With all due respect to Mr. Passman and that seminal book, the changes in the musician industry since the late 1990s have made that book largely irrelevant. The contraction of the major label industry in the past ten years has meant that recording contracts, and the nasty tactics that Donald Passman was so good at warning us about, isn’t as large a threat to our profession.

And it’s not just the Passman book that has become outdated. The past decade has, if not completely negated, at least disrupted nearly a century of accepted musician business practices. The Internet, CD Baby and cheap home recording gear have ruined whole libraries of music business books. And publishers have not been keeping up with the changes – how could they? We’re not at the end of a major change in the industry – we’re right in the middle of it.

A Book for the Modern Musician

Except now that’s changed. I finally feel like I’ve read a book that accurately provides a blueprint for the successful career of a modern, working musician.

The Savvy Musician is written by David Cutler. You can find it at Amazon, or at the SavvyMusician.com.  This is the book of the decade for the musician industry.  It should be required reading at music schools and every pro should have a well-thumbed copy on their shelf.

There are several striking things about this book.  First, the comprehensive depth of material in this book is remarkable.  From marketing, to performing, to networking, to composing – this book covers a huge amount of material.

Second, there are 165 short vignettes of stories and interviews from successful, non-famous, working musicians in the book.  The vignettes add a lot of credibility to the material without any gimmickry.  The fact that they come from successful, non-famous musicians is what makes them genuine.  It’s easy enough to make a living as a famous musician – I’m sure Paris Hilton has sold more albums than me – it’s stories from regular musicians that are really interesting.

Third, Mr. Cutler has thankfully not fallen into the trap of glorifying the almighty Internet – and I say that as an avid blogger, Twitterer, Facebooker and all around new media addict.  In this book the Internet is treated as any other tool in the musician skillset, but it is rightfully nestled aside other, just as important tools – like face-to-face networking and printed press kits.

Again, I know that is a strange thing to say on a blog, but even I know the limitations of this, my favorite media.  While the Internet has probably been the one invention that has most changed our industry in the last 20 years, we still have some ways to go before the Internet can solve all of the challenges that it has created.  Until then, the Internet is a tool, and as this book shows, a savvy musician would be best served using it as such.

That said – as our industry progresses into the 21st century, and as things continue to change for our profession, sequels to The Savvy Musician will likely need to expand their coverage of internet-related techniques.  Take that for what it’s worth – a pre-emptive criticism of unwritten updates in an unknown future.  For now, the coverage of the Internet in The Savvy Musician covers those things that are known advantages – having you own website, joining networking websites, etc.  We’ll have to see what Internet-related advantages prove themselves in the future.

Possibilities

One of the things I really liked in this book were the endless lists of possible gigs, contacts, venues and possibilities for a music career.  There are a lot of opportunities mentioned in this book that I either hadn’t thought of, or hadn’t considered in a long time.  It’s those lists that have really stuck with me since I finished reading this book, and it’s left me with a head full of possibilities for the future.

Can you imagine a better outcome from reading a book?  To walk around for weeks afterward, still considering all of the new possibilities it inspired in you?

I also appreciate the focus of the book – again, not on the famous – but also, not on the urban pro.  This book is not about New York or LA or any other major music center (a fault that we here at MW may well be guilty of).  This book focuses on, and gives examples of, musicians working anywhere.  One of the underlying themes of this book is that we can make a career for ourselves nearly anywhere.  There are always possibilities, but it’s for the savvy musician to go out and get them.

______________________

The Savvy Musician is published by Helium Press.  Visit the Savvy Musician Blog at SavvyMusician.com/blog.

Marv, aka “Marvalous”, is a musician selling his CD.  I had no idea what his music sounded like, but after talking to Marv for a few minutes I bought his album. I just have to admire a guy that is willing to stand out on a New York City street for hours at a time, facing the early February cold and sustained rejection, in order to give a pitch and a hard sell to one face after another.

And after talking to him awhile, two more things impressed me: 1.) He does this full time. 2.) He makes a living doing this.

