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I have been thinking. When wanting to build a hierarchy for professions, where would a musician fit?
I've seen that an actor or a dancer would claim the peak of of the event unless the musician is.. dunno. Paco? or Jaco?
But thats not what this is about.
When thinking about which ones from all the professions are the most noble ones, entertainers sadly are not on top.
So, where would you place yourself?
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10-08-2023 02:12 PM
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Looks like you're restricting the hierarchy to the Arts. Your question was definitively answered thousands of years ago and that answer is still the answer today - music is the highest of the art forms because it is literally invisible, therefore absolutely the most abstract , so it requires and engages out highest capabilities (both performing and listening), which makes it the most beautiful; that places the musician at the top.
Source receptors:
3 for vision
4 for taste
5 for touch
7 for smell
>15K per ear for sound (is it any wonder we enjoy and play music?)
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Yeah but a dancer or actor beats the act with ease. But other professions?
Originally Posted by pauln
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Originally Posted by emanresu
[Not really clear on the question ... Do you mean, "Who's better - a musician or an accountant, and what's the hierarchy with all other professions?"]
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Somewhere between Drug Dealer and NICU nurse.
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I think I saw a twitter survey where the result was that slightly more responders wanted to date a stand up comedian than a musician (don't remember if it was lead singer, band member or what word the survey used)
Perhaps one way to figure out a hierarchy of professions would be to do some kind of study where people are feed the same internet dating profiles, but they show different occupations to different test subjects (preferably without the knowledge of the test subjects).
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Lol, I'm right above drug dealer. I'm a loser who lives alone. I just love music so will always pursue it. Plus, it's a great past time to keep me occupied in my solitude. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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10-08-2023, 09:21 PM #8joelf Guest
My two-liner:
Q. Why is it better to be a Shakespearian actor than a jazz guitarist?
A. Because the Shakespearian actor at least works once a year, when they do Hamlet.
I'm here through Thursday, etc....
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There's a big difference between your local working wedding band musician and Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen.
Just keeping it local, when I realized the waitresses and bartenders make more money than the guys in the pick-up cover band...being a working musician is a blue-collar job.
I've known a few musicians who've done well nationally, but most work for peanuts and have a day job.
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Isn't the guy who delivers pizza probably a musician, or the guy waiting on you at Guitar Center? When I was growing up in Los Angeles, it seemed that everybody who parked your car or waited on you in a restaurant was an actor.
Seriously though I don't buy into this hierarchy. If I did, I would put teachers and those who save lives (medical people, police, fire dept., ...) at the top of the hierarchy. Funny (well, not really funny at all) that those who play the part of these professions on TV or in the movies get paid FAR MORE than those who really do that work.
Tony
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This was certainly true back when one could make a living as a full time musician (1970s and probably earlier). We got paid a middling blue collar wage, but we could make ends meet with that pay. Originally Posted by JGinNJ
Tony
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Either can be a lifesaver at the right time! Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I also am not sure of the question.
But...I think of music as THE most noble art. Nothing compares.
What can make you laugh or cry EVERY time you hear it? Conjure up that first kiss? The marriage ceremony? The memory of the first big concert you went to?
A musician can make you feel something, and occasionally even think. Even a good novelist can't do that as quickly and easily as a good songwriter.
"Busted down in Baton Rouge,
Waiting for a train,
Feelin' near as faded as my jeans..."
Dang if that doesn't trigger some thoughts and memories you must be a jaded S.O.B.
I've seen many, many concerts, and a lot of them really got to me, even some I saw this year. But one in particular comes to mind: in 1992 I was at a medical conference for HIV/AIDS in Berlin. There was a concert at the Waldbuehne, the outdoor amphitheater at Olympic Park. The opening of the 1936 Summer Olympics occurred there, and there were many Nazi events during that time.
But on this evening there was a commemorative performance for people who had died from AIDS. Leontyne Price was the featured soloist. I don't remember all of her pieces, but I do remember the finale--the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth. It was unbelievable, and a rare event that few people would have had the opportunity to experience.
There are so many other emotional moments connected to music. Itzhak Perlman performing the violin sonata from Schindler's List at Ravinia. John Prine singing Summer's End the last year he toured. Paul McCartney playing Yesterday.
Even now, thinking of my kids' playing recitals or performing with orchestral groups in school, I'm getting teary-eyed. Those events only happened once in time and will never happen again.
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I definitely think music would be the artform people would miss the most if it disappeared tomorrow. And that's coming from a painter!
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Obviously visual arts like painting and music are complementary. A lot of famous musicians have synesthesia--for example, can see musical tones in colors. Messiaen, Rimsky-Korsakov and Duke Ellington are all supposed to have had it. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Many, many well-known musicians are painters, some of them very good. Dylan, Miles, Joni and Tony Bennett come to mind. Quite a few are photographers, as well.
I don't think we could do without visual art either. I get feeds of paintings every day on Facebook, mainly by impressionists and some modernists, and I repost them frequently. There is a lot to learn from such works. I used to paint and draw myself, but have set it aside for most of my life. Maybe I'll get back into it in retirement.
