First, let’s get the link out of the way, which is an article on professional decline appearing in the Atlantic Monthly: Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think.
As you might expect, most of the article deals with mid- to late-career professional decline, but author Arthur C. Brooks relates a strange experience from his own early adulthood. As he writes, in his late teens and twenties he worked to become “the world’s greatest French horn player”. He got some work with a touring ensemble, and eventually played with the city orchestra of Barcelona. But somewhere along the way, he started getting worse. It wasn’t a case of losing his chops because he got bored and stopped practicing or learning new pieces; his playing simply deteriorated for no clear reason. Far from neglecting his music, he sought out new teachers and practiced even harder, but nothing worked. As he put it, pieces that used to be easy became hard, and pieces that used to be hard became impossible.
How is this possible?
How does one’s musical ability simply deteriorate? I’m all too familiar with forgetting how to play pieces I once learned, because I got bored playing them. But to see one’s musical ability disintegrate like that? I don’t get it.
The late neurologist Dr. Harold Klawans told some stories about this in one of his books, most likely “Toscanini’s Fumble”. Most of them were associated with some kind of trauma; for example, he told the story of a woman who completely lost the ability to play an instrument in which she was a performance major after her fiance’ broke the engagement because he’d found someone he liked better, which in this case turned out to be another man.
Lack of growth. When you start out as a kid learning an instrument, you may have many opportunities, which are bigger than the one that came before. Recitals, choirs, performances, competitions, etc. But when you get to your 20s or so, you reach a “up-or-out” stage. Either you have to expand it into something even bigger yet - perhaps going professional, or at least being a super-serious amateur - or you have no further reason to really do music because your studies and work life have crowded it out.
Same old same old syndrome. The technique of playing an instrument is the same. Unless something comes in to make it unexpectedly zesty or you learn something new, you just tire of it. (actually, this is just the same as 2#)
Maybe biological - your brain hits its max growth point and maturity by the time you are in your 20s. It’s not so much that you deteriorate as it is that the learning sponge stage is past.
I can see how lack of perceived growth would be a problem for the ego, but that alone wouldn’t make a musician less capable than he or she has been in the the past.
As for option #4, I could see such a thing happening only if the musician has contracted some rare and bizarre degenerative brain or nerve disease, but I’m sure this didn’t happen to the author I cited. Instead, he reinvented himself as a conservative writer and academic, and based on what I’ve seen, a very competent one. (This is a good example of why I try not to read only those writers I agree with politically.)
I know myself that learning a new piano piece starts intensely with a lot of careful focus and hard work. As you get better and can actually play the piece there always seems to be a plateau whereby you don’t get better with the piece, maybe even worse.
And in the OP example it seems like the same thing. I believe that this is the modern attitude that things come too easily (for example, just use Google if you don’t know something). A century ago, everything was difficult and always required constant hard work and focus.
Brass instruments are very difficult to play really well. Louis Armstrong’s trumpet playing was supposed to have peaked in his early 30s. If the guy mentioned in the OP was one of the best, even a slight decline would have been noticeable.
BTW, having read the linked article, I wonder if the old man on the plane was Chuck Yeager. It would make sense, for the pilot to express to him his lifelong admiration.
Well, not quite the same, but it certainly is true with sports. I used to be an awesome rugby and soccer player, and often the fastest guy on the team. Well, I’m 65 now, and over the past two decades I’ve watched my skills (and my reaction time!) slow down month by month.
NOW I know why they have “Old Boy” and “Over 50” leagues…
A major league baseball pitcher named Steve Blass had such a thing happen. He was around 30, had an established career, and suddenly he lost the ability to throw a baseball accurately. Some people refer to it as Steve Blass disease, or Yips.
If you want wild speculation, it’s well documented that ability to learn a foreign language peaks in childhood and starts falling off dramatically around age 13 (experienced this myself). Maybe musical ability uses some of that same machinery or is governed by some of the same constraints.
Or on a different kind of theory, maybe it’s a matter of focus. I remember in my teens it was possible to make an entire world of a musical piece, and nothing else matters. But no matter how dedicated you are, it’s inevitable that the real world is going to rob the energy of whatever inner worlds you have going on.
I don’t know about the author, but I’m still gaining in skill and technique on my instruments. (I’m 56) So is my music partner. We’re both much better musicians than when we met fifteen years ago.
Now, french horn is a demanding instrument, more than tuba and bass, but I don’t see that I have to degrade any time soon. I know an awful lot of musicians my age and older that are playing as well as ever, if not better.
Younger players are hungrier and, to me, seem to put more fire and energy into their playing, but that doesn’t necessarily equal more skill. When I see my students over play or shove all their chops out into the air at once, I tell them that that’s a good way to not get invited back to a gig. It’s rare to find young players with chops using a good dose of taste.
With vocalists, at least, one reason can be using bad technique that causes damage to the vocal production. When you are younger, you can get away with a lot of damaging techniques due to the resilience of youth. You’ll heal more rapidly. Plus there’s just the long term effects which can take time to take their toll. This is the reason a lot of pop/rock/etc. singers just can’t sing like they used to in their youth.
Perhaps something similar is possible with brass players. The lips, like the vocal folds, are a small part of the body, and could see them being over used. In fact, if trying as hard means practicing the same amount, maybe that could mean his lips were getting more worn out.
The only other thing that occurs to me is a difference I see a lot in older vs. younger musicians: a level of energy. Younger people just seem to be able to use more of it and go all out. All the older musicians I know seem to focus on this idea of using less energy for the same results. But, if you didn’t learn that, I could see that being a difference.
However, what I’ve mostly seen in that arena are people losing endurance, and maybe some raw volume or range. But they make up for it with better technique and muscle memory.
OTOH, would the other passengers have recognized Chuck Yeager? As interested as I am in this subject, I’m not entirely sure I’d be able to recognize Buzz Aldrin after decades of not seeing him in the media very much.
And yips are pretty much talking yourself out of being able to do something. Doing something at the highest level takes an immense amount of skill - a small error in where you place your fingers or how you hold your lips can have you fumbling through a horn piece, the smallest adjustment in stance can have you missing getting a ball over the plate. And then you start to obsess over it. And as you obsess, the things that you were doing “naturally” because you’d had so much practice that the muscle memory was just there, suddenly your brain just interferes.
My musical technique and playing (baritone ukulele) get better and better as I age, but I have to be careful about my tendons and joints. I know they are not as resilient and forgiving as they used to be, so I’m careful about how I use my hands. As far as technical ability, though, I constantly challenge myself with difficult material and get better and better. Not by leaps and bounds, but small, steady increments. I’m 63 now – been playing guitar or uke since childhood.