Invisible Until You Fail: The Unseen Labor of the Accompanist

This is a response to Mrs. George Nussbaum’s “The Art of Accompanying.”

Anna May Lowenstein (1883-1973), who wrote under the name Mrs. George Nussbaum, was an American pianist and educator in the early and mid twentieth century. Not only was she an accomplished pianist and composer at a time in which women were often confined to the domestic sphere, she was also an outspoken writer and cultural critic of her contemporary music scene. 

Her writing is bold. In her ten-page manifesto: “The Art of Accompanying,” Nussbaum writes with a clear and unwavering voice of authority on an often taken-for-granted role. Many of her observations ring true even today, such as:

 “The art of accompanying is a much neglected, but fascinating branch of study…understood only by competent accompanists, and in a lesser degree, by the artists they accompany.” 

What I love about Nussbaum’s writing is its candid and unapologetic nature. She pulls no punches when describing public perceptions of accompanists: 

 “The idea of an accompanist, as it exists vaguely in the public mind, it that [s]he is a pianist who is not competent to play solos; yes, [s]he may have a certain amount of technique, but the ability to read fluently and the possession of a sufficiently unobtrusive personality would be considered to be the chief factors that contribute of the making of an accompanist.”

 This is quite the insight, and one I’ve personally felt many times. I spent ten years of my life in college for piano, and often felt as though my role of accompanist was something chosen for me by my superiors (even before college!). I didn’t necessarily take it as a sign that I wasn’t meant to be a solo performer (I still wanted that), but I did sometimes see it as a distraction from the goal of being one. It was a catch-22: accompanying took extraordinary effort that took away from my solo pursuits. There just simply wasn’t enough time. I felt like I had been thrown in the accompanying well without any rope or ladder to crawl out. 

It made me question my value as a soloist. Why did it start to feel like my greatness as a musician was dependent on who I accompanied? 

And yet,  Nussbaum acknowledges the grim reality for many independent musicians:

“There exists, in every important city in the world, pianists capable of giving recitals, and of playing as soloists at orchestral concerts, who do not possess the faintest chance of obtaining concert engagements, and whose lives are passed in the uncongenial occupation of giving lessons chiefly to unappreciative and unmusical children.”

Yeah…that’s harsh. And as an independent musician who teaches private piano lessons, it hits home. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t still a little girl inside of me who remembers seeing Olga Kern walk out on stage to play Rach 2 at our local Philharmonic, and dreaming of doing that too. 

But Nussbaum is right: it’s not always about talent. This is why she advocates that more pianists should consider a career as accompanist. It’s more in-demand, the job market is less saturated, and the role is deeply undervalued.

 Nussbaum describes the qualifications of a skilled accompanist to be “very exacting,” including the routine maintenance of baseline mental and physical alertness to handle anything unexpected.

“No one ever seems to realize that the accompanist exists till [s]he makes a mistake.” 

Way to sum up my last decade in one sentence, Mrs. Nussbaum. 

She even empathizes with the frequent errors accompanists make under pressure, like misreading a key signature and unintentionally transposing mid-performance. (Been there.) Her dry humor shows through in moments like this anecdote:

“A singer once asked the accompanist to transpose her song, and when he asked to what key, she answered: ‘Oh I don’t know, I just want it transposed.’ The accompanist then played it in the key in which it was written, and was profusely thanked by the vocalist for his cleverness.”

Experiences like these are in no short supply for the average accompanist, even today. And this is what I find the most fascinating about her writing. Even though this was penned generations ago, Mrs. Nussbaum’s observations read as though they could be pulled from today’s classical music culture. It speaks to a deeper problem that has plagued American pianists for decades: classical musicians in the neoliberal U.S. are expected to pursue their craft as though patrons are funding them, all while supporting themselves independently. Unless you come from generational wealth, the math simply doesn’t add up.

So I’ll give Nussbaum a pass for her conclusion that solo careers are often unsustainable, and that more pianists should therefore consider accompanying. It was, and still often is, given as logical advice, considering the circumstances. She makes a compelling case for the skill, nuance, professionalism, and sheer dedication it takes to be a great accompanist. These are things I know to be true. 

But my question is: why, in a future neighboring century, do her observations still ring so true?

Many classical musicians today still don’t know how to move forward with their childhood dreams of becoming a solo artist. The fantasy can sometimes feel like a relic from another era, like something that only could’ve happened if we’d been born 200 years ago with rose-colored glasses on.

I say this as someone who gave a genuinely earnest attempt at serious collaborative playing. I spent 15 years accompanying before stepping back. Not forever. But for myself.

Because it’s true: I often felt like a music box people could wind up and expect to perform endlessly, with no emotional reality behind it. It’s true: I was invisible unless I made a mistake (and yes, I still lose sleep over botching the final measure of Brahms’s first cello sonata on a recording run). It’s true: I’ve been often side-eyed or dismissed for showing any difficulty with my part, even when it was objectively harder than the soloist’s. And all that is to say, that yes, it’s true: I have had some fulfilling collaborative experiences throughout these years. Those aren’t the ones I’m discussing. But for the record, they were few and far between the more disheartening ones. 

So no, I don’t fully agree with Nussbaum’s solution: to subjugate oneself to this treatment, knowing the work is valuable but still publicly treated as second-class, just because it pays. 

I refuse to accept the role of the “not chosen” one. That doesn’t mean I won’t ever collaborate again. And if you think that’s true, you clearly didn’t read this far. But it does mean that I will be picky with the projects I accept, because I can finally choose to collaborate based on what serves and fulfills me, not who I’m meant to serve. 

Sure, in recent years we’ve rebranded “accompanist” as “collaborative pianist” in an attempt at equity. But let’s be honest: the work is still underpaid, the recognition minimal, the treatment often unfair, and the assumptions unchanged. I could write a whole essay on why that new title changes nothing.

So I’ll just leave you with this:

What’s so wrong with just being a pianist? (One who is multi-faceted: who collaborates, solos, and chooses to do so freely?)

Why must our identity, if not tied to solo greatness, be defined by proximity to someone else’s spotlight?

And why are we still expected to accept that?

—Keytress