ENTP Response Paper

Travis Bliss
2/4/14
ENTP 351 Section 1

This article is a brief overview of the conditions of the American economy and current
state of the arts culture and specifically how it pertains to the Conservatories in New York City,
and the Students that attend them. It attempts to inform the reader about the hardship of
going into the arts, and sort of, from their point of view, give these potential music majors a
more realistic set of expectations. It claims that winning a job, or making a living with music, is
not as easy as it used to be, and students cannot and should not go into school assuming they
will come out assuming opportunity will be dropped on their lap. Some of these prestigious
conservatories have started incorporating more and more entrepreneurial aspects into their
curriculum, as well as an increasingly diverse set of classes ranging from improvisation to
composition. Overall, this article attempts to prove the point that if you want to be successful in
music in this day and age, you must have a knowledge of entrepreneurship.

I believe the source of this paper could be the Mannes School of Music, or maybe a
combination of Mannes and Julliard. This article starts off with a dark tone but lightens when it
begins to talk about the new opportunities and programs that Mannes will be offering. The
intended audience of this article is probably high school through early college students. They
are probably predominantly white or Asian, upper middle to upper class. The pictures in the
article feature two white girls. This articles uses a couple of devices to reinforce its point. It
uses name recognition to legitimize its findings. It uses nave student interviews to reinforce
the point. I think the subtext of this article serves to intimidate students interested in pursuing
the arts, maybe saying, Its not a good idea to go into the arts, but its an even worse idea to go
into the arts and not going to Mannes school of music. To persuade people, this article uses
sweeping generalizations such as: Youd be better off as an electrician. One student claimed
I could marry a rich man instead of teaching, playing, and winning competitions to make
money. The negative message that is being presented here, is that there is little chance of
success, and you will almost certainly face a lot of hardships trying to make a life with music.
There is not much of a positive message but it does imply that if students were trained in
entrepreneurship they would probably have a slightly easier time in the music world. This
article has a slight vision of success mostly that if you go to Mannes and take all of the
entrepreneurship classes that you will be better off, but mostly is focused on the negative. This
serves to disempower most musicians, especially ones who are enrolled at schools that arent
Mannes, or maybe Julliard. It serves to empower those who are going to Mannes and are
allegedly on the right path. I think one part of this story that is untold is the stories of the
musicians who have made it in music recently, especially ones from schools outside of New
York. They could interview students from New England Conservatory and some other schools
like that to get a sense for some people who are successful in making a life currently.

I found this piece to be fairly relevant, and a little interesting. They make a semi valid
point, which is that it will be tough trying to make a living in music. I think it would be more
productive to have more in depth interviews with students from these schools and see what the
specific struggles were that they went through, and what steps they went through to try to
conquer them. This article made me as a reader feel, slightly disheartened and apprehensive
about my future as a musician. But I also felt skeptical due to the overall generality of the claims
about it being impossible to find jobs and what not. I would tend to agree with the article in
some points and I think its good that people are writing about it. The methods that were used
were okay but could have been less vague. I think a good second perspective would be from
graduates who did get the coveted job that they were looking for right away, like an orchestra
position, and ask them how they did it, and how much trouble they had. Overall this makes me
feel slightly more anxious about my future than I already did, in some ways, but it another way it
also inspires me to work harder and broaden my horizons to be one of the conservatory
graduates who can succeed in music.