*3.1. What Motivates Chamber Musicians?*

#### 3.1.1. Music at the Core of It All

All of the musicians interviewed agreed that the musical experience itself was their main motivation for building a portfolio of work around chamber music performance and spoke of their endless fascination with the music:

The string quartet repertoire: nothing can begin to compare really. Violinists and cellists of course have got options like piano trios, and a much bigger repertoire of duos. I think for a viola player, quartets are the greatest thing you can aspire to. Then there's the fact that it's the private voice of the great composers, so it tends to be more personal, more intimate and, as we know, some of their greatest music. (Participant 5 (P5))

The importance of repertoire highlighted by these musicians is consistent with accounts given elsewhere by chamber musicians speaking of their motivations and experiences (e.g., Steinhardt 2000). As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, the centrality of the musical experience itself seems to be one of the aspects of chamber musicians' professional experiences that has not changed in the new millennium.

The desire to share their music with audiences was another key motivation that remains unchanged in the 20th and the 21st centuries. As one of the musicians explained, performances are often highlights of their working life that outweigh the less exciting aspects:

You don't love every moment of your practice. You don't love every moment of the concerts. Sometimes you get fed up with it, but for all of that come these just phenomenal highs when you play to however many people—appreciative people—and you're pleased with what you've done. It sounds really corny, but you look out and you think: "I'm really lucky to be doing this". (P8)

The potential contribution of performing experiences to ensemble musicians' ongoing motivations for performing noted here adds to the existing body of literature on this topic (e.g., Woody and MacPherson 2010; Waddington 2013).

#### 3.1.2. Collaboration

Another key motivation for all of the musicians interviewed was the collaborative aspect of ensemble playing. All participants spoke of their passion for working with other artists to explore new ideas and new ways of working:

I think what really makes me tick is the musical interaction and the spark and the responding and all of that that you get in a collaborative setup—whether that's two people or in a big group. So, for me, that's a big motivation behind a lot of things that I do. (P6)

This motivation was articulated by all of the musicians in this study, regardless of the stage of their career, as well as in the accounts of other chamber musicians elsewhere (Steinhardt 2000; Gregor-Smith 2019); consequently, this appears to be another aspect of chamber musicians' experiences that has not changed in the 21st century. A lot of music psychology research has been devoted to uncovering the social and musical dynamics of chamber groups precisely because the kind of interactions described and valued by this participant are at the core of what these musicians do (Keller 2014; Bishop 2018).

### 3.1.3. Ownership

Another motivation identified in the accounts of all of the interviewees concerned the creative control that chamber music affords them:

That feeling I guess with all music but especially with quartets, of "it's only as good as what you bring into it", because you are very much responsible for it. You're not passive behind a conductor or anything. Just more in control. (P1)

Unlike larger ensembles such as choirs or orchestras, chamber music allows musicians the freedom to decide who they want to work with, what they want to play, where, and how. Of course, it is not necessarily straightforward to draw together players who have a shared vision and approach to working together (Waddington 2017), but with the right combination of collaborators and circumstances, small-group musical collaboration can be rewarding, as this singer explained:

I think when you get many of the salaried jobs that are within music, or regular jobs with a bigger company, you lose any creative choice making in terms of programming. If you sing for an opera company or play for an orchestra, you are one of many people and you are part of the process that somebody else is leading. [ . . . ] Having that ability to be involved in projects where you are able to be creative and with people who are equally adventurous and wanting to explore new things—I think that's what's really interesting for me. I enjoy the rehearsal process and the creating of it sometimes more than the actual performance of it. The performance is important, but actually I feel like the really interesting bit has already happened by the time the performance happens. (P3)

The greater creative flexibility offered by small ensemble work in comparison to larger-scale collaborative performance work was attractive to these musicians. Overall, a combination of creative ownership, inspiring collaborations, and overriding passion for the music motivated these musicians to place chamber music at the core of their working lives. It seems likely that all these features can be observed individually in solo and/or orchestral work as well, but perhaps it is their combination that is unique to chamber music making. These motivations for pursuing chamber music work were considered powerful enough to outweigh the various hardships, explored in the section that follows, faced by today's chamber musicians:

The hidden fact is that you really would do it for free, but you do your best not to communicate that to anyone. [ . . . ] It's an idiotic professional choice to make basically. It doesn't add up. The amount of time that you have to put into rehearsing, learning the scores, practising, travelling to rehearsals—all of that stuff—and turning down paid work in order to spend that time rehearsing. You'd basically make a loss if you were to add it up! (P2)

This impassioned but rather sobering characterisation of chamber music as something of an impractical vocation was supported by other musicians' accounts, regardless of when they entered the profession, and highlights the strength of their motivations for making chamber music central to their working lives.

