The Composition of Success: Competition and the Creative Self in Contemporary Art Music

Abstract

Much of the literature on production in cultural fields has been dominated by gatekeeper and rational-actor narratives. These literatures argue that the production of art objects tends to be driven by competition for status within fields and by institutional forces that shape how actors produce their work and define success. While much of the existing research has provided insight on the structural determinants that organize the opportunity structures within cultural fields, much less is known about how cultural producers make sense of the competitive prize-seeking bound up in professional integration. This article examines the role that juried prizes and competitions play in shaping how cultural producers understand who they are and what they do as artists seeking professional integration in their fields. Drawing on 41 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with contemporary art music composers in the early stages of their careers, the article shows how composers engage in self-curation strategies that seek to mitigate the uncertainty of selection associated with competition participation. The article discusses three additional findings. First, composers participate in different competition types and make decisions about which types are best suited for achieving their professional goals. Second, self-curation strategies map on to different aspects of composer’s self-concepts and the actions warranted by these differences. Third, composers move within and across three different self-curation strategies outlined in the article. By engaging these strategies, it is argued that composers come to understand competitions as meaningful in their efforts to professionalize and as mechanisms through which they reconcile legibility within the field with an authentic pursuit of their artistic voice. This research locates self-curation as a phenomenon at the intersection of rational and meaning-centered action.