Dreaming of becoming a professional musician

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

How many young people have dreamt of becoming professional musicians - perhaps wanting to become performers or composers? I know I was one of them.

But having known so many professionals who find their lives inrewarding and tedious for much of the time, I do not regret my diversion into teaching, in spite of the ongoing problems. Many go on trying to make careers at orchestral performers for many years, but the supply exceeds demand to such an extend that there must be large numbers of frustrated players out there who will never accomplish their dreams.

[Serial_Apologist]

How many young people have dreamt of becoming professional musicians - perhaps wanting to become performers or composers? I know I was one of them.

But having known so many professionals who find their lives inrewarding and tedious for much of the time, I do not regret my diversion into teaching, in spite of the ongoing problems. Many go on trying to make careers at orchestral performers for many years, but the supply exceeds demand to such an extend that there must be large numbers of frustrated players out there who will never accomplish their dreams.

I had not considered this as a career option until in 1959, at age 13, as lead soloist of the boy trebles section of our school chapel choir, and on Grade 5 of piano lessons, I was precipitated into a choral scholarshop exam, which I failed on sight reading, having had no prior explanation of what advantages this could lead to. My progress in the instrumental field declined in line with my boredom with the repertoire and basics practice simultaneously with my voice breaking, though I was retained in the choir - by which time I was educating myself beyond the classical/romantic music on which I had been brought up, and discovering on the one hand 20th century classical music, and on the other jazz.

Only in the past 10 years have I discovered that successfully passing the choral scholarship could have taken me to music college. But in retrospect, on the one hand jazz was not on any British higher education syllabus back then, and the models for pianistic emulation in that field not apparently contemporary; and on the other, composition would have been very much in the atonal/serial models then seen as fashionable and in any way still beyond comprehension. If I have any regrets it's because musical journalism would have been just right for me in the post-school period that saw modernism reaching out towards the public and jazz either moving in that direction, influencing or being influenced by the more adventurous pathways then being explored by some rock music.

Did competitions like Young Musician determine one's musical fortunes back then? If so I don't remember it. Today as you say EA, supply in the classical field outnumbers demand, and one should maybe be expected to be as adept at playing Carter or Ferneyhough as Liszt or Beethoven. With my other hat on, in the jazz field there are similar BBC-sponsored schemes, but I was nevertheless thinking of the huge surge of young, creative musicians currently entering what community-minded jazzers in the 1970s would have scornfully described as the "jazz market", while remarking the other day, to a jazz musician of my generation, how lucky she might (?) have been to have been able to benefit thereby back in the 1960s.

[MrGongGong]

How many young people have dreamt of becoming professional musicians - perhaps wanting to become performers or composers? I know I was one of them.

But having known so many professionals who find their lives inrewarding and tedious for much of the time, I do not regret my diversion into teaching, in spite of the ongoing problems. Many go on trying to make careers at orchestral performers for many years, but the supply exceeds demand to such an extend that there must be large numbers of frustrated players out there who will never accomplish their dreams.

I think that there are many ways of working in music without adopting the "traditional" roles of player/teacher
most musicians move quite happily between many ways of work
I think one of the key things is to try and be able to work with what is "in front of you"
someone I know who conducts many choirs said (wisely IMV) that one of the hardest things was to work with the choir in front of you NOT the one in your head !
Many people (and this is particularly true of music teachers) are unhappy because they are wanting to be somewhere else , the church I used to sing at as a youngster had a vicar who had been in KCC as a boy, he was always unhappy that the sound we made (which wasn't bad ) wasn't "up to" what he remembered from many years ago, consequently he was always unhappy, unable to get beyond this and draw on his expertise.

For some of us , it really is too late, i'm not sure that I can actually DO anything else apart from make a rather good risotto and that's not going to buy much cheese (neither is being a musician for that matter) .......

If most of us who do work as musicians were "sensible" we would have gone and got a "proper" job, thank whoever that this hasn't happened ....

[teamsaint]

well you could put the recipe on the refreshment board !

I went to an open day for potential undergrads (not for me , obviously) at Royal Holloway recently. The prof (or whoever) said something worthwhile, which is the department would aim to find that one little niche into which the studnts could fit, career wise.Very sensible.
let themselves down, though, by mentioning that KT Tunstall had studied there , roughly every 2 minutes during the morning !!