I think about my own albums, which I’ve safely stashed in the big, anonymous cloud of iTunes, and I sheepishly push from behind the shield of Facebook and Twitter – giving my hard sell to profile photos and not real faces. Could I stand on the corner and sell my music? I think I could, but it doesn’t matter – I don’t.

As Marv tells it in the interview below, he hit the streets when the music industry machine started to break down. He had used standard music distribution routes before they started to go out of business, and then – not to be stopped – he just walked outside and starting doing it himself.

As we move further and further into a new musician industry, it is, and will be increasingly, tempting to settle behind the largely faceless infrastructure that the internet is building for us – where we interact largely through email, wall posts, newsletters and bursts of text 140-characters-or-less. For a lot of us, this infrastructure is working – certainly it’s working much better than the infrastructure we had in place before this. But look at Marv – he’s doing something right, too.

I asked Marv for an email interview, and his answers are below.

Q. How many hours a week do you stand outside and sell your album?

A. It’s a full time gig year round, unless the weather is to an extreme that people won’t be inclined to stop and listen. Like the old adage says you get out what you put in. So I’ve put in many a 12 hour day.

The good thing is you never stop selling. In the course of even a traditional conversation, someone is bound to ask you, “What do you do” or a similar question that allows me to segue into my spiel. So assuming I have product – I’m always promoting.

Q. How do you get people to talk to you on the street? Do you have an opening line that always works? How do you get people to buy your album?

A. I genuinely love people, and that helps I’m sure. Especially in NYC people are many times apprehensive and guarded. So I smile, and ask open ended questions or make a remark based on an observation, it could be a shirt or a brand that they’re wearing or A sports team, etc. People are like squirrels they want to see your nuts, they just don’t want to get hurt or victimized in the process. Selling is about product knowledge after that it’s just a matter of tailoring it to the individual.

People like new music/artists and people gravitate to confident assertive types, too. It’s like they can or want to identify with you and how they would like to see themselves. Many have abandoned their creative side in some way due to fear, societal pressures, or just the everyday harsh realities of life. We’ve all been there and very few, if any, escape.

Q. In your experience, do you feel like you receive primarily positive feedback from people you talk to on the street, or primarily negative feedback?

A. I appreciate any feedback I get. It’s really gratifying when someone tells you that they can relate to something you’ve said or experienced. It’s like the palms on the proverbial glass. I know everyone won’t like my music, but maybe they’ll respect my story. I even tell people that, it’s the truth and I pride myself on being honest.

Q. Do you sell your albums through traditional distribution sources (stores & online) as well? Which is more successful – selling through traditional distribution sources, or selling one-on-one on the street? Why do you think one method is more successful than another?

A. I’m in the process of re-launching my web-site, and getting back into the online markets. I was one of the many artists who several years ago thought we were ahead of the curve, by having a fancy website and a company that would house and ship my product for us. The company was absorbed, then eventually went out of business, so I found a different avenue, literally.

It’s not a matter of which method is more sucessful, when you can do both. The online market pretty much takes care of itself, and being outside on the Ave in NYC gives you a similar kind of world accessibility. Plus you’re always thinking marketing, and dealing with and overcoming rejection, two essential skills in business.

I will say this – in one day I can move more CD’s than in a year in a storefront (when there were store fronts). I remember going to the Virgin Mega Store just to show people the CD’s I was featured on, which no one was really promoting. Now both have gone, and are going, the way of the dinosaur, so the web is definitely the place to be. But like with anything else you gotta research and work it.
___________

If you’d like to know more about Marv, visit his myspace page, or visit him on 6th Ave. Marv also produces a show called Fire Your Boss, a party for the independent artist. The next show will be May 6th, 10pm, at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City.

It seems that with a record deficit and 10% unemployment, space travel is not a priority to the U.S. government. NASA suddenly finds itself, not for the first time, in a situation where it must argue on behalf of it’s tax-dollar worthiness.

