Artistic Career in Music : Stakeholders Requirement Report

Abstract

The teaching of western art music performance still relies on 19th-century values and standards, which promote the reification of the score by concentrating on realising the composer’s intentions, while often ignoring the performer’s innovativeness and potential for interprofessional collaboration (Dalagna, Carvalho & Welch, 2021; Ford & Sloboda, 2013; Westerlund & Gaunt, 2021). They also ignore the audience and importance of the performance context but continue to inform most music performance guides, critical editions of scores and, crucially, the siloed practices in higher music education (HEIs). Therefore, they neither prepare today’s musicians for fast changing societies, nor support students' development of agency to cross boundaries of traditions and create their own careers (López-Íñiguez & Bennett, 2020). Such crossings of artistic boundaries take place on an individual level in HEIs (Stepniak & Sirotin, 2020), but rarely on the collective level of these institutions (see, Carey & Coutts, 2021). Currently, there is substantial research evidence that the career imagined by students is vastly different to the career realised as emerging professionals in music industries (López-Íñiguez & Bennett, 2020; 2021; Bennett & Bridgstock, 2015). Since careers in music are unpredictable (Weller, 2012), very few music students are employed in a full-time performance role (Bennett, 2018, 2008; Beeching, 2004; Perkins, 2012).