Thoughts on Being a Violinist

You have tapped into one of the great issues of my life, though I am in place considerably farther down the path and have already gone down a different fork or two. For me this dialogue is an old one, no longer painful, but also never resolved. I empathize with your thoughts

I can possibly help you think about what it is like to choose not to do music professionally.

Here’s an overly detailed background sketch:

I was fully dedicated to music in high school. I went to a high school with unusual resources for performing arts. I played several classical and early music wind instruments, performed in many ensembles and contexts, and founded a successful early music group. I had other interests but music was the center of my world. I was worried about the realities of life as a professional musician, and concerned about the fact that I didn’t really love my primary instrument, the clarinet. I also wasn’t convinced that I would be good enough. I appied both to music schools and colleges with strong science programs, and was a little shocked to get into my first choices in both categories. After a soul shaking struggle I chose to go to a liberal arts university where non-music majors are treated respectfully by the music department. The sense of loss propelled me into an acute depression for weeks. Happily, luck and persistence allowed me to take music courses and instrument lessons and to participate in ensembles often reserved for music majors throughout college and grad school.

I am now 50. I am convinced that I made the right decision. I have a successful career in sciences, human services, and government, and I have never abandoned music. I work ferocious hours, but I don’t have to make the compromises musicians often have to make between family time and income generating obligations on nights and weekends. My job performance is often judged publicly, but unlike a musician, my success is not as dependent on style, whim, aesthetics, and personal magnetism and even appearance. A close musician friend has developed repetitive motion disabilities that threaten her livelihood at mid-career. I don’t have that sort of vulnerability

I now primarily play baroque and renaissance winds, and also traditional flutes and whistles.

It is very hard for me to perform early music as often as I wish, but am very happy with the quality of the opportunities I do have. I usually perform early music with professionals and am paid as they are. This is very reinforcing for an amateur. I may not have enough opportunities to play, but I can freely choose to reject things I don’t want to do or accept risky projects, since I do not rely on it for income. I occasionally give lessons or substitute for school conductors, and am the music director for at least one theater production a year. Professionals who do not know me are skeptical of my ability and can be terribly dismissive. I no longer enjoy playing with amateurs who are not progressing to a higher standard. Sometimes I have gone for more than two years without being regular standing member of a group and am limited to ad-hoc events. .

I play various sorts of traditional music with a couple of groups. mostly for contradances. New England is a great place to live if you love this music as I do. Art least two thirds of my performances are of traditional music now because there are more than enough gigs available.

I’m happy with my decision not to pursue music professionally, but it is extraordinarily hard to find good opportunities as an amateur. My income has been higher and my career has been more flexible and stable, but I still grieve what I have missed.

I don’t advise you to switch directions at all, but I thought that my experiences might show the other road. I admire my musician friends and I think that most would not want to trade lives with me.

Finally, I would say that these days most people have multiple careers with complicated twists and turns. I know an oboeist who is now the CFO of a software company, an actor turned radiologist, and a guitar player who is a successful health economics consultant. You will have lots of choices and opportunities ahead that you could never dream of now.

An interesting topic. I’m happy to revisit it.

Thanks for the nice comment. I ruefully realize that the question engaged deep and unresolved issues for me, and my dreadfully long answer was probably more useful as a form of discharge for me than as a response to you.

That sounds like a good kind of life, one that I would certainly find attractive myself,

Many of my music friends are able to mix teaching with a regional symmphony and more than one smaller ensemble such as chamber groups or theaters. The smaller ensembles tend to form and reform from small pools of players who know and like each other very well.

My daughter now attends a private high school, despite our enthusiasm for publc schools. The music faculty there seem to have very enjoyable and rewarding jobs. As a practical matter, they are free from the anxieties endemic to the business of running a studio, and have many opportunities to take on roles and projects which are not at all limited to music. I think that most of them began as part time instructors there.