”culturalentrepreneurship”

What are we classical guitarists doing?

I really don't know any classical guitarist who can make a living just by playing the guitar.
Most classical guitarists also dedicate themselves partially or exclusively to pedagogy or
they even change their profession.
Why is it so difficult to live of our art? Is it a marketing problem? an education problem? As a
freelance musician, can I have any chance to actually make a living?

In this article I try to give my own point of view and my own reflection about what I see in my
environment and what I am doing myself with my profession of classical guitarist.
When we talk about entrepreneurs and economies, of course we are talking about how to
earn money. This also assumes many things outside of music, such as: marketing, sales,
advertising, etc. And being a freelancer means in a few terms that I have to deal with all
these aspects by myself.

If music is seen as a product to sell, we need to know who we want to sell it to and that's the
first problem.
When it comes to classical music, most performers are more conservationists than
innovators, playing the same repertoire and new classical music very often falls into a
philosophical rather than a musical innovation. It is not surprising that the most sold classic
works were composed more than 100 years ago.

Who could be interested in buying this conservative art if with the help of technology today
everything can be found fast, of good quality and even free, so the need for interpreters for
this type of conservatism is less and less, since the facilities and the quality of sound and
video recording are increasing.

As a classical guitar teacher, I was able to see how most of my students, despite playing
classical music, hardly ever or never listen to classical music in their spare time.
You can also see that in the most favoured countries and social sectors the reception of
classical music is greater, but even so it is not enough and as Robert Flanagan wrote in his
book The Perilous Life of Symphony Orchestras: “no symphony orchestra earns Enough from
performances to cover its performance expenses ”

So, the philharmonic and symphony orchestras are subjected to survive with external
financial aid, as do the great festivals of classical music in the world.

In other styles of music, the panorama can be totally different, because the market is very
large, and people pay for it. 

And what are we doing?

As instrumentalists, we are content to follow instructions, and for that we are trained to
rigorously follow a series of patterns and rules in our performance, but where is the space for
innovation? In the interpretation itself? In the repertoire? Is there something else?

In the industry, innovation and the new (as mentioned in Staffan Albinsson´s article) is one of
the most important sales arguments.
In classical music there was also this innovation, and for example composers such as
Schubert, Chopin, Tárrega, etc. counted with their own followers, who awaited the
composer's latest works. These composers lived in part from the sale of these publications.
Currently, I don't know any guitar composer who can make a living from his publications.
In folk and popular music today the balance between supply and demand is maintained,
each season has its new hits and each style its own followers.

Of course, we must live economically on our work as musicians, and theoretically, we have
the possibility through technology to sell our product, but to whom?
The phrase: art for art's sake sounds great, but somehow, we have to pay our bills too.

I don't think there is anything wrong or good in music, it's all about what I want to do myself
and for whom I want to do it and of course my possibilities and needs. Seeing popular or
mass music as something inferior, or as we could see in the article WHAT IS SO
"CULTURAL" ABOUT CULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP? Horkheimer and Adorno's
phrase, referring to other different art styles for arts purposes, “well calculated stupidities of
amusement” makes us lock ourselves in a bubble, generally elitist, in which what we as
classical musicians do has greater value. This idea is also imposed on our education and
they teach us to look at other music and styles with an air of superiority and contempt.
This arrogance against what is not “superior” is seen very frequently on the guitar, where the
works of Latin American composers with folk influences are viewed with a certain inferiority
by some classical musicians.
Then when we need to live on our “superior art”, they ask us to use the means used to sell
that banal and cheap music. This contradiction leaves us with our art at a high level, more
work outside the musical and without money.

I believe that music should be accepted as music and not for its rational value or its level of
complexity. Of course, this has to do more with the human part than with the musical part. If
the ideas of others were accepted with the same value as with our own ideas perhaps there
would be more peace in the world.