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> Our society does not support classical musicians in the same way that we support ‘popular’ musicians. It really really does. Popular/rock/folk/classical musi

by dofm 1mo ago

> Our society does not support classical musicians in the same way that we support ‘popular’ musicians. It really really does. Popular/rock/folk/classical musicians all earn much the same way now: a blend of teaching, occasional performance fees, functions performances like weddings and galas, music-related side-gigs (composition, arrangement and recording for commercial music), and non-music-related side gigs — teaching non-musical things, gardening, painting and decorating, bar work, office temp work, even full time jobs (doctors and lawyers, accountants). I know a couple of classical musicians whose actual money-making music is playing other instruments in funk/rock functions bands. Even the "best" or most famous musicians, popular or classical, have side gigs. Approximately nobody makes their money only from performing or from recordings; that ended twenty-five or thirty years ago. Elite soloists, maybe — but that is actually a pretty expensive life to live. I would be surprised if many of them risked a life where they had no other job. The idea that a "conservatory" system exists that meaningfully supports classical musicians is nonsense almost anywhere in the world, I would think. Even the first-chair musicians and conductors have side gigs. (ETA: I can't believe this is a workable model for mathematicians, either. Maybe for a couple of dozen the world over. But there is no performance, no regionality, little in the way of public dissemination, little in the way of reflected glory for benefactors. No, the "conservatory" will perhaps be the intelligence agencies, as it was before.)

