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Thinking Again About the Word “Amateur”

Steve Eddins
July 31, 2024

It’s been a long while since my previous Horn Journey blog post, which was about the word “amateur.” I’ve been busy with events such as Horn Camp in June and the Assisi Performing Arts Festival earlier this month. But now I’m back at home and ready to start writing again.

I want to start with a few follow-up thoughts about the conundrum regarding “amateur.”

First, I was recently reading William Westney’s book, The Perfect Wrong Note. The book has a wonderful chapter called “Adventurous Amateurs,” which talks about adult music learners:

The paradox is that adult music learners, while they often have the lowest expectations, are in a uniquely excellent position to succeed. Many come to this endeavor with fervent desire, love of music, enchantment with the idea of making music with their own bodies and emotions, and leisure time and disposable income to support the lessons. -p. 204

In this chapter, Westney addresses the difficulties associated with the word amateur:

Even the word amateur has built-in conflicts of meaning, and I’ve wrestled with that in the writing of this book. While it literally means “lover,” it can also carry the connotation of dabbler, dilettante, a person who is somehow preordained never to be very good. To describe someone’s work as amateurish usually is not a compliment, and the expression “rank amateur” is less than inspiring. But amateur status can be joyous—denoting free choice, pure love of the doing, and open-ended possibilities for discovery. -p. 205

In the book’s preface, which I suspect Westney wrote later, he avoids the term completely, using instead the phrase “recreational musician.”

Second, I received a very nice note about “amateur” from Chris Turnes, a MathWorks friend and musician on the MATLAB math team. Chris said:

The word is used very, very differently in French than in English. “Amateur” in French always gives the connotation of someone who deeply appreciates and is knowledgeable about something. So, if you’re ever trying to tell someone in French what kind of horn player you are, that’s definitely the right word!

Thanks, Chris, for reaching out with the kind words!

I took another look, in several dictionaries, at the subtleties of definition and usage for words such as “amateur,” “professional,” and “profession,” but I found myself again going in circles. Overall, though, my conclusion from last time hasn’t changed: “amateur” is rarely ambiguous in real use because the intended meaning is almost always clear from the context.