Posted by longtime lurker on November 23, 2001 at 18:50:24:
Please bear with me,
I have a question for all ya'll. Are there too few or too many tubists? On which segment of the tuba-playing populace did you focus when answering that question? What can be done to ameliorate the situation in whichever direction you chose, (i.e. there are more or less tubists)?
My prejudiced, unscientific take on the situation is this:
There are too many professional orchestral tubists and not enough community orchestra/band tubists. The rampant unionization of orchestras, even in states unsympathetic to unions, has led to more professional positions than the philanthropic and classical music communities would otherwise support. The corollary to this is that there are fewer community orchestras than there would be in the absence of unionization. By this I mean that there are some marginal communities in which the sum of the classical music and philanthropic communities is not always sufficient to support a professional orchestra, i.e. in good times there is a professional orchestra, but in bad times it folds and is eventually replaced by a community orchestra, which may eventually get reorganized as a professional one when the good times come back, (if they come back).
My point here is that unionization of a newly professional orchestra in such a marginal community distorts the incentives of aspiring tubists: it gives the orchestra a permanency that is deceptive. (I must disclaim that I do not know how the unionization of an orchestra actually works. Finding out is on my agenda.) This is made even more problematic by the next issue.
There are too many tubists at the college level who still have aspirations of being a professional. That's common to most fields at any college. Most of my fellow economics majors here at university are not going to be economist, similarly most of my fellow math majrs are not going to be mathematicians. The difference is that we do not necessarily expect to be those, they are concentrations in the broader liberal arts tradition. (That's b.s. to be sure, but works as well as the truth.) Why aren't more tubists weeded out between high school and college?
Anyway, this is but a short sketch of something that might develop into a research project of some sort later.
thanks,
/brian