Who do we compose for?

This is like the old and hoary discussion of what art is. At the end of the day, whether or not someone can say that what you do is music, the only things which really matter are whether or not you are satisfied with what you've done, and whether or not someone is willing to pay for what you've done.

Being paid for your music doesn't make a good musician, or a bad musician, or a musician at all. But it will determine whether or not you can continue to do what it is that you love to do. I would think, however, that a good deal of the satisfaction of music (of any art form) is public recognition.

No- I totally disagree with your last statement. When you create something out of nothing and you find it beautiful - that's art. The rest of it is commerce.

What shameless liars think of my opinions is a matter of complete indifference to me.

Oi! No fighting on my thread.

Set- I agree with what you've said, but why so much reference to money?

Probably because the "commerce" of which Aidan speaks has been in inextricable element of music-making for the last several centuries. Only until very recently in history have composers and audiences become squeamish about the concept of commerce or worried about the implications it might have on art itself. As everyone here has mentioned, the ability to generate money or public recognition is not necessarily an indication of artistic quality (whatever that means). But to react so allergically to the very concept of commerce is a very recent, very typically modernist stance, and it largely explains why "modernist expressionism," as you put it, survives only in academia--i.e. the only place where composers have the luxury of disdaining the notion of public appeal. When this repertoire is put anywhere else, such composers invariably find themselves reaping the disdain that they've been so proud to sow.


p.s. I haven't forgotten about your IM, PQueen.

"Modernist expressionism" can have the same immediate evocativeness that more tonal compositions create, but just what they evoke may be different. In a learned listener, modernist expressionism may evoke an intellectual response, before it would evoke an emotional one.

I make the references to money because without it, you are not going to be able to pursue your love of music, or at least not to pursue it as effectively. Unless you have an independent income (and if i correctly recall the substance of things you have posted, you don't), you are going to need to make money while pursuing your love of music. It makes the most sense to use music to make that money, because then you are not distracted by the exigencies of a "nine to five" job, which could well leave you too exhausted and distracted to indulge your music.

When Mozart died, Constanze sold many of his scores for pennies, because she had to feed their three children, and "Wolferl" hadn't made enough money (or hadn't saved it, which amounts to the same thing) to leave her sufficiently well off to do that. (While he enjoyed substantial gains in income in the last year of his life, most of it was eaten up in paying his debts. He was no longer borrowing at the time of his final illness, but the annuities which he had been promised by some patrons were nullified by his death, as they had been contingent upon continued compositions.)

On the other had, people like Paul McCartney can compose and publicly produce whatever music they like, because they had benefited sufficiently to afford it.

I don't suggest that you'll be a Mozart or a McCartney. I don't know and couldn't say. But if you want to pursue music as a career, rather than a hobby, you will likely find that you have to temporize in order to make a commercial success, so that you can pursue your artistic goals.