This is a familiar situation for arts organizations. The threat of budget-cuts to arts education is a near constant concern at public schools, and the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts was only recently restored to Clinton-era numbers.

Ok, so the science kids finally got their budget cut, too. The MIT and Stanford grads at NASA are a smart bunch, of course, and I bet they put up a pretty savvy fight. And you know what? The arts community can learn something from the rhetoric that they will use to protest the budget cuts.

So far, I’ve seen two interesting things:

1.) In a Senate hearing this week, Obama’s budget director argued with Senators about the budgets cuts to NASA space flight program. The most vocal opponent of the plan, as you might expect, was Florida Senator Bill Nelson. Nelson is, himself, a former astronaut and, of course, well aware of the $4.5 billion impact that the space industry has on his home state. The aerospace industry in Florida represents 23,000 jobs in Florida. You can bet that senators from other space-industry states (…clap! clap! clap! clap! – DEEP IN THE HEART OF…) will also be protesting these budget cuts.

This is a good technique. Every industry needs advocates, and senators are a good start. You know what else works? Those numbers. But check these out:

The non-profit arts industry in the United States brings in $134 billion every year in economic activity. The industry includes 4.85 million full-time equivalent jobs. Altogether we generate over $10 billion in income taxes for the federal government.

I’m not done. According to a 2005 study there are 49 congressional districts in the country that have more than 10,000 arts workers, and more than half of all congressional districts have more than 5,000 arts workers. The highest concentration is in the 8th Congressional district – New York City – which (just in this one district!) includes 119,320 arts workers. In New York City alone the arts create an economic impact of $21.2 billion, including $904 million in taxes back to the city.

Take that, Florida, with your lousy $4.5 billion for aerospace industry. We make nearly 5 times that much in just New York City.

The next time the arts get into budget trouble, I hope to see the senators from arts-industry states (Hello, Cal-eee-forn-ya) fighting as hard for our jobs as the space-states are right now for theirs.

2.) In an interview on the Lehrer News Hour, Michael Griffin, a former NASA administrator, made the case for NASA. He said:

“I think the contribution of human spaceflight to the posture of America in the world and the technology and industrial base that we have today more than pays for itself.”

Pretty good, right? Like I said, these guys are smart. Let’s use this.

Try substituting “human spaceflight” with “jazz music”. Also, replace “technology and industrial base” with “commercial and cultural benefits”. Also (just because it bothers me), clean up the grammar. So it reads:

I think the contribution of jazz music to the posture of America in the world, as well as the commercial and cultural benefits that they have created, more than pay for themselves.

BAM. Replace “jazz music” with any kind of art – ballet, sculpture, opera…  The next time we find ourselves with looming budget cuts for the arts, that’s our talking point.  It’s brilliant.  It was formulated by some of the smartest scientists on the planet.  That is a space-age talking point.

Maybe we could use it today and get an increase in the federal arts budget instead of letting it remain flat?

No, let’s not push our luck.

The Head Nod

Here’s the problem. You’re sitting at the piano, sending out your part of the groove – and, well, basically – you’re busy. Both hands and sometimes both of your feet are working on your instrument, and you don’t have any appendages left over to cue the band. So what do you do? Nod your head.

A good head nod is harder than it sounds, though. Major complaints from sidemen in pits usually involve some variation of “the head nod doesn’t match the hands” – that is, the head nod brings the band in before or after the piano-conductor plays the beat with their own hands.

If you only take one piece of advice away from this article, let it be this: get your head and your hands together. Practice it and get it right. Video tape yourself to make sure it’s happening the way you intend it. Don’t let this basic part of the piano-conductor skill set be the complaint you get from your band.

A good head nod, as with any ictus, is usually more about the preparation, or “prep”, than the actual nod. The “prep” is the beat(s) leading up to the first beat that is played by the ensemble. A head nod, then, is not just a sudden drop of your head. A full head nod with prep has both a clear upward swing and a downward nod.

