Health problems of orchestral musicians from a life-span perspective: Results of a large-scale study

The profession of orchestral musician is often linked to musculoskeletal problems, hearing disorders, and struggles with stage fright. However, data on the prevalence of physical problems are very divergent because of different research methods and sampling procedures. It is to be expected that physical problems generally increase with age, but the literature on medical issues that affect musicians contains very few studies on this aspect. In light of this, the data produced by a cross-sectional study of 2,536 musicians from 133 professional symphony orchestras in Germany were analyzed with regard to a number of health aspects. The data from 894 female (36%) and 1,607 male (64%) professional orchestral musicians aged between 20 and 69 (M = 45.5, SD = 9.52) were used to study physical problems, their duration and intensity, and psychological difficulties (such as pressure to perform in the orchestra and stage fright) in conjunction with variables such as age, gender, instrument family, position in the orch...