John von Rhein offers a lovely little essay in the Chicago Tribune about the strange disdain the professional cultural world has for ”amateurs.” These are people who play for the love of the music, he says, adding the barb: ”How many ‘professional’ musicians truly delight in the music they are paid to produce?”
Well, a lot, actually. But he makes a larger point. The rise of the professional arts in the past 50 years seems to have downgraded those who play for the love of it, rather than for pay. Perhaps the emerging professional nonprofit industry needed to distinguish itself from the community groups that came before. Perhaps our high ideals about what ”high art” was supposed to be in a cold war era made us a bit hyperbolic.
Whatever the reason, the gap between the amateur and professional is one of the most troubling and damaging elements of our current cultural landscape. And fostering that gap is one of the dumbest moves for an industry struggling to reclaim relevance, connection, and meaning. Says von Rhein:
Musicians who play for love rather than money can teach even jaded ears something vital about what it means to make and experience music. They are one reason classical music remains a living art.
I believe that one of the greatest tools available to promote the ascension of the amateur in the cultural landscape is digital information technology.
Online culture is starting to figure out the value that amateurs bring to the table. Let’s hope this has positive influence on the ‘professional cultural world’. Those who play for the love of it can easily reach a large audience digitally.
Perhaps classical music isn’t a very good example here, but you take a look at photography and a community based website like Flickr, there are stunning examples of amateur fine art photography that are viewed and appreciated by a large number of people. The professional arts industry would do well fostering this kind of participation and enabling amateurs with a passion for their art.
von Rhein does not make a point about professionals downgrading amateurs. I agree that the word amateur has taken on a negative tone, and von Rhein says that technology is resulting in fewer amateur musicians since so much pro music is so easily available. But von Rhein’s essay is positive and hopeful. Your blog comment is negative and pessimistic.
Love, music and art – things too important to leave only to the professionals.
Well, as Alexander Glazunov supposedly once said, amateurs would make the best musicians…if only they could play.
Seriously, though. Amateur/nonprofessional groups can offer incredibly satisfying musical experiences, even if they don’t match the technical levels of major professional orchestras. I’m not sure if we’d count youth or college orchestras as “amateurs” in this kind of discussion, but there you often get both high levels of execution and inspired musicmaking.
However, there is always the quality control issue. Buy a ticket to the local professional orchestra, and you know that it’s going to be reasonably good. But amateur groups run a wide gamut in terms of quality, and however much the players may love the music, serious ineptitude is not fun to listen to.
Comparing how amateurs and professionals approach music is like comparing the people who commit to love in a marriage and the people so afraid of loosing “romance” in love that they refuse to marry, to manage a household together, balance budgets, endure tragedy and boredom and all the other lessons that life always showers on lovers in a long marriage.
Which person really loves? Which one really knows what love is? Does the amateur who only plays to feel again their own romantic feelings about music, no matter how they play, or the person who continues to learn their art throughout their lifetime, learns how to call up the shapes of music, the endurance and the fine discipline to forget themselves and offer what they can to the music, day after day, through all their life changes? How can play and practice daily like this without at the same time getting enough money to eat? How can we admire Burbage’s establishment of the box office which elevated the value of the working actor with one hand then take away that value with the other hand by degrading the professional as one who doesn’t love his art? Why are not school teachers, movie stars and sports players, medieval historians, neurosurgeons, and all those other professionals who choose their life work due to a deep fascination and love for their subject not called prostitutes to their art as musicians alone are? What it reveals is a deep naivite in our North American culture about the meaning of love and what loving music or anyone really means and how long the life and how difficult the sacrifices are along the way that leads eventually to being able to actually play music with love and to offer that to one’s audience.
Well. Re: “What’s Not to Love About Amateurs?” I am personally raising the next generation of ‘amateurs’. I administrate a youth orchestra in Meriden, CT. So far, one of our number has graduated and will go to college to teach music and teach the next generation from the college/professional level. But the other 20 or so younger musicians will, with love, support, logic and inspiration and not just a dash of perspiration on both sides, become life-long musicians. Patrons of the Arts. Real, live, ticket-buying ‘consumers’.
They will love their instruments, they will love to practice, they will love to share their gift with others. They will love to see ‘the big kids’ in the various media and follow their favorites.
The entire reason for running this orchestra is to foster love for this art form, to create a world for each musician to share for a lifetime. That is a lot of love. We are teaching ‘unteachables’- appreciation,interpretation, musical values and standards to children. When we all do it well, we will create a new demand for it. The only way we can sustain the orchestral art forms are to teach them, at the right time in a child’s life, and from the heart.
Teach children art and they will create a demand for it. Forget professional vs amateur- we were all amateurs when we started. Just listen to the music and make sure that you bring a child along with you. Gather a group of young people, add music and see what happens. Please stop talking about it. Just do it.
What happened to the definition of ‘professional’ in this discussion: an artist who has completed recognized training, is acknowledged by his or her peers and at least seeks to be remunerated for their work. It’s the commitment to recognized or shared standards that distinguishes the professional and I like the point made in this tree that while the amateur’s laudable focus is on his or her own enjoyment, the professional is oriented towards audiences, i.e. “it’s not about us, it’s about them.”
I think that many people would be surprised by the quality of some of the top amateur artists. In the amateur chamber music world, you have some very fine players, many of whom left places like Juilliard to go on to careers outside of music, but continue to play, at very, very high levels.
Let’s not forget, either, the many composers, who for whatever reason are deemed professional, but earn a living doing something else. Naturally, Charles Ives, the father of modern American music comes to mind. Steven Albert made his living selling stamps. I think it’s a bit of food for thought, as to exactly what is amateur and what is professional and the values that we attach to each of these terms.
Look at choruses–there are few “professional choruses, yet the “amateur” choruses perform with “professional” orchestras all of the time. I believe that the building of bridges between those thought to be amateur and those thought to be professional will be critical to the health of some arts disciplines that are having a rocky time.