# Were all famous composers good at business?



## hiroica (Aug 31, 2015)

I've read about Mozart's entrepreneurial qualities and also that Beethoven was rabid in getting his music out there. Obviously Wagner was involved in many aspect besides music making as well. My question is this. Do you know of any composers who were more inept when it came to the business of promoting their music? Ones who excelled at music but relied on the help of others for many of the other aspects that go along with becoming a successful composer.


----------



## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

Actually, it seems like many of the great composers were mediocre businessmen. Well, at least they were terrible at managing their money. In Beethoven's case, his inept brother could be blamed for some of it.


----------



## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I think Schubert is an example of a composer who wasn't good at getting his music out there. It seems amazing that a composer of such quality should have been so obscure in his lifetime. Thanks to Robert Schumann's chance discovery of Schubert's music in that closet, he developed a reputation later in the 19th century.


----------



## eugeneonagain (May 14, 2017)

Mozart's entrepreneurial qualities? He was not notoriously good in this sphere. He was a spendthrift and it plagued him later on.

A more known example of a composer who managed this side of his career as well as the music is Handel.


----------



## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

I would consider Gioachino Rossini as a good businessman. He was able to retire, live the good life and still leave quite a large estate.


----------



## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

After retiring from concert life, Paganini famously opened up a casino that wound up being a financial disaster. He had to sell off much of his belongings, including his instruments, in order to survive.


----------



## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

JAS said:


> I would consider Gioachino Rossini as a good businessman. He was able to retire, live the good life and still leave quite a large estate.


Didn't Rossini's first wife have a gambling problem? Telemann's 2nd wife had a gambling (and fidelity) problem as well that proved to be a financial burden! 

The Wikipedia page for Kaspar van Beethoven discusses some of the problems he had managing his brother's career.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Anton_Karl_van_Beethoven

Vivaldi died in poverty as his career more or less flamed out. It's too bad he didn't get any of those royalty checks from the classical radio stations!


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Not a composer, but Mozart’s famous librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte went bankrupt several times, each time fleeing to a new city to escape creditors and probably debtor’s prison. Finally he fled to the US, where he ran a grocery store before founding an opera house in New York and (you guessed it) going bankrupt again.

To quote a certain Swedish composer who finally went into the business of prosthetic limbs: "Music makes a thin soup."


----------



## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Klassik said:


> Didn't Rossini's first wife have a gambling problem? Telemann's 2nd wife had a gambling (and fidelity) problem as well that proved to be a financial burden!


Apparently Gesualdo's wife also had a fidelity problem, but he managed to cure it very thoroughly.

As I understand it, Mozart was fairly good at making money. It's just that he was even better at spending it. But his finances were never in such dire straits as he thought, or as portrayed in the legends that grew about the lone, misunderstood and unappreciated genius.


----------



## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

Didn't Verdi leave a lot of money as good business man , he built "Casa di Riposo" , that's rich from the heart.


----------



## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Handel was pretty good at business. He ran his own opera and oratorio productions for the most part of this middle to end of his professional life. Though not always successful because of competition, politics and whatnot, he had a strong sense of business. He died wealthy, self-made.


----------



## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Beethoven was actually a pretty good businessman (although he complained about it). According to Cooper's bio, his Opus 1 trios made him enough to live for half a year! Later, he asked his brother to manage his financial affairs for a time, but my impression is that his brother was a bit too greedy on his behalf. Ludwig managed to maintain excellent relations with his various publishers with few disputes, notwithstanding his very occasional dishonesties and theirs as well.

"There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a businessman, and how can one understand – good heavens! That’s what I really call troublesome.”


----------



## bioluminescentsquid (Jul 22, 2016)

Great performers - or at least those who are considered to be "great" - undoubtedly are, or are at least surrounded by shrewd businessmen.


----------



## Meyerbeer Smith (Mar 25, 2016)

Meyerbeer. Came from a family of businessmen, was independently wealthy, and managed both his finances and his opera negotiations smartly.

"He was an astute businessman, drawing up precise contracts with his artistic collaborators, theater managements, and publishers, keeping records of his artistic income, and separate cash-books of expenditure, carefully controlling his fortune by financial advisers and agents, providing his children with their own accounts and making provision for their future." 
(R.I. Letellier, _The Diaries of Giacomo Meyerbeer: 1791-1839_, vol. 1)

He was also charitable and generous (he provided pensions for a couple of associates who had fallen on hard times), and helped to change copyright laws in Germany so artists benefited from their work.

Richard Strauss was also supposed to be financially astute.


----------



## Richannes Wrahms (Jan 6, 2014)

Debussy and Sibelius were in debt all the time.


----------



## Chris (Jun 1, 2010)

Arthur Sullivan lost a lot of money in his pursuit of writing serious opera.


----------



## Eschbeg (Jul 25, 2012)

I can't believe it took me this long to think of Charles Ives, who was an insurance salesman by day. He was savvy enough at it to form his own insurance company, and he is sometimes credited with inventing the concept of life insurance. He wrote a book on it, anyway, entitled _Life Insurance with Relation to Inheritance Tax_.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I would say Haydn. He made a lot of money from his two sets of six each, of London Symphonies, and seemed to have died a rich man.


----------



## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

hpowders said:


> I would say Haydn. He made a lot of money from his two sets of six each, of London Symphonies, and seemed to have died a rich man.


His brother Michael arguably could have done better for himself. He had opportunities to take up roles with the Esterházy court and the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but he stayed in Salzburg for whatever reason. Perhaps Michael could have been better known, but it's hard to say.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Klassik said:


> His brother Michael arguably could have done better for himself. He had opportunities to take up roles with the Esterházy court and the Grand Duke of Tuscany, but he stayed in Salzburg for whatever reason. Perhaps Michael could have been better known, but it's hard to say.


On the other hand, Mozart could have been the worst. How could anyone with his ability die poor? He should have been able to make a fortune from The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. Something was off. He was surely Godunov as a composer to be a millionaire in the currency back then.


----------



## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

hpowders said:


> On the other hand, Mozart could have been the worst. How could anