----- Original Message ----- From: "phillip holmes" <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>
Agreed, and most musicians (speaking of classically trained instrumentalists and vocalists) have already made adjustments. Most are teachers first, professional musicians second. This is the way it was for most of recorded history anyway. Bach didn't make a living playing organ and harpsichord, and he didn't get paid union scale. Musicians had a pretty cushy deal going while there were wealthy benefactors who cared, but the world's tastes have changed for the worse (IMO--not a humble opinion either). Also, I don't think that recording contracts kept these orchestras going. Most didn't have contracts. It was local community involvement, the chamber of commerce types, wealthy people with time on their hand, etc.....
Interestingly, this approach seems to depend on one important social opinion...that, somehow, "classical" music is innately superior (at least in the sense of the "elite" preferring it) to other forms of music. This means that a community, in order to be a "respectable" community (in the sense of upper-class = respectability) must have classical musicians, classical performances, and if at all possible a classical ("symphony") orchestra!
One result was that, at least in the late-nineteenth/early- twentieth centuries, classical artists were spared the sort of social-class demotion that applied to most other musicians and stage performers (and that still seems to be true, though less noticeable, in this day and age!).
It is also interesting to note an opposite development! In this day and age, particularly in the USA, country & western music has been adopted as what might be called "the official 'working class' musical genre!"
Steven C. Barr