The Price of Experience: Understanding Young Musicians' Motivations for Youth Orchestra Participation

Creative labour has been long catching the attention of sociological discussions on labour, due to its distinctive accounts of passion-driven persistence, regardless of its precarious conditions and embedded inequalities. Deeply institutionalised, with a history of elitism and exclusion, the classical music field exemplifies this paradox. Aligning with broader contemporary neoliberal shifts in the organisation of labour, it is becoming increasingly precarious, adopting production-based, temporal employment. Yet, it continues to mask precariousness and forms of inequality under notions of meritocracy and passion-driven work, ultimately devoted to a cultural hegemony and closely related to middle-class and imperialistic hierarchies. By bringing the underresearched youth orchestras to the fore, this thesis situates them within broader debates on creative labour, structural inequality and precariousness and the classical music ecosystem. Although powerful gatekeeping institutions within this ecosystem, serving as key educational spaces and offering symbolic capital to their members, youth orchestra participation lacks monetary compensation. Nonetheless, youth orchestras remain highly popular amongst young and aspiring classical musicians. Reflecting on the intricate structural dynamics of the field, this phenomenon raises questions about how young musicians internalise, rationalise, and navigate these dynamics early in their careers. To address this gap, this thesis asks what are the motivations behind young and aspiring musicians' unpaid participation in youth orchestras? It investigates young and aspiring classical musicians' complex motivations behind unpaid participation in youth orchestras, in an attempt to shed light on how broader structures of creative labour intersect with musicians' subjectivities and career trajectories. Focusing on the Dutch Nationaal Jeugdorkest (NJO), as a case study in a qualitative research approach, it draws on twelve semi-structured interviews with young classical musicians aged twenty to twenty-eight, educated in Dutch conservatories and originating from varied contexts. Their accounts were thematically analysed, reporting valuable and nuanced insights on creative labour, inequality and precariousness. The findings demonstrate a dynamic interplay of extrinsic, career-oriented goals, and intrinsic motivations, including emotional, social and passion-driven rewards, informing young musicians' motivations. These motivations reflect broader dynamics. Youth orchestras are ambivalently situated within the ecosystem, as powerful gatekeeper reproducing existing values and exclusions, yet they simultaneously operate against them, by fostering emotional support and a personal relationship to music as forms of resilience. This duality points to broader neoliberal dynamics, where passion and purpose are used to legitimise precariousness, and rationalise (self-)exploitation. This research deepens our understanding of how young cultural workers navigate and make sense of exploitative structures in the creative industries. By foregrounding youth orchestras within debates on cultural labour, this research contributes to critical understandings of inequality, professional socialisation, and the affective economies of creative work. Last, it calls for institutional reflection and structural change to ensure fairer and more inclusive access to professional pathways in classical music.