Three more things to keep in mind with the preps and nods:

1. Don’t prep your prep – One common affliction among new piano-conductors is to give a slight prep, almost a tick, before their actual prep. This is misleading to the band, who will be confused as to which prep was the actual prep.It’s perfectly acceptable to give your band more than one prep, of course, but if you are going to do that, really do it. Tell your ensemble how many preps you are going to give and then give them very clear, in tempo, preps before the beat.
2. Breath with your prep – Just a regular breathe will do the trick. Your horn and wind players will be breathing before they come in as well, so just breath with them. The band that breaths together comes in together.
3. Make sure your prep is in tempo – Including your breath. Whatever tempo you give your prep in – that’s the tempo the band will enter with.

“Give your upbeat in tempo!! And give two beats when you can, its harder to feel a tempo out of one beat when the conductor’s hands are on their way back to the keyboard.” ~ Brendan Whiting

The backup plan

As a backup plan for the head nod – it’s also a good idea to sit your rhythm section where they can see your hands. That way, if you do give a bad cue, the rhythm section can still see when you hit the keys.

“I make a point of seating my drummer and bass player to the right and left of me (respectively), so they can both get a clear visual of my hands. If there’s a second keyboard, he/she is usually right behind the bass, with the rest of the band behind him/her…it’s the whole “keep the rhythm section together” idea that’s even more vital when there’s no stick to follow.” ~ Sarah Brett England

Adjusting the material

A lot of the repertoire that we work with as piano-conductors was written with the expectation of a standing conductor. For many shows there most likely was a standing conductor in the pit when it originally mounted.

When these shows are pared down for smaller pits with a piano-conductor, you sometimes have to make little adjustments to the show to accommodate the circumstances. And in this case “the circumstance” might be that you can’t even be seen because you are offstage, or because the only place to put the band was down in an underground storage closet (this was exactly the case for the Broadway production of Avenue Q!).

Consider this advice from music director Sarah Brett England:

“I can’t always be seen, so at times, I’ve had to make slight adjustments to the score to guide singers along the way, be it adding a pickup to establish a downbeat when there’s otherwise no set tempo prior to that, occasionally keeping a light beat in my left hand (or setting it in the drums) during a fermata, accenting downbeats in extended vamps under dialogue when the singer is having a hard time keeping track of the beat for their entrance, etc.”

Don’t be afraid to make little changes like these to your score. Quick fixes like this will make your productions run much smoother.

Management

As I’ve alluded to, piano-conducting most often accompanies a management position in the arts industry (such as music director). As such, I would be remiss if I didn’t say something about this part of the job.

Scheduling

Be sure to schedule reasonable amounts of time for band rehearsals, and to schedule regular breaks into that time. For example, if you have the option of scheduling your initial band rehearsals into either:

1. Two 4-hour rehearsals in two consecutive days or
2. One 8-hour rehearsal in one day

Always pick the former. Humans can only concentrate for so long (including you!), and you’ll find diminishing results if you hammer your band with a marathon rehearsal right off the bat. This is especially true for bands with horn players – you have to know how to pace your rehearsals so that your lead trumpet can still hit those high C’s at the end of the 1st act.

Rehearsals

The first few rehearsals are the best time for your musicians to get to know your conducting style. Help your band out by demonstrating how you show basic conducting gestures – for instance, what sign do you give to leave a vamp, how many preps should they normally expect, what does your “speed up” or “slow down” gesture look like. A quick overview of your movements will allow your musicians feel more comfortable and concentrate on the music.

Notice that this vibe is a lot different than you might expect from a standing conductor for a symphony orchestra or opera. The traditional relationship between a symphony and their conductor is a complex relationship of mysteries, posturing, affection, discipline, charisma and many other things. My personal advice is to leave that approach to the classical cats and lighten up if you want to be a piano-conductor in the commercial music world. As a piano conductor you are the leader, but also one of the players – and you are better off leading by example than by intimidation or posturing. Perform your part well and expect that your musicians will match your level of musicianship and professionalism.

