Here is my response, which I submitted to the Globe as a Letter to the Editor.
Dear Sir or Madam:
I would like to
respond to the article by Adam Ragusea entitled “Facing the Music” printed
in today’s Globe Magazine.
I am currently
studying composition at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, the
department to which Mr. Ragusea alluded in his piece (where he too
studied composition).
While I
understand that it can be frightening or frustrating to realize, at the end of a degree path, that one’s chosen field may
not be the most lucrative, it is ludicrous and melodramatic to accuse one’s professors
of deliberately poisoning students’ minds to think they can achieve unattainable
goals.
In the end, some
people are talented, driven, passionate, and lucky enough to be successful in
the arts; some are not. The job of
the professor of music (or dance or theater or studio art) is not to decide
which students will succeed and which will end up investment bankers. The professor’s job is to teach the
student who asks to be taught, to the best of his or her ability.
I make no
presumptions about how Mr. Ragusea feels in his current career as a radio
reporter, but what I can say is that I cannot imagine ever truly being happy
without music as an active part of my life. And if that means being a professor and teaching this stuff
“to some other sucker”—i.e., sharing my knowledge and passion with students who
are just as passionate as I am and helping them to create art for the benefit
of this community we all live in—then so be it. I actually quite like the idea.
I do not expect
to make a living as a professional composer, and I certainly have never
had a professor here (or anywhere) imply that I would definitely be able to.
In truth, it is
hard for me to imagine a student going into a master’s or doctoral program in
the arts, still deluded into thinking there are plenty of good jobs to be had
in those fields outside of a professorship (and even those are harder and harder
to come by nowadays).
My colleagues, professors, and I are all here because we love music and cannot imagine our
lives without it. What the others will
end up doing with their careers after this is their business—we are here, now,
to learn to make the art we love.
If that’s too much
commitment for you, study accounting.
Sincerely,
Evan A. Rees
Accompanist,
Indiana
University Department of Theatre and Drama
Bloomington, IN
47401
