Strike with the Band: The meritocratic failures of classical music

The other path was to move to LA and try to get work writing for film and TV. But that's also incredibly competitive. You also have to write music incredibly quickly to succeed, and I was a slow writer.

Fortunately for me, I absolutely hated teaching theory and ear training during my masters, and I made the decision to not go on to a Ph.D. Even more fortunately, I got my first computer when I was 5 (its own example of privilege) and I was able to get first a support job and then soon after a programming job during the first dot com bubble.

I still love music and I miss composing, but I'm sure I'm happier being financially stable, having a choice of where to live, and not teaching things I really don't enjoy.

The thing that makes so-called classical music stand out in a crowd is the long duration over which musical ideas may be worked out. Even in the 1700s we're talking multiple hours for something like Don Pedro's/Commandatore's themes over the course of Mozart's Don Giovanni. And the assumption behind a CD being able to hold Beethoven's 9th in its entirety is that a modern audience is able and willing to concentrate on the relationship among related musical ideas over the course of 70 minutes.

But "transcendental, lush, and heartbreakingly emotional" can only be marketed atop those long forms if listeners have sufficient leisure time, money, and attention to devote to it. The modern world doesn't give, say, the average American much leisure time nor money. And most HN devs here seem busy writing apps that capture any attention left in the cracks.

That means classical music must compete as one of many sources of "transcendental, lush, and heartbreakingly emotional" experiences. In that light its time requirements make it a detriment. So it's no surprise that a skilled violinist is struggling just to pay off the debt it took to be able to proficiently perform large-scale classical works.

It isn't about working hard. It's about working smart.

Make a list of things you love. Make another list of things that others will pay for. The intersection is where to make a career.

I think the author's angst comes from missing that: 1) Markets outweigh other financial considerations we wish for. Currently, those don't support as many musicians as there are people wanting to be professional musicians. As a music and history lover who got some attention as a youth (also in a small pond), I eventually realized that programming pays better, if one is persistent to learn. 2) We can scratch our itches in the form of hobbies or outside interests, as part of having a balanced life. And in activities with family, friends, neighbors, and church members. For example, my mother made us practice the piano (she was just tougher than I was when I tried to quit), and I am so grateful to my very non-wealthy parents for those sacrifices. We had good times as a family singing around the piano: we weren't what anyone would call very good at it, but those are priceless memories to me. (It also taught us that we can do hard things, if one sticks with it and practices the right way, like, one hand slowly with many repetitions, then put them together: life can be similar.) We sang mostly "parlor music", like Stephen Foster melodies from an old book, etc etc., and kidded each other and had popcorn and told stories etc. It didn't have to make me a living to add joy to life. Similarly for our little, amateur, local church choir. Some people learn to jam together. (Coolness...)

We have to make realistic choices (and avoid debt!), and strive for a balanced life. I write some things about having a balanced life, and balanced human growth in good ways, at http://lukecall.net .

Favorite quote, "When rich people get together, they talk about art. When artists get together, they talk about money."

"Those who achieve such heights are capable of playing the most complex, technically difficult music on equally complex instruments that take decades to master"

Complexity just isn't of value in software and I don't know if it is in music. One of my favourite pieces is Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, and that's extremely simple (ISTM. IANAMusician. YMMV. etc).

The only value to music is a purely subjective one, how do assess merit in such a situation.

Basically, these are nostalgia careers. There is nothing wrong with loving old things, but they make sense as a hobby, not as a career you need to make a living.

I say this as someone who was (for a time) married to someone who "followed her dream" at the advice of her dad, and majored in operatic singing. Good as she was, all she was able to get as a job was in an opera chorus, while teaching music in elementary schools. The opera she was in was eventually closed, the music program in that school district was canceled, but neither paid much anyway. Eventually she took on more loans (while I paid rent and groceries etc) to get a degree in speech pathology.