anon291 1mo ago
Modern 'classical' music is a myth. In their day, classical composers were essentially pop performers. Women used to throw their undergarments at mozart... Today classical music is filled with people who want to pretend to be superior to pop musicians because they keep their repertoire confined to academically acceptable areas. And then the LARPers that want to make new music make complete and utter arhythmic and atonal trash that demands humans subdue our own aural feelings of beauty. You'll find classical musicians who complain about this stuff are usually incompetent musicians who really stretch the definition of artist. Sorry spent almost a decade of my young life in a somewhat competitive music school environment. Lots of the other kids were upset I played what I wanted to and people liked it. Actual modern composers in the classical tradition (I.e. people alive today who compose music that is similar in feel to older composers) are well compensated because they're often hired to score films, video games, and other capitalist interests that the supposedly 'real' classical musicians would scoff their noses at.
- boothby 1mo ago
  > Today classical music is filled with people who want to pretend to be superior to pop musicians because they keep their repertoire confined to academically acceptable areas. As somebody with classical training and a brother in the industry, it pains me to read this misinformed opinion of yours. Top-tier symphonies world round are doing crossover concerts with pop artists, play pop songs, modern and experimental music, and regularly feature works by living composers. In my high school orchestra, circa '98, we played stuff like music from Star Wars and West Side Story -- not just the ancients. Down the foodchain, it gets even weirder. The favorite gig I played involved interpretive dance featuring waterboarding, gallons of fake blood, a live chicken race, and more. Where you certainly will find a subset of afficionados of any genre who scoff at anything but their extremely narrow definition of "good music," if you take the time to rub elbows with mature classical musicians you'll find many to most of them quite open minded. Your experience with young artists, finding them to be idealistic and purist, does not extend to the whole field. I know people who only listen to a single narrow genre or decade of pop music. How are they different? Edit to add: > And then the LARPers that want to make new music make complete and utter arhythmic and atonal trash that demands humans subdue our own aural feelings of beauty. Oh, no. No, no no. I've been to a circuit-bent punk show. I recently went to an ambient music festival. I've heard glitch pop. Angine de Poitrine is blowing up because they use a semitonal guitar (though as a bit of a noise snob, I find their use of semitones milquetoast and rather uninspired). Here you are, narrowly defining music, and excluding what you dislike. But it's not just "classical" living composers doing this.
  - lokar 1mo ago
    > Top-tier symphonies world round are doing crossover concerts with pop artists And they have been for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerto_for_Group_and_Orchestra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerto_for_Group_and_Orchest...
    - TFNA 1mo ago
      As classic as that collaboration now is, the RPO was not top-tier at the time of it.
encomiast 1mo ago
> Even the first-chair musicians and conductors have side gigs. A principal player (I don't think anyone beyond high school band calls them 'first-chair') in a major symphony orchestra in the United States makes $250k-400k a year. These are extremely competitive jobs and they are paid well. Certainly enough to live on if you wanted to. These people often teach, but not really because they need a "side-gig." If you ask them, they will likely tell you they feel a certain duty to prepare the next generation, they like teaching, and their rehearsal/performance schedule affords them the time.
- dofm 1mo ago
  There are about twenty of these people, though. I said "approximately nobody". At a first approximation, no musician who does it for money makes a living out of it. Classical, pop, rock, whatever. Nobody in music, basically, makes real money. Fifty, maybe a hundred violinists in the entire world do earn a pure living. Perhaps another twenty five of each other instrument. A few international soloists in other instruments. But musicians in those jobs are often burning as much money as they are making. (Even Anouskha Shankar has a portfolio career). This is essentially nobody. Everyone else in classical music is earning just the same way as popular musicians — and society doesn't "support" popular musicians at all! The perception that rock musicians make money touring, for example, is just that: perception. The vast majority of tours either just break even or lose money. Working in music production and staging makes better money than musicians make. Everyone else, essentially, has another job. > (I don't think anyone beyond high school band calls them 'first-chair') Snark noted, though I have no earthly idea why you felt it necessary
  - encomiast 1mo ago
    I understand your point. Music is one of those careers, like professional athlete, that make parents cringe when optimistic children announce an intention to pursue it. Your numbers are off (the base pay of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last time I checked was around $200k) and there ~30 violinists in that orchestra alone. But it's not an order of magnitude. But just because the numbers are small doesn't mean society does not support them. There just isn't a need for a lot of them. It would be like saying society does not support professional athletes. Clearly it does, but only at the highest level. And at that level, it supports the very well. > Snark noted, though I have no earthly idea why you felt it necessary I apologize. I come from this world, have close friends in major orchestras and experience on the world's opera stages. This culture is full of shibboleths: referring to works as "songs", clapping in the wrong place, hell, even pronouncing 'Don Giovanni' the same way you pronounce "Don Draper" lets people know you are not from around here.
analog31 1mo ago
>>> Elite soloists, maybe — but that is actually a pretty expensive life to live. I would be surprised if many of them risked a life where they had no other job. Yes, they really did. Getting to that level requires training at an intensity that closes off the option of training for an alternative career.
- lordnacho 1mo ago
  I think he's alluding to having family money. So, even though you try hard to become a pianist, if you don't become famous, you're ok. A friend of mine did this, he lives in a massive house and just enjoys his music, teaches occasionally.
  - Gravityloss 1mo ago
    I think often in families, if a generation is successful with money (for example as engineer or enterpreneur), then next generation often become artists or politicians etc.
IronyMan1 1mo ago
i know some musicians, and it's how you describe it. They have multiple gigs all the time. Even 20-30 years ago. Most of the time one main job, one that pays the bills and is stable, like teaching, and more on the side. A conservatory is just a high-end agency for distributing classical live music.
babagan0ush 1mo ago
On a side note: It's not called a "conservatory" because we are conserving the art in it. The name seems to originate from a place where orphaned children were taken care off (i.e. conserved) and part of that was through musical education.
vintermann 1mo ago
I don't think fully employed opera singers, and professional orchestra musicians, tend to have side gigs. But it's also extremely difficult to get full employment in such jobs, and I think they're pretty intense: of the few people from my school days who succeeded in getting that, at least two of them quit/downshifted into teaching jobs after a decade or so.
- NikolaNovak 1mo ago
  My experience is different ; Somehow I befriended a bunch of professional opera and orchestra singers in my mid 20s. It is now 20 years later and they absolutely all have side gigs. We need to distinguish "professional opera singer" and "professional orchestra player" vs Pavarotti though :). Just like there are hundreds and thousands of "professional singers" and one Jennifer Lopez (though one could argue she's a perfect example of side gigs:). My musician friends teach, do social networks, do all kinds of gigs, and are usually "multi barely employed". Not a single one of them, and two are fairly successful, are "full time employed" in the same sense a corporate professional is :-/.
  - vintermann 1mo ago
    I think it's a lot about which country you live in. I live in Norway, and went to a music oriented high school (I'm not terribly talented myself, but only half the places were set aside for people doing well on audition, the rest of us got in on grades). A good deal of my classmates became professional musicians of various sorts, two got orchestra jobs. But Norway isn't the best country to be a full time classical musician at all - apparently there are far more positions in Russia and Eastern European countries.
- saberience 1mo ago
  As someone who's been close to several opera singers (long story), I would say that the amount of opera singers who don't have side gigs in teaching or otherwise is very, very small. Yes, if you're one of the few world famous sopranos you don't need to teach, but most singers are not world-famous. I knew one singer who toured internationally, had sung in front of thousands of people, had sung with world famous people, etc. But who lived in shared accomodation and worked several other part-time jobs to make ends meet.
luxcem 1mo ago
I think you are talking about the US. In Europe (at least France & Germany) most professional classical musicians are doing it exclusively (we might be an outlier but it's the norm here), competition is fierce though but at that level it's a full time job. In France we have prestigious ensembles (Orchestre de Radio France, Opéra de Paris, Orchestre de Paris), roughly 20+ subsidised regional orchestras and opera houses, military and police ensembles. That's for full-time permanent job. Underneath that there's the intermittence regime (roughly 100k people) freelance entertainment professional. Between gigs, the government provides a special unemployment insurance program to maintain a steady income. Germany is the same story, on an even bigger scale (100+ state-funded ensembles) but no intermittence equivalent. But even in the US, are you sure that musicians from the big 5 need side gigs? It seems that the salary in those orchestra are in the $100k-$200k range annually. Enough to live even in the most expensive cities, right?
viccis 1mo ago
>I can't believe this is a workable model for mathematicians, either. It already is. Pure math departments are largely service oriented. They exist to teach engineers calculus. They are already spending a great deal of time doing non-research tasks, just like musicians you described. The exceptions would be the very top researchers at R1 schools, and even then they often spend time advising students and teaching occasional courses. It's not super common to have people do nothing but research in a pure math department.

