Is music school now irrelevant?
mainFrom an anonymous insider’s blog:
The highest caliber of artistic education would teach us how to connect with people from all walks of life. The highest caliber of artistic education would give us clear and usable tools to help us navigate the paperwork-strewn networking maze that is the life of a freelance artist. The highest caliber of artistic education would teach us why we should matter. Instead, we are lectured on Gregorian chant, scrutinized for our knowledge of scale degrees and soprano clef, and applauded for our performance of complex polyrhythms. So-called “entrepreneurship” classes are often little more than an allegorical soapbox on which the instructor can wax poetic about their lives and disparage the ideas of their eager students, even when those ideas often bear far greater relevance to modern times than anything the teacher could even dream of.
In other words, music school is irrelevant. And it has been since the mid-20th century: a hulking, gargantuan conglomerate, resistant to change, reliant upon old money to incessantly push its outdated narrative and churn out herds of orchestral musicians and *gasp* even a soloist or two….
A typical college semester is fifteen weeks long. A college year – thirty weeks. Let us say that you paid that same private instructor $300 per lesson for thirty weeks, outside of school.
Your final bill? $9000. Add weekly chamber coachings – $18,000. Per year.
So how can we justify paying $60,000 a year for a conservatory education? To put it simply, we can’t. Unless drastic changes are made to the curriculum.
Read on here.
” Let us say that you paid that same private instructor $300 per lesson for thirty weeks, outside of school.
Your final bill? $9000. Add weekly chamber coachings – $18,000. Per year.”
That’s how new alternative music schools get started. Someone figures they can do the same for less. But then the competition for great teachers and great facilities sets in and they end up expensive.
In all fairness, virtually nobody pays $60,000 a year to attend music school. Yes, that’s the price tag. No, that’s nothing more than a shoe store jacking up their prices by 60% and then offering you “60% off.”
You need to go over your school-level mathematics, z-anon. Adding 60% and then reducing by 60% is actually an overall reduction of 36% (because the “60% off” is calculated from the ‘jacked-up price’, not the ‘original’ price — i.e.: 1*1·6*0·4=0·64).
I think you’re missing the point but thanks for the math lesson.
As a former MSM grad, you are wrong. Only about 10% of the attendees received any sort of scholarship. The rest pay full price, usually through loans.
The writer is anonymous?
News Flashes: (1) For any student studying any field at any university or college…you get out of school what you put in. (2) Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but…the world does not owe you (or me or anyone) a living.
BTW, how come this author chooses to remain anonymous? What is he/she so afraid of?
‘It’ is hiding under the table, fearful of the comments on SD.
Yada yada yada. Just learn to play your instrument well and develop musical ears and apply the history and theory you learn in your musical performances.
The ‘insider’ obviously does not like music school – so leave, stop whinging and let those who want to attend do so.
Nobody is forcing you to attend. Stop whinging and do something else if it’s that terrible.
I believe that this individual is resentful over the fact that he or she lacks whatever it takes to make it and is blaming Juilliard for it. Most likely their intonation is god awful and no one wants to play with someone who lacks the basics. Juilliard is so fantastic that I often wish that a time machine existed so that I could do all over again. When Dorothy DeLay served as the nerve center of the school, she attracted many world-class violin soloists to study with her. They would sit outside her studio for up to 12 hours hoping that she could squeeze them in for a lesson. It was always a joy to play with them because they were superb…most were major international competition winners. In the end, Juilliard never forced “Rambling Musician” to attend. Unfortunately they missed the lecture on how life is unfair and that there are never any guarantees. It’s arrogance based on entitlement.
$300 per private lesson? Geez, I took up the wrong profession. That’s lawyer-sized money. While the writer gets some of it right, (s)he demonstrates her/his (its!) youth and ignorance in other ways: in music you have to start with the simple and move to the complex over time. Ear training is badly taught in general, but very necessary. I play with a Brazilian conductor who is a master of it and learned it in his conservatory. Why are American schools so lousy at it? The polyrhythms of Xenakis and Ligeti, besides being more math than music, are impenetrable if one hasn’t mastered the someone easier polyrhythms of more traditional composers. $300 an hour? I need to let my students know that my $50 is a real bargain!