#### *3.2. A Challenging Professional Landscape*

Interviewing musicians who established their careers in the 20th century, as well as musicians who have entered the profession more recently, allowed the construction of a picture of how the profession has changed over time. Most striking were the changes to the arts economy in the UK that have had a direct impact on the way these musicians work, how much they earn, and their professional and musical identities.

#### 3.2.1. The Arts Economy

The longer-established musicians described the arts landscape of the 1980s and 1990s as offering an abundance of well-remunerated performance opportunities for UK-based groups:

Every month we had at least 15 concerts in music societies around the UK. We were playing on the BBC at least twice a month if not more. We were making records for which we were being paid very well. We were doing lots of touring abroad and around the UK as well. [ . . . ] If I approach now the same music societies that we played at then for the same fee—I mean the exact number that we played for then—they'll say that's far too much and they can't possibly afford it. [ . . . ] Out of those music societies that we used to play at, there's maybe three or four who are still operating at the same kind of level, but it used to be maybe 120. (P2)

Such frequent, reasonably prestigious performance opportunities are difficult to imagine when faced with today's competitive environment, where such opportunities are relatively scarce. Another musician explained:

There were fewer groups around in those days. There were more music clubs and therefore more concerts available. The possibility of balancing freelance orchestral work with getting concerts as a chamber musician was probably easier to achieve, because it was all just that much more relaxed. [ . . . ] It was a smaller pool of players and a larger amount of work basically, so it was just altogether more possible. [ . . . ] Basically, there was less competition, you didn't have to be as good, and it was easier to find balance. So quite simply we were luckier. We were living in a very fortunate time. (P5)

This account, too, feels far removed from the realities of the bleaker professional landscape that today's musicians face. As outlined in the introduction to this chapter, many of the differences may be attributed to changes in arts funding across the UK. Reflecting on the reduction in the number and quality of performance opportunities in recent years, one of the interviewees offered this explanation:

I think that various things have contributed to it. Obviously, the Arts Council's demise because a lot of music societies were dependent on that kind of Art Council funding which just evaporated over the years. But I think also some responsibility lies with [certain organisations], who have promoted the people on their roster so that music societies can actually get a concert for £200, because it's subsidised at the other end, and they see no reason why they should pay £2000 when they can get one for £200. I think that has actually led to a huge policy of undercutting. It's a big race to the bottom to see who can get concerts by lowering their fees to a degree that the music societies are then interested. (P2)

These comments are in line with the broader research on musicians' working conditions, which, in some respects, might be described as "exploitative" (Portman-Smith and Harwood 2015). Early-career chamber musicians seem likely to be more vulnerable to this kind of exploitation, since most must negotiate their own performance opportunities and fees and may feel pressure to do concerts for little pay or for exposure.

Some of the challenges in relation to securing performance work were highlighted in this study by the musicians who entered the profession post 2000. One of these musicians reflected on some of the difficulties she experienced in establishing herself during the second decade of the 21st century and explained that finding enough work in a saturated market was particularly difficult:

I think getting paid performances is a challenge: where to look is quite difficult and then knowing who to talk to about that, and how to get someone even interested in booking you. If you do manage to speak to a promoter, like someone said to me: "We have 200 emails a day from groups just like yours and we can't look at everybody". It's quite difficult to know how to manage that. (P3)

This competitive environment forces musicians to develop a variety of skills and unique selling points in order to make themselves attractive to concert promoters and other bookers, further reinforcing the notion of musicians as entrepreneurs presented in existing research (Parker et al. 2019). For chamber musicians, particularly those in the early stages of their careers, who are unlikely to have agents and bear responsibility for securing their own performance work, this means that there is pressure to acquire effective enterprise skills as early as possible.

