Today’s topic is a guest post from current Blair School of Music senior, Owen Purcell!

In the nineteenth century, the American university continued its momentous rise to notoriety both in American life and on the global scale of academic prominence, after two centuries of struggling to compete with its European counterparts. Perhaps unsurprisingly, American universities, in this time, were striving to emulate the systems and practices native to these rivals in many ways. So, just as European universities left the business of music to the great conservatories down the road from their campuses, American universities also left the business of music to the great conservatories down the road from European universities’ campuses. Nonetheless, in 1865, music first entered the American university, with the establishment of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and the inauguration of the Bachelor of Music Education.

This is perhaps the great dividing point between American higher music education and European higher music education. There has never been a systemic focus on music educators in Europe, whereas, music in higher education in America was built on a bedrock of preparing music educators. One could argue that this represents a difference in philosophy between the two, as the purpose of music education on the European continent was the ever-increasing quality of top performers, and the purpose of American music education was the ever-increasing quantity of common musicians.

A generation since the beginning of widespread use of public schools in the United States, Oberlin saw the demand for music educators across the country, and initiated the first degree of its kind. Two decades later, what would become the Crane School of Music leapt onto the field of music education with specific paths for public school music teachers. It wouldn’t be until 1910 when the first American conservatory with the intent to compete with European conservatories would become established, the Institute of Musical Art, now the Juilliard School of Music.

Over the last century, prominence of music in universities has only grown. The National Endowment for the Arts was initiated in the 1960’s, and it only increased the importance of music education. At the same time, more students have gone to higher education every year, and the increasing popularity of double-majoring in music and another field have made studying at a place like the Blair School of Music or Northwestern an increasingly attractive path for young musicians, especially those worried about the economic hardships faced by younger Americans.

How this will fare for performance-intensive conservatories is uncertain. On one hand, the name recognition and the high-caliber instruction could become more and more valuable for young musicians trying to become competitive in an increasingly elite market. On the other, the prospect of pursuing another, perhaps more financially dependable, interest while getting a conservatory-level education in music could attract more and more of the best young musicians in the United States. As of right now, many things could happen, and many young musicians have been double-majoring in undergraduate degrees, testing the water, then upon graduation, stepping out, or doubling down by going to graduate school at a conservatory.

I will end on a quick note about singers specifically. Studying voice in university has many benefits for those who want to work professionally in the mediums of opera, art song, or musical theater, but what distinguishes it from other instruments is that the physiological differences between an 18-year-old singer and a 28-year-old singer are vast, in a way that affects the instrument uniquely. This is where studying at an American university for voice performance gets tricky. European conservatories have a much broader range of ages at which people study, so singers regularly begin and continue their academic careers in their mid-to-late twenties. This is antithetical to how American universities function: increasingly systematized to recent high school graduates, on rigid, four-year paths.

For a system built initially around preparing music educators, this makes complete sense.

A high school choir director or a theory teacher does not need a developed, marketable voice to begin teaching. But for those who find vocal performance as their intended career path, their time in conservatory can come awkwardly early.

For prospective vocal performance students, this reality should be considered while they decide where they want to study. The pursuit of a second academic interest might be incalculably valuable not just as a backup plan, but as the foundation for a career that you can pursue while you wait for your voice to mature after undergrad.

-Owen Purcell