Essay on the Class Divide in Classical Music

JeJeJe
Wed, 11 Sep 2019 23:53:58 +0000

bridgenail—— Thank you very much for sharing your thought!
glassharmonica—- Thank you, again for posting this essay!

We always had a feeling about wealth that advances young musicians at their early years while raising an instrumentalist son. We are in lower-middle class in very high cost of living area. We drive over 20-year-old cars (still running!) and don’t even own a house. My son is a first generation musician. No one in our family can read music. We couldn’t afford a full-course of music major preparations in my son’s middle school to high school years. Participating music festivals with his public school bands weren’t even free! However, my son was awarded a full scholarship on his two instrument private lessons and ensemble fees since 7th grade by a local performing art organization for youths in underrepresented area. To return, he needed to perform locally (with lots of parental volunteering) at any events requested and mentor younger instrumentalists for 6 years. With those paid lessons and ensembles, we could manage to buy professional grade instruments (two instruments for different kinds of music), send him to summer camps that he could list in his artistic resume as well as paying for studio recordings for auditions for national-level ensembles and colleges plus traveling. Many parents can afford to hire the best instructors in the area or / and even famous musicians’ Skype lessons, purchase $10K+ instruments and send expensive summer programs or/and international tours with no financial issues for their musicians. My son was very lucky to be selected to tour internationally with a fully funded ensemble but he needed to audition “very hard” to get opportunities. So, it is unfair at some degree but it isn’t unreasonable. There is a way to make it through in many cases because music should be for everyone (for both performers and listeners)!

My son is now a freshman at private conservatory (one of his top choices) studying jazz. He earned great amount of talent scholarship (from our experiences, most private conservatories didn’t seem considering us “financial need”) so we can manage to pay for the rest. He will have a debt (federal student loans) when he finishes BM. However, my husband and I plan to pay for him when he graduates in 4 years so he can focus on his career or MM. We decided not to tell him our plan because (1) We aren’t 100% sure financially (2) He should feel the weight of being in debt by his decision to attend private conservatory so should be very serious about getting his education. Hope, it all works out in 4 years.

My son may be one of 95% of those middle class performers. But he will grow up as a person / musician he wants to be by having best opportunities he/we can afford in next 4 years at private conservatory. I am sure he will find his happiness as long as he has opportunities to perform. Music is one of his main characters which will stay in him forever.