# The lost art of music patronage/comissioning



## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

In gool ol' days a large bunch of compositions were commissioned. Composers worked for money or they had their patrons who supported them financially.

The patrons/commissioners sometimes had influence on composers, sometimes they allowed them full freedom of expression, since they already made their choice whom to support.

If art patronage/commissioning was still these days, I think contemporary music would be better.

While I really support freedom of expression, I also think that patrons influencing or sometimes disciplining composers could have a positive impact on their work. Patrons didn't spoil or thwart talents of the great composers of the past, so why would their influence today be negative?

If you were really rich, so rich that you can comission a classical piece, what would you commission? Whom would you hire? What instructions would you give to a composer, or would you let him compose whatever he wants freely?


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

I’d rather pay any living composer not to compose.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

ZJovicic said:


> In gool ol' days a large bunch of compositions were commissioned. Composers worked for money or they had their patrons who supported them financially.
> 
> The patrons/commissioners sometimes had influence on composers, sometimes they allowed them full freedom of expression, since they already made their choice whom to support.
> 
> ...


Hundreds (thousands?) of compositions are commissioned every year.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Yes, there's a lot of commissioning going on and the music gets played and then soon forgotten, deservedly. It's not to say that there haven't been some commissions that turned out ok. The opera Riders of the Purple Sage that the Arizona Opera commissioned several years ago was excellent. But if I'm being honest, there is no composer alive today who can create commissions the way the old masters did.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Does the N Y Met not rely pretty well wholly on patronage these days?


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

At least in the U.S., an unwritten requirement for sitting on the board of an orchestra, ballet, or opera company, is a fat wallet and the expectation of significant donations -- i.e. "patronage." These organizations commission works institutionally, as do smaller ensemble that receive grants and sometimes donations from patrons expressly for commisioning.


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## Gallus (Feb 8, 2018)

I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of performed contemporary music is composed on commission.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Barbebleu said:


> Does the N Y Met not rely pretty well wholly on patronage these days?


In fact in the US almost all major orchestras receive over half their revenues from private benefactors. The lesser part is from ticket sales and the like. There is next to no tax money involved except that donations are deductible from taxable income, which amounts to an indirect subsidy from the Treasury.

BTW I believe most newly-written and -performed works are either written on commission (often orchestras or successful soloists or even combinations) or come forth from the publish-or-perish world of academia.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

The advantage of a commission is that the work has a good chance of actually being performed. There is plenty to be found in an online search under “symphony orchestra commissions” to see who is paying for these newly commissioned works. The interest is far more than one might imagine because the music will die without the young being involved and the already recognized composers receiving commissions. It’s just too easy to say that all the music is not worth hearing that’s being composed today, and I haven’t found that to be true. But since the new music is not already predigested like Mozart or Beethoven, as legendary as they were, one has to be open to the unexpected surprise that might actually be good. Those interested in the new are usually interested in more than just being comfortable in their listening habits. They’re open to challenge, inventiveness, and change and are willing to invest some time in that while still venerating the old masters.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

This looked like an interesting thread but it turns out to be another chance for those who are desperate to rubbish modern music (again and for the 100th time). So many who do enjoy modern music but also enjoy earlier music as well and have much to contribute have left the forum because of those dinosaurs. It just gets tiresome and tends also to be Stalinist:


> I'd rather pay any living composer not to compose


 even though so many people enjoy that music.

Anyway, the ways that composers got paid for making music in the past varied quite a lot, I think. Some in Baroque and Classical times put together shows for the public and hoped for them to be financial successes. Others wrote music to sell - sometimes even with a tailor-made dedication - and still others enjoyed the security of patronage or a paid position, albeit at a cost to their freedom to compose what they wanted to. Some did well, others less so. In general, I think, pieces would be performed once or twice in one place and then elsewhere. But I don't think (I may be wrong in this) there was an expectation for music to be played for years after. Some works got enough exposure that the tunes were whistled in the street but I don't think that was a norm.

As the Romantic interest in events that we might recognise as classical concerts grew we slowly arrived at our current understanding of what classical music is for. But that is an understanding that is perhaps beginning to break down now.

I would love for this thread to tell me more about all this. That would show this forum at its best!


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## ZJovicic (Feb 26, 2017)

An excellent and longish in-depth article that I came across, trying to answer what is wrong with contemporary classical music, from economic viewpoint. Their answer (if you don't have enough time to read the whole article):



> How could this be happening? How could these strange distortions take place in the midst of timeless beauty and balance? It is because we have severed the link between market forces and composers. In other words, it is because of subsidies.


Anyway, here is the article: https://mises.org/library/whats-wrong-contemporary-classical

Now, let's get back to the main topic. I see no one answered my question:



> If you were really rich, so rich that you can commission a classical piece, what would you commission? Whom would you hire? What instructions would you give to a composer, or would you let him compose whatever he wants freely?


