The value of chamber ensembles in music degrees

I’m a music professor, and I find there are sometimes disconnects between the music faculty and the faculty in other departments. Of course not every institution is the same, and even areas of concentration within music can have differing roles and expectations, but here’s what sometimes surprises my non-music colleagues about my particular job:

• Most of my teaching is one-on-one. In my “applied” music teaching, students (mostly music majors) come to my office weekly for private lessons in playing their instrument. One side effect of that is that I put in a lot of contact hours with students for the amount of teaching load credit I get. (I once had a colleague in another department ask to schedule a meeting on one of my “non-teaching” days, a luxury I do not have.) A flip side is that I’m grading these lessons as they are happening, so I rarely have stacks of papers or assignments or exams to grade.
• I’m pretty specialized. I have the expertise to teach an instrument (actually, in my individual case it’s a few, but that’s unusual), and I wouldn’t be a very effective teacher of most of the other instruments, which I can’t play much or at all. Well-staffed music departments often have a separate teacher (or even more than one) for every instrument (including voice). For that reason, music departments tend to have a fairly high faculty-to-student ratio.
• Much of my value to my department has to do with my “studio,” the group of students who I teach one-on-one. To be seen as contributing appropriately, I need to maintain a full and vibrant studio. At a small school like mine, that means it’s an ongoing priority to find and recruit prospective students, often by traveling to high schools and community colleges in the region. I’m not just looking for music majors in general, but particularly for students who play what I teach. Failure to keep my studio full could ultimately result in the value of my position being called into question.
• The students in my studio take lessons from me not just for a semester, but for the duration of their degree programs. That means I get to know them well, see them at their best and their worst, and see their development in detail over the course of several years. It can be a close teacher-student bond, or sometimes a more strained relationship. Since at my institution I’m also the academic advisor for my studio, I’m monitoring most aspects of their academic progress, professional development, and even personal wellbeing pretty closely.
• I don’t work directly with some of the most publicly visible aspects of the music department, such as the marching band. The musical groups that have broader audiences (especially because of their association with university athletics) sometimes seem to take on outsized importance in the public’s minds, relative to the arguably more academically important performances by student soloists and concert-hall-type ensembles.
• Publishing scholarly papers isn’t how I prove my academic bona fides. Music professors with some more academically-oriented specialties like musicology or music theory might do that. But since my area is music performance, I build my reputation by, well, performing. My annual faculty recitals, presented on campus, are a major component of that. Things like playing in a nearby symphony orchestra count, too.
• Performance is a serious, rigorous academic activity. I spend months practicing for multiple hours a day before putting on an hour-long solo recital. To make it a worthy academic achievement requires playing challenging music, generally mostly or entirely music I’ve never performed before. Even selecting the music requires a great deal of expertise, including consideration of factors including overall theme, variety of styles and historical periods, pacing, performance factors like fatigue, and inclusion of music by a diversity of composers. And the printed sheet music provides only skeletal instructions for performance—I will have to make thousands of interpretive decisions, weighing historical performance practices, traditions specific to the instrument and to the individual pieces being performed, the interactions and balances between separate pieces of music, the approaches of any collaborating musicians, the response of the audience, and my individual performing strengths and weaknesses.
• Similarly, the music and performance opportunities I select for my students and student ensembles are part of a larger educational purpose, which doesn’t always align with public tastes. (I direct the university jazz ensemble, and I have gotten comments from audience members who want to hear Glenn Miller on every concert, and who are unflinchingly candid in their opinions of the “modern” big band music that I also generally include. For educational reasons, I want the students to study and perform in a variety of styles.)
• I work a lot of weekends and evenings. Not so much grading papers, but performing, and attending and evaluating my colleagues’ and students’ performances.
• And, finally, because what we do in the music department is so different from what our colleagues in other disciplines do, we spend a fair amount of time justifying it. Administrators, tenure and promotion committees, and others might look at a spreadsheet of academic journal publications or credit hour production, and assume we aren’t getting much done, or might view a recital performance as just playing some music for fun. There’s an ongoing need to explain the importance, value, and academic rigor of our work.

Check your music department’s website, and stop by to hear a colleague perform or teach!

I was a very committed college music major. I had picked music as a career years earlier. Being a music student felt like a central aspect of who I was. While I did struggle at times, and had other (perhaps more widely marketable) skills I could have fallen back on, quitting the music-major track never seemed like a real option.

For me, it turned out well. I was successful in my studies and now have a job that is a good fit and more or less pays the bills. But in my role as an educator and advisor, sometimes I encounter students who are considering changing directions. Here’s what I have to say to those students:

• You don’t have to be a music major. Even if you’re good at it. Even if you really do love music. Even if friends or teachers think it’s the right choice for you. Even if you have already invested time, money, and effort into it.
• There are other ways to make music a part of your life. In many cases you can continue to be in college ensembles, take music courses as electives, and maybe continue to receive music scholarships. (Check with your music department.) Beyond college, there are probably opportunities to make music in community ensembles, garage bands, churches, theater productions, lesson studios, volunteer efforts, and more. Even if you never play or sing again, your background in music opens up richer possibilities for you as a listener and patron.
• There’s time to try something else. Music degrees are intensive and usually thrust you right into lots of major-specific courses right from your first semester. That can feel like a trap, like if you change majors you are wasting semesters you already completed and starting over as a freshman. But in the scheme of things, isn’t it worth extra years and dollars to graduate in a field that feels right to you?
• This is your decision. People might try to talk you out of switching majors. Being a music major can feel like kind of a club or fraternity/sorority or cult, but it isn’t really. You aren’t betraying or disappointing anyone by doing what’s right for you. Be aware that in some cases professors or fellow students may be thinking about how your decision will affect them or their classes or ensembles. They probably don’t really mean to put their own interests above yours. Good teachers and friends, in the long run, want what’s best for you, even if it isn’t a music degree.
• But you don’t have to rush into a decision. If music has been your life for years and now you’re having second thoughts, it’s worthwhile to figure out whether you’re dealing with a real change of heart or just some temporary frustration. Sometimes I have seen students transfer out of the music department, only to transfer back in later, now a little behind. If you need to dabble in something else for a while to find out whether music is your thing after all, then go for it. But minimize the flailing if you can. Before making a decision, give yourself time to think things through with a long-term view. Consult with people who know and love you, plus your music professors, plus people in whatever alternative fields you might be considering.

Music is great but it’s not the right career for everyone. Make your life choices carefully and honestly.