Music and/as Work
Abstract: This essay examines music through the lens of work, arguing that musicology has been inconsistent (and often evasive) in its engagement with labor as a conceptual and material category. Drawing on the author’s experiences as a trained musician and scholar, the essay begins by addressing the contradiction between the immense value placed on music as an aesthetic object and the frequent disparagement of music-making as legitimate work. Treating “work” as a contested discursive concept rather than a stable definition, the article situates debates about musical labor alongside broader discussions of gender, capitalism, and social reproduction. Building on feminist and Marxist scholarship, it emphasizes how capitalist social relations shape what counts as work, how labor is valued, and how musical activities are positioned as leisure, vocation, or profession.
The essay then develops a historical framework for understanding music at work and music as work. First, it traces how music has structured labor in preindustrial settings, how industrial capitalism separated music from work, and how music was later reintegrated into workplaces as a tool for productivity and control. Second, it examines three major forms of musical labor relations—patronage, guilds (and later unions), and independent musicianship—demonstrating how each reflects shifting social hierarchies, power relations, and definitions of artistic autonomy. Rather than resolving tensions between music as art and music as labor, the essay argues that these contradictions are central to understanding musical life under capitalism. Ultimately, the article contends that recognizing music as work clarifies how musicians navigate compulsion, pleasure, creativity, and precarity, and provides a framework for interrogating how value is assigned to music, musicians, and cultural labor more broadly.