Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Is is good advice to become professional musician?

This makes me cringe for all sorts of reasons, but the main one is that sports are more or less sacrosanct far and wide, but classical piano is not even on most people's radar at all. So, no, I don't think parallels are great; they are pretty much nonexistent.

You miss the point.

I was referring to the number of people who financially succeed in a profession versus the number who want to succeed. Sports and musicians have a similar ratio.

I could have used other examples, such as authors, filmmakers, race car drivers, watercolorists, etc, but I chose sports because they are on many people's radar.

What if we made an analogy like this:

Hip Hop and Rock = Football and Basketball

Classical Music = Soccer

Not in this country. Maybe Tennis or Golf?

Its ok to play for money..just don't become a professional musician.. it only causes undue stress..

More like bog snorkelling!

Soccer? I think it's doing well outside of the U.S. More like:
Classical = curling

Lacrosse

I understood the point, but feel the analogy is a poor one, and have no particular reason to believe that the ratios of varying success are similar between sports and classical music, other than the fact we know that people who attempt a career in either cover the range from great success to total failure. I sure have no idea if the numbers between the two groups match up in any significant way at all. Do you?

Just based on my own memories of school, there were fewer kids expecting to make a career in sports than there were ones expecting to make a career in music, even though the numbers of kids playing sports was much larger than the number of those involved with music. However, on the other hand, just in terms of being an educator, there were many more school coaching jobs to be had than there were school music teachers.

Thnaks to everybody specially Dr. Kreisler, rocket88 & Nikholas, very useful info indeed for me. I will now have a solid foundation in what to base my advice to this young budding musician,i.e., I will nip that idea of becoming a professional musician in the bud..........and have my free meal with wine which flows at my friendºs table like water at the wedding of Canan.......

My advice will be to carry on with his musical studies as seriously as he can but to follow a parallel career or trade, and as he becomes good at both he can alternate between them or choose one once he finds his way.

I feel like advising him to become a banker but I would like him to carry on being a nice, decent, law abiding boy as he is now................

It doesn't matter what you advise. Young people take little notice of their elders, which is often a good thing.

Since when is it a good thing?

Since always. Handel, for example, had to study music in secret because his father forbade him to have anything to do with music or musicians.

Actually, not always.

Chopin's parents were both musicians, his mother a piano teacher. Billy Joel's father was an accomplished pianist. Beethoven's father was a musician who gave violin and piano lessons. Bach's father was a musical director who gave him harpsichord lessons. Liszt's father played the piano, violin, cello, and guitar, and taught him piano at age 7.

Quite right. I think compared to the number of composers who did what they were told Handel's a drop in the bucket.

We don't know how many great composers we never had because their parents steered them into more lucrative occupations. We know of at least a few who defied parental authority -- Handel, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, to name but a few, and the world is a better place for that.

This seems an uncontroversial point to me -- I don't see how anybody could reasonably argue that Handel ought to have become a lawyer.

Where did your friend's grandson get the idea that teachers actually care about the content of such an essay?

I was thinking if I got that writing assignment at 14, I might have written an essay about how unhealthy it could be to make kids think about careers at that age.

Great poster - would read from again! Thanks!

You seem to have succumbed to a Chinese whisper and missed the point, which is whether or not it is often a good thing that the young don't listen to their elders not whether or not Handel should have become a lawyer. There would certainly be a lot less death on the roads.