The economics of this was driven home once when we were together, when we went to see an opera in San Francisco. There was no amplification, but an actual orchestra. The ratio of audience members to performers was ridiculously low. The house was mostly full, but it wasn't that big a house (how big can it really be with no amplification?).

Meanwhile, the same evening, a young coworker of mine was attending an EDM show right across the plaza at the Bill Graham center, so we walked over together. That show was basically a couple guys on stage with laptops. Apparently not much on stage resembling musical instruments. And the crowd lined up outside was so enormous it made it hard for me to find my wife and to get to the opera house.

Some people see that as sad, I guess, and in some ways I can agree. (although I tend to prefer electronic music more than classical, I don't see the point of attending a live show if the music is pre-sequenced, that's just weird)

Regardless, this is reality today.

Her points are mostly sour grapes and throwing shade at the broader industry/community imho. Does it have diversity(?) - it tends to be very, white, asian, and jewish. Does it have a diversity problem? Perhaps, but at the same time, I don't think diversity will some how 'save' classical music. Ultimately, I think classical music more generally in at least the US is more diverse, has much broader engagement and diversity and gas more appreciated/exposure as it pertains to marching bands and football programs. It's a bit lame admittedly, that music can be so dependent upon sports for it's relevance but I also think one of the most fundamental issues with classical music is it's notion of performer/audience. Many people love to play music as it's a satisfying and communal endeavor, but so much of the classical world is focused on aspirations of getting paid to play for audiences. I hope that one day there will be a bit of a mental shift that reconsiders what about playing in a band or orchestra is so magical and recenters the whole thing on the participation in making art collectively instead of trying to exist merely for the pleasure of an audience. I think it would be a welcome realization that would allow the classical realm to refocus and reengage with society in a more relevant way.

I see the meritocracy working perfectly here, on average the richest students had the best training and equipment, and as such developed into the best musicians (and without the injuries mentioned), therefore they have the most merit to make a career of it.

No one is born knowing how to play a viola, what careers are there where your training is not reflected in your merit?

As a former professional classical musician (I kicked the habit when I became a father,) I'm always amazed at the sense of entitlement expressed by musicians. As if the state is somehow morally obligated to support their art.

At the end of the day, it's a question of supply and demand. There's a ton of young people that go to music school each year, while on the demand side there's an ever-diminishing group of snotty white-haired patrons that are willing to pay to hear a symphony orchestra live.

> Perhaps the most humiliating defeat was dealt to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, which went on strike for six months in 2011, only to concede to an almost 25 percent pay cut.

I really don't get why musicians feel primordially entitled to a $100K job no matter the economic circumstances.

This breaks my heart, and it’s exactly how I felt for 15 years. Being a violin failure, when I loved violin more than anything, was so painful. But when it comes to things like playing violin, we have the power to decide for ourselves what success and failure are. Success might be practicing five hours a week and mastering four new pieces a year and enjoying the transcendent beauty of playing violin.

I left the pre-professional violinist track and ended up with an MS in CS. Now I’m a homeschooling mother teaching her kids to play violin and piano, among other things.

Our culture is obsessively utilitarian when it comes to music and sports. Playing music, playing sports is anything but playful, and it is such a shame.

So if your dream job isn't worth people voluntarily paying for, then you're entitled to having the government extract the money from them on your behalf?

I don't think so.

Would you like being taxed to pay professional football players who aren't in the NFL?

Rather than try to storm this particular upper-bourgeois shrine to "dead shit", fail, then get upset about it, why not make something new, or share the gift with some place that needs it?

With these people, that's inconceivable! The answer is always public subsidy. That way, lower-bougies get a fair and equal opportunity to let their shit roll downhill, and land on the same people who subsidized them--the same way they see "justice" in getting a bunch of plumbers and mechanics to pay off their student loans for sociology degrees.

Many years ago, I had a discussion about the same issue in the world of dance. I was reminded that Smith had said "...they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime.".

