shirling & neueweise wrote:
> people study composition to get university positions; i spoke once > with a uni prof who was sad to see that many of his master's and PhD > students weren't really interested in composition. in fact one of his > PhD students at the time had actually told him he was studying > composition to get a comfortable job in a university.
Andrew Stiller wrote:
I find this extremely hard to believe. There are only a few hundred U.S. university jobs available to composers, of which only a handful are open every year. Each such job opening will receive dozens, perhaps hundreds, of applications from new-minted PhDs, most of whom (me included) will never find work in the field. Hardly the way to go job hunting! Saying you're studying composition in order to get a university job is entirely equivalent to saying you're studying violin in order to get a job with a major orchestra.
I'll take Andrew's statement one step further. This year there were 96 (at last count) positions posted for theory, theory/comp, composition and comp specializing in electro-acoustic music. To give you an idea of why it's not a great idea to get a DMA for a university gig, there were only 10 gigs for composers, 3 for E/A composers and 11 for theory/comp. By the rejection notices sent out from schools, there were over 180 applicants to many of these positions. I'd compare it more to studying a wind instrument to get a job with a major orchestra (which very few openings every year). Attitudes towards composition in the university are slowly changing, by the way...the idea of forcing students to write in one style or another is pretty antiquated anymore. There's so many musical innovations happening these days, the monostylistic concept just isn't feasible anymore. By the way, I accepted one of those composition jobs this year (after three years on the market). :-) -- Dr. Rob Deemer Composer/Conductor www.robdeemer.com www.myspace.com/robdeemer Composition Department Chair (beginning Fall of 2007) SUNY-Fredonia _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
