Dreaming of becoming a professional musician

[rauschwerk]

I'm always a bit puzzled by this comment.

I'll try and clarify what I meant by sacrifices. Had I continued in what I once thought was a job for life, I would have been able to retire at 60 on a good pension and lump sum. As it is, I'm still only semi-retired at 67 (not that I mind) and will be for another year or so. Even then, my standard of living in retirement will not be what it would have been had I been able to stay in my 'proper' job. I don't mind that but my wife does. I think she would have really preferred me to retrain in IT and perhaps make shedloads of dosh as a contractor.

[MrGongGong]

I'll try and clarify what I meant by sacrifices. Had I continued in what I once thought was a job for life, I would have been able to retire at 60 on a good pension and lump sum. As it is, I'm still only semi-retired at 67 (not that I mind) and will be for another year or so. Even then, my standard of living in retirement will not be what it would have been had I been able to stay in my 'proper' job. I don't mind that but my wife does. I think she would have really preferred me to retrain in IT and perhaps make shedloads of dosh as a contractor.

Understood

but what's a "pension" and a "lump sum "?

I guess it depends on what you consider to be a "standard of living" , being miserable doing something you hate so you can have a fancy car etc seems a bad deal to me. We had a choice between buying our daughter a reasonable cello and having carpets , no contest really carpets just fill up with muck anyway.

I suppose it's only a "sacrifice" if you have it in the first place and it's taken away.

[rauschwerk]

...being miserable doing something you hate so you can have a fancy car etc seems a bad deal to me.

I couldn't agree more. I actually enjoyed my salaried job (though rarely as much as making music) until the company that ran the quasi-academic research lab where I worked was privatised and suddenly one had to become good at such activities as networking and self-promotion (neither of them really my thing) in order to be noticed.

[Pabmusic]

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

Not really, as any dictionary will confirm (I note that even an American dictionary - Mirriam-Webster - says "noun, plural but singular or plural in construction"; the OED gives it as singular in general use, but plural in scientific or statistical use). Language changes, and has done always (look at how 'nice' has almost reversed its meaning over the centuries). 'Data' is a Latin plural, not an English one, and we live in an age when most people don't learn Latin. No-one on either side of the pond quibbles over 'agenda' - we all treat it as singular. I think it's fascinating how this happens, but I'll shut up now, since we're seriously off-topic.

[Hornspieler]

It was in the first few days after war was declared, that we were to be evacuated and the family would be split up, because we were allocated by school, not residence. So on the day before we left, I was taken, with my three older siblings, to bid farewell to their piano teacher. (being fourth in line and because of the apparent lack of achievement of all the other three, my parents had decided not to bother with me)

The lady teacher sat down at the piano to play for us and, to my surprise, I found that I was crying.

My brother and I found ourselves in a large house in Redhill (only eight miles away from our home in Croydon!) and we were sharing a bedroom with twin boys from East London who were from a Salvation Army family. When their father came to visit, he brought his euphonium with him and played for us. Once again, the tears started to flow and I knew somehow that I wanted to learn an instrument.

No more than that, and at first it was clarinet because my sister's boyfriend was anxious to please the family and brought his entire collection of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw records for us to play. (I still have them in mint condition)

Entry to Grammar school found me seeking tuition on the clarinet but there was no instrument available so I was persuaded to try the French horn. I had to teach myself technically but was coached in sightreading, musical interpretation, transposition by our Music Master (The late Antony Brown)

Academically, my fortes were Physics, Chemistry, Maths and English and I had no thought of playing horn professionally until Tony Brown took us down to the Summer Orchestral Course for schoolchildren at Sherborne (girls) School.

There, I met others of my age - Janet Craxton, Peter Lloyd, the Amherst family, the Sansoms, Michael Clothier - and those great coaches Ernest Read (the Guvnor) Leslie Regan, David Martin, Noel Coxe and suddenly I was hooked. I wanted to be with them and there was no doubt about their futures. So that was the point at which I decided I wanted to make music my future.

Forgive me if I quote a little extract here from my memoires because it explains a lot:

The new school term started and I had to sort out my future career. In the Lower VIth I had been taking Physics, Chemistry and Maths and my headmaster had high hopes that I would land a scholarship to Oxbridge. I knew now that I would never make the grade as a scientist because I had no feeling of commitment to anything except music. I went to my music master to ask his advice because, so far, I’d had to teach myself. There was no horn teacher in the area and I realized that I’d progressed as far as I could without proper professional tuition.

"Try the top." he said "Write to the best teacher in England and ask him to hear you play. Then he can advise you on who to go to, or whether you'd just be wasting your money."

So I wrote to Aubrey Brain and to my surprise he not only agreed to audition me but offered to take me on as a pupil.

