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Rank-and-file musicians struggling on poverty line.

... then the Orchestra goes belly-up. Many Orchestra's exist of contractors already these days and they get payed per activity.

We live in a society where labour is very expensive and therefore the Orchestra is simply an extreme luxury item.

But from a mucisians perspective: In my world - I'm an educated, professionally skilled, but only parttime organist there are three pillars you need to develop in order to get a good salary. The first is a mostly parttime employment. Think being violinist in an orchestra, conductor of a choir(s), or in my case organist in a church. The second is being teacher. The third are the occasional things like individual concerts, giving workshops etc ...

If one of these three pillars is not developed well, the musician is likely to struggle on finance. The exception are brilliant musicians of course. They can rely entirely on concerts or so. The majority is unfortunatly not exceptional ...

Another unfortunate thing is that many musicians are not so good teachers. When I studied, I took the lessons to get my didactics certificate, but what it brought me is that I understand that being a good teacher is a very respectful competence which should not be assumed lightly. Obviously, I did not become a teacher just because of the job. When I sometimes join my kids on their music lessons, I still enjoy the competence of my eldest son's piano teacher. It's magic to see a teacher encouraging and helping a kid on doing something very difficult.

Dancers have even more financial problems ...
 
Has it ever really been any different? The big name soloists and conductors will be on very good money and in demand worldwide, but the rest probably struggle. I’d be interested to see what kind of gulf exists in financing country to country, e.g. is the average BPO member much better paid or state-subsidised than say the LPO equivalent?
 
The audience for classical orchestral music is apparently in decline in the UK.

Thus the need for so many expensive full sized orchestras is much less. We could return to the old situation where there were two symphonic orchestras in London, one in Manchester and a part time one in Liverpool. Then gradually of course commercial enterprise brought many others, and the BBC themselves brought into existence several symphony orchestras in the major provincial centres, and two in London. This was fine when the audience was there and keen, but in the UK the audience simply is diminishing.

Ergo, all but the finest and most patronised orchestras must eventually become extinct.

The last thing we need to do in the UK is state subvention an “elitist” art form of the highest expense when the old pensioners are suffering for the lack of social care ...

ATB from George
 
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