Miserable job. Highly competitive, low pay, limited autonomy. Had a colleague once who switched to IT from being an orchestral musician. Caveat: single data point.
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Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
31–40 of 56 posts
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#32IANAM (though I have relatives that are). My experience ion the corporate world is that HR exists to protect the organization, not to help the employees. The notion that orchestras need an HR organization to address musician's issues should be taken with a big grain of salt.
Why should a musician be different than any other job, without the support of HR. Yes, HR is there to protect the company when there are disputes with employees, but it's also there to help protect employees from other employees.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#33I remember listening to a piano concerto + symphony one evening live at a concert hall and thinking how it was possible that this orchestra of 50+ plus a famous soloist makes money on our $100 tickets (best seats). Here we are paying $100 for 50 top notch world class musicians playing for 3 hours. There were maybe 500 people in the concert hall, so at an average ticket price of $50 each musician (split evenly) would…
When I'm at a classical music concert I feel strongly that I'm part of a culture . Here's music written 300 years ago that we're actively conspiring to conserve. None of it really makes any money - not for the musicians who have spent their lives getting good enough to play it, not for the mostly amateur promoters, not for the taxpayers who probably bear the bulk of the costs of the thing - but we do it anyway. Even…
It's 100-200 years old usually. 300 y.o. falls into the baroque era.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#34I remember listening to a piano concerto + symphony one evening live at a concert hall and thinking how it was possible that this orchestra of 50+ plus a famous soloist makes money on our $100 tickets (best seats). Here we are paying $100 for 50 top notch world class musicians playing for 3 hours. There were maybe 500 people in the concert hall, so at an average ticket price of $50 each musician (split evenly) would…
When I'm at a classical music concert I feel strongly that I'm part of a culture . Here's music written 300 years ago that we're actively conspiring to conserve. None of it really makes any money - not for the musicians who have spent their lives getting good enough to play it, not for the mostly amateur promoters, not for the taxpayers who probably bear the bulk of the costs of the thing - but we do it anyway. Even…
> I think it's kind of a lovely thing.
There's room to disagree about that. Especially with orchestral music, the reality is that so much of the audience is simply there out of habit and not "real aficionados" as you say. Which means they're not really grokking any of the music and do not really care about anything besides the old "workhorse" pieces. The widely-acknowledged outcome is that, far from being actively preserved, much of the potential repertoire simply languishes in obscurity.
There are of course forces pushing against this unwanted dynamic, such as a renewed appreciation for solo and small-ensemble/chamber music (which can at least be easier to understand for the novice listener), as well as recreational engagement with the artform outside the concert hall. In many ways, this is a reaffirmation of the "natural" environment for this sort of music where recorded music was either non-existent or uncommon, and actively playing music was an increasingly accessible, everyday activity.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#35I once saw a FoF playing in the Sydney Symphony and then met them at the bar in the harbour for a messy evening of drinking. They were joined by many colleagues. The conversations I eavesdropped on were quite epic: “No I don’t think it was a mistake to do crystal meth, it was just a mistake to do it in the first day” And other such tidbits which suggested their lives were anything like described in the article. Maybe…
A family member who is a professional classical musician told me it seems that excessive drinking, and sometimes substance abuse, is a coping strategy for the high stress of playing on stage, which is very exposed. Doesn't seem very healthy. There are pro orchestras whose members get drunk in the interval so the second half of the concert is not so good, especially if they are away from their normal base, or don't like the conductor.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I'm at a classical music concert I feel strongly that I'm part of a culture . Here's music written 300 years ago that we're actively conspiring to conserve. None of it really makes any money - not for the musicians who have spent their lives getting good enough to play it, not for the mostly amateur promoters, not for the taxpayers who probably bear the bulk of the costs of the thing - but we do it anyway. Even…
> I think it's kind of a lovely thing. There's room to disagree about that. Especially with orchestral music, the reality is that so much of the audience is simply there out of habit and not "real aficionados" as you say. Which means they're not really grokking any of the music and do not really care about anything besides the old "workhorse" pieces. The widely-acknowledged outcome is that, far from being actively pr…
Ahhhh, bunk. The beauty of music is that you don't need to be an aficionado to enjoy it. You can enjoy it on a shallow level, or as deeply as you want—tracing every thread in technique and influence and emotion and commentary and so on. That's why it's so [culturally] valuable—it speaks every language at once. It is a lovely thing that it's so much more readily available at that scale than in the past.
