I was looking at martle's comments at the beginning of the hypochondriac thread, and considering the sort of stress that comes for many working in the music world, and certain factors in particular. One of these is the relative informality in terms of the times spent on one's work: obviously if one is primarily doing a teaching job hours are more fixed (though in universities and music colleges these are still somewhat less rigid than in, say, a 9-5 office job) and even more so in music administration and publishing; but composition, performance, writing take place at all sorts of hours of the day. And all can be very solitary in nature (for composers and writers most of all and to a large extent solo performers). This is combined with all the socialising, networking, etc., which goes on, and needs to be done, after in what otherwise would be one's 'social' occasions. Certainly some of the time this is a very informal process (the situation differs in different countries - I've noticed that there seems to be a clearer delineation between one's formal and informal interactions with others in the music world in Germany, for example), which can actually be very hard - I suppose sometimes what's necessary is to build contacts, etc., without obviously being seen to do so. This leads to all sorts of strained pseudo-friendships, to people seeming friendly then suddenly cutting others short when they see someone more important to talk to, and so on. I suppose what I'm getting at is that the boundaries between one's professional and social lives become very blurred, and this can sometimes make it difficult to find time for genuine relaxation if one is in any sense in the company of other people involved in the same field.

Personally, I find that side of things can be stressful, and for that reason (not having a family, and having found in recent times that relationships/romances with women not professionally involved with music may be the better option) need a side to life that is entirely separate from all this, and friends who are not musicians or at least only very tangentially associated with the music world. I do have that side and group of friends, and that is vital in avoiding becoming totally subsumed in the stresses of the music world (especially as not enjoying all the networking side or 'keeping up appearances', and the awful business of ascertaining which friends are more 'useful' than others). But I reckon that these blurred boundaries between professional and personal lives must be extremely stressful for many and wondered how people here generally cope? Is it feasible to be able to somehow 'draw a line under one's work' at some point in the day, as many doing what some of us might see as more mundane jobs do, when our actual work is so fundamental to our whole being? And when composes or performs, both intensely personal things, how does one manage not to allow every part of our lives to be overwhelmed by these, but at the same time avoid an attitude and approach of slightly cynical, detached 'professionalism'?

I don't know if this all makes sense, but hope some will recognise what I'm alluding to - I'm really interested to know how people here deal with conflicting pressures?

I recognise all of this too, Ian - I think the 'business' (if one can call it that) of studying/writing about music is similar to composing or performing it in this respect. I don't care much for the professional socialising side of things (and I've never been much good at it anyway), but it's conference season at the moment so one just has to grit teeth and get on with it.

On the other hand, I sometimes worry that I find it too easy to draw a line between the musical world and the rest. I don't have much trouble switching off at the weekends and around the edges; but only because, perversely, I've become as fanatically disciplined about relaxation as I am about working. (I don't quite write '8-9pm, watch TV' in my diary, but it comes close some days.) This is good in some respects - much as I might worry about it during the day, I genuinely haven't lost a minute's sleep over my PhD (perhaps I should...) - and I think that a reasonably well-rounded experience helps my writing and thought a little - but it does mean that while I have plenty of friends who are friends, it's very rare that I have conversations with them about music, art, film, etc.

I think, then, I stress about not having enough of the stresses you mention Ian.

As a tangential aside, I remember a certain (male) maths lecturer of ours saying that every female mathematician they knew who was married was married to another mathematician, and another (male) maths lecturer saying that the quality of women in mathematics was so low that he had to look outside of his field for one.

Solitude is pretty much necessary for a lot of scholarly pursuits.  For my part, here's a quote of Roy Lisker's partial translation of Grothendieck's Recoltes et Semailles:

"However, re-thinking those three years (1945-48), I realize that they weren't wasted in the least. Without recognizing it, I'd thereby familiarized myself with the conditions of solitude that are essential for the profession of mathematician , something that no-one can teach you."

The social aspect of mathematics is also very important; as many papers are impenetrable, though not, I imagine, half as highly developed/insidious/unavoidable as the social side of professional musicianship might be.

Again, not wishing to take up space for the sake of it, I must also add my agreement with what Ian writes in his opening salvo here; he makes a number of salient points, with which the only problem I have is that what he offers is a kind of ineluctable truth and, as a consequence, there is not really a "way out" or viable alternative to the solitariness of the musician's lifestyle (horrid word! for the use of which I apologise), especially that of the solo performer and most especially that of the composer. All those necessary hours at the instrument and/or the composition desk cannot be avoided and, as Ian rightly observes, they often cannot easily be shoehorned into convenient time-slots in order to allow as much of the more usual social intercourse available to those in other professions. At least the conductor, orchestral musician and chamber musician has a slightly better time of it than the soloist and the composer, but most performing and composing musicians also have to travel a lot, so the pressures and comparative isolation applies pretty much across the board, I think. Yes, it is true that performers and composers can endeavour to discipline themselves to follow a routine of "I will practise/compose from this hour to that", but it often doesn't work out that way, nor can it reasonably be expected to; how long will it take to learn that Bach French Suite or that Stockhausen piano piece and how much time will be needed to get to the end of this or that section in the piece on the desk? We can't all be Richard Strauss, who reportedly wrote the end date on the final score of Ariadne auf Naxos and then wrote it all down, finishing it on the very date that he'd set himself - but even if we could, the entire business of writing a big score inevitably presumes absolutely no interaction of any kind with anyone while working at it. And yet - the entire business of music making is about communication...

Best,

Alistair