It might seem an unlikely proposition, but it could be argued that those responsible for the 1985 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition—held late this past spring in Forth Worth, Texas—have somehow been influenced in their marketing strategy by the deathless advice the great English humorist Stephen Potter gave to failed tennis players: “If you can’t volley, wear velvet socks.” In the case of the Cliburn contest, volleying might well stand for the proper business of a piano competition: choosing, with some regularity, first-prize winners of musical authority and personal magnetism. Potter’s notion of velvet socks surely can be applied to the lavish but meretricious coverage the competition received (and doubtless strove for) on nationwide public television at the end of the festive proceedings in early June.

To understand the present manifestation of this now most famous of American music contests, one must begin, not with the relatively brief history of the Cliburn award itself, but with the history of music performance competitions over the past fifty years or so. In the late 1930s, by all odds the most important competition in the world was the Queen Elisabeth contest in Brussels. Founded in 1937 as the Concours Eugene Ysaye (in honor of the great Belgian violinist), it gained luster from the association of the Queen with such famous performers of the day as Pablo Casals and Arthur Rubinstein. From the first years its prizes were an object of the ambitions of the Soviet Union, then embarked on a policy