Just an aside: There's especially the fun in-between. I had the amazing fortune of getting to see a cross-section of the TSO perform all of the music to Home Alone live while they displayed the movie on a screen above stage. It was fantastic. What a treat.
All this spoken as someone who spent a good portion of his 20's playing 'small-ensemble' and solo around cheap clubs in Toronto. (And continue to nurture those delusions happily into my 30's, and I'll never stop)
(Just another fun aside: my brother in law happens to be a player in the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and I'm pretty sure we're both jealous of each other to some extent)
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#37Even worse to me is so many orchestras have to pay the bills with performances of Christmas music or orchestral versions of Motley Crue. Imagine putting in that many hours of practice on the classical masters to end up with a low paying job playing Frosty the Snowman and Def Leppard "Pour Some Sugar On Me".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jrg0X9H6FGU
The folks in the uniforms, especially the ones playing instruments, in that video are world class.
They're having the time of their professional lives.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#38IANAM (though I have relatives that are). My experience ion the corporate world is that HR exists to protect the organization, not to help the employees. The notion that orchestras need an HR organization to address musician's issues should be taken with a big grain of salt.
Why should a musician be different than any other job, without the support of HR. Yes, HR is there to protect the company when there are disputes with employees, but it's also there to help protect employees from other employees.
> it's also there to help protect employees from other employees
Not always. The main goal of HR is to protect the company and keep things running when sorting out problems between employees, not fairness.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#39IANAM (though I have relatives that are). My experience ion the corporate world is that HR exists to protect the organization, not to help the employees. The notion that orchestras need an HR organization to address musician's issues should be taken with a big grain of salt.
Why should a musician be different than any other job, without the support of HR. Yes, HR is there to protect the company when there are disputes with employees, but it's also there to help protect employees from other employees.
Any organization that refers to the units it manages as 'resources' does not care about them as humans.
Human Resources is about limiting damage to the company. Sometimes that overlaps with protecting workers. Most of the time it doesn't.
Re: Orchestral musicians have unusually challenging jobs
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think it's kind of a lovely thing. There's room to disagree about that. Especially with orchestral music, the reality is that so much of the audience is simply there out of habit and not "real aficionados" as you say. Which means they're not really grokking any of the music and do not really care about anything besides the old "workhorse" pieces. The widely-acknowledged outcome is that, far from being actively pr…
Ahhhh, bunk. The beauty of music is that you don't need to be an aficionado to enjoy it. You can enjoy it on a shallow level, or as deeply as you want—tracing every thread in technique and influence and emotion and commentary and so on. That's why it's so [culturally] valuable—it speaks every language at once. It is a lovely thing that it's so much more readily available at that scale than in the past. Just an aside:…
> The beauty of music is that you don't need to be an aficionado to enjoy it. You can enjoy it on a shallow level, or as deeply as you want—tracing every thread in technique and influence and emotion and commentary and so on.
Of course, I agree about that wrt. music in general. My cautionary comments about appreciation being both hard and not seriously engaged in, as a matter of fact, by many listeners were specifically about commonly-performed orchestral music. (Some people might even consider that alone "real music", while excluding that status for movie soundtracks and the like. Of course, this is self-defeating if you actually care about "real music" being more broadly appreciated: lighter works are a necessary stepping stone to that lofty goal.)
(Just open up your favorite music publishing platform and see how common it is to market just about any piece of orchestral music as something purposely bland and good for "relaxation". Needless to say, this is not what real appreciation looks like. It's not even a "shallow" level of engagement with the music itself.)