Professional education toward protean careers in music? Bigenerational Finnish composers’ pathways and livelihoods in changing ecosystems

Contemporary professional landscapes in classical music fields are rapidly changing and younger generations of musicians are confronting their creative careers, more often than not in connection to self-employment and freelancing. This narrative inquiry investigates the pathways and livelihoods of composers in a changing professional ecosystem through interviews with 10 bigenerational composers in Finland. The analysis is presented in three “factional stories,” in which the empirical material is crafted into “fictional form” by an anonymous first-person narrator. The stories depict how the secure, traditional careers of the older generation are found to be bound to traditional orchestras and ensembles, whereas the protean careers of the younger generation of composers involve passionate pathfinding amid pluralizing ecosystems, within but also beyond traditional contexts and through various collaborations. The younger composers are expanding significantly, or consciously distancing themselves from, the traditional model and values of a contemporary composer. Competition is found to be increasing and professional education described as too short and insufficient in its concentration on technique—this does not provide new understandings and skills beyond traditional composing craft needed for navigating the profession and securing livelihoods. Although similarities are found in the pathways of both composers’ generations, such as strong career callings and experiences of luck, the “struggle” for a composer to find a place in society is more strongly experienced by the younger generation, for which the development of an ongoing “learner identity” is required to embrace—and not resist—such a challenge. As a whole, the study provides a new understanding of composers’ pathfinding through changing ecosystems and suggests that traditional and protean music careers co-exist—even within a single person—while they can also be clearly separated from each other. The study informs higher music education programs in Western countries.