by dofm 1mo ago

anon291 1mo ago

Modern 'classical' music is a myth. In their day, classical composers were essentially pop performers. Women used to throw their undergarments at mozart... Today classical music is filled with people who want to pretend to be superior to pop musicians because they keep their repertoire confined to academically acceptable areas. And then the LARPers that want to make new music make complete and utter arhythmic and atonal trash that demands humans subdue our own aural feelings of beauty. You'll find classical musicians who complain about this stuff are usually incompetent musicians who really stretch the definition of artist. Sorry spent almost a decade of my young life in a somewhat competitive music school environment. Lots of the other kids were upset I played what I wanted to and people liked it. Actual modern composers in the classical tradition (I.e. people alive today who compose music that is similar in feel to older composers) are well compensated because they're often hired to score films, video games, and other capitalist interests that the supposedly 'real' classical musicians would scoff their noses at.

boothby 1mo ago
> Today classical music is filled with people who want to pretend to be superior to pop musicians because they keep their repertoire confined to academically acceptable areas. As somebody with classical training and a brother in the industry, it pains me to read this misinformed opinion of yours. Top-tier symphonies world round are doing crossover concerts with pop artists, play pop songs, modern and experimental music, and regularly feature works by living composers. In my high school orchestra, circa '98, we played stuff like music from Star Wars and West Side Story -- not just the ancients. Down the foodchain, it gets even weirder. The favorite gig I played involved interpretive dance featuring waterboarding, gallons of fake blood, a live chicken race, and more. Where you certainly will find a subset of afficionados of any genre who scoff at anything but their extremely narrow definition of "good music," if you take the time to rub elbows with mature classical musicians you'll find many to most of them quite open minded. Your experience with young artists, finding them to be idealistic and purist, does not extend to the whole field. I know people who only listen to a single narrow genre or decade of pop music. How are they different? Edit to add: > And then the LARPers that want to make new music make complete and utter arhythmic and atonal trash that demands humans subdue our own aural feelings of beauty. Oh, no. No, no no. I've been to a circuit-bent punk show. I recently went to an ambient music festival. I've heard glitch pop. Angine de Poitrine is blowing up because they use a semitonal guitar (though as a bit of a noise snob, I find their use of semitones milquetoast and rather uninspired). Here you are, narrowly defining music, and excluding what you dislike. But it's not just "classical" living composers doing this.
- lokar 1mo ago
  > Top-tier symphonies world round are doing crossover concerts with pop artists And they have been for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerto_for_Group_and_Orchestra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerto_for_Group_and_Orchest...
  - TFNA 1mo ago
    As classic as that collaboration now is, the RPO was not top-tier at the time of it.

encomiast 1mo ago

> Even the first-chair musicians and conductors have side gigs. A principal player (I don't think anyone beyond high school band calls them 'first-chair') in a major symphony orchestra in the United States makes $250k-400k a year. These are extremely competitive jobs and they are paid well. Certainly enough to live on if you wanted to. These people often teach, but not really because they need a "side-gig." If you ask them, they will likely tell you they feel a certain duty to prepare the next generation, they like teaching, and their rehearsal/performance schedule affords them the time.

dofm 1mo ago
There are about twenty of these people, though. I said "approximately nobody". At a first approximation, no musician who does it for money makes a living out of it. Classical, pop, rock, whatever. Nobody in music, basically, makes real money. Fifty, maybe a hundred violinists in the entire world do earn a pure living. Perhaps another twenty five of each other instrument. A few international soloists in other instruments. But musicians in those jobs are often burning as much money as they are making. (Even Anouskha Shankar has a portfolio career). This is essentially nobody. Everyone else in classical music is earning just the same way as popular musicians — and society doesn't "support" popular musicians at all! The perception that rock musicians make money touring, for example, is just that: perception. The vast majority of tours either just break even or lose money. Working in music production and staging makes better money than musicians make. Everyone else, essentially, has another job. > (I don't think anyone beyond high school band calls them 'first-chair') Snark noted, though I have no earthly idea why you felt it necessary
- encomiast 1mo ago
  I understand your point. Music is one of those careers, like professional athlete, that make parents cringe when optimistic children announce an intention to pursue it. Your numbers are off (the base pay of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra last time I checked was around $200k) and there ~30 violinists in that orchestra alone. But it's not an order of magnitude. But just because the numbers are small doesn't mean society does not support them. There just isn't a need for a lot of them. It would be like saying society does not support professional athletes. Clearly it does, but only at the highest level. And at that level, it supports the very well. > Snark noted, though I have no earthly idea why you felt it necessary I apologize. I come from this world, have close friends in major orchestras and experience on the world's opera stages. This culture is full of shibboleths: referring to works as "songs", clapping in the wrong place, hell, even pronouncing 'Don Giovanni' the same way you pronounce "Don Draper" lets people know you are not from around here.