From no teacher at all to the finest in England just like that. I couldn't believe it!

So Aubrey Brain coached me in how to play musically, with an emphasis on phrasing and I entered the competion for an open scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. (I won't say it was a "fix" but the chairman of the board was Ernest Read and Aubrey Brain was Professor of Horn at the RAM.)

I was all set for a career as a professional musician. It was now up to me to achieve that.*

HS

* There is more to say on the subject of being a professional, but I shall await the views and experiences of others before posting again on this thread. (Time for my mid day nap!)

[Serial_Apologist]

Lovely story, HS

[Hornspieler]

Lovely story, HS

Well here comes the not so encouraging part:

….. so your dream has become a reality. You went for an audition and managed to secure a contract against some pretty tough opposition. Over the succeeding years, you have managed to advance your status desk by desk, chair by chair, orchestra by orchestra. You are now performing at the peak of your abilities!

But – the higher you are, the further you have to fall. As in sport and the performing arts, you are only as good as your last performance. You are many years away from pensionable age and there are lots of talented youngsters after your chair.
The conductors that you knew and who trusted you are gone – to be replaced by younger men, some of whom prefer the comfort of not “teaching grandma to suck eggs” and wish to impose their ideas on more receptive ears.

There is only one way for you to go and that is back down the way you came up – until you do your final audition – the one to save your place!

So what are the prospects for the future? Is there anything else that you can do to make a living? In the course of my professional playing career, I encountered so many players who I once lionised who had been reduced to playing as extras in amateur orchestras under incompetent conductors for beer money and eeking out a living giving the odd music lesson or still hanging on somehow, praying that they will survive long enough to collect their full pensions.

When I retired from professional performance, I was determined that if anyone said that they had heard me play badly, they would need to have a long memory – not a short one.

There are a few sayings in which there is more than a modicum of truth:

“… orchestral playing is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration …"

“ ... ninety percent of the time, you’re bored stiff – the other ten percent you’re scared stiff.”

As my dear friend and colleague Arthur Davison put it: “… the amateur musician hopes that he will get everything right. The professional
prays that he will get nothing wrong – that is the essential difference between the two”

I was lucky. I went into Arts Administration (Orchestral management in fact) and my previously rejected skills in science, mathematics and particularly report writing (courtesy of Sir William Golding) stood me in good stead – particularly when, fed up with being on call 24 hours a day, I moved on into Management and Productivity Consultancy and could pick and choose my challenges and my working hours.

“In your wildest dreams” they say – but always have other prospects in reserve if you can.

HS

[MrGongGong]

“In your wildest dreams” they say – but always have other prospects in reserve if you can.

HS

Like this you mean ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AifKIcQuMpk

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Language changes, and has done always (look at how 'nice' has almost reversed its meaning over the centuries). 'Data' is a Latin plural, not an English one, and we live in an age when most people don't learn Latin. No-one on either side of the pond quibbles over 'agenda' - we all treat it as singular. I think it's fascinating how this happens, but I'll shut up now, since we're seriously off-topic.

Nevertheless, it's very interesting, but perhaps better discussed on a different thread, e.g. Pedants' Paradise.

Returning to topic, I started this thread having recalled a conversation with an ex-Halle viola player who died a few years ago. He described the increasingly stressful lifestyle of the professional musician, saying that a large proportion wanted to do something else, but didn't feel they could or should, while so many were desperate to get into it. He himself felt much happier having left orchestral playing and changed career.

[salymap]

It's the same with the behind the scenes humble workers. Many failed music students think it would be fun to work for a music publisher or in a library, but 99% of it is a slog and they soon get get fed up with the routine.
The lucky ones find their niche. Hans Hubert Schonzler was our packer but he wrote on Bruckner and conducted. Tom Robinson went to the BBC when he stopped singing 'Glad to be Gay'. Many others just changed direction. We had oneortwo singers that worked with us for a bit then found an opening in opera etc

[Tony Halstead]

When I was learning the piano aged about 10 in the 1950s the thought of being a professional musician or indeed playing an orchestral instrument had never crossed my mind ( although when I first heard on shellac 78s the opening horn call of the Tchaik 1st piano concerto I had burst into tears, according to my late parents!).
What was subsequently very bad for me - for my ego - was that I had a bit of local 'commercial' success as a pianist, winning prizes in 'talent contests', peaking in 1958 when as 1st prizewinner in the Daily Express competition ( judged by one Pete Murray) I won a huge silver cup and a week's holiday for my whole family at Butlin's holiday camp. By the way, the 2nd prize was 2 weeks at Butlin's, the 3rd prize 3 wks etc...

