Orpheus wounded: The experience of pain in the professional worlds of the piano

Abstract

None of the three worlds within the field of professional piano playing has adequately confronted the problem of pain, partly because its causes and treatment could be easily assigned to another world. The medical world could blame pain on “misuse”; the virtuoso world on lack of “genius” or “hard work”; the pedagogical world on “bad teaching” or “lack of talent.” Each world, for its own reasons, has managed either to skirt the problem of pain outright or to develop techniques and languages that fail to offer general remedies, or worse, exacerbate the amount of pain pianists endure. In the meantime, market competition in a shrinking concert market has increased, together with audience dependence upon charismatic virtuosity. The more compact virtuoso world, populated by ever larger numbers of hopeful pianists, creates intense competition in which the causes stimulating pain multiply.