It is another one of those Sundays. All week the radio commercials have cheerfully told of successful people who had found their jobs through The New York Times. This Sunday's Classified Section, they have crooned, would contain listings of over 10,000 jobs. The implication couldn't be missed: if you wanted a job, you couldn't fail to land one by thumbing through the Times' great Help Wanted Section, 44 (and often more) pages of professional panacea in four-point type.

Years of weekly Want-ad peering may give a proper perspective on the professional musician's role in the labor market, but will fail to inure him to the truth. By the time he reaches the M's, his mouth is dry. After columns of Machinist, Management, and Marketing, a slight hand tremor develops. Medical and Mental Health, he quips, is what he'll be in the market for if he doesn't get to Music soon; and Messenger is what he'll probably have to settle for if he needs a job badly enough. There, after Multilith, is where the word Music generally appears, when it appears. Not that one may expect to find Times ads for music directors of major orchestras, or even for most playing or singing jobs, or tenured positions for professors of musicology. There are trade journals for such rarified posts, and most of the time, the professional grapevine does the trick without resorting to umbrella groups or periodicals. But Music - a whole dimension of human communication - wouldn't one think that enough lower level or paraprofessional jobs might be available to give the young aspiring musician a stepping stone, an apprenticeship, a point of departure? Aren't there enough musically oriented jobs generated by society's demands for the art to warrant a column or two? Music Monitors, every so often: people who listen to radio programs and identify tunes for logging purposes. Music Publishing, now and again: a job as order filler or clerk, sometimes dressed up with fancier titles (to mask menial jobs) or occasional offers of free concert tickets. Music Counselors, springtime proffers for eight weeks of summer sun and frolic, with or without bunk duties, at a children's camp.

Lovejoy's College Guide lists over two thousand colleges and universities. Most of them offer courses in music, and many of them have music faculties and students who major in one or more musical disciplines. The College Music Society Directory (Eighth Edition) proudly contains the names of 23,508 music faculty at 1,398 institutions serving unfathomable numbers of students, many of whom will try to apply their education when they are cast upon the labor market.

It is another one of those Sundays. Immediately following the Multiliths in the Want-ads are fourteen columns of Nurses.