A year later I was asked to join the school orchestra ( at Chethams, Manchester) playing the viola, but my 1st viola lesson had been a disaster as I had /have very short arms and couldn't reach the the end of the fingerboard; so, it was decided that I had to play the ( French) horn. After one introductory 'quick guide' lesson that was all about buzzing the lips 'as if blowing out a candle' I then joined the school orchestra.

After flunking various academic / school exams I turned up at the Royal Manchester College of Music in 1962 as a 1st study pianist and 2nd study horn player. After a year studying piano with Iso Elinson and horn with Sydney Coulston ( BBC Northern Orch principal) I gave up struggling with the piano and decided that the horn was a much more 'fun' instrument, and furthermore blessed with what seemed an unlimited potential social life.
It was then that I started dreaming about being an orchestral player having played as an 'extra' or 'dep' for such conductors as Barbirolli, Horenstein, Boult, Silvestri, Jansons ( pere), Hurst, Groves, Gibson, Atherton, Carewe and others.

I was lucky enough to land myself with a succession of orchestral appointments after leaving the RMCM in 1966, which included the BSO, BBCSSO. LSO and ECO. During my 3 years in the BBCSSO I started writing about music as the assistant music critic of the Glasgow Herald ( the chief critic was Malcolm Rayment, who by his own admission hated organ recitals, so, I heard my fair share of those )

After about 14 years in the ECO I felt I was stagnating, so left the ECO to freelance, and to give up the 'modern' valved horn for a year so as to find out if I could improve my 'authentic' / HIPP playing.
I don't really know to this day whether I did improve but I was flattered to be asked to play, during the period from 1982 to about 2005, for all of London's period-instrument orchestras and ensembles.

HIPP Conductors whom I enjoyed working with include Hogwood, Norrington, Pinnock, Gardiner, Goodman, Parrott and Rattle.
I can honestly say that the most enjoyable, frequently exhilarating period I have had as an orchestral player has been the last 25 years or so, as a freelancer concentrating mostly but not exclusively on HIPP work. I feel incredibly lucky that, 95% of the time, I have enjoyed my 'job' and have been PAID to do what I've loved doing.
What a curious contradiction it is that for we orchestral musicians, 'work' is 'playing'!

[salymap]

When I was learning the piano aged about 10 in the 1950s the thought of being a professional musician or indeed playing an orchestral instrument had never crossed my mind ( although when I first heard on shellac 78s the opening horn call of the Tchaik 1st piano concerto I had burst into tears, according to my late parents!).
What was subsequently very bad for me - for my ego - was that I had a bit of local 'commercial' success as a pianist, winning prizes in 'talent contests', peaking in 1958 when as 1st prizewinner in the Daily Express competition ( judged by one Pete Murray) I won a huge silver cup and a week's holiday for my whole family at Butlin's holiday camp. By the way, the 2nd prize was 2 weeks at Butlin's, the 3rd prize 3 wks etc...

A year later I was asked to join the school orchestra ( at Chethams, Manchester) playing the viola, but my 1st viola lesson had been a disaster as I had /have very short arms and couldn't reach the the end of the fingerboard; so, it was decided that I had to play the ( French) horn. After one introductory 'quick guide' lesson that was all about buzzing the lips 'as if blowing out a candle' I then joined the school orchestra.

After flunking various academic / school exams I turned up at the Royal Manchester College of Music in 1962 as a 1st study pianist and 2nd study horn player. After a year studying piano with Iso Elinson and horn with Sydney Coulston ( BBC Northern Orch principal) I gave up struggling with the piano and decided that the horn was a much more 'fun' instrument, and furthermore blessed with what seemed an unlimited potential social life.
It was then that I started dreaming about being an orchestral player having played as an 'extra' or 'dep' for such conductors as Barbirolli, Horenstein, Boult, Silvestri, Hurst, Groves and others.

I was lucky enough to land myself with a succession of orchestral appointments after leaving the RMCM in 1966, which included the BSO, BBCSSO. LSO and ECO. During my 3 years in the BBCSSO I started writing about music as the assistant music critic of the Glasgow Herald ( the chief critic was Malcolm Rayment, who by his own admission hated organ recitals, so, I had my fair share of those )

After about 14 years in the ECO I felt I was stagnating, so left the ECO to freelance, and gave up the 'modern' valved horn for a year so as to find out if I could improve my 'authentic' / HIPP playing.
I don't really know to this day whether I did improve but I was flattered to be asked to play, during the period from 1982 to about 2005, for all of London's period-instrument orchestras and ensembles.