Hire a Good Drummer

“A great working relationship with the rhythm section as a whole, especially the clearest and most consistent communication with its members, is crucial.” ~ Anne H. Tortora

The relationship between a piano-conductor and his drummer is an important one. The conductor is the one that everyone looks to – but the drummer is the one that everyone listens to.

Lucky for us, there is no shortage of extraordinary drummers in our industry. I’ve been lucky enough to work with a number of very talented drummers over the years. They all have a few things in common – they are very smart, they are very consistent, they accept the peculiar demands of a theatre gig and they are very good at both following a conductor and leading a groove. When you find a drummer like that, don’t lose their phone number.

“I find if you have OUTSTANDING chemistry with your drummer, many issues are avoided off the bat. In other words, you may have the finest drummer in the world, but if you don’t “feel” music the same instinctively, you’ll be constantly struggling with a lot of things. Interestingly enough, I’m not just talking about tempi. I think it’s a synergy thing.” ~ William Asher

Performing the Show

After the initial rehearsals are over, once you’ve been playing a show for a few days or weeks – the role of the piano-conductor changes. After an ensemble becomes familiar with a show they will come to know the show as well as you do.

Once this happens your job is to give the ensemble everything that they need, to trust them, and also: to stay out of their way. Assuming you have great singers and great musicians in your production, you can move into a dynamic that more closely resembles a chamber orchestra. A chamber orchestra is an (almost) conductor-less ensemble that breathes together, plays together and follows the leadership of it’s concert master (that’s you).

“I recently talked about [piano-conducting] with a pro who has been in the business for a long time and conducts shows from the keyboard at a major venue. He said that he loves working with musicians he knows well; after a week or two of playing a show, it becomes almost a chamber ensemble, where people just groove and breathe together, and it’s less about one person leading the pack.” ~ Markus Hauck

Certainly I don’t mean to say that you should dial it in. I only mean to advise against a common pitfall of piano-conducting: over conducting. For instance, if you come to a long vamp for just the drums and bass – should you start your conducting pattern and give the two musicians each beat? As long as the tempo remains constant and everything continues according to plan – no. Trust your players and let them play. When you give your performers more responsibility in sections like that, they will take ownership of those parts – and eventually the entire production. Personally, I find over and over again that musicians work better when their piano-conductor doesn’t micromanage.

Troubleshooting

Sure, the chamber ensemble idea sounds great – but what if it doesn’t work? What if your musicians or singers aren’t as good as you had hoped? What if you let the bass and drums handle that long vamp and they take off with the tempo and trainwreck the section?

Ok, this kind of thing happens. How you handle these situations will be the test of your leadership, and every situation will be different. Here are the 4 things I always try when I need to troubleshoot a difficult situation.

1. Servant leadership – “Servant leadership” is the management style that I always try to use first. With this philosophy you approach your job responsibilities with this question: “What can I do to help my performers do the absolute best job that they can do?”If there’s a problem with someone’s playing – a trumpeter splatting every entrance, a singer that’s never prepared for rehearsal – I’ll often take them aside and privately ask them just that question. Approaching these situations in a helpful way, rather than an accusatory way, fosters effective conversations that can often solve problems.
2. Ask for feedback – Don’t be afraid to ask your band for feedback. Sometimes piano-conductors feel like asking their musicians and singers for feedback shows weakness, but you shouldn’t be afraid of that. Ask your band if there are any parts of the show that they need more from you, or if there are any cues that are unclear, etc. You are all working together, after all, so if your clarinetist needs a bigger head nod for the entrance to their solo, let them have it. If you respect your performers enough to ask their opinion, they will often answer back with the same amount of respect.
3. Make a change – Sometimes you just have to change something to get it to work. If your saxophonist can’t play the flute part, re-write the part for sax. If your alto can’t sing that high G, lower the key. If your chorus can’t see you and won’t cut off together, nominate someone on stage to act as the surrogate conductor and give a small head nod for the cutoff.Again, you should feel justified in making small (or medium) -sized changes to your show in order to show off your ensembles strengths and not their weaknesses. Sure, there is a sanctity in the material we work with, but your audience won’t care about it if your alto squeaks on that G.
4. Fire somebody – It’s not fun, it’s always awkward, but sometimes the only thing to be done is to fire someone. If you’re thinking about making a personnel change like this, discuss it with your bosses before you actually fire anyone. If you can gather the united support of the production team, situations like this are easier (on you…).

