Were classical musicians into composing for the money?

In Paul Cantor’s fourth lecture, he talks about the commercialism in music. The misconception that composers in the baroque and classical eras were poor artists just trying to survive is not true to the reality of most of their actual lives.

Cantor mainly focuses on the baroque and classical eras of music but touches a little on Romantic music as well. He believes that it was no small coincidence that music and art flourished around the same time and in the same places. Places that were commercial hubs but didn’t have a national institution. Places that are now modern day Belgium, Germany, Italy, etc.

Some ignorance of history and geography on my part didn’t realize that these countries didn’t become actual countries until after 1800 — After the United States became a country. While cities like Antwerp, Venice, and Rome have of course been around for much longer, the countries that they are in now are much newer than I think many people realize.

He talks about how in France, everything was centered around Paris. Nothing happened unless it was in Paris. Because of this, the competition in this more National institutionalized environment was almost non-existent. Conversely, the competition in these other cities was very high.

He mentions a lot of different composers — Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, Brahms, etc. It was interesting hearing so much about music because I grew up classically trained in piano and my teacher (my sister) made it a point to teach some of this history. So while I went in knowing some of what he talked about, much of it was still new to me.

He talks towards the beginning about Bach. Bach was involved with church patronage, working for the church and basically composing a Cantata a week for the church. This resulted in over 200 Cantata’s written by Bach. He also worked for the Prince, and it was in this era that the beginning stages of sheet music were starting. Bach is often seen as one of the least commercial composers of this era, yet Cantor shows that even he was still very much commercially involved.

He also mentions that Bach didn’t always love the pressures of this more “commercial” life. Churning out a Cantata a week was a big pressure that he did not enjoy very much. However, there’s no denying that many incredible works came because of this pressure that was put on him.

Cantor then goes into the next era of more “classical” music. This era was the beginning of a very commercial environment for music. In this era, the idea of “subscriptions” came along. Where they would sell tickets for concerts before they happened to gauge interest. This was also when sheet music really started to take off and because of this, composers were getting out from being known only by their home town. This was a huge step in making music into more of a market game.

The idea that these incredible artists from history didn’t care about gaining any money from their work is ridiculous. Some of them did rebel from the more commercial style, for instance, Bethoveen towards the end of his life, when he had gone completely deaf, composed some of his most challenging works during this time. He didn’t care about others playing it. He simply composed.

However, even though the composers didn’t always love having to be commercial, they took advantage of it nonetheless.