Who paid for the great works of music in the period between 1700 and 1918? From such musicians as Liszt, Beethoven, Mozart, Bartok, Handel, Debussy, Bach etc... there were a heck of a lot of great composers in that period. I was analyzing Bach the other day. His Brandenburg Concerto #2 has tens of thousands of notes. That is a heck of a lot of work.
Patronage. Honestly music was profitable for a very brief period of time between around 1940s-1990's. Every other time in history it's required someone rich to like you enough to pay you to do it, or be a traveling minstrel who lived on the edge of society.
Like even Wagner who is arguably one of the most influential and popular composers of all time spent most of his life destitute and only was stable when the Kaiser himself was sponsoring him.
I think in the same way though this speaks to something deep and profound about music, I once heard the saying "You can buy anything in this world for money" and I think that the problem we have pricing music has to do with how transcendental it is, it is designed specifically to convey or share something that transcends mere language or description, musics purpose is to communicate from one soul to another in a way that is deep and meaningful, that touches people and brings them in alignment and helps people see that which we can't quite understand in normal life.
It is beautiful, and I think the attempt to commoditize music, make it corporate and subjugate it to the whims.of the market end up making music a little less musical.
> Honestly music was profitable for a very brief period of time between around 1940s-1990's.
And having a market like this for a while bought us an incredible bounty of all kinds of music, some incredibly sophisticated, some with subtle & important things to say, some with all the art of a schoolyard taunt, some finding both wide and deep appeal.
If the conditions were unusual, so was the harvest -- bountiful enough that hopefully people will give a second thought about dismissing such conditions simply because they're potentially ephemeral (especially given that so are we).
As for commodification: it's different from monetization. It's distinguished by fungibility; muzak for grocery stores, elevators, hotel lobbies, customer service calls, etc being the greatest example, but of course some pop music is disposable too. And yet people don't always know the difference in advance (art is tricky in that way). In any case, monetization which rewards successful indelible efforts provides a powerful reinforcement for creators who have a knack for things people value or even find transcendent.
> You can buy anything in this world for money
In the story where I heard this, that's something the devil says, and while the devil isn't above telling you the truth, he's much more likely to say whatever he needs to (true or false) in order to get you focused on a model/direction that serves malevolent purposes, like the Cthaeh.
> In the story where I heard this, that's something the devil says
I appreciate you pointing this out the full quote I am referring is "You can by anything in this world for money, so if something can't be bought for money it is not of this world."
I feel like music tries to give us something that is not of this world, which is why we have so many problems when trying to figure out how to price music.
Both examples you picked were at the very top of their profession - and then some - even at their time. I'm not sure if looking at the Newtons, Einsteins, or Mozarts and Bachs of the past tells us all that much for the current discussion.
Not to leave it at criticism, while highly specialized, the excellent lectures of Professor Christopher Page of Gresham College linked on the bottom of https://www.gresham.ac.uk/speakers/professor-christopher-pag... include a lot of details that tell us a lot about more ordinary musicians and (here: guitar) teachers, even if it's mostly about one instrument and a few limited locations and periods of time. A very interesting anecdote in any case, especially given the quality of the presentation(s). It is not explicitly or even mostly about the economic situation, but enough can be deduced from the context.
All examples in the original comment are people at the top of the profession. Literally none of them is average music teacher. And the question was "who paid for the great music of the period".
Einstein was not richer then other physicians. His fame could have help him when emigrating and at keeping employment, but afaik it was not rewarded by super unusual riches.
> All examples in the original comment are people at the top of the profession.
And how does that invalidate the argument? "Others made the same mistake!" - Yes, and?
> Einstein was not richer then other physicians.
How is this relevant to the argument? (Rhetorical question - it is not)
> And the question was "who paid for the great music of the period".
OP wrote "there were a heck of a lot of great composers in that period". Which is correct - most of the works were from regular people. They were not as outstanding as Mozart or Bach, but still produced a lot of the great music. People like Johann Pachelbel, to give an example. Not in the same league as Mozart, but there were many of the same type and they produced most of the music of the period.
I play recorder and violin and most of the sheet music I play is from those more normal people.
Oh and the parent (buscoquadnary) is not quite correct when he only points to "patronage". A lot, if not most of those people made money with performances (Mozart too! - https://www.biography.com/news/mozart-pauper-lost-fortune) and with teaching.
Others did not made mistake. Others asked different question then the one you answered. Others asked about specifically about musicians such as Liszt, Beethoven, Mozart, Bartok, Handel, Debussy, Bach - the top of the top. You answered about salary of guitar teacher, someone whose work you do not play, because it never even got recorded.
The astronomer William Herschel had a fairly successful career as a musician in Bath and was able to afford a nice middle class home.
When King George appointed him Royal Astronomer so he could do astronomy full time, the salary he earned from that position was half what he made as a musician.
Hypothetically music should be priced like medicine or drugs. What you "get" out of it is a mood, like a stimulant or depressant (but with more complexity and side effects).
