Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2022-07-22 21:17
Paul Aviles wrote:
> However, look only to our
> history when being a wind player was the path to a really high
> paying job, the 1930s and 1940s. The pinnacles of that career
> field made as much as $70,000 dollars a week. ...
> Back then everyone and his uncle was trying to be a bandleader
> or a sideman.
>
> Of course, times have changed.
>
They certainly have, so much that I don't think the economic environment was even comparable to today's. For one thing, there were no contractual "fringe benefits" - for most musicians there were no contracts, just whatever the leader was offering. But teachers didn't get medical coverage or organized pension programs, either, back then. I don't know (it might be interesting to read up on it ) when medical insurance became a given for most Americans, but I think it was sometime early in my lifetime (b. 1947). And, of course, not every musician then or now reaches "the pinnacle" of the performing field. The rest even today can be very disappointed when, at the end of their career, they can't stop working because they have limited health insurance and no pension because they never thought (or couldn't spare the money) to set one up early in their work years. The choice in the U.S. became more stark since the '50s with the advent of union contracts and increasingly strong fringe benefits - principally health insurance and pensions - in the teaching profession at nearly all levels. So it was a substantially different set of choices in the 30s and 40s. And that doesn't take account of the war, which took a lot of potential musicians and other artists off the domestic market and put them in uniform.
> I would still contend that those who pursue the arts do so for reasons that
> defy a financial model.
I'm also not sure you can answer the question asked in the original post by looking at musicians who have become successes as performers as those who "pursue the arts" unless you're including those who choose teaching or music administration or other musical (or artistic) related careers that offer stable employment and benefits. If the choice for a young person just out of school is whether to pursue some kind of art-related career (including teaching, management, etc.) and going into engineering or medicine, I might agree with Paul. But people choose these music-related fields all the time instead of performing careers because of the greater financial security the non-performance fields offer to everyone, not just those who reach the pinnacle.
I think the OP's answer is clear enough in the U.S.. I think the interesting answers will come from other places.
Karl
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