Piano-conductors can be found on Broadway shows, small summerstocks and all the productions in between. It’s a complex position that is incredibly important throughout the arts industry.

Many thanks to the Theatre Music Director Yahoo Group for their help.

Are you a music director? Join the Theatre Music Director Facebook Group.

The closing of Broadway shows Finian’s Rainbow, Ragtime, Shrek The Musical, Bye Bye Birdie and Burn the Floor eliminated 97 musician positions from the Broadway industry this month, leaving 269 positions still secure.

According to a recent report in Variety Magazine, cumulative attendance is down 3.6% for Broadway shows this season. Yet, despite lowering attendance and a sputtering economy, Broadway has managed to take in slightly more box office money this season than last season – $692.2 million versus $689.6 million in 2009.

The number of musician positions available on Broadway is a slight increase from the same time last year. 23 shows closed between September 2008 and January of 2009, shedding 150 musician jobs over the 3 month period and leaving only 257 positions still working, primarily with long-running musicals like Wicked, The Phantom of the Opera and Jersey Boys.

Ticket sales for the revival of A Little Night Music show house capacities at 99.2% with a box office take of $928,670 for the week. Nevertheless, other shows have felt the post-holiday box office slide, most notably West Side Story, which finished the week $200,000 short of it’s usual numbers.

The Broadway musician industry will undoubtably be helped by several big openings this spring. Broadway newbies The Addams Family and American Idiot both have highly anticipated openings in March, and the revivals of both Promises, Promises and La Cage Aux Folles should soak up some missing musician jobs in April.

The 2004 revival of La Cage boasted a 24-piece orchestra, but there’s no word yet on whether this season’s rebirth will see the same sized roster.

Are You a Music Director?

Don’t miss the NYC Music Director Meet-Up on February 8th, 2010 at 8pm at the Trattoria Dopo Teatro in New York, NY. See this link for details and please RSVP on Facebook.

Author, blogger and professor David Cutler sent us a copy of his new book, The Savvy Musician, for review. We’ll be reading it and sending out a review soon.

In the meantime, please visit Cutler’s excellent site, www.savvymusician.com, for more information.

His initial dig on Peoria is a misstep, but it looks like he got a good, national wallop for that. I don’t mind an arts guy that speaks his mind now and then.

So is he with us, or is he management? We’ll see how he does.

Good luck Rocco – and do me a favor: consider giving grants to individuals, not just mega-huge non-profits.

When 18th century composer George Frideric Handel wrote his timeless “Messiah” oratorio, he not only penned a classic holiday composition, he also established a foundation for a new business approach to opera. Paul Solman reports.

This article is part of a series on musician history. See also, Learning From Our Past.

Court musician was a career path for musicians in feudal Europe from the Middle Ages to the late 18th/early 19th century.  Of the gigs available to musicians during this time, court musician was the most prestigous and best paid job around.  The position disappeared in the late 18th century/early 19th century when the court system itself crumbled.  Certain elements of the court musicians life and career parallel modern musician careers, but for the most part, court musician is a gig that has dissolved into our past.

What can we learn about ourselves from their careers?

What is a court musician?

Court musicians were hired by the rich nobility – dukes, kings, queens, etc.  There were two main reasons that courts held orchestras back then, only one of which is still relevant today.

First, from the middle ages to the 19th century, music was legally required at certain events (weddings, for example).  Music, we have to remember, was a scarce and valuable commodity at the time.  With the exception of music boxes, player pianos and similar inventions, was no way to record it and play it back.  So if there was going to be music – there was going to have to be musicians. Unfortunately, we don’t have this assistance today.