"For $20, I can sell you this audio file that makes you yearn for the deep friendships you created that summer a few years ago. Side effects may include vivid visual memories and internal hallucinations of what could have been, sudden mood swings including finding them on Facebook to see what they are up to, and in some cases: crying".
The problem with this approach is that unlike drugs, the effects of music are heavily influenced by the taste of the consumer. Some people find Celene Dion inspiring and heartwarming. Personally I find it to be sappy, generic garbage. Just because you're telling me it's inspiring doesn't mean it will be. That ambiguity leads to much higher price elasticity than a drug.
There were a lot of great composers in that period, but that's over 200 years and there were probably many more who are forgotten or were never even given the opportunity. And today there are probably more songs released on Spotify daily than were written in all of the 1700s.
On top of that, music was not a commodity back then. Live performances literally made a living for many of them as these performances were the only source of music. (And a church needs this music for every mass, for instance.)
Now music is abundant, recordings are cheap / free, and the best performance is easily available in a recorded form. Live performances are still a thing and still feed many of the music creators. Royalties, too. But you better be a superstar for that to bring enough. (Liszt and Mozart were superstars, in a sense.)
Wait until a Dall-E equivalent for music emerges though.
Dall-E for music will be interesting, but I think it's different. In a sense I think we're already there. Not in the sense that AI makes music but that music is so abundant, and there already aren't a ton of jobs in music writing. It's not a trade in the same way that like graphic design is. I mean, maybe Hans Zimmer loses his job but socially it doesn't seem like that big of an impact. Musicians don't tend to make money from streaming, and if you like going to shows to see performances, you're probably not going to watch a server rack on stage (Maybe, who knows what the future will bring!).
A "Dall-E for music" will put much of the control into hands of listeners. That is, you will not search for the music that matches your mood, you will ask for it directly, and maybe adjust in near-real time.
A DJ will arrive with a unique set, likely with every track custom-made for a given gig.
Selling any records at all will become very-very hard, except for rare hits with outstanding human vocal performance. In music clips, music will be relegated to the position of a movie soundtrack, if not lower.
I suspect ai music will have the uncanny valley/98% done problem for a while. For 1 I suspect the 'DJ' in your example, being an actual DJ or the artist themselves plays a larger part in how people listen to music, especially when it comes to 'pop music' (it may be less so for electronic/classical/jazz/"artistic" music.
Obviously for anything sort of focus-y, house music downtempo etc. If we're not already there, we'll probably be there soon, though I am curious if a careful listener will eventually notice the uncanny valley problem there. But pop music I'd say has two problems. 1. There's a je ne sais quoi quality that's hard to replicate, and two I imagine the corpus is just not that big. I mean sure, there's a decently large corpus of pop music, but good pop music? how many hip hop billboard charts have there been a thousand, maybe a few thousand. How do you combine Beyonce, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston into a banger that doesn't sound too much like Beyonce', Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston without the titular character marketing said music.
I hadn't thought about it until just now, but soundtrack music has been so terrible for the last 15-20 years that it's one area AI might genuinely be much better than what we've got now. Be hard to do worse, anyway. Studios and producers don't want to pay for good music anymore, so maybe they can get so-so AI music for cheap, and at least it'll be better than the crap they're using now.
Well, you might not want to watch a server rack, but what if that server rack were eventually powerful enough to run a light show, splice a video montage, and compose a song in real time, together based off of audience feedback? I've gotta believe that people would show up just for the spectacle.
Also most people were pretty poor at that time. Honestly being a live performer probably wasn't that horrible job comparatively. Think of farming or manual labour or low rung artisan. Grinding making some parts in poorly lit conditions.
I feel like the patron system of old ended up turning into the modern professional sports system instead of supporting the arts. Which sort of shows the shift in priorities at least the rich have had in more recent years.
Except it's really local governments bankrolling the stadiums and upgrades. And then ticket and merchandise sales are mostly the fan base, not some patronage class. Maybe sponsorships are closest to patronage but those are still more of business transactions. It's all just business, and the wealthy aren't donating anything (unlike arts patronage).
The stadiums yes (and that's a rant I could go on for hours) but the salaries are based on the actual money coming into the league. And if you argue that isn't the same thing, what makes it any different from Kings funding patrons using tax money?
I draw the distinction because the fans themselves are (at least in theory) voluntarily choosing to support their hometown team, whereas the decision to apply taxes towards patronage is unilaterally made by the king. Though we could probably debate over whether the descriptor of a "hometown team" is truly honest, since it's more accurately a wealthy owner's team that happens to be located in / named after a city which benefits very little from the team's success.
I am quite sure there were a lot of bad contemporaries, but they never ended up in the history books.
One of the new genres that really impresses me, is 3D art. The art form is getting quite mature, and often requires as much work as any Dutch Master oil painting.
One of my favorite 3D renderings, is Worth Enough, by radoxist[0]. Nowadays, I'm sure that there are works that beat it, but it was quite amazing, when he posted it.
