A few weeks ago, I was ill. Ill actually seems too serious: “mildly poorly” is more accurate. Not so poorly that I could not work, but poorly enough that said (white-collar, in-no-way physically taxing) work was an effort. Brain fog and achy joints bothered my practice routine at the piano; I huffed and puffed my way through scales and exercises. I knew I wouldn’t learn much new material in this state, but I could at least maintain my physical technique, and play for pleasure. So I perused my books and settled on Haydn sonatas. I made friends with Sonata No. 46 in A-flat, reading each movement a couple times through. The second movement is a particularly balmy and therapeutic adagio, with an elegance on par with Mozart and Bach. I was so charmed by it, I resolved that it was too charming to keep to myself, so I set out to record 8 beautiful bars and share them on Instagram. The stakes could not have been lower: I was still in my pyjamas. And yet — this would be my undoing.

So far in my career, I’ve been fortunate to teach at most levels. With most “casual” music students, the main battle is keeping them inspired and motivated to actually practice and improve their craft. It is with those students who are completely absorbed in music as a possible career that one has to be on guard for an opposite vice. The pursuit of perfectionism.  Dare I say it? People can be too into things, or too demanding of themselves and others. I’ve regularly consoled inconsolable young musicians who, despite having played thousands of considered, impressive notes, fixate on the 3 or 4 notes that were not quite to their liking…

Perfectionists abound in music history. Rachmaninov suffered from prolonged depressive episodes and writer’s block, despite a large, adoring public for his music and playing. Many consider Brahms’ later output to be stifled by his overly self-critical approach — he long procrastinated penning symphonies, out of fear of comparison with Beethoven. Paul Dukas, now pretty much only known for his wonderful tone-poem The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (with help from Mickey Mouse), would perhaps be better known if the majority of his work had not ended up in his fireplace. At what point do we cross the boundary of healthy self-criticism into an obsession — and even obsessive compulsive disorder — that causes genuine harm? Rachmaninov’s temporary solution involved a hypnotherapist; but the relief waned as the years passed, even if it did initially yield the Second Concerto. More recently, a colleague relayed to me the story of a young pianist who, having placed 5th in the final of a major competition, castigated themselves for missing 5 or 6 notes in a difficult passage from Rachmaninov’s Third Concerto. For perspective, that’s 5 or 6 notes out of a piece that contains nearly 30,000 — an accuracy of 99.9998%! And yet, the disappointed performer had convinced themselves that those few notes alone sabotaged a podium finish. Perspective is critical.

Artists and craftsmen in most disciplines are divided on this. Perfect or ideal visions for a performance are, after all, useful things to possess. They give us a clear picture of what we’re working towards; they are inspiring, even (or especially) when they are unattainable. But how we cope with the gap between our idea of a perfect delivery and what actually, materially happens in the moment is fraught with potential neuroses. It can be nigh impossible to simply “let go” of a chord that we misplace in concert, when we’ve spent so much time meticulously preparing beforehand. Maintaining that dual psyche — ruthless intensity in practice, playful ease in concert —  is tough, and especially on younger musicians. Puberty is bad enough without standing in front of everyone you know and rattling off high-wire Beethoven, with all that grandeur, legacy and history balanced on your lone shoulders. 

This pressure to be technically immaculate and musically awesome on every outing is increasing in a world where we spend our lives walking around with cameras and microphones in our pockets. Musicians are compelled to borderline torture themselves in the pursuit of perceived success. I call it “Whiplash-syndrome” after the viscerally compelling film by Damien Chazelle, where Miles Teller’s anti-hero aspires to be a great jazz drummer by any means necessary, entering into a psycho-faustian pact with his categorically abusive teacher Fletcher, played frighteningly well by J.K.Simmons. Teller’s drummer craves greatness. He makes little time for anything else, alienating his family, dumping his girlfriend (“a distraction”), and chasing Fletcher’s approval to the point of near self-destruction. The final scene is now iconic: our drummer achieves flow-state nirvana in Ellington’s Caravan, finally gaining Fletcher’s unspoken recognition of “greatness”. Most serious musicians have had this alluring, ephemeral moment with a teacher. It is an inevitably profound experience for any student, when the one person whose role it is to criticise you is absolutely and unreservedly impressed by your work. I recall it in my own lessons: those occasions when I played something and my teacher was so enamoured that they would walk over to the piano, chuckle and pat my shoulder twice. I believe this happened thrice. I remember exactly what I played in those lessons, the whole moment still vividly clear to me almost a decade later. Such dynamics are not exclusive to music; it’s classic master-apprentice stuff. Chefs, stonemasons, journalists, clowns, Jedi and lawyers all train in similar ways. It is a central responsibility of any teacher not to abuse this dynamic, this trust. It is our duty to deconstruct it. Chasing approval (or avoiding disappointment) can be a source of remarkable motivation in people. But what happens when the teacher is no longer around? What motivates you when you’ve put all your eggs in one basket — and it’s not even your basket! 