Second, having music available on command was a symbol of status for the very wealthy.  17th century luxury included chefs to cook fine foods with new ingredients (“Hey Duke, check out this new thing called cinnamon!”), soap, wine, chamber pots – and what good would luxury be without music?

Unlike laws requiring music, the status symbol of live music still holds true today.   There are still plenty of gigs to be had among the uber-wealthy.  Sometimes this comes in the form of private parties, but more often than not we see this in the form of charitable contributions, endowments and contributing patronage of non-profit arts companies like symphonies and ballets.  The rich are often still signing our paychecks, they just aren’t giving us a room in the palace anymore.

Was it a good gig?

While court musicians were the highest paid musicians of their day, it was also one of the least stable jobs.  Nobility were notoriously poor financial planners and it was not uncommon for courts to layoff all of their musicians at once without any warning.  Also, courts would often withhold payment for extraordinarily long periods of time – court records in Germany show payment delays from several month to, in the case of one German music director, a full 5 years without a paycheck!  As part of their contract they were usually given room and board at their employers residence – which is probably why the stuck around so long without payment.

According to the writings of court musicians at the time, many of them would have preferred to have worked in the relatively stable job of town musician (town musicians were professional musicians hired as full-time government workers by municipalities) if they wouldn’t have had to take such a pay cut to do so.

Yet another complaint of the court musician was the problem of isolation.  Courts, especially in the summer, were often located far from population centers (and far from the heat of the city).  Isolation is a grievance that is popularly attributed to Joseph Haydn, who spent his summers at Esterháza with the court of Esterházy, his full-time employer for 30 years.

I have to admit that a summer spent at a swampy castle in Hungary with no indoor plumbing, no phones, no internet, no TV and no fridge does sound like a bad vacation.  But then again, Haydn was a kapellmeister at his court (read: the boss), so his gig was probably pretty cushy compared to his sidemen.

There was a lot expected of court musicians.  Consider this, from a court musician in the late 1600s:

“With the court it is one day here, the next day off to someplace else.  There is no difference made between day and night.  Today one must perform at church, tomorrow at dinner, the next day at the theater.  In comparison to this, things are a little calmer in the cities.” ~ Johann Beer (1665-1700), chamber musician at Weissenfels

“Calmer in the cities” is a reference to the jobs in the city, as I mentioned before.

If you take out the word “church”, that complaint sounds almost exactly like something that cruise ship musicians used to say when I worked on ships.  I guess things haven’t changed much in 300 years.  At least, I suppose, we were paid on time.

How much money did they make?

Ok, so when they were paid, how much did court musicians make?

To answer that question we first have to solve the problem of currency.  We really have no good way of translating 17th or 18th century monetary figures into today’s money.  The best we can do is compare purchasing power – for instance, how much did a loaf of bread cost, or a cow, or the weeks groceries.  Another way to understand the value of a salary is to consider what other professions were making at the same time.

It’s also worth noting that there was a huge difference in pay between musicians on the same gig during this time.  There was a hierarchy of salary based on instrument as well as nationality.  A trumpet was a symbol of wealth and nobility, and accordingly, trumpeters were the highest paid musicians for hundreds of years.  Other wind and string players were considered less valuable (which makes me wonder why anybody would bother learning the lute in the first place).

There is some evidence that a premium placed on certain nationalities, at least in some courts.  In the court of Dresden, for example, the German concertmaster was paid 1,200 Thaler (a good wage), but the Italian singers were paid 3,000-10,500 each.

Here are some salary figures from several locations in Germany during the 18th century, which I have lovingly lifted, along with most of the information here, from the book, The Social Status of the Professional Musician from the Middles Ages to the 19th Century.

Musician Salaries

Non-Musician Salaries, Cost of goods

So what?

