Our columnist Richard Morrison's advice for youngsters thinking about a career in music...
For many young people it’s that time of year when big decisions must be made. You’ve just graduated. Congratulations. Now what, apart from paying off all that debt? Or maybe you’ve got your GCSE or A-level results. What’s the next step?
Medicine, engineering, accountancy... or a career in music?
Even in your mid-teens the options get closed off quickly, don’t they? Like the narrator in Robert Frost’s famous poem ‘The Road Not Taken’, you feel you are being forced to choose between paths that will take you in entirely different directions.
You’re bright. You could do sciences and become a medic or an engineer. But you also love to sing or play the violin – and you’re good at it. You are already Grade VIII. Maybe you’ve made it into a top youth orchestra or choir. You’ve experienced the thrill of making music at a high level and want more of it. So obviously you want to follow your dream as far as you can go.
A career in music is a risk...
But is that wise? In Frost’s poem, the narrator tells us he took the road ‘less travelled by, and that has made all the difference’. Sounds enticing. The trouble is that everyone who cares deeply about your future – parents, teachers, friends – are advising the opposite: that you should take the road that most people choose and keep music as a ‘fun hobby’. Trying to forge a career in music looks so perilous compared with studying, say, accountancy or dentistry.
Well, they are sensible to point out this hard, unromantic truth. There are many things we don’t know about life in 20 or 30 years’ time. But it’s hard to imagine that there won’t still be a need for doctors or engineers. Whereas violinists or sopranos? Hmm.
Because I constantly meet musical teenagers who are pondering their next step, I am trying to turn that ‘hmm’ into sensible advice. Reflecting on my own experience isn’t terribly helpful. Decades have passed since I made my own big decision to choose the ‘road less travelled by’ – opting to study music against the advice of family and teachers. Since then, the world has changed out of all recognition. So, if I bumped into my 16-year-old self now, would I still advise him to ‘follow his dream’ and train as a musician?
Tough cuts to the music sector
It’s hard not to exude caution, verging on pessimism. Two of our national opera companies are currently shedding dozens of orchestral and singing jobs. Cathedrals are cutting their paid choirs. Brexit has made it far harder for UK musicians to work in the EU. Major orchestras are giving far fewer concerts than 20 years ago. There’s less public money being channelled towards classical music. And of course, we face the prospect of Artificial Intelligence replacing human labour in all sorts of areas, including the music business.
- English National Opera to move to Manchester
- Canterbury Cathedral boys' choir to welcome non-boarders
True, the prospects for musical life could improve. Hope always springs eternal when a new government arrives. Cuts could be reversed. A curriculum that pushes music to the margins in schools could be overhauled. And the synthetic blandness of AI-created music could paradoxically spur a new appreciation of live performance by living, breathing human beings.
Accept less pay and be prepared for intense competition
Even so, I would feel obliged to issue some pretty stark advice to teenagers contemplating doing music as a career. First, have a second string to your bow. Some of the best professional musicians I know did medicine or business studies or law as their first degree – and they seem stronger, psychologically, for having that ‘fallback’ option available. Second, when you reach 30 be prepared to find yourself earning less than half of what some of your old school friends are earning – the ones that went into jobs in the City, for instance. If you think that pay gap would make you horribly resentful, you would be better off joining them.
And third, accept that competition within the music world is intense and unremitting. Each year, conservatoires turn out hundreds of new hopefuls. There will always be far more qualified candidates than available jobs. This is the gladiatorial arena you are entering. You’ll require bags of stamina, determination, adept social skills and good luck as well as a rock-solid technique and unwavering concentration.
A career in music? The risks are immense, but the rewards are huge
But the reward? Being paid to make music is one of the greatest privileges and joys known to human beings. Yes, the risks are immense. But do you want to spend the rest of your life thinking ‘what if’ or ‘if only’? Despite my reservations I would still say: you owe it to yourself to give it a go.
