The job stability in classical music is great. It's getting a job in the first place that's a problem. My partner, in an earlier life, was one of the best young flautists in Canada. There were about eight jobs in the entire country for orchestral flautists, and about a year before graduating, a few of them turned over, meaning it would probably be another five years before any more jobs opened up. Good time for a career change...
replyOld joke: What's the difference between a flautist and a flutist?
About $50 an hour. :-)
replyI think a lot of people just don't get how much of classical music was foundational for pop music. McCartney said blackbird was a twist on some Bach intro. Billy Joel said similar things. A lot of of good music was cooked in classical knowledge.
replyI think he agrees it is popular, but in comparison to contemporary styles of music it’s tiny (in skilled performers, listeners, funding and revenue). Right? Even in Europe.
replyEurope is actually worse, or at least Germany, because the government pays for opera, so it doesn't have to stand on its own two feet. So they don't (have to) care about listeners as much.
reply> so it doesn't have to stand on its own two feet. So they don't (have to) care about listeners as much.
replyThat's great. A lot is lost when art has to cater to audiences.
Except it runs into an excess problem. As an example, Berlin - just one city - has 7 professional orchestras. They are supported by the government financially to the tune of 200 million EUR per year. There is a very real opportunity cost here and quite a bit of a wealth transfer to old people at the same time (since the audiences for classical music tend to be on the older side).
replyYou could pump a large part of those resources into supporting other kinds of music and arguably the outcome would be more interesting.
There is a certain amount of government support for classical music in the US as well. Not enough to fully fund it.
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