SUMMARY
of
Performer-Pedagogues: A Study of One Orchestra
This is the paper describing
my major fall term research project for professor Howard Gardner’s class at the Harvard
Graduate School of Education entitled “Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet.” My aim was
to compare reported levels of
career satisfaction between musicians who only performed and those who were also teachers. I surveyed
many core members of the
Florida West Coast Symphony and had follow-up interviews with ten musicians. I am grateful to
the orchestra management and
musicians who made this project possible and hope that the results will be interesting, informative,
and helpful to the organization.
The first part of the study provides some background information regarding career satisfaction among
symphony orchestra musicians.
I included Gunther Schuller’s commentary about American orchestras in 1979 and the study by J.
Allmendinger, R. Hackman, and
E. Lehman describing the work environment of symphony orchestras in Germany, England, and the U.S. All
of these authors
describe orchestra musicians’ general lack of satisfaction with their jobs, and present theories of
why that might be so. I also
summarize two theories of work motivation and well-being that I found relevant to the situation. One
is a description of Self
Determination Theory, which focuses on conditions for high intrinsic motivation among workers. The
other is the theory of Vital
Engagement, which is related to a long-term meaningful commitment to one’s work. Given the background
information, I thought that
there was some possibility that performer-pedagogues could be more satisfied than other orchestra musicians
with their careers.
The survey I distributed was based on the one used by the group of researchers listed above who investigated
symphony orchestras
in the early 1990’s.
The center section of the document
is a description of the particular methodology of the study and the conditions that limit
the interpretation of the results. The most important consideration is the climate in the orchestra
regarding the vote to unionize. I
believe that the open discussion of musician-management relations contributed to the tone and consistency
of responses among
musicians. Even with the high level of hopefulness after the unionization, however, there were
some very articulate comments that
could provide some insight into possible future improvements for the organization.
The results were surprising
because of the musicians’ consistent dedication to teaching students. Though there were three
of twenty-two respondents who answered the survey as non-teachers, all three of them were interview
volunteers who had significant
teaching experience. Everyone in the sample was an experienced pedagogue. Furthermore, they
unanimously mentioned that they
thought teaching students had a positive impact on their own playing. I found a dedicated group
of pedagogues. Though I did not
have a comparison group within the orchestra, I was able to draw some other comparisons and conclusions.
The FWCS data was similar to
the 1990 composite results in four categories. First, internal work motivation was extremely
high. According to the interviews with the FWCS musicians, there is a tremendous commitment to
music. Each person commented
on how he or she enjoyed performing as a part of an orchestra; they loved the feeling of contributing
to a larger whole. Another
category worthy of mention is satisfaction with work relationships. This orchestra appears to
have a high degree of appreciation for
each other, and the musicians volunteered that information in the interviews. The remaining two
categories that are similar to the
1990 composite are satisfaction with growth opportunities and satisfaction with job security.
The four areas that were significantly
different were also quite a bit lower for the FWCS. The biggest difference was with
compensation. Not only was this a consistently negative result in the survey, each interviewee
mentioned it several times. It was
such a large issue that I had to describe the current situation for the musicians in some detail. Financial
necessity was one of the
reasons that many people were teaching more private instrumental lessons than they would ideally like
to. They also felt some
anxiety about maintaining the quality of their performance in the orchestra in spite of the large amount
of time they had to spend
earning enough money—balancing financial stability with individual practice time. In other words,
if the orchestra provided a better
wage, the musicians reported that they would be more able to improve rather than only protect the quality
of their orchestral playing.
The other three categories where the musicians were significantly less satisfied were job involvement,
general satisfaction, and
satisfaction with management. Regarding the dissatisfaction with the management, I tried to consider
the context of the survey and
the interviews in my interpretation of the results. Though the survey held quite a negative picture
of the management just before the
union vote, the interviews (held afterwards) were significantly more hopeful about the potential outcome
of this year’s negotiations.
For my conclusions about the
performer-pedagogue, I found that even though the musicians earned up to half of their income
from teaching, they felt that their training was appropriate to the activities in their careers even
though they had no significant
pedagogical education in conservatory. Three of the ten interviewees had up to one year of pedagogy
class while pursuing their
degrees in music, but none of them felt that the class even affected their teaching. With such
a widespread emphasis on pedagogy
in their working life, I found it strange that among this sample there was such a shortcoming in their
education. The story in the data
raised many more questions about the conservatory training musicians receive and how that relates to
preparing future generations of
young musicians for orchestral careers.
 Please send your comments to Jeanine Tiemeyer. This document was updated 6/2/2003.
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