In further evidence of both the effects of funding cuts and the challenge of securing work, another of the interviewees noted that when music societies did wish to book their group for concerts, they were unable to offer them compensation for expenses like long-distance travel:

You end up sometimes missing out on the work because the funding is so squeezed. Sometimes societies would love to book you; a really good example of this is many of the societies in Scotland—particularly in the north of Scotland. They'd like to book a greater variety of groups, but they just don't have the money to pay for the travel up there, so it's very hard for them to present a varied programme. That's a bit frustrating. (P4)

The musicians, then, face the choice between taking the work and making a loss in real terms after travel time and travel expenses are accounted for—the vocational but impractical experience described in the previous section by P2—or missing out on the work altogether.

#### 3.2.2. The Perceived Relevance of Western Art Music

As well as changes to funding for the arts in the new millennium, there was a sense, particularly from the more established musicians, who had been around long enough to witness the changing landscape, that live chamber concerts were now valued less. One of the violinists was concerned that this would become a problem in years to come:

It was always the case that you would see the average age of the music club or society audience is about 75, and then of course they die off and you just think, "well, who's going to come in next?", and then you'll see the next generation. As I get older, I'm not sure that next generation is an absolute given. My generation, yes they're still interested in music, but the next generation down and the generation after that: "music societies? Why do we need those anymore?" (P7)

This perception of aging audiences and decreasing interest in such concerts from the younger generations is also supported by research (Dearn and Pitts 2017) and paints a bleak picture for the future of chamber music in the UK.

Changes in education policy over the last decade are likely exacerbating this gap between generations with regard to interest in and understanding of chamber music. The UK government introduced the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) for schools in England in 2011—a collection of subjects that are considered to have the most educational value, and a performance indicator by which schools are measured. The EBacc does not include art subjects. In practice, this omission has resulted in a striking reduction in formal music education for children and young people, including instrumental learning (Bath et al. 2020). A recent report commissioned by the Incorporated Society of Musicians (Underhill 2020) has suggested that music education in schools has been further devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with almost 10% of primary and secondary schools in England no longer teaching music at all. One of the interviewees here opined that, as a consequence of these reductions

in music education, "fewer people are interested in going to concerts because fewer people know anything about what concerts are, or what music is, or have a personal connection to it" (P2).

Whilst the impact of the reduction in music learning may not be felt directly in terms of audience numbers at present, the general devaluing of western art music that has been cemented through education policy, in combination with the funding cuts over the last decade, has the potential to result in a lesser appreciation for western art music among future audiences. With chamber music itself arguably something of a niche within western art music, chamber musicians will have to work harder and more imaginatively to combat perceptions of elitism and irrelevance, and to grow their future audiences.

#### *3.3. What Barriers to Inclusion Are There?*

The participants were not asked directly about barriers to the profession during the interviews, but, during analysis, key barriers were identified that have important implications for equality, diversity, and inclusion in relation to the study of chamber music at various levels and for chamber musicians at different points in their careers.

#### 3.3.1. Money

The barrier to the profession that came through most strongly in all of the interviews was money, and there were several different ways in which it was seen as a barrier. One interviewee who teaches in a UK conservatoire alongside their performing career noted that the rise in UK higher education tuition fees in 2012 changed students' attitudes towards study and work:

It's a lot more expensive now than it was [when I was a student]. So even the first and second-year undergrads, they don't feel like they've got all the time in the world. They feel like they've got to succeed and the pressure of having to get good marks—and students have had that for the last century I'm sure but I feel like the pressure's on, because a lot of people are being slightly more realistic with them now, which maybe they weren't ages ago. (P1)

For prospective students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the high tuition fees, particularly for a degree in a subject that does not guarantee a steady source of income upon graduation, may be unaffordable or unjustifiable. Current students are keenly aware of how much they are investing in their training; they have higher expectations of their study experience and of themselves (Vigurs et al. 2018). They know that they must acquire and refine the skills necessary to earn a living when they graduate.

In relation to transitioning into the profession, several of the musicians spoke of the financial barriers that new graduates who are seeking to establish themselves as chamber musicians face:

It takes quite a while to establish yourself doesn't it? [ . . . ] It's a gradual process. Initially you do a lot of things for free or for exposure or expenses. I worked a lot with, still do work a lot with, an Irish music promotion company. [ . . . ] When they were initially starting their company, I'd go over to Ireland a lot and do lots of playing for nothing more than my flights paid and a sofa to sleep on. You do these things to build the profile and build experience and contacts and all of these things. (P8)

As noted elsewhere in the literature on musicians' working conditions, there is something of an expectation that musicians who are starting should take on gigs for experience, little pay, or exposure (Portman-Smith and Harwood 2015). As such, this presents a barrier for musicians who do not have the financial security that would allow them to work for free or for very little pay. Some musicians in this position are fortunate to have financial support from their families; others, like one of the interviewees here, may have worked in a non-musical job to fund the first few months of insecurity. For other musicians, however, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, this barrier may be insurmountable.

