­i­tive spirit can drive us to discover new abil­i­ties within, to liter­ally exceed ourselves. To me, this is the embod­i­ment of true virtu­os­ity, and a concept worth celebrating.