<p>There is a new article in the NY Times that prospective music majors intent on a musical career should read:</p>
<p>"The results suggest how hard it can be to live as a classical musician in a society that seems increasingly to be pushing classical music to the margins, even as Juilliard and scores of other music schools pour out batches of performers year after year."</p>
<p>Not a new article (2004–9 years old), but still rings true. </p>
<p>Tuition and student debt is much higher now and the job opportunities are far fewer.</p>
<p>It’s strange-- people have been reposting that article for the past few days, although, as MM notes, it was written 9 years ago. Not only is the job market worse for musicians today, it’s worse for everyone else, too. :(</p>
<p>True. The job search is always a matter of concern no matter one’s degree or area of interest. It does seem so often to be the case that when people have demonstrated a tremendous self-discipline and focus in one area, they have the skills to learn and master new things. Entering a top conservatory is not a promise for an international career. It is a step in a long process for a developing musician/artist. How that education will be realized may not be determined for many years. It’s a big wide world with many communities starved for culture and classical music. While there are no guarantees in this competitive field, I believe that it is important to encourage our young musicians to follow their dreams and see where they lead. At least they will never look back and say, I woulda shoulda coulda.</p>
<p>This one is making the rounds on facebook and such as if it is new, don’t ask me why, as if it is a revelation. I think the first point to be made is it has always been difficult to go into music, especially classical music, people make it sound like there was some sort of golden age of classical music where it was easy to come out of school and get a job, it has never been easy. If you read a history of orchestras, for example, it is only fairly recently, mostly the post world war II world, where the big orchestras became full time positions, with benefits and so forth, before then, they were part time positions. Classical music in the US never had the penetration that pop music or big band/jazz did, in some ways it always was what people see it as today,kind of on the margins. </p>
<p>As Anthony Thomassini, the chief music critic on the NY Times, wrote to someone who asked why it was so hard to get into music, what to do, and his response was it is always hard to go into music, always has been, it was when he got into it many years ago (he studied piano at Yale I believe), as it is today. </p>
<p>It has gotten harder, there is no doubt, orchestra jobs, even the part time ones are disappearing, orchestras have gone on strike, and many of the things musicians used to count on, like musical theater work, session work at studios and so forth have dried up…even for those who make it to the soloist level, it is a different world, there just isn’t the kind of thing in the classical world, where agents and record companies took care of the artists. …and a lot of things that could provide a good living, like session work for movies, has been outsourced to cheaper labor markets in eastern Europe in a lot of cases…</p>
<p>And yeah, lot of kids are coming out of the big conservatories with stars in their eyes and then face reality, who think because they are going to Juilliard or Curtis that the name means something in of itself, that if they got in there, they are going to be treated as something special out there, and when they hit the real world they are going to find it is pretty harsh. The conservatories have (slowly, but still) tried to come around and they offer all kinds of seminars and such on what it means to be a musician, on how it means entrepeneurship and networking and being willing to be flexible, but the problem is, they can offer it, doesn’t mean kids are listening. This is especially true on the solo instruments, piano and violin and cello, where the training is mostly on the solo repertoire and the goal often is to become that big hotshot soloist, and there are teachers and programs out there IMO to use the words of someone I know, are training the musical equivalent of thoroughbred racehorses when what is needed are quarterhorses. </p>
<p>I am not so sure how there are these audiences starved for classical music, either, I am very, very leery of the claims, for example, that Asia is going to provide this tremendous audience for classical music, from what I can tell, there isn’t any more of a demand there, despite claims to the contrary, and what you see is a lot of kids going into music there, playing (often at incredible levels), and then going to Europe or the US for jobs, and the demand for classical music, especially in China, if what I have heard and read (Alex Ross wrote a piece about it in the New Yorker) seems to be driven by the government and the industries allied with it trying to use classical music to show they have become sophisticated, rather than the ordinary person having a passion for it (guys I work with from China laugh when I ask about the passion for claissical music, these are educated tech people, and they said the government likes to pretend that people care, when most don’t, they would rather listen to K Pop and rock and such</p>
<p>People on here have caught flack for making statements like if you can’t get into a top level conservatory, you should think seriously about going into classical music, people saying that is ridiculous, it is elitist, etc…but that misses the point, it isn’t about going into Juilliard or Curtis or CIM or NEC or Rice or wherever, it is about being at the level where you could get in there. The irony is that as the job market gets tougher, the playing level has been going through the roof. There are members of major orchestras today who would have a very, very hard time getting into the orchestra they are a member of, because playing levels have gone up that much, kids are coming out of school playing much, much stronger then the typical student did 20 or 30 years ago, and as the jobs have dwindled, the competition has ratcheted up. And yes, it pays to think about if it is hard for kids coming out of the elite conservatories, who presumably have incredible skills, what does it mean for someone who didn’t have the skills to get into a place like that, who was nowhere near that level… (btw, I am not saying you have to go to a school like that, what I am saying is the skill level needs to be there where you could get in…a good teacher at a ‘lower tier’ school that is affordable might be a much better option).</p>
<p>Given all that, it is easy to ask why you should spend time and money going to a conservatory that charges in many cases Ivy league levels of cost, given how tenuous a field it is, and the answer to me is if the kid is truly passionate about music, has the skills to have a realistic chance, then the pursuit of music, even if he/she doesn’t end up in it, is worthwhile. This battle is nothing new, how many people do we all know who get pushed into fields of study because parents think it is what they should do, and are miserable? With all the good intentions in the world “Son, Accounting is a good, steady profession”, it also may hinder the kid, not allow them to develop who knows what…</p>
