FORT WORTH &mdash; On a recent Tuesday night at Bass Hall, the roll call of nations included Bulgaria, Israel, Italy, Korea, Russia, Australia, Germany, China and Japan. That night, when the semifinalists for the Cliburn International Piano Competition were announced, one nation was conspicuous by its absence: the United States.</p><p>Again.</p><p>Four years ago, Ning An was the lone American to advance to the semifinals but did not make the finals. In 2001, no American made it past the preliminaries. In 1997, Jon Nakamatsu became the third American to win the Cliburn (Andre-Michel Schub in 1981 and Ralph Votapek in 1962 were the others), but none of his countrymen survived the first round.</p><p>And the implications of that rather bleak record in the world&rsquo;s most prestigious piano competition transcend what happens in Fort Worth, classical music experts say. For the third consecutive competition, no American is among the six pianists gearing up for the finals that begin Wednesday. That reflects the state of things in the Cliburn&rsquo;s host nation, one that has pushed classical music more and more toward the periphery of its culture.</p><p>"I think it is a larger question," said Cliburn juror Richard Dyer, a longtime classical music critic for <em>The Boston Globe</em>. "Why have the Americans disappeared from the classical music scene?"</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">Lack of motivation</span></strong></p><p>It&rsquo;s been happening for decades, music observers say, as classical music has been cut from public school classrooms and marginalized by lack of government funding and media attention. It follows that fewer American children are taking up the piano. U.S.-born pianists make up only a small percentage of students at places like The Juilliard School, said Veda Kaplinsky, head of Juilliard&rsquo;s piano department. Students at top American conservatories are more often born in Asia and Europe.</p><p>"It&rsquo;s hard to say that Americans are less talented than other those in other nations," said Kaplinsky, who is also a Cliburn juror. "It&rsquo;s just that they&rsquo;re not classically geared. They&rsquo;re less motivated in that direction than any of the Asian countries or Eastern European countries that still carry the torch from the [19th] century."</p><p>The Cliburn does retain a significant American flavor. Five of the 12 pianists who advanced to the semis have studied extensively in the U.S., two at Juilliard, two at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and one at the Manhattan Institute. Many of the foreign-born musicians moved to the United States at a young age and are thoroughly Americanized by the time they get to the Cliburn.</p><p>"Joyce Yang is as American as apple pie," Kaplinsky said of the 2005 Cliburn silver medal winner, an audience favorite who was born in Korea but moved to the United States as a child.</p><p>But there is no debate that most of the top piano talent comes from elsewhere. That might always have been true to some extent, because of classical music&rsquo;s roots in Europe. But recent Cliburn results indicate that the disparity between the United States and the rest of the world is growing.</p><p>"It has to do with socioeconomic things," Dyer said. "People in China still see it as a way to fame and fortune, particularly with the example of [young piano superstar] Lang Lang. In America it&rsquo;s really not, compared to business school. Well, maybe not business school anymore."</p><p>Kaplinsky said she first noticed the decline of classical music in American culture in the 1970s. Until then, pianos were fixtures in millions of American homes and public school classrooms. In recent decades, however, music has disappeared from curricula, often the first thing to go when education budgets needed to be cut.</p><p>"We lost a generation in the United States, ever since classical music was removed from the public school," Kaplinsky said. "If you have a situation where kids have no classical music ancestry, they found it in a classroom and were immediately drawn to it. Then they came home and told their parents and their parents would not refuse them. It doesn&rsquo;t happen any more. They don&rsquo;t hear it. A child can grow up in the United States very easily and reach the age of 18 without hearing a single classical music piece."</p><p>American parents also tend toward pragmatism, steering their children toward endeavors more likely to provide future comfort, Kaplinsky said. A career in music is definitely not one of them. The American child who does choose the serious study of music can feel socially isolated.</p><p><strong><span class="subhead">'Am I the only one?&rsquo;</span></strong></p><p>Spencer Myer, one of five Americans in this year&rsquo;s Cliburn field, knows first hand. Myer, the son of a classical guitarist, grew up near Cleveland in a home with a piano. At age 6, he asked his parents for piano lessons.</p><p>"The first time I really noticed it was in junior high school," Myer said. "I started really asking, am I the only one who felt this way about art and music and not about sports? I felt very out of place, I felt like an outcast. I had no idea other people shared my passion at all."</p><p>Myer said another revelation awaited when he first encountered foreign-born students at American conservatories where he studied. For most of his early years, he had practiced an hour a day. At the same age, he learned, pianists from Asia and Europe had spent hours a day at the keyboard, often held to task by their parents.</p><p>"The big difference was the work they put in when they were young," said Myer, who studied at Juilliard and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. "In those early years they honed their musical technique, and you can&rsquo;t build a musical soul without that technique."</p><p>The growing ambivalence to classical music among the young is not an exclusively American phenomenon. Christopher Elton, head of the piano department at the Royal Academy of Music in London, said most students at the academy were born in places other than Great Britain.</p><p>"To be a pianist requires extraordinary discipline and dedication from a young age, and not many young people tend to have that these days," Elton said. "There are too many distractions on the Internet, Facebook, where they can have great fun. That&rsquo;s true here, and it wouldn&rsquo;t surprise me if it were the case in the United States as well."</p><p>Some in Fort Worth for the Cliburn hold out hope that there are somewhat better days ahead. Dyer said each generation has its classical music prophets who broaden the audience beyond its typical confines. </p><p>He named Leonard Bernstein and Van Cliburn, then opera singers Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti. Currently, cellist Yo-Yo Ma fits into that category.</p><p>Kaplinsky says she was heartened that a performance by Ma and Itzhak Perlman was part of President Barack Obama&rsquo;s inauguration, which might forebode a greater emphasis on classical music in the new administration.</p><p>"Before, when presidents would bring classical music to the White House, it was just as a token," Kaplinsky said. "I&rsquo;m hoping that he will revive it."</p><p>That would be a good thing, she said. "It is a soul-enriching and calming influence on human beings," Kaplinsky said of classical music. "It is one that draws on their deep emotions and makes them feel more connected with themselves. It&rsquo;s only a positive thing. It needs to be presented in such a way that people accept it as positive."