Back to my instagram story. Now that I’m racing towards my 30s, I’m not so quick to flog myself over passages that sound nicer in my head than my hands. I’m better at enjoying the surprises. I remind younger musicians to keep finding the fun in every corner of the music (to truly play the music) and to be patient with ourselves as we grow. But in filming a brief clip of some soothing Haydn, I was completely blindsided by a relapse into a perfectionism I thought I’d conquered. I filmed the 8 bars, watched the footage back, recoiled at my playing, promptly deleted the video and attempted another take, rectifying my shortcoming…only to discover a new shortcoming in the next take. I envisioned scathing followers in fits of revulsion at my sloppy form and lacklustre sound — as if people scroll on the apps intent on critiquing Haydn sonatas. Before I knew it, I had reached take 40-something, and lost over an hour of my afternoon. For an Instagram story! Diminishing returns is an understatement. 

The permanence of the recording process gets to me. I love the performing arts precisely because the art happens in the moment — it’s there and then it’s gone. Music is alive because it begins and ends — it’s born, it moves and it dies. The score permits us to recreate and conjure up the same ideas, but the music is never quite the same again, as the performer and listener are never quite the same from moment to moment. Recording changes this reality. Suddenly, you can listen to music delivered repeatedly in exactly the same way, forever, with performances  etched in stone (or vinyl, or the cloud server circuitry). This creates the conceptual space for the “ultimate interpretation” — something that musicians from before the recording era would find quite alien. In my latent perfectionism, this potential had traumatised me into chronic overthought: can I permit evidence of me playing like this out there, theoretically forever? No! What if someone else notices the uneven colour in that note, or that fraction-too-soon E-flat? I was taken aback at how upset I was to see my own playing (which, to my ears, was riddled with faults) forever trapped in the phone screen. With every take, I grew more frustrated with the inadequacies, thereby making it harder to produce the desired outcome. Eventually, I managed a just-about-tolerable reading, and I had an errand to see to, so wrapped up the futile micro-torture. 

Whiplash ends with a question mark. “Was all that sacrifice worth it?” My partner, who is a normal, well-adjusted human being, answers “obviously not”. I took a little bit of convincing to agree — which speaks volumes about what attitudes were normalised in my musical upbringing. I suspect I am not alone here. Our relationship with perfectionism and the idea of perfect playing are set by society as much as ourselves. The desire to succeed and do justice in performance comes from deep within, but the parameters by which we measure success are often externally set. This has to be good by that concert, by that audition, by that recording session, for that lesson. You have to “make it” by a certain stage; music competitions have looming age limits. Practice famously earns us £0 per hour, which is harder to withstand as we transition from student to professional. Time spent practicing — and it is truly spent — is an unsustainable opportunity cost for many. 

The pursuit of perfection in performance, interpretation, or recording, becomes all the more folly when we reflect on just how subjective our taste in good music, or indeed any artform, actually is. Our own tastes and ideas of perfection evolve over time, even day to day, making the idea of a truly timeless, eternally perfect reading or recording even more absurd. Perfection in art can be a hopelessly static and lifeless concept. Most artistic mediums instinctively embrace their subjectivity, but musicians work in environments that can suppress this realisation. Scores can be read as tyrannically “black and white” — either you play the right note or the wrong note. And wrong notes are bad. Examinations and auditions are standardized in the hope that they are indiscriminate, but the subjectivity of those who set the standard can often sneak into our supposedly objective and indiscriminate criteria. 

Perfectionism is not to be trifled with. Just when you think you’ve entirely transcended these lesser spiritual states, they bite back. Recording is a novel horizon for me, and those old habits emerge when we’re in less familiar territory. Manageable exposure over time helps, but it takes exactly that: time. And even if there likely won’t be a zen-like endpoint for those of us prone to perfectionist bouts, we can control those feelings far better when we put a proper name to them, think through the actual root cause, and readjust our circumstances. So I’ll keep at my little instagram videos, and when the onset pathos begins to subside, I’ll up the stakes and change out of my pyjamas.