Nothing to win

I'm still working on a Monteverdi post, but in the meantime I ran across a quote in an Ann Althouse post that sparked some recollections:

Everybody was really competitive, even though there was nothing to win.

That was a reference to living in Manhattan, but it applies to the Canadian music business as well. I struggled for years as a concert classical guitarist in Canada and, by Canadian standards I was actually "successful". I made a living as a classical guitarist playing concerts, doing radio broadcasts on the CBC and teaching at conservatory and university. Successful! My most prominent concert was a performance with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra at the Odeon theatre in Vancouver, the largest concert hall in the city. This was broadcast live across Canada. I played the Villa-Lobos Guitar Concerto and a couple of solo pieces. The Brazilian consul was an invited guest. For this, which involved three months of hard work learning the concerto, I was paid the magnificent sum of $1,250 Canadian. My typical annual earnings were between $23,000 and $25,000. Sometimes I wouldn't open my mailbox for a month because I knew that it would contain only bills. One summer I got hired to do a summer course for a splendid $3,000 and because it was earned in a short amount of time about half of it was taken in taxes.

But yes, we were all very competitive even though there was nothing to win. In 1986 Vancouver was the site of a spectacular international exhibition with pavilions from countries around the world. In conjunction they held a classical music competition for solo artists. First prize was $700. This isn't a joke it is an insult. So yes, in the classical Canadian music business there is nothing to win. Canada has very little regard for classical music apart from a few square blocks in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver.

Of course, for classical guitarists in the world as a whole, the situation is not much better. When I was a young guitarist dedicating decades of my life to the hard work of becoming an accomplished soloist it would have been of immense value to me if I had had a consultation with a vocation specialist. He might have told me the following: there are perhaps a million classical guitarists in the world of whom perhaps 50,000 are striving for a serious career. Of these the ones who are actually successful are five. No, not five percent, five individuals. (I could name them, but the list would be out of date. Of the five I met four and studied with two.) One quite successful artist kept a large Mercedes sedan in Frankfurt and every year he would fly there and tour around Germany and other European countries. He also had a recording contract with Philips. He earned perhaps $500,000 a year. That is a successful career.

Here is a clip of a performance from the heydays of my career.