<p>With music, the idea seems to be that in going to conservatory, you are missing out on valuable stuff you get going to a regular college environment, or that it is if you don’t end up a performer is a waste of time and money, and that I challenge. If the kid has a passion for music, and spends 4 years immersed in it, and comes out after the 4 years and then finds out they don’t want to do music for a living, they aren’t exactly coming out uneducated, either. Sure, they didn’t take all what used to be called core courses, that ‘broaden’ a person, but guess what, music school broadens a student, too, it isn’t just a ‘trade school’ as one poster called it. No, you don’t take wonderful courses titled “the idea of God in the west”, “economics 101”, “Political theory”, and so forth, and much of the work is not in that vein at all. On the other hand, the kid coming out of music school has learned discipline, much more so then kids coming out of academic schools IMO, the amount of practicing, fighting to find a practice room, and sitting there hour after hour practicing. They have learned negotiation skills, they have learned how to deal with difficult people, they have learned serious analysis skills, and academically they are challenged by music theory and ear training and music history, they have met kids with their kind of passion and spent time in discussions with them, and they obviously meet kids from all over the world, music is a lot more international than a typical college is. </p>
<p>They also have learned something even more valuable, that you can pursue your passion, and if it ends, they learn how to move on to the next thing, and that is huge, that it is okay to try and do something, put your heart in it, and have it not work out. In the business world, despite what too many people think, most business successes are predated by a number of failures, that failures end up driving success. Put it this way, people who take the safe path often end up with lives where they don’t really achieve a lot, because they take the safer path and end up only on that…</p>
<p>I think what they really can learn is that passion is a good thing, and if it doesn’t work one way, another one can come along. All that learning about music, being around it, changes the student as profoundly as going to college does I feel, I have know a lot of ex music majors, IT is full of them, and all of them are very different people for it. The people I have met who were bitter about having gone into music were usually people who went into it assuming that the ultimate payout was to be a top soloist or get into a major orchestra, and when that failed, felt they were a failure in life, a lot of the kids who get into Curtis or Juilliard and assume because of the name that they have it made are going to find, I suspect, that when your goal is ‘to be the best’ , ‘better than everyone else’, ‘a star’, anything less is a failure and it can create bitterness; but the person who goes into it with open eyes, realizes how tenuous it is, know that going to Juilliard is a great education but doesn’t guarantee anything, tries and then figures out it didn’t work, will probably be grateful for the effort to try and also will find that the music still drives them forward, albeit in different ways:). </p>
<p>There are people who took the path some think is the only one, go to a HYP school, get an MBA, become a business type, then find out how illusory that happiness is. There is a church in NYC, an oddity, a kind of Presbytyrian mega church, and it has a lot of young people, who according to the pastor find solace there because for the first time in their lives, they are seeing and hearing that there is a lot more to the world than material success, that having the Ivy league education, the high paying corporate job, the fancy car and fancy clothing, that striving for that alone can be empty, and it is okay to question that and find deeper meaning. A kid with a passion for music just might find deeper meaning through it, and that is important, too. It doesn’t pay the bills and such, but maybe with that kind of base, they can move from music into something else and find happiness and a way to pay the bills, or maybe if they are really lucky, find their bliss in music:)</p>
<p>I think the reason this article is being sent around so much is that the people doing it had this misguided perception that going to Juilliard or Curtis or wherever in of itself meant something and thought having the magic name of Juilliard behind them would mean automatic success; to those who have been around music at all, it shouldn’t be that big a deal, that music is hard, few make it and so forth.</p>
<p>I think that very few people who post in this forum believe that a degree in music is a waste or time or money. Most of the discussion revolves around incurring debt and then it devolves into arguments as to whether or not music study is a waste of time and money altogether. No matter what your level of talent, the real financial challenge that most parents and students do not take into account are those first few years after graduation — out in the “real world” of a young performer… Those first few years out in that “real world” are very expensive and the burden of debt can make a performance career even more elusive than they ever imagined. And this discussion pertains not only to music, but to any pursuit that involves an extraordinary amount of debt. Debt that in the end might hinder, rather than help a young artist’s chances in a competitive field.</p>
<p>I don’t know if anyone asks that outright (there there was on thread about justifying a music degree) and in terms of the real world, a lot of parents consider a music degree a waste of time…and there have been comments on here about conservatory degrees, that have said because they focus in on music alone, don’t have the broad liberal arts basis that colleges have, that said in effect that if you don’t make it in music that the value of the degree is less than one attained at a college, and I was challenging that idea. In light of the Juilliard article, it is even more relevant, because people are passing this around as if it was some sort of hidden wisdom, and basically saying “look how hard it is for Juilliard graduates to make it in music” which in turn leads to discussion about what do you do if music doesn’t pan out…when a conservatory degree is called ‘trade school’ it isn’t exactly saying it is valuable, because generally a trade school degree is only valuable in that trade…if the value of any school is in learning, then a conservatory, albeit in different ways, is still a college degree, whether or not the students took all the core courses (much of which when I was in college we groaned about and called them “crap courses” as opposed to our major courses).</p>
<p>The case I plead for our young students is that they are educated in such a way that they know more about the world and how we live in it, know more about themselves including the variety of their multiple talents, and that they can graduate having options for the future, both because they have a background that allows them to go a variety of directions and that they are not encumbered with debt that will limit their futures.</p>