Anything is better than criticism without thought
Meeting new people can be an anxiety inducing situation - at least, it often is for me.
Introducing yourself to a room of unknown people, many of them peers and musicians, in the context of playing in a concerto masterclass, would seem like utter madness then for a deeply introverted person. However, it’s part of my job as a musician and performer to put myself in these sorts of positions regularly.
Recently, that was the situation I found myself in, my nerves sitting a little higher than their usual level – it’s been a year now since I graduated music college and it’s easy to find that my familiarity with this particular solo environment has slipped a little without weekly performance classes and lessons. On this occasion, the playing goes fine – not great, but fine. I receive useful, kind but honest feedback from the musicians taking the masterclass. Afterwards, I meet other musicians my age who I’ll be playing with for the next year. Everyone is kind, encouraging and friendly. That is, until one audience member approaches me, an older gentleman, very smartly dressed and smiling. He decides that while we’re stood with four others in a group who are all very much able to hear what he’s saying, to tell me:
“What they said up there to you was so right. You looked really unhappy. Really, just such an unhappy look upon your face. Were you aware of this?”
I’m taken aback slightly, but years of conservatoire training and various awkward post-concert meet-and-greets have trained me to simply raise my eyebrow, laugh, and trot out some inoffensive agreements and platitudes in the hope he’ll realise I’ve registered his comment and move on. But he doesn’t. Instead I’m treated to at least three repetitions of how “miserable”, “terrified” and “unhappy” I looked, largely when not playing.
“I mean, you really looked so terrified and unhappy before playing, we thought something awful was going to happen. And then you played so beautifully! But your face looked so unhappy.”
I try and counter this somewhat, to divert the conversation somewhere else, but nothing deters him. So I stand there for another five minutes being told how I “simply must fix this,” by someone who, it turns out, is not a musician.
Unfortunately this is not the first time something like this has happened to me. Not just the unsolicited, chastising advice, but the direct and repeated comments about my face. My first feelings upon going home that evening were mainly just a personal kind of hurt. A comment like that raises all the insecurities I have about parts of my appearance. But my immediate thought after this is to catch myself – am I being overly sensitive? Am I any good at taking criticism from others? I’d always felt that one of my strengths was being able to take criticism well, to realise that a criticism of what you’re doing is not a criticism of you personally. Perhaps I was not as good at taking on board critiques as I’d thought.
The difference lies, in my opinion, in the intention and thought behind the criticism. There are those who actively want to help you improve, and those who simply want to show off some perceived knowledge on their part. My music college, and even school years teachers never glossed over any flaws in my playing or challenges I was clearly facing, but I was always credited with self-awareness and the space to solve a problem myself once I’d understood the point being made. I was always credited with a level of self-perception and also the knowledge that, like most musicians, I probably criticised myself endlessly, anyway. In this other type of criticism seems to lie the implication that I don’t perceive these things or evaluate myself – which I do, endlessly.
The question is then, how do I get this across to an audience without essentially asking them to give me carte blanche; to not hold my performance to any kind of standard at all?
I’m interested to know if these issues affect male performers as much as female and non-binary ones. How often have my male colleagues not just been told, but warned of how serious and miserable they look in their bars rest? Is it the same for older as well as younger performers? These are genuine questions, ones that I would be interested to hear the answers to.
I realise and accept that if you are a visible performer on stage you are required to deliver as genuine and authentic a performance of the music as possible, and that this might require a level of persona or physicality to achieve this. However, I can’t deny that I’m slightly sick of people freely, cheerfully even, criticising the natural drop and expression of my face.
Does putting myself in a public arena entitle people to comment freely and directly upon those parts that make up the whole performance, including my face? As musicians, we owe the audience our best performance that we are capable of giving at that time – but I don’t believe we owe them ourselves. A thick skin is a necessity in a world and industry that calls for you to enter into vulnerable situations. But we are humans, entitled also to our insecurities, our sensitivities, our vulnerabilities. We deserve to be seen first and foremost as a person with feelings, not just an instrumentalist. We deserve empathy.
I still firmly believe that musicians owe their audience the very best they can do on that day. And while this is also a nuanced subject with many variables, perspectives and questions that I don’t personally hold the answers to, I have decided that what I’m not ok with is a bald, unhelpful criticism with no suggestion of help in it, no insight as to how I might adjust something – that actually, at the root of it, is just thoughtless more than anything else. A comment for the sake of a comment, delivered as if there isn’t a human being on the receiving end of it.
So, if nothing else, I propose this: that musicians owe those who come to see them the best they can give at that time – their thought, their care, their artistry. And we ask only for thoughtfulness in return. Anything is better than criticism without thought.
“I’ve been hugely comforted and also informed by the amazing work Hattie and Becca do through TMDTA, being so open with their own personal journeys and reaching out to other brilliant musicians. I wanted to write for the blog in the hopes of encouraging musicians to keep being open with each other and enacting the change we want to see within our own lives and industry, by talking about things we find difficult and connecting in ways that aren’t often openly encouraged.”
Holly is a versatile freelance bassoonist based in London. She has performed professionally with orchestras across the UK and frequently performs with her quintet, Festivo Winds, who recently became Live Music Now musicians. She previously studied on the RNCM and University of Manchester ‘Joint Course’ programme, and completed her Masters studies at the Royal College of Music. Alongside playing and teaching, Holly recently started curating her own interview series, ‘Personify’, talking to fellow musicians about their relationship to their instrument. https://hollyredshaw.com/personify/