Musicians in Search of Professional Practices

The thesis is about classical musicians in search of professional practices. Its main question is: what organisation of qualities and competences contributes to the musicians possibilities to create satisfying musical practices? After analysing the musicians' labour market in the Netherlands and relating these findings to those of other Western countries, attention is given to theoretical explanations of the artists' behaviour. Main point becomes the difficulties economics has in analysing intrinsic motivation, because it mostly is treated in a utilitarian manner, not reflecting its core aspect of non-exchangeability with other values. Although psychic income and risk-taking behaviour may explain much, the necessity remains to go a step further by looking at the economic assumptions, in order to give artists' specific behaviour its place. A wide range of psychologic and philosophical theories get attention, leading to acceptance of intrinsic motivation besides extrinsic motivation. More specific for musicians, a wide range (around 50) of qualities and competences, needed to function as a professional musician, was found in the literature, including the Multi-level Theory of Korthagen & Vasalos (2003) who organise them at different levels. The reviewed Self-determination Theory of Deci & Ryan (2000) gives attention to the interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Paralel to the review of the literature some musicians and related organisations were interviewed in order to give attention to the specific musicians' perspective which may differ from the goal-oriented economic perspective. Important outcomes were the minor role of acquisitional techniques and the importance of specific personal qualities as passion, perseverance, self-knowledge. The musicians also demonstrated to have a wide range of ideals, different from the economic theories who assume they want to make art as much as possible. The outcomes of these findings from different sources were combined in the Balanced Motivation Model that was developed. To test it and to find distinguishing qualities of musicians with satisfying practices a large-scale survey was held among Dutch classical musicians, leading to 400 accepted quesionnaires. This demonstrated a significant predicting power at medium level of Korthagen & Vasalos model and at a modest level of Deci & Ryan's theory for some groups of musicians earning more than minimum income with their musical activities. It also showed that craftmanship can only explain 2/3 of the musicians' satisfaction (musical and financial) with their jobs. The developed Balanced Motivation Model proved to be an effective tool in understanding the relationships between the elements that are important for the musician in creating satisfying professional practices, including the balancing of the tensions between intrinsic and extrincis motivation.