It is a different type of experience though. It's fleeting--one looks at a painting or visual work, and registers a response. One can think about it. One can go back and look at it again. But it's transient.
On the other hand, one can be surrounded by music almost 24/7 if one wanted to be. I can listen to Autumn Leaves by a master, and play it myself. I know all the notes. I can visualize the sheet music. I know it intimately in a level of detail that is not there for painting or sculpture or photo or whatever.
I think you have to have both. Our earliest ancestors painted what they hunted on caves, and undoubtedly played drums and flutes and made some type of music, maybe while they were painting.
That said, you can't dance to a painting.
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This sounds like one of those moments of abstraction, where one finds oneself wondering, "Is this really me, my life? Are these really my responsibilities, my work, my results, my plans, my face in the mirror? Do I really have to play along with the laws of physics, and if so, when did I agree to that?" Maybe this doesn't happen to you, but occasionally, this world looks like the dream with a different set of rules that I question, not the one I wake from every day. That includes wondering about the value of the different senses and their expression and appreciation in the world.
I don't know where music comes from, or if it is less or more important than light, color, touch or taste, but wondering what life would be like without it and where to rank it or the people who create it is rather like a fish wondering about life away from the sea.
It does lead us back to our appreciation for the forms that move us most, touch us deepest. Though a musician's life is not as well appreciated or remunerated, let alone respected as highly as we all agree it should be, the challenge to produce it at a high level anyway makes it somehow more saintly, in a way, and speaks of its deeper value.
As I've grown older and found fewer playing opportunities in spite of my increased abilities, I'm learning to become satisfied with what I AM able to express, as well as appreciate and understand through music, supporting those more courageous than I, or more gifted where and when I can.
For me, music is more evidence of some great underlying creative intelligence that connects all of life, rather than some random addition of an optional sensory exchange between an organism and it's environment. I don't think I could tolerate a life without it, not well at all, and I'm grateful that that has not been my lot. It just seems to be part of who we are and what we need. Still amazing to think about its power, though.Last edited by yebdox; 10-11-2023 at 02:31 PM.
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When an actor does the job, he does the job. Same for dancer. They are the "job" at the moment.
When a musician does the job, thats where a Disney cartoon can get the closest. Puffy cheecks, dreamy looks, cool looks, lots of acting. All amateurish unless premeditated, trained.
Eh, when a painter does the job, it'll probably be the farthest from such stereotype.
A musician - we do the notes but the other senses have to be filled with something also. That's so strange. It is just strange.
But that wasn't the OP question.
When the robots take over and provide all the food, shelter and good health, then yes, arts would take over big time.
But until then, we are entertainers. The level of sophistication and beautifulness doesn't matter, still behind.
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Let's see what Aristotle thought of becoming a musician...
We will now give our own account, approaching the question first with reference to becoming in its widest sense: for we shall be following the natural order of inquiry if we speak first of common characteristics, and then investigate the characteristics of special cases.
We say that one thing comes to be from another thing, and one sort of thing from another sort of thing, both in the case of simple and of complex things. I mean the following. We can say (1) 'man becomes musical', (2) what is 'not-musical becomes musical', or (3), the 'not-musical man becomes a musical man'. Now what becomes in (1) and (2)-'man' and 'not musical'-I call simple, and what each becomes-'musical'-simple also. But when (3) we say the 'not-musical man becomes a musical man', both what becomes and what it becomes are complex.
As regards one of these simple 'things that become' we say not only 'this becomes so-and-so', but also 'from being this, comes to be so-and-so', as 'from being not-musical comes to be musical'; as regards the other we do not say this in all cases, as we do not say (1) 'from being a man he came to be musical' but only 'the man became musical'.
When a 'simple' thing is said to become something, in one case (1) it survives through the process, in the other (2) it does not. For man remains a man and is such even when he becomes musical, whereas what is not musical or is unmusical does not continue to exist, either simply or combined with the subject.
These distinctions drawn, one can gather from surveying the various cases of becoming in the way we are describing that, as we say, there must always be an underlying something, namely that which becomes, and that this, though always one numerically, in form at least is not one. (By that I mean that it can be described in different ways.) For 'to be man' is not the same as 'to be unmusical'. One part survives, the other does not: what is not an opposite survives (for 'man' survives), but 'not-musical' or 'unmusical' does not survive, nor does the compound of the two, namely 'unmusical man'.
We speak of 'becoming that from this' instead of 'this becoming that' more in the case of what does not survive the change-'becoming musical from unmusical', not 'from man'-but there are exceptions, as we sometimes use the latter form of expression even of what survives; we speak of 'a statue coming to be from bronze', not of the 'bronze becoming a statue'. The change, however, from an opposite which does not survive is described indifferently in both ways, 'becoming that from this' or 'this becoming that'. We say both that 'the unmusical becomes musical', and that 'from unmusical he becomes musical'. And so both forms are used of the complex, 'becoming a musical man from an unmusical man', and unmusical man becoming a musical man'.
That clears things up pretty much, right?
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hah!
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