analog31 1mo ago

>>> Elite soloists, maybe — but that is actually a pretty expensive life to live. I would be surprised if many of them risked a life where they had no other job. Yes, they really did. Getting to that level requires training at an intensity that closes off the option of training for an alternative career.

lordnacho 1mo ago
I think he's alluding to having family money. So, even though you try hard to become a pianist, if you don't become famous, you're ok. A friend of mine did this, he lives in a massive house and just enjoys his music, teaches occasionally.
- Gravityloss 1mo ago
  I think often in families, if a generation is successful with money (for example as engineer or enterpreneur), then next generation often become artists or politicians etc.

IronyMan1 1mo ago

i know some musicians, and it's how you describe it. They have multiple gigs all the time. Even 20-30 years ago. Most of the time one main job, one that pays the bills and is stable, like teaching, and more on the side. A conservatory is just a high-end agency for distributing classical live music.

babagan0ush 1mo ago

On a side note: It's not called a "conservatory" because we are conserving the art in it. The name seems to originate from a place where orphaned children were taken care off (i.e. conserved) and part of that was through musical education.

vintermann 1mo ago

I don't think fully employed opera singers, and professional orchestra musicians, tend to have side gigs. But it's also extremely difficult to get full employment in such jobs, and I think they're pretty intense: of the few people from my school days who succeeded in getting that, at least two of them quit/downshifted into teaching jobs after a decade or so.

NikolaNovak 1mo ago
My experience is different ; Somehow I befriended a bunch of professional opera and orchestra singers in my mid 20s. It is now 20 years later and they absolutely all have side gigs. We need to distinguish "professional opera singer" and "professional orchestra player" vs Pavarotti though :). Just like there are hundreds and thousands of "professional singers" and one Jennifer Lopez (though one could argue she's a perfect example of side gigs:). My musician friends teach, do social networks, do all kinds of gigs, and are usually "multi barely employed". Not a single one of them, and two are fairly successful, are "full time employed" in the same sense a corporate professional is :-/.
- vintermann 1mo ago
  I think it's a lot about which country you live in. I live in Norway, and went to a music oriented high school (I'm not terribly talented myself, but only half the places were set aside for people doing well on audition, the rest of us got in on grades). A good deal of my classmates became professional musicians of various sorts, two got orchestra jobs. But Norway isn't the best country to be a full time classical musician at all - apparently there are far more positions in Russia and Eastern European countries.
saberience 1mo ago
As someone who's been close to several opera singers (long story), I would say that the amount of opera singers who don't have side gigs in teaching or otherwise is very, very small. Yes, if you're one of the few world famous sopranos you don't need to teach, but most singers are not world-famous. I knew one singer who toured internationally, had sung in front of thousands of people, had sung with world famous people, etc. But who lived in shared accomodation and worked several other part-time jobs to make ends meet.

luxcem 1mo ago

I think you are talking about the US. In Europe (at least France & Germany) most professional classical musicians are doing it exclusively (we might be an outlier but it's the norm here), competition is fierce though but at that level it's a full time job. In France we have prestigious ensembles (Orchestre de Radio France, Opéra de Paris, Orchestre de Paris), roughly 20+ subsidised regional orchestras and opera houses, military and police ensembles. That's for full-time permanent job. Underneath that there's the intermittence regime (roughly 100k people) freelance entertainment professional. Between gigs, the government provides a special unemployment insurance program to maintain a steady income. Germany is the same story, on an even bigger scale (100+ state-funded ensembles) but no intermittence equivalent. But even in the US, are you sure that musicians from the big 5 need side gigs? It seems that the salary in those orchestra are in the $100k-$200k range annually. Enough to live even in the most expensive cities, right?

viccis 1mo ago

>I can't believe this is a workable model for mathematicians, either. It already is. Pure math departments are largely service oriented. They exist to teach engineers calculus. They are already spending a great deal of time doing non-research tasks, just like musicians you described. The exceptions would be the very top researchers at R1 schools, and even then they often spend time advising students and teaching occasional courses. It's not super common to have people do nothing but research in a pure math department.