HIPP Conductors whom I enjoyed working for include Hogwood, Norrington, Pinnock, Gardiner, Goodman, Parrott and Rattle.
I can honestly say that the most enjoyable, frequently exhilarating period I have had as an orchestral player has been the last 25 years or so, as a freelancer concentrating mostly but not exclusively on HIPP work. I feel incredibly lucky that 95% of the time I have enjoyed my 'job' and have been PAID to do what I've loved doing.
What a curious contradiction it is that for we orchestral musicians, 'work' is 'playing'!

Thanks for that waldhorn, a lovely post from a happy musician which is good to read.

[Hornspieler]

When I was learning the piano aged about 10 in the 1950s the thought of being a professional musician or indeed playing an orchestral instrument had never crossed my mind ( although when I first heard on shellac 78s the opening horn call of the Tchaik 1st piano concerto I had burst into tears, according to my late parents!).....

..... After flunking various academic / school exams I turned up at the Royal Manchester College of Music in 1962 as a 1st study pianist and 2nd study horn player. After a year studying piano with Iso Elinson and horn with Sydney Coulston ( BBC Northern Orch principal) I gave up struggling with the piano and decided that the horn was a much more 'fun' instrument, and furthermore blessed with what seemed an unlimited potential social life.
It was then that I started dreaming about being an orchestral player having played as an 'extra' or 'dep' for such conductors as Barbirolli, Horenstein, Boult, Silvestri, Jansons ( pere), Hurst, Groves, Gibson, Atherton, Carewe and others.

I was lucky enough to land myself with a succession of orchestral appointments after leaving the RMCM in 1966, which included the BSO, BBCSSO. LSO and ECO. During my 3 years in the BBCSSO I started writing about music as the assistant music critic of the Glasgow Herald ( the chief critic was Malcolm Rayment, who by his own admission hated organ recitals, so, I heard my fair share of those )

After about 14 years in the ECO I felt I was stagnating, so left the ECO to freelance, and gave up the 'modern' valved horn for a year so as to find out if I could improve my 'authentic' / HIPP playing.
I don't really know to this day whether I did improve but I was flattered to be asked to play, during the period from 1982 to about 2005, for all of London's period-instrument orchestras and ensembles. [/COLOR]

HIPP Conductors whom I enjoyed working with include Hogwood, Norrington, Pinnock, Gardiner, Goodman, Parrott and Rattle.
I can honestly say that the most enjoyable, frequently exhilarating period I have had as an orchestral player has been the last 25 years or so, as a freelancer concentrating mostly but not exclusively on HIPP work. I feel incredibly lucky that 95% of the time I have enjoyed my 'job' and have been PAID to do what I've loved doing.[/COLOR]
What a curious contradiction it is that for we orchestral musicians, 'work' is 'playing'!

A lovely post waldhorn. So you too were moved to tears! At least you had something other than horn playing in a symphony orchestra to fall back on. When you felt that you were stagnating, you were able to change direction. Exactly what happened to me, after 22 years of horn playing. But I gave up full-time contracted orchestral playing before that and this is why:

I was playing in Strauss Don Juan and was on the right hand page of the music when I glanced across to the other page and thought "...I don't remember playing that. It must have been okay or I would certainly have remembered it, but I must have been operating on Auto Pilot!"

That was when I made the move into freelance management, solo playing, chamber music and eventually stopped playing altogether to become a full time orchestral manager, with a bit of youth orchestra coaching and private tuition.

I was then 40 years old and had been playing professionally since the age of 18. So if I had (been able to) continued playing up to retirement age and collect my orchestra pension, I would have had to cling on to my chair for another 25 years!

Food for thought. There was an occasion when I was present at an amateur orchestral concert. A friend that I had known as a student came up to me and said "Oh, I do envy you. Being paid to play music in a professional orchestra." To which I replied "No. I envy you!
You can choose what you want to play and if it's something you don't like, you don't have to turn up for the concert. I have to play anything that is put in front of me to a professional standard, whether I like it, understand it, have a migraine, or whatever other problem is on my mind."

Make no mistake. It was a great experience to be involved with wonderful performances by some of the world's greatest conductors, but I have never regretted taking my leave before the job turned sour.

HS

[Tony Halstead]

That's very kind of you, salymap!
The '5%' of my orchestral playing career that wasn't enjoyable would include playing for commercial adverts ( 'jingles') which - obscenely- pay the same amount of money per hour as a musician would get for a whole gruelling 3- hour recording session of e.g. a Mahler Symphony or Stravinsky ballet.
Also in that 'forgettable 5%' would be what we call 'muddy field' engagements... outdoor concerts usually including Handel's Fireworks Music and such. No dressing rooms or toilet facilities, inadequate lighting, incompetent conductors etc.
It's so sad to see / hear the actual music sidelined and thereby diminished on these sort of concerts.

[antongould]

Thanks for that waldhorn, a lovely post from a happy musician which is good to read.

Thirded