I attended a performance of The Nutcracker last night, and pondered something I’ve often pondered:
The orchestra had a full complement of instruments – harp, trombones, tuba…not all of which are called for in a sizable portion of the classical canon. Baroque/Classical (ie, up through Mozart & Haydn) you may get a part for trumpet, maybe. But you don’t see trombones (and definitely not tubas) until the Romantic era. And there aren’t that many pieces with a part for harp.
So if you’re a classical harpist, or tuba player (tubist?) what is life like? Are you paid a full time salary, but only perform every now and then? How do you fill your time?
When I was in college, there were ten full-time jobs for tuba players in the US. That number may have changed, but i doubt it. By full-time job, I mean if you had that gig, that (and practicing) was all you had to do, and the bills all get paid: San Francisco, LA, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, a couple other symphonies I don’t remember, 2 studio gigs in LA and a studio gig in New York. So, if you weren’t performing, you were practicing.
Anything less than that fell far short of the mark as far as paying all the bills were concerned. So, if you were the tuba player in the Oakland Symphony (which is a very good group), when you weren’t performing, rehearsing with the symphony or practicing for it, you were rehearsing or performing in a brass quintet, teaching private students, teaching at a college somewhere (most of the brass instructors at my college, CSU Hayward, played in the Oakland Symphony), and you also had brass students at that college, plus you were practicing for whatever other music you wanted to learn… so, in all, not having one of those 10 top jobs meant you were working roughly 100 hours a week.
Side note: When I was in college, Winnepeg auditioned for a tuba player. 200 people showed up to audition for it.
I was at a wedding once where the music was provided by two harpists (different sizes) a harpsichordist, a lute player, and a violinist. It was beautiful music. I don’t know if they were an ad hoc group, a real quintet that played together a lot, or part of some larger group.
It was a religious wedding, with a Eucharist and everything, and something I can only describe as a chuppah, because I guess the Eucharist requires a “roof,” but this wedding was in the late spring and outdoors. Yes, they actually shlepped a harpsichord and two harps outdoors. There was even a special platform with an acoustic wall on the backside to make the musicians easier to hear.
When my husband was a professional tubist (a very short period of time) when he wasn’t playing tuba he was playing some other brass instrument, like a baritone.
Then he ran off to play bagpipes professionally.
Clearly, between that and me going to art school money lots of money was not one of our top priorities.
I’m sorry for the digression, but can you explain this? I’m
Catholic and the Eucharist requiring a roof makes no sense to me. And I don’t know what a chuppah is.
A chuppah is basically a type of canopy under which a Jewish wedding ceremony takes place. Just do an image search and you’ll see the various versions of them. Outdoor processionals of the Eucharist are usually done under a canopy in Roman Catholic tradition. See these photos.
That said, Roman Catholic weddings are almost never outdoors (I’ve never heard of one, but it seems it might be possible with a special dispensation from the bishop.) No idea if that would require the use of a canopy, or not. Or it could certainly be some other Christian denomination.
A chuppah is the canopy under which a Jewish couple says their wedding vows. For non-Jewish weddings, and specifically Catholic ones, I don’t think it’s necessary to have a canopy for the Eucharist. It’s just a thing people do: wedding canopy - Google Search
My college roommate was a voice major. Singing FT is a good way to destroy your vocal chords even with proper technique but she had no choice but to grab whatever gig she could whenever she was unemployed. Weddings? Sure. Funerals? Okay. Some other kind of celebration? Yes! She gradually built up a reputation for herself. She also gave lessons for a time.
While she was working FT she landed a soloist position at an area church. She was there for a good many years before moving to another church which paid more (“chasing churches” is a thing in the sacred music world – I never knew it existed until I was in a choir and we suddenly lost our director).
These days she’s less of a soloist and more of a choir member and music is less of a vocation and more of an avocation.
So for a modest organization like the Berkeley Symphony in my example – when they need to beef up their regular complement, with tubists and harpists – do they just call up some locals in their rolodex? “You free to do harp for the Nutcracker in December?”
It was an Episcopal wedding. I guess it could be a requirement of the Episcopal church that you needed a roof, or maybe it was just something the local church itself required for outdoor weddings to protect all the stuff they were letting (probably actually renting) you use. When I was told it was “a requirement of the church,” I assumed that meant the denomination, but I guess it could literally have been “the church” that supplied the couple with the stuff for the outdoor wedding.
Normally, I don’t like outdoor weddings, but this one was particularly nice.
A lot of it was word of mouth, and people would get in touch with people they knew if they needed to fill a spot. There’s also the issue with the union; if it’s a paying gig, it kinda needs to go through union channels, so unless you’re in the union, you tend not to get paid. See: rent.
My mother’s roommate in college became a professional harpist. In addition to playing for a symphony, she played for a church service which was televised weekly. (I think it was the Crystal Cathedral.)