“The highest caliber of artistic education would teach us why we should matter.” If you don’t already know this, perhaps you should do some soul searching as to why you are a musician in the first place.
I recently designed and delivered an entrepreneurship module for students on the music, popular music and electronic music undergraduate programmes at a former polytechnic with a vibrant creative and performing arts faculty. The University required all students to undertake a two week work experience placement in order to complete the module.
A lot of my classes were on skills and abilities I had acquired from a side career initially working in business administration. Including, book keeping; working with data; tax; marketing; events management; managing projects and people and so on.
It occurred to me that these skills – essential stuff for a portfolio musician and freelancer – together with the experience of working in a non-performance context do not often appear on the curriculum at most Conservatoire’s (well, at least the one which I attended for my undergrad).
‘Music Schools Irrelevant’ and expensive ! – So true, considering that you can purchase the book « How To Play Piano In 6 Weeks Or Less » for $7.94 on Amazon !!
Blah Blah Blah sounds butthurt about being told he was out of tune while playing a jury.
So come to the EU where studies and student life cost drastically less for an equal (or higher level) education! 😉
They don’t want us.
While the point is well taken about tuition costs vs. private study, this person seriously misses the mark in some areas. I think maybe they just went to the wrong school. For example:
“Ear training and theory are taught in a completely isolated and un-musical way.”
This was true at one institution I attended, but certainly not the other. The instructor and class for analysis I had in grad school was *outstanding* at making it relevant. The private teacher also can help greatly in this regard, a good teacher absolutely will use analysis to help you learn how to guide interpretation. But it does mean you need to learn the boring basics at some point, same that developing good basic technique will help you elevate your musicality later on.
“Liberal arts classes are mostly a waste of time,”
Ok, sounds like you want to go to a trade school and not receive an actual education. Again, for those that want to learn, it is a rich experience that will help one be a well rounded artist. I took art history, literature classes, philosophy, heck even geology (“rocks for jocks”) and it was a valuable experience. Don’t be a robot, be an educated human capable of participating in society.
“Basic sound recording and video editing classes”
Video wasn’t too much of a thing back when I was in school, but there absolutely was a recording class and it was very valuable. Which leads me to another thing they miss:
As any recently graduated freelancer (without an orchestra that has it’s own space the musicians can use) could say, it’s not worth nothing to have regular access to concert spaces to make decent sounding recordings of yourself, and to practice auditioning in the big spaces you’ll be auditioning in (if you haven’t been doing that regularly, it can be pretty jarring getting used to the amount of reverb and adjusting volume for what you *think* the judges are hearing). Once in the real world, you’ll have to pay to rent those, or sound like crap recording in your apartment living room.
And I should have mentioned regarding the liberal arts education as well as music history: this *is* actually far more relevant than ever. What everyone from Orchestras to chamber music audiences want is someone who can eloquently place what you are playing into a context that enhances the audience’s experience. So a background in history, philosophy, and other artistic pursuits will not only inform your own performance and make it better, it will help you communicate that with your audience, which increasingly enjoys short comments before the performance (or if they don’t, you still will want to have the ability to do that in the program notes).
Seriously? Highest levels of artistic education are about entrepreneurship and navigating bureaucracy? That’s business education, not artistic education. And while a degree of business education is quite valuable for practicing musicians, the distinction between the two should never be blurred.
Finding an audience (which is what I understand from the jargony “connect[ing] with people”) is certainly important, but when you find them you need to give them something–art at its, well, highest level.
Sounds like this person should’ve practiced more for their jury. Thanks for linking us to a random anonymous blog with TWO articles on it and no biographical info whatsoever. We should ALL be hanging on this persons every word obviously. They must have gone to best conservatory on Earth!
One of these rants which prefers to do away with content.
There is music, and there is the wrapping paper.
There is musical education in many forms, and there is the ‘art’ of dealing with the world.
But where the world is simply a wrong place to receive music, adaptation to such world is simply selling-out: destroying content.
Let conservatories educate the best they have to offer in terms of musical craft, musical meaning, content. And let the students figure out for themselves how to deal with the world. The conservatory is NOT the place for the wrapping paper.
