Majoring in Music... Why?

Savannah

The Minnesota Opera's production of La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi

Music has never been described as a solid career choice. The pay isn’t steady, neither is anything else about the job. Even the job itself is relatively nondescript. Still, as long as there is music there will be musicians. Many wonder why people would willingly commit to something so typically seen as a hobby, but musicians love their craft and gladly dedicate their lives to it.

Nowadays, making a living solely performing is highly unlikely. Even the best of the best opera singers may not be making a living in performance alone. Typically musicians will also take up other jobs as arts administrators, advocators, managers, or any number of other jobs in the music industry. Bergen Baker, a mezzo-soprano opera singer, said, “It’s totally an entrepreneurial business. You are your own product.” And in an interview with Fred Plotkin for WQXR, an American soprano at a top European conservatory said, “I am coming to realize how much of my time must be devoted to being entrepreneurial.” Both statements ring true. Your resume as a performer is your talent and your personality, since you have to be not only fit for whatever role you’re going for, but you also have to be personable so that others will want to work with you. As a musician working a different job in the music industry, you must also make sure you’re making connections and conducting yourself with the utmost professionalism and charisma.

Doctor Jonathan Reed conducts the State Singers Choir at MSU

So, performing is an unreliable career, and even other jobs in the music industry aren’t necessarily stable… why would anyone want to have a career like that? As Kim Witman remarked in an article for the Huffington Post, “It seems to be a big leap to take on the basis of a gut feeling…. We often ask singers if there’s anything else in the world they could imagine doing for a living; for if so, they should quit this and do it.” Those who go into music have such an intense passion for the art, and would never devote their lives to something, not for the benefits, not for the pay, but for a genuine love of music.

Through writing this article I learned that it's so much more entrepreneurial than I had originally thought. Writing this article paired with slowly but surely becoming more informed about my future career as class goes on, I recognized that I am shaping myself into a product and I will need to learn skills that will help me to be marketable in the future. I think it's important for people to understand that people who are musicians are in that field because of a genuine love of music and we know that the path isn't easy and that success isn't guaranteed but we couldn't see ourselves doing anything else.