Here's my answer:

I would commission a symphony, perhaps a choral one, that would be composed by a composer well informed and somewhat versed in most important 20th and 21st century composition schools of thought, styles and techniques, including serialism, microtonality, minimalism, etc... but in which elements of these techniques would be used economically and only when their use is warranted for achieving certain artistic goal. As a whole the work would need to be coherent and intelligible, complex but understandable to everyone. It would need to be beautiful as well. When it comes to musical ideas used in the work, I would recommend using only melodies that can naturally arise in composer's head as main building blocks of the work. They would later be developed using any technique that he has at his disposal, but the main ideas, must be a result of his intuition, natural inspiration, rather than being constructed, step by step, using any algorithm or technique. The meaning of the work can be whatever the composer thinks represents the most supreme value, or the most important issue that the humanity is facing nowadays. I would also give an instruction: try to please both masses and the critics, do the impossible feat of being adored today, and equally revered 300 years from now.

If you succeed you get $10.000.000, if you make a decent try, you get $1.000.000, if you fail, but you did all in your might to succeed you get $100.000, if you fail because you didn't listen or didn't make any real effort, you still get $10.000 - that's what every candidate gets at the start of the process as a benefit of doubt. The rest they get if they earn it.

Oh, God, I got really carried away... it's so fun to spend imaginary millions...


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

^^^ Who could have guessed that this thread would end up as an attempt to promote conservative economic views? What is the difference between a subsidy and a commission? If the commission comes from the public sector - the sector that conservative would have us shrink so as to ensure that the less powerful get no support - then it is probably administered by people who know about music. If it is a personal commission it will reflect the views and tastes of the person commissioning and, unless that person is tapped into something meaningful, could well end up being forgotten. And if it is a private company that is doing the commissioning then it will necessarily pander to popular taste - an area of music that needs support less than other areas.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Maybe ZJovicic is in collusion with the Russians.


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## Guest (Feb 19, 2019)

I got commissioned to write a string quartet in response to Mozart, made some money out of it, got interesting/good reviews in the newspapers, but the main thing is that I stuck to the brief I was given. I also wrote another piece for solo clarinet with a different brief that was less strict, but I stayed within the guidelines obviously. And then there are other pieces I write that have different sets of parameters and pay different amounts accordingly. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything ‘lost’ about commissions for new pieces. 

If I were to commission a piece, I’d ask a friend to compose something for me to perform on guitar with some live electronics. Something that I can also easily set up and perform at multiple different venues. I’d want the composer to have more Han one performance, certainly.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

With my luck, I'd be the guy who commissioned Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum, with the idea of a grand work in Venice's St. Mark's and which actually ended up so short that it had to be played twice to fill up the time allotted and which Time Magazine called Murder in the Cathedral, where one audience member remarked, “In a cathedral the audience cannot applaud, but at least they cannot boo, either."


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

ZJovicic said:


> While I really support freedom of expression, I also think that patrons influencing or sometimes disciplining composers could have a positive impact on their work. Patrons didn't spoil or thwart talents of the great composers of the past, so why would their influence today be negative?


What makes you think that was the case? Beethoven famously wrote some uninspired music, in nearly every case because he was offered a lot of money to do so. Mozart apparently tried to keep his high standards in all contexts, resulting in some incomplete works and even some forfeited commissions. Also, you seem to assume that composers today have no incentive to compose music that is well received by audiences. I think that is also an inaccurate generalization.


Enthusiast said:


> As the Romantic interest in events that we might recognise as classical concerts grew we slowly arrived at our current understanding of what classical music is for. But that is an understanding that is perhaps beginning to break down now.
> 
> I would love for this thread to tell me more about all this. That would show this forum at its best!


Well, part of it is that in the late 19th century, a rising middle class with more money and leisure time needed new sources of entertainment, resulting in the building of large concert halls, some of which are still around today.

But the 20th century brought commercial phonograph recordings and broadcast radio, also talkie movies, TV and eventually the internet, and these technological developments caused profound changes in how music was produced and consumed. At first, the increased ease of access resulted in increased mass appeal and popularity for classical music, not to mention jazz, blues, and rock 'n' roll, all of which might otherwise have remained confined to the African-American communities where they originated.

But nowadays, classical music competes with all sorts of new music and entertainment, notably electronic music and entertainment. Composers who want to stick to the traditional 19th century acoustic instruments and ensembles like the symphony orchestra, the piano, and the string quartet face a major challenge. Some have tried to meet it head on by turning to electronic media and other modern innovations, with predictably mixed success.

Nevertheless, I like that, as I think it is essential for any art form, however long its history and rich its traditions, to have a steady inflow of new creative ideas. However, major successful innovations are rare, and always have been. It's the nature of the beast.


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