And let it be understood that the world of the present is in a bad state where culture is concerned: it is a grave misunderstanding to think that classical music or its education is ‘in the wrong’ and has ‘to adapt’ to survive. It is the world which has to offer a place for the art form, because the world desperately needs it, as a therapy of sanity offering a cure for the world’s deplorable insanity. Not the other way around – that is the way of and for the nitwits and the people without talent.
“The highest caliber of artistic education would teach us why we should matter.” If you don’t know that already, Anonymous Insider, can’t nobody teach it to you.
Resistant to change? What about the wokeness pandemic that has infected some of the American academies?
Whether music schools and colleges are of any use is an interesting question. Many of the greatest composers did not attend conservatories or colleges, sometimes because their families could not afford the fees. Nevertheless, on the strength of private lessons with good teachers and studying the scores of the great composers they managed to achieve mastery, fame and, in some cases, fortune.
It can be argued that conservatories teach the same academic curriculum to all their students, turning many of them into ‘clones’ of their teachers and stunting any originality.
Among the great composers who never attended music colleges are Elgar, Berlioz, Beethoven, Mozart and Wagner. I guess the contributors to SD could name many more.
Although Beethoven formal education did not extend past elementary school he did use private tutors for languages as a young man and at one point audited university lectures. He also read.
Did his other interests make him a better composer or pianist? Who knows?
James Levine said in many interview that he was very concerned about authenticity and collected and used original scores. What was his outside interest? As far as we know, only collecting dinosaur bones!
I think his outside interests got him into trouble….
Thought-provoking article. It begs the question: is a conservatory seen as a trade school, or something broader? And more broadly, what is the purpose of higher education?
If the writer or any other aspiring performer is concerned with preparation for the “real world” of musical professional life, and nothing else, then by all means, forget the conservatory and move to a place where the kind of music you love is being taught and performed. Find private teachers and coaches that suit you. Find your fellow aspiring musicians and working professionals, and break bread with them. Join the music union. Beyond school, isn’t that the way forward forever?
Instead of conservatory, I studied music at three American universities. It suited my multiple interests. The type of theory, ear training, and sight singing that was taught had a direct bearing on my performing: it was invaluable. Graduate school was more of the job training phase. And after school was over learning continued privately and with colleagues. Probably this path would not have suited the writer. Ultimately, each person must find the way that best meets their needs. The hardest thing can be finding the right mentors at the right time.
So, lets recap:
SONY and Universal are signing influencers who play their violin to accompany their farts, jokesters who are only funny to other classical musicians or whoever has the most followers/plays the best videogame cover music. Where does music school fit in that scheme?
Other than that, failing orchestras are reducing positions and underpaying even tenured musicians, at all levels (ask Peter Gelb).
In a normal world, there would be only a handful of these institutions, but because they are “culture” they don’t get closed, ruining the life prospects of a huge % of the students they are supposed to train.
Its like flooding the market with old Nokia brick phones nobody wants.
But if you dare call that out you are “against the arts”…
Enjoy what you’ve created, folks…
Although training for a profession might be *partially* within the remit of Higher Education, it is *not* the main purpose. For many university or conservatoire students, their degree courses may be the only opportunity in their lifetimes to pursue serious and concentrated study in a discipline that interests them at the highest level, before the responsibilities of adulthood truly catch up with them. Why ruin those precious years with this relentless barrage of negative talk about alleged irrelevance? Why deny those with musical potential the opportunity to focus on music for a few years, even if they end up going into a different profession? And why deny the “late bloomers” a chance to prove their musical worth during those years (sometimes, they end up overtaking the ones who came top in auditions done at age 17!)?
Why not? Because it costs their parents a hell of a lot of money that they should be saving for their own retirement and most kids cannot appreciate a liberal arts education anyway.
However the degree is a necessity for employment.
The working and middle class students do not deceive themselves about this
When I went to an “elite” private liberal arts college people asked “What are you studying”?
When I went to a large state university people asked “What are you going in for?”
A liberal arts education for its own sake would be better appreciated after one is forty or preferably, after retirement.