This financial barrier around the transition into professional working life is potentially worse for string players who aspire to be chamber musicians. In addition to being open to exploitation as they establish their careers, these players must often also acquire suitable professional instruments:

Some students come from families with money, so they can afford an instrument, while some students come from absolutely nothing and really need a violin. So, I will tell them that they need to do more free gigs where people choose what they play, because they can borrow an instrument and show off to fundraisers or sponsors. Whereas, for somebody who doesn't need an instrument I wouldn't think that that's a priority. (P1)

In the scenario described by this interviewee, students who do not have a suitable instrument upon graduation may be further disadvantaged. Not only must they find the money for an instrument, but, as they endeavour to do so, they may be forced to take on more performing work for free or without having much creative control or ownership. This reality further disadvantages musicians from less wealthy backgrounds both financially and musically, and may limit the direction that their careers can take in the earliest stages.

The financial challenges of sustaining a career that centres on chamber music were considered by two of the most experienced musicians interviewed. They suggested that although it was possible to make a living primarily playing chamber music, it was not easy. As P5 explained: "If you've got a big mortgage to be able to support, all of those unpaid quartet rehearsals and things of that sort, those practical things can be the make or break factors". This lends further support to the notion of chamber music as a vocation that "doesn't add up" (P2) economically, and these financial barriers may restrict access to the profession to those from secure middleand upper-class backgrounds.

#### 3.3.2. Gatekeeping

One route into establishing a successful career as a young chamber ensemble that several of the interviewees described is through winning competitions or young artists' schemes. These tend to open doors to more prestigious engagements and opportunities. One of the musicians described this process briefly:

It's so subjective what the public appetite and what the potential is for a group. It depends on the competition, it depends on who you're pitted against, it depends who's on the panel, it depends on what mood the musicians are in on the day, there are just so many variables. (P1)

It should be noted that, in the interviews, only three of the five musicians who entered the profession in the last two decades mentioned competition success as being instrumental in their own careers. Whilst success at competitions is not necessarily required to establish a career in chamber music, it certainly helps—a point that was acknowledged by almost all of the interviewees.

The adjudicators of competitions and young artists' schemes have a difficult task. They also hold a lot of power. Winning a competition can be a material boost for a chamber group. Awards often come with concert series or tours, as well as prize money and mentoring. Competition winners are an attractive prospect for concert promoters, and this can help groups to build networks of contacts and cement their reputations. In many ways, competition panels are gatekeepers to early success and opportunities for more stable income. Given the power they wield, it is important then that competition panels are diverse—both socially and musically—to prevent the same kind of groups playing the same kind of repertoire in the same ways from automatically being the most prominent voices within the profession, to the exclusion of others.

### 3.3.3. Encounters: Role Models and Realities

Some of the more recent graduates spoke of the influence that encountering established chamber musicians had in showing them that it was possible to earn a living as an ensemble musician. As one participant explained, until he encountered these musicians personally, he had not realised that this was a possibility:

I didn't always know I wanted to be a chamber musician. I grew up in South Africa, so there's not a lot of quartets around to look up to and so I only really discovered what it was when I started studying. I knew what it was, but I didn't really know how to listen to them, or I'd never really seen more than one live in my life. [ . . . ] I started doing a little bit of freelance work with orchestras while I was at college and seeing what the kind of value of playing was, that there was potential to make money out of music, because I'd never really met anybody who had done it, or understood it first-hand. (P1)

This is an important barrier to inclusion. This participant attributed this lack of access to his geographical location; for others, opportunities to play chamber music and encounter chamber musicians may depend upon their access to performances or to instrumental learning. To aspire to a career in chamber music, a young musician must know that such a thing exists, so they must encounter chamber music and musicians. In addition to knowing it exists, they must also know that it is possible for them: they must be able to relate to the role models they encounter—to be able to visualise themselves in similar roles (Gorman 2017)—and also have opportunities to acquire the necessary skills, both musical and extra-musical.

