On Jan 28, 2006, at 8:04 PM, John Howell wrote:
are they willing to analyze the marketplace and produce music suited to it? Mozart did.
Trying to suck up to potential employers is not the same as addressing a market. If that were so, then any slob who sends out a resume is an entrepreneur.
Haydn did.
Haydn spent 90% of his entire career writing to meet the requirements of one man. This is not a market, in any sense of the term. Even his Paris and London symphonies were responses to commissions that he did not actively seek. Haydn himself memorably asserted that his originality was a consequence of his isolation at Esterhaza.
Bach did.
Bach spent 100% of his career satisfying either a single individual or a highly restricted committee that was in no way a focus group. To assert that he was thus addressing a "market" is to stretch language to the snapping point. One of Bach's contemporaries wrote that it was a pity that such a talented individual had never had the opportunity to write opera, where he would have learned the art of crowd-pleasing. Presumably John agrees with this.
So did DuFay, Josquin, Palestrina and Byrd.
In light of the above, have you *any* evidence to support such statements?
Another point: if any of the above careers constituted self-marketing, then it must logically follow that an academic composer who writes in such a way as to achieve tenure is also self-marketing.
I don't believe anyone has ever accused them of "selling out"!
On the whole issue of selling out, self-marketing, and so on, I strongly recommend to the whole list Hans Abbing's provocative book _Why Are Artists Poor_? Unlike anybody here, Abbing is an actual economist who brings economic principles to bear in his study of the issue.
For more details, see my review of the book (as "Myocastor") at Amazon.com.
Andrew Stiller Kallisti Music Press http://home.netcom.com/~kallisti/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