Unfortunately, most employers in any profession see a liberal arts graduate as someone who has sticking power and at least a modicum of writing and analytical skills, although the employee candidate probably has forgotten at least 80% of what he/she has learned.
If there’s government funding involved the organization might be required to hire someone with the credential (I believe that in England a diploma is actually called a “qualification”).
There’s a large range of statements in the original article. It sounds like he went to Juilliard or similar.
To pick a few points:
Most students, if they do any research, know that they won’t be working in music after graduation. Music school is not an apprenticeship.
There may be marginal courses but the writer suggested Beethoven’s relationship with Bridgetower as an alternative? Seriously? It’s a footnote.
Covid has shown the fragility of music work — that’s not the fault of Music schools. Learning about tax returns won’t save you unless you want to do it professionally.
The writer has some fair points but these are all mixed in as a hodge-podge* of his struggling career.
*somewhat like this comment but I don’t want to go on & on.
For the most part music colleges offer little beyond mediocrity and routine (not to mention the vast cost). Connections important of course and the enjoyment of the general ‘esprit de corp’ but from a learning point of view better to build yourself a willow cabin at the end of the garden and practise eight hours a day.
Even worse now after Covid. And as an example, why does London need four music colleges, raking in mostly foreign student fees but also enough too from home students, all thinking they will be turned into professional stars. Few become stars, but there was always work for the rest of us and well paid work when I started out. That all went many years ago. Trained musicians, and I hesitate to call them professional, often live a life of extreme hardship with so many chasing so little work and poorly paid at that, or performing endlessly for free none of which would pay the rent. It will take years to put back together a profession that was already hammered before Covid, and the whole thing of music colleges is certainly in badly need of reform. Plus not all of the best qualified and experienced teachers necessarily work in a music college.
Having multiple conservatoires in London is beneficial in enabling a diversity of perspectives and musical traditions to flourish and disseminated. In music, there is rarely a single, immutable correct approach a given artistic or technical challenge. Often, there are multiple fruitful approaches that can yield the very highest standards of artistic excellence. Each professor, each department, each orchestra, and each institution will have its own unique combination of ideas and perspectives. We are very fortunate to have a prolific, decentralised, and diverse music scene in London, such that we can cultivate a variety of such approaches.
If we were to merge all the London conservatoires and reduce the overall number of students, that would focus the gatekeeper function of auditions and pedagogy in a very small number of professors. They would become not only gatekeepers to a conservatoire, but gatekeepers to the profession itself. Less than a decade ago, we learned that a small but *very* influential group of UK music teachers (notably, Michael Brewer) had exploited their power to abuse pupils, many of them still children. Read even a small sample of the reams of testimony from those cases, and it becomes evident that those abusers got away with their misdeeds for so long because they held (or were perceived as holding) the genuine power to “make or break” a pupil’s musical future.
And even if the gatekeepers were all people of unimpeachable integrity, the fact remains that no audition panel is infallible. The history of our profession is replete with anecdotes of distinguished musicians having succeeded despite being written-off by *some* of their distinguished forbears.
Anonymous? Disregard.
BRAVO!
The writer of this blog is irrelevant. Not school. You could ask if it is too expensive. The answer is yes. But – these diversity officers aint cheap!!
Remember the Matt Damon quote from ‘Good Will Hunting’
““You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library.”
BTW: I hope I’ve written this in the right box. Slipped Disc site is very hard to navigate now. Anybody else finding this ?
“Music history should be replaced by studying the music of ours time.” —eh hem, you mean not history?
America’s primary and secondary education system doesn’t typically offer a music theory/musicianship element, which is why ear-training and sight-singing are such heavy portions of the early undergraduate years. (see Paris Conservatoire entry requirements)
Lessons and ensembles alone won’t amount to much education. Studio class, juries, institutional competitions, etc, offer a bit more context, not to mention the use of facilities contributes to practical side of education as well.
No one in America is forced to attend music school in America. More affordable options with far less coursework exist all over the world. Granted the value of those degrees is not the same as American degrees, but if it’s only about playing then there’s no difference I suppose. (Are there many good players out there?)