So what can we learn from all this?  First, it was nice work if you could get it.  You might say the same thing about premium gigs today – back-ups for rock stars, Broadway shows, international tours, film scoring, etc. The court musician career afforded it’s workers a middle class lifestyle or better, also much like today’s elite gigs.

Yet, at the same time, the job had it’s difficulties and it was still, in the end, a job.  A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking about the classical age of music and he shook his head when he considered how much easier it must have been hundreds a years ago…when musicians were taken seriously and treated with respect.  Unfortunately, the research suggests that professional musicians during this era had many of the same complaints that were have today.  Wages were not standardized, work was unstable, gigs often required travel and time away from home, there was little, if any, considerations made for retirement or long term interests.

What interests me about this epoch is that these musicians all made careers without the aid of recordings – a predicament we may, to a lesser degree, find ourselves in today. They also, I should say, made their careers without the burden of recordings. Nevertheless, the lesson here might be that this has never been an easy career. There’s no reason to look back with nostalgia on the time of Bach or Haydn, because it doesn’t seem like was any easier back then.

There are a few interesting stories in this material that I have yet to look at. Telemann, for instance, made more than twice the salary Bach made because Telemann was a better businessman, promoter and all-around hustler. He was, it seems, a much better networker than Bach. That sounds like an interesting thread of information to me – I might follow that.

Also, how one became a court musician is an interesting topic I’ll save for another article. I’ll give you a hint: you had to know somebody. No surprise there. I’ll follow that info as well and tell you what I find.

Is it just me, or does it seem like recorded music doesn’t have the same value that it used to?  I mean, albums still cost $10-15, and iTunes tells me that my songs are worth $1 to each of you (or hey! maybe $1.29!), but that’s not what I mean.  It’s just that people aren’t impressed anymore.  It used to be that someone would tell you that they had an album and you’d be like, “Wow!  You made an album!  I’m so impressed and excited that I’m going to pay money for it!”

But these days you have to beg someone to buy your album.  Friends and relatives begrudgingly buy it as if they are doing you a favor.  I feel like major labels are even trying to trick me into buying albums by including extra incentives that have nothing to do with music – behind-the-scenes materials, bonus videos, etc., etc.

Let’s face it, recorded music just isn’t as valuable as it used to be and as working musicians, we’re going to have to stop relying on recorded performances for our bread and butter.

Here’s the problem, though: we’ve been relying on recorded music as an income for nearly 100 years!  Remember when musicians would retire from playing live and only record music for a living?  The Beatles…Glenn Gould…Rubinstein – it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to do that anymore.  Not, at least, as easily as they did.

Ok, but let’s not lose our heads here.  “Professional musician” was not a career created by record labels and recording gear.  Ours is a proud, ancient profession.  There have always been working, professional musicians.  In fact, for the majority of human history, professional musicians did not have the luxury of recorded audio and still made a living.

As we move forward into this new era of the musician industry, maybe we should look back.  What did musicians do for a living 100 years ago?  300 years ago?  Who hired them?  How did they get gigs?  What kind of money did they make?  Which of their mistakes and triumphs can we learn from?

I believe that we are moving into a new musician industry that is a hybrid of the old world (pre-recording industry) and new world (post-recording industry).  We still can sell recorded music – we shouldn’t abandon everything we’ve achieved in the past century – but we also have to relearn how to make a living as musicians did before the invention of audio recording.

What if we are able to create a new, more sustainable model for the musician career by combining all of the knowledge of the two traditions?  Who knows.  Maybe musicians are broke, have always been broke, and that’s just the way it is.  I don’t know – I think it’s worth looking into.

And now you know my new project.  I’m lucky enough to live near one of the largest and best supplied performing arts libraries in the world (The Lincoln Center Library) and I’ve started looking into it.  I don’t pretend to be a qualified historian, I’m just a working musician – but I’ll let you know what I learn.  I’ll write about it here on MusicianWages.com.  Subscribe to our feed or email list, join our Facebook group, follow us on Twitter…or find us any of the other ga-billion ways that you can follow people these days.

More to come.  Thanks.