I used to think robots taking over the world was the least of my worries. Turns out, I’ve been caught in the middle of a musical universe prone to tech invasion all along.
As a pianist who advocates for humanity as the heart and soul of classical music, I would be the first to stand up against the idea of robots replacing the career of a classical musician. Who would pay hundreds of dollars for orchestra seats to listen to a robot perform on a Steinway at Carnegie Hall?
While I can agree this is an interesting concept, it would likely only attract a small audience of curious tech nerds or superficial listeners. So even though it’s safe to assume that music-playing bots will likely not be taking over the classical realm anytime soon, something almost as equally frightening is starting to occur.
The immense competition, abundance of perfect internet recordings, and growing unrealistic standards of today are causing aspiring young musicians to think they must lock themselves up in a “practice prison” for ten hours a day, mindlessly engaging in repetition, striving for perfect technique, forgetting to be human.
In the four-and-a-half years I’ve spent in a music conservatory environment, I’ve realized how susceptible young musicians are to the toxic influence of the internet. I’ve witnessed fellow students give music up entirely because they aren’t winning competitions. I’ve seen students calculate and plan out their playing down to the second, disregarding the spontaneity of human musicality. I’ve witnessed musicians rank their fellow colleagues from lowest to highest based on skill level and I’ve even heard others believe arrogance is justified by world-class musician status. For an art form that is as close to humanity as classical music is, this is shocking.
As a result, many musicians are slowly losing touch with their human selves, transforming into technicians, or, as I see it, technique obsessed “robots.” I can’t say I blame them: with the growing popularity of the internet came the ability to see that somewhere thousands of miles away there is a nine-year old prodigy who can already play faster, cleaner, and “better” than you.
With the rise of the internet also came an obsession with replicating the same stellar YouTube recordings that boast millions of views, creating an obsession with one standard way of playing. Nit-picky YouTube listeners will make this very clear in their commentary. Vladimir Horowitz’s 1965 recording of Chopin Ballade No.1 is filled with remarks pointing out precisely where and when he played a wrong note, as well as numerous comparisons to Krystian Zimmerman’s rendition of the piece, which has over 6 million views.
Audiences demand perfection; at least that’s what musicians are led to believe. After giving an unsatisfactory performance in 2015, Yundi Li, Chinese pianist and youngest winner of the International Chopin competition, was attacked on social media for his “disastrous” note and tempo inaccuracies but mostly for his unprofessional attitude afterwards. Li made a public statement on Weibo apologizing for failing to deliver a perfect performance, reiterating this instilled perfectionism many musicians have.
With YouTube’s tightening copyright policies, replication of recordings is becoming much more transparent than before. Tiffany Poon, a Chinese piano prodigy and 2018 graduate from the Juilliard/Columbia University exchange program, has been using YouTube as a platform for promoting herself since she was 10 years old and her recording of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata prides itself in 5.2 million views. But the accomplished pianist’s rendition of Bach’s Partita No.1 has been blocked in the United States due to a copyright claim that it sounds just like Andras Schiff. If you ask me, only a robot could replicate a recording so accurately.
While social media can be a useful learning and marketing tool, it has also caused a shift in practice mentality. Prior to the rise of the internet, classical musicians focused more on bettering themselves as artists and human beings rather than competing against every other aspiring musician around the globe. Pianists such as Glenn Gould and composers such as Robert Schumann and Franz Liszt were obsessed with individuality and imagination. They fed their souls and minds with life experiences by visiting museums, enjoying nature, reading books, becoming fascinating human beings. As a result, life and its myriad subtleties, inflections and shadows informed their music.
Recently, scientists at the Korea Institute of Machinery & Materials created the world’s strongest robotic hand, which prides itself in the ability to “gracefully” play the piano, whatever that means. Brace yourselves. A musical robot invasion may happen sooner than you think.
But musicians have a choice: to unplug or not to unplug. French pianist Lucas Debargue became a sensation in Russia after placing fourth in the 2016 International Tchaikovsky Competition. In an interview for Russian Kultura TV program Enigma, the tall, lanky musician said he doesn’t have any interest in putting himself out on social media. Debargue started studying classical music seriously at 20 years old and only four years later made it into the finals of the Tchaikovsky competition. Although known for his odd, unconventional technique, Debargue attracts listeners with his original, sensitive, and intellectual approach to the piano. Debargue’s limited exposure to social media is apparent when he speaks of the importance of being a human and living a culturally enriched life.
“What I see nowadays with children is that they are just obeying teachers and parents, and I’m not interested in this way of practising and this vision of music,” Debargue said in an interview with Catherine Kustanczy. “It’s very important for an artist to get inspired by a lot of things, to have other outside interests- to see movies, to read books- to manage to have a human life…you are human first; then you may be a musician.”
We would never dream of replacing human musicians with technology, so why are we praising technical perfection over thought-provoking musicality? In our tech obsessed world, I have no doubt that one day robots will surely be able to play just as well as the greatest musicians who ever lived. But they will never be able to replace the human experience. So when it comes to a world susceptible to robot takeover, classical musicians have to ask themselves: Are they humans or are they musicians?