Within higher music education, there is much that institutions can do to prepare their students for the realities of the profession. One of the musicians explained that despite her own careful planning for establishing a portfolio of work that centres on chamber music, she was not aware of these realities when she graduated:

I thought that once you were getting relatively high-profile concerts at places, and once people were acknowledging that they were happy to book you and people were happy to pay you money to come and hear you in a concert, I thought that concerts would be financially viable and sustainable, and therefore that promoters would be happy to take you and agents would be happy to take you on; that within a couple of years of leaving college it would be relatively easy to get yourself a manager or some person who would take some of that administrative responsibility away from you. I now think you have to be very lucky to get into that situation, and many of the larger groups that you look at as a student are actually doing most of the stuff themselves. I wasn't aware of that at all. (P3)

It should also be noted that the most recent graduates interviewed here left their postgraduate programmes in the early 2010s, and the intervening years have seen higher education institutions devote more attention to careers and employability curricula for their students. However, it is useful to also consider the important role that instrumental and vocal teachers play in providing direct access to the profession as role models. There needs to be more consideration and transparency around how

success is portrayed so that students are able to make informed decisions as they visualise their futures and design their careers (Bennett and Bridgstock 2015).

### *3.4. Professional Identity*

The musicians interviewed in this study all had established portfolio careers that placed chamber music at the centre of their working lives. All of them did some teaching—many of them as instrumental or chamber music tutors in higher education institutions. Some of them had additional work such as freelance orchestral work, or running chamber music courses or festivals. Most of them had a main ensemble that they worked with; some also had other ensembles they played with regularly. In talking about the decisions that they had made around the balance of work in their portfolios, a tension between diversification and specialisation became evident. One of the violists spoke of his time with a prominent quartet as a period of intense specialisation:

During all those 20 years with the quartet, I did, I think, no other playing, apart from bits of solo playing locally. There was no time for any orchestral work in London. I think the strength of the quartet's lifestyle and the danger of it was that it was epic, so that when it went wrong, or when you stopped, I had no other contacts, no other experience going on. And after 20 years, I couldn't really go back to being a violinist. [ . . . ] The downside of always only doing the quartet, even though it means you don't have the problems of scheduling other work in and so forth, is that you are effectively cut off from the profession, and then to get back into it is a hell of a lot more difficult. (P5)

For this player, the advantage of being able to focus solely on the quartet was the total immersion in one thing that was artistically satisfying and all-consuming. He spoke of the unique lifestyle the quartet were able to forge through their imaginative programming and careful curation of opportunities that would likely not be possible for today's quartets in the UK, given the much bleaker arts economy. The danger in specialising, as articulated by this player, is that it has the potential to narrow the musician's skill-set and network. This narrow and deep approach could, at one point, have been advantageous for a chamber musician's career. For today's chamber musicians, however, the disadvantages seem to outweigh the advantages.

Another player also reflected on this tension between specialisation and diversification and how she perceives the focus has shifted over time:

I did my undergrad 2002 to 2005 and then my postgrad 2007 to 2009, and it felt as though we were still being trained for the industry maybe as it was in the 90s, when there was much more funding available for things and possibly people didn't have to be quite so business-minded as they do now. I think the successful youngsters coming out of training now have really got a very astute sense of [ . . . ] the need for versatility; whereas, I think I was actually actively encouraged not to be versatile but to specialise. I think that's possibly more the old model and it's quite interesting for me that actually I am quite a versatile musician and I have gradually found my way back to that versatility. [ . . . ] But it does feel like a factor in the whole thing is the way that the industry has changed. (P6)

Beyond the practical, economic reasons for not pouring all of their skills and resources into a single project, and in line with existing research on performers' careers (Haldane 2018), other musicians suggested that building a diverse portfolio of work strengthened the overall quality of their music making.

I think that you need to have space from each other in order to be able to bring other things into the mix; different life experiences, different musical experiences, they all feed into being a more rounded quartet player or chamber musician. I think that's really important. [ . . . ] It's important to have the other things too. I think it is possible to [play together] full time, but you might end up killing each other. (P7)

This emphasis on diversification seems to be more important in the 21st century than it was for chamber musicians of a few decades ago. With tougher working conditions and greater precarity in terms of employment opportunities, it is vital that today's players are versatile musicians with diverse networks of contacts and skills.

#### *3.5. What Skills Do Today's Chamber Musicians Need?*

Chamber musicians need a wide range of musical and extra-musical skills in order to establish and maintain successful careers.