It’s a big step at age 18 to jump into a musical playground and become more and more narrow in thinking about the world, when it is precisely the time to become more broadminded. Surely musicologists are killing performance majors with their obsessions over 16th C. music, yet there is still so much to be discovered from that time. We mustn’t forget that this type of study and analysis is relatively new as well.
The great musicians of the past weren’t necessarily educated in institutions, but they were well educated in history, philosophy, score reading (analysis), piano (if not primary instrument), languages, and much else often sponsored by individuals (see Leopold Auer’s studio circa 1910). Today one needn’t be from a certain class to get an education.
Consider the people outside of America craving to attend US institutions. Part of what holds that degree up is precisely the roundedness of the education and the high standard, from getting in to getting out.
The so-called entrepreneurship classes didn’t exist in the past and yet people were able to make it—it’s a bit of a marketing thing, maybe more for worrisome parents. “Don’t worry, we’ve got Billy covered. He’ll be ready to promote himself. …Now, please make the cheque payable to: …”
We should also understand that not every music student will ultimately be a musician, and they should be prepared for more than work as a barista.
We are living in a time where a loud minority wishes to diminish the work of past artists for more of what we have today. This is a dangerous trend—particularly so for those advocating for the muting of Beethoven in his 250th anniversary. He earned that respect and nearly all trends in Western music can in some way trace back to his advancements in one way or another. Why is it that promoting something new must involve attacking something old? Perhaps it is because the past has the truly great art—I do not need to be persuaded to know that Beethoven’s Symphony 5 or Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion are important works, yet someone tries to explain some modern composer whose work will soon be forgotten. I’ve got news for many of you out there who think composers get swept under the rug for various reasons: Their music isn’t all that great after a few hearings, plain and simple. Success as a composer is a game of economics/supply and demand…if you’re good, you’ll be found and treasured, and this day and in the tech age all the relevant platforms are at your disposal, and a whole lot of competition. Great music survives because it’s desired. Take a (master)works from a great orchestra and replace a couple consecutive programs with bang-clang-thump-bump-screeches and you’ll soon have no audience.
Who to blame: The uneducated audience OR The music itself? …figure that out and you’ll be one of the wise ones.
There’s a reason that many parents won’t support their child’s attendance at an expensive conservatory. It’s called “ROI”, which- sad but true- is often zero, or negative. The author of this admittedly angry and bleak piece makes a few good recommendations. But overall, the supply/demand ratio for concert music and musicians is shrinking fast. The pandemic will no doubt cull the herd, institutionally and individually. It may be time for a reckoning where elite conservatories are concerned. A young alum once described the system as a ‘pyramid scheme’ in which most music schools recruit students to fill the studios of their esteemed faculty members. Contrast this with ultra-competitive STEM focused institutions, where the acceptance rate is often in single digits. If conservatories gradually wither and fail, there will be an opportunity for faculty and alums to move to music departments at major universities where the students are majoring in high-demand (STEM), but who have already achieved a high level of musical proficiency. Such polymath students can continue studying music with demanding instructors, perhaps for credit, striving ever higher artistically, and yet be assured of a remunerative career. These students will be the modern versions of “amateurs”, when that term wasn’t pejorative but rather connoted a well-rounded individual with multiple skill sets.
What about the polymath students who *want* to do a *music* degree? Plenty of us *chose* to specialise in music (whether at a university or a conservatoire), despite having been eminently capable of specialising in a STEM discipline, you know.
You make some excellent points. One way of looking at the “pyramid scheme” is through the winner-take-all economy, in which there are a number of worthy contenders but very few real winners in terms of a comfortable living wage. Take the world of cellists, for instance. There are many great cellists alive today, but I doubt if any of them have seven-figure incomes besides Yo-Yo Ma.
I teach music at a liberal arts college where almost everyone majors in STEM or economics. For the last 20 years or so, the humanities and arts have been essentially ornamental here. It’s true that many pre-med students are skilled instrumentalists and will occasionally double-major in music, but none ever go on to graduate study in music. They’ve found that music makes a rewarding hobby but a risky career path.
There was a classical music choir at my “elite” liberal arts college run by a famous name conductor when I was a student 40 years ago.
She caused a lot of resentment because she insisted on running it like a professional choir with a choir who were seriously studying STEM and looked at the choir as a recreational activity.
