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Random violin competition demographic of the dayMarch 30, 2009 at 6:05 AM Of the twenty South Korean competitors admitted to the Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition in May, nineteen are women. From Ihnsouk Guim
Posted on March 30, 2009 at 8:06 PM Wow, Eugene, Reading your title made me think only Koreans are entering the competition. I don't know much about competitions. I would think Koreans make much less than half of the total contestants? From bill platt
Posted on March 30, 2009 at 8:44 PM ...and only girls play the flute.
People have no imagination. From Anne-Marie Proulx
Posted on March 30, 2009 at 8:40 PM I'll do my feminist speech of the day here... For centuries, music was a men's thing. Yes, of course they were very few unknowned women in the 1700-18OO. Later came Ginette Neveu and Ida Haendel but they were lost in a tournado of hundreds of men sometimes much more famous (when these women were as good!). I still believe that life is harder for women even in the west! It's not obvious like before but it's steel there. A few example : women are mainly juged by their look, taken for hysterical when they fight to tell the truth, more numerous than men in many modern fields so taken for granted and easier to exploit... To come back to violin, I read this in a musical magazine once: the person said something like "I believe there are more women than men that play violin in the world but the names we remember are mostly men and the principal chairs in orchestras are very often men..." It's not always the case but I know what the article wanted to tell. So if an equally talented Corean men would have applied, he would have been taken. That means that these 19 Korean girls probably exceed what they expected or were so good they didn't have choice to take them. It's not easy to make your place in music when you are 5"4 and compeet with 6"0 + giants to earn a place in a competition (Maybe I exagerate here by taking the two extremes but you know what I mean). Think about it, you would never make a box round with a male and female! In music and in some other sports like horseback riding (where physical abilities and strengh is required contrarly of what we think...) women are very lucky to be in the same category as men. It is really fantastic and I love violin for this reason too! But, nevertheless, I wouldn't claim women have to work harder than men because I would get killed by all v.commers males but... almost It's a real extraordinairy achivement for a women to outcome all these! So I'm convinced the juges weren't more kind too the Korean women than men! I know the poster didn't say this, by the way! I'm sure they were forced to take them because of their wonderful playing and, I have too admit that it is really deserved after all these centuries where the world didn't even know that some violinists were women... So that's it for my feminist speech of the day lol! By the way, I have also heard that in Europe, more men played violin and in Asia, more women played the violin because it's a cultural question. I am not sure at all if this is true but if yes, this could be part of the explanation! Good luck to them! Anne-Marie From J Kingston
Posted on March 30, 2009 at 10:08 PM Here are a few perspectives: Are Korean women exceptionally skilled as compared to Korean men? Are Korean men interested in this type of activity or don't they enter? What do Korean men do while all these women are learning violin? What makes Korean women highly motivated to enter contests? Why do some highly skilled individuals never enter contests while others do enter? Are these competitions very beneficial, somewhat beneficial or not very beneficial to entrants? While the questions are somewhat retorical, the participation by Korean women is clearly the result of superior playing, or a highly motivated subgroup. From Jim W. Miller
Posted on March 31, 2009 at 12:05 AM After going around the block with more than just one or two feminists, I learned it's mainly just a scene where men can't win. From Anne-Marie Proulx
Posted on March 31, 2009 at 12:25 AM Jim, there are good feminists! A good feminist don't want to win over men??? What's this! There shouldn't be a "winner"! Ok some extremists are too be found in any groups but this is another story! Anne-Marie At this prestigious contest, they surely try to take the appliants for their playing only regardless of his/her gender! From Jim W. Miller
Posted on March 31, 2009 at 1:27 AM Sorry, Anne, I was having 80s flashbacks. I know better than to fight with women now. I'm a lover. You know, there's a theory that insiders already know who will win this, as long as they just don't fall off the stage. I don't know, but that's the kind of thing I hear. I saw the winner picked at another big competition, weeks before the first note was even played. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, probably. It reminds me of how people move up in other professions, within companies for example. In that case it's not whether you're male or female, but who you know, where you went to school, and the like :))
From Eugene Chan
Posted on March 31, 2009 at 3:36 PM For the record, I didn't post this because I was trying to make a point of some kind. It was just a statistical peculiarity, like flipping a coin twenty times and hitting heads nineteen times. :-) Ihnsouk, the twenty competitors from South Korea form almost a quarter of the field, so not quite half, but it's still twice as many as any other country at the competition. From Terez Mertes
Posted on March 31, 2009 at 6:26 PM Interesting! This entry has been archived and is no longer accepting comments. |
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