Sunday, March 4, 2012

Someone's bitter....

I just read this heinously bullshit article on music which was posted in today's Boston Globe Magazine: http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-04/magazine/31115605_1_pyramid-scheme-liberal-arts-contrabass

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

1 comment:

  1. Where did you send this to? I have something I'd like to tell this moron.

    ReplyDelete