This did not mean that they could not read music or that they did not appreciate classical music. It just meant that they did not want to be required to attend rehearsals when they had lab reports and science research papers due. The choir director did not last more than three years.
The point of this story is that there will always be a tension between those who consider performing music as an avocation and those to whom it is their whole existence.
In a master class 20 years ago, the guest, who was a former professional double bass performer in an elite orchestra, turned professional businessman, told us that we were more than likely screwed and he outlined his case why. He asked about how much we understood finance, credit, etc. There were crickets
Totally agree, 60,000 is a ridiculous amount of money for a year of higher education
I agree with a lot of what the author says, but he/she is missing the elephant in the room: Music education is suffering because conservatories have adopted standards meant for ordinary colleges and their accreditors. Ultimately, it is the government that dictates college music curriculum. That is why “General Education” credits are required (completely worthless!). That is why Ethnomusicology and other worthless subjects are watering down the curriculum.
In short, get the government out of music education and you will see improvements practically overnight.
Er…the government doesn’t set the curriculum in the English-speaking world.
Isn’t it great being an “anonymous insider”? No responsibility to give concrete examples or alternatives, nothing but empty pontificating required.
it is true…. but then again, you need to be associated with a big school to get a leg up in a competition for the most part. Can we audit that deaf cow Kaplinsky please?
When I graduated from Manhattan School in 1972, the guest speaker at the commencement told us all we had chosen the wrong profession.
Most of us commenting here are anonymous, so why criticize the writer’s anonymity? But the writer’s money would be better spent paying someone to help them lose their fear of “sounding like a robot”, I mean play in tune.
You don’t go to a school to become an artist. You don’t become an artist to get a job.
“I did play out of tune. But the instructor, a fine musician in their own right, failed to make me understand why this matters. Is perfect intonation the goal of an arts education?”
Wakey, wakey kiddo! Real world here! I can help you understand ‘why’ if you find it difficult. It’s called supply and demand. Supply of jobs is low and demand is high, so if someone else is genius enough to be able to play in tune, you’ll be sitting on your backside at home.
Yes, kid, playing in tune is one of the goals of a music education. Because I’m not going to hire you for a gig if you can’t play in tune.
Two respected and qualified musician friends which have advocated against the charade of “entrepreneurship” in music schools posted here.
https://barczablog.com/2020/06/17/the-view-from-here-perspectives-on-careers-in-music-the-arts-from-margarete-von-vaight/
https://www.facebook.com/WilliamFed/posts/10158617398236154
NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN
“Added cooperation among faculty and administrators to allow room in curricula for students to ripen their entrepreneurial plans.” – from musiciansway.com
Can people and do people learn more about any profession through one on one on the job training then they do in a liberal arts college or even in a conservatory majoring in what they want their future profession to be? Of course.
However the degree is what’s considered important and is a minimum qualifier for virtually any professional job. I believe employers show that a person has staying power not to mention as “well rounded” as a meatball!
No time to read all the comments, but I’ll just say the author lost me with his false dichotomy between accuracy and creativity. (I say “his” because when I’ve heard this complaint it has always come from males.)
I would ask him to choose his favorite artist, or an unquestionably great one at least, and ask: are they accurate? And are they interesting? Does their accuracy interfere with their creativity?
Once I was having a discussion like this with someone I knew in school. She maintained that a beautiful sound is boring. I said “but what about _________ [her teacher, who she revered]? Would you say he’s boring, or his sound isn’t beautiful?” She said “Oh, I guess you’re right.” This was someone who was never happy agreeing to disagree; she had to be right, and you had to be wrong. I felt like I’d just executed a jiu-jitsu throw. 😛
Don’t go to Juilliard, study privately with Kevin Kenner instead! Where else will you learn how to produce a non-bangy tone?
The truly gifted get private coaching and lessons for free from the masters. I’m talking about Kit Armstrong with Brendel, Perahia with Horowitz, Pogorelich with Argerich, and so on, not some for-profit music conservatory pedagogues.
this Covid pandemic has proven classical music a risky business and career choice. Only study music full-time if you or your parents are wealthy, otherwise do it as a serious amateur/dilettante.