I am glad you responded to Susan Key’s guest editorial, though I see that you are somewhat confused by her challenge. One of the problems with scaling walls is that once music professionals enter the realm of the music establishment they may not realize there are walls. Composers of the 19th and earlier centuries did not have much problem with walls, for they identified their role in music differently. I dare say that there’s not a professional “serious music” composer today who can identify with the communication between Edvard Grieg and his German composer-teacher Salamon Jadassohn.Jadassohn urged Grieg to give up his leaning toward folk-music, nationalistically oriented music, often in simple genres like songs and piano pieces. He suggested that Grieg devote himself to larger works like symphonies (Jadassohn had a high opinion of Grieg’s talent). Grieg is said to have replied “I leave to the Beethovens and Brahms the construction of great musical edifices. I prefer to build humbler abodes in which my countrymen may feel comfortable. The idea that an artist’s (musician’s ) highest duty is to his or her own muse has so pervaded the establishment, that I suspect that even composers or musicologists who want to reach out to the general public somehow feel a revulsion when it comes to figure out what their role actually is.

But the point is that Gerk’s data could mislead the applicant into thinking “well, I’ve got experience in three of those fields, so I’ll have an easier time finding a job than someone who can only teach the traditional historical musicology topics and wrote their dissertation on Haydn’s influence on Mozart and Beethoven.” The fallacy in that is to think that we’re the only one. Maybe I’m feeling overly pessimistic this week, but it seems that the increased demand for intra-disciplinary scholars just brings with it a higher number of applicants with just those qualifications. I wonder how much better off in the job search someone is with an American music specialty than others. At the same time, I think Gerk’s findings do reflect a good trend in the field, and are, for the time being, for me still quite encouraging in my choice of field.

Thanks for this post, Jake.
This desire to be more “public” with musicology seems to continue to gain momentum. I wonder if it might be a side effect of more and more musicology PhDs and not a huge change in the number of available academic jobs. At the SAM conference in San Antonio last week, there was an entire session dedicated to work “Outside the Academy.”
I hope that places like SF Symphony will be able to make use of musicologists in this quest to scale the walls. This doesn’t seem all that likely given the already narrow budget margins of most symphonic organizations. However, I hear that the venerable Philadelphia Orchestra may be hiring a PhD or two to assist in their ambitious, but very exciting, “Global Concert Series.” I also hear that it might pay better than some entry-level professorships!