Classical music, like classical dance, is a positive thing that is being sold in a way that doesn't really accord with its value. Much of Mozart's work was commissioned to entertain small audiences at social events the format of which has more or less disappeared from the world. That's why it was a way to make a living back then and why it isn't now. The contemporary pre-occupation with virtuosity and art for art's sake in certain "classical" (really Romantic era) art forms disguises these arts' social function, and by extension obscures anyway of charging for them.

Although the author strikes a tone of strident unfairness ("This is the way of arts under capitalism..."), at no point do they suggest that there is anything on the other side of the balance sheet -- that musicians provide a certain amount of value to society and should thus be compensated for it. The closest they get is to mention putting in a lot of effort and going into a lot of debt. The tough, late realisation facing these musicians is that most people have to work for a living; that having some unique skills of a rich kid does not make you into one.

Performance is a fairly limited way for society to derive value from the arts. A lot of the value of them is in the effect they have on people as they learn to work together in the context of a performance, and on their friends and family as they attend it. For many of the classical arts there are direct antecedents in folk arts which were as much for the benefit of the performers as for anyone else. The antecedents are particularly easy to discover for music and dance. These folk arts bide their time, ready to have their former positive effect on us, if only we would employ them at a scale and in a context that is fitting to them.

From The Wealth of Nations:

Hunting and fishing, the most important employments of mankind in the rude state of society, become in its advanced state their most agreeable amusements, and they pursue for pleasure what they once followed from necessity. In the advanced state of society, therefore, they are all very poor people who follow as a trade, what other people pursue as a pastime. Fishermen have been so since the time of Theocritus. A poacher is every-where a very poor man in Great Britain. In countries where the rigour of the law suffers no poachers, the licensed hunter is not in a much better condition. The natural taste for those employments makes more people follow them than can live comfortably by them, and the produce of their labour, in proportion to its quantity, comes always too cheap to market to afford any thing but the most scanty subsistence to the labourers.

It is noteworthy that quite a few people make a living teaching hunting marksmanship and tracking techniques, running ballet schools, tuning pianos...

https://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN.html?chapter_num=...

Edit: getting downvoted here with no response, but if you read the article, the only thing the author can point to in terms of the prospective careers falling apart are medical issues, followed by a blanket claim that classical music is run by haughty folks.

Not all unwealthy people learn with bad technique.

My career is in applied math and computing, and now I'm heading for an alpha test for my startup, but for hobbies I like both classical violin and mathematical physics.

For violin, for the muscles part, have two hands, one chin, one left shoulder, and one back. There have long been plenty of pictures of great violinists -- e.g., Heifetz -- that show really clearly what positions of hands, chin, left shoulder, and back should be. The left shoulder position is made easier by the long very popular shoulder rests that attach under the violin a little behind the bridge.

I got through some plenty serious music, e.g., about half of the Bach Chaconne with no problems with injuries.

I played violin because I like it: I don't have a good singing voice so can use violin, e.g., with some of Bach's music, to scream out to the heavens the passion of the human spirit! In this way, violin is great fun!

But it was always totally clear to me that there was no money in classical music for me and very little for 99.99% of everyone else in music. E.g., I did clearly understand that all the people who could have a good career as a classical solo violinist could meet in large SUV -- literally true. E.g., there was a report that each year there are in all the world only about 50 solo violin performances with major orchestras.

But also gotta mention, there are not many people, only a small fraction even in that SUV, who can play the music as well as Heifetz. Each year some young violinists come on the scene with a big entrance, but too soon it's clear that for world class performances of the major pieces they need more time in master classes, a practice room, and most of all thinking about the artistic expression of the pieces. E.g., the last few bars of the central D-major section of the Bach Chaconne are the climax of the piece, and that needs to be brought out clearly to the audience but is rarely done effectively. Net, it appears that there is some room at the top for solo violinists.

Also a violin doesn't have to be wildly expensive: Mine cost $600 and is plenty good enough. My understanding is that the violin makers have made amazing progress in recent decades and routinely make violins as good as the best ever.