[Boilk]

How many young people have dreamt of becoming professional musicians ...?

Probably none.

To become a professional musican is challenging enough, to become "professional musicians" is near impossible, not even Bach or Mozart accomplished that.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

"Young people" is implicitly plural. Therefore they cannot all become one professional musician.

[Pabmusic]

"Young people" is implicitly plural. Therefore they cannot all become one professional musician.

Spot on, Alps, but 'young people' is explicitly plural, not implicitly so.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Spot on, Alps, but 'young people' is explicitly plural, not implicitly so.

In practice, yes, but historically no. Back in the midst of time it was more correct to say "the people is..."

[Hornspieler]

In practice, yes, but historically no. Back in the midst of time it was more correct to say "the people is..."

For Heavens sake stop bickering about grammar and address the subject!

As a matter of fact, I do still dream about being a professional musician (literally) and wake up in a cold sweat.

Sometimes, I dream that I have been invited back into an orchestra to deputise in the 1st horn chair and I am asking myself "Can I still play this thing?" "Will the others resent my presence?" "Is my eyesight good enough to read the music and still focus on the conductor?"
"Was there a rehearsal? I don't remember seeing this music before ..."

But my worse nightmare was some years ago when I dreamed that a concert was about to start and I was sitting right under the conductor's nose in the Principal 2nd violin chair with a fiddle in my hands. What was I doing there? Had there been a rehearsal - in which case I must have bluffed my way through that somehow? I woke up screaming!

This could prove to be an interesting and informative thread. I shall await the comments of others before returning to it in a more serious and, I hope, informative vein and I hope that other former and current professional musicians will also join in the discussion.

HS

[Pabmusic]

In practice, yes, but historically no. Back in the midst of time it was more correct to say "the people is..."

Ah! It's a similar phenomenon that has led to our use of 'data' as a single, where Americans use it as a plural. Linguistic speciation.

[rauschwerk]

I certainly thought about making a career in music, having shown early promise as a pianist and very much enjoyed playing. My mother seems to have believed that the only respectable career open to me was that of concert pianist, a calling for which I would have been dramatically unsuited temperamentally (too much solitude for me!). I think now that I might have enjoyed and made a decent fist of an academic career but, my musical education having been severely hampered by indifferent teaching and lack of encouragement, I lost faith in my own talent by the time I left school. I was ok at sums, hence engineering degrees and 'proper' jobs, but my burning and enduring enthusiasm was for choral singing which I discovered in the first week of my first degree course. I don't understand how I got to 19 years of age without once singing in a half decent choir. My parents considered taking me to audition for cathedral choir schools and decided against it, but never told me why. That said, I have often wondered whether my voice would have been big enough for me to make a professional career. Could I have developed as a counter-tenor instead of a baritone? Who knows? The thought didn't even cross my mind in the far-off 1960s.

At 49, bolstered by a generous redundancy package, I began a musical career based on teaching keyboard instruments and have never regretted it. Financially, though, it has meant considerable sacrifices.

[MrGongGong]

Financially, though, it has meant considerable sacrifices.

I'm always a bit puzzled by this comment
Though in my case i've never done anything else so what some folk might think of as "sacrifices" are simply the way one lives.
The idea that the purpose of life is to build up a nice stash so that you can eventually do what you want (and I'm not suggesting that YOU are saying that rauschwerk) is so prevalent in our world that it really is swimming against the tide to do something else.

[Bryn]

Ah! It's a similar phenomenon that has led to our use of 'data' as a single, where Americans use it as a plural. Linguistic speciation.

Surely it is only the ignorant who us "data" as if it was a singular? "Media", also.

[Mary Chambers]

A couple of European tours as a choir member with a symphony orchestra convinced me that I couldn't pursue a professional career, even if I had the ability. I'm just not tough or dedicated enough. It was unbelievably tiring hard work!

[salymap]

As I had an aunt and uncle who were a pianist and violinist up to professional standard,although their careers started in the silent cinema days, I realised my piano technique wasn't going to get me anywhere.I
Iound satisfaction in working with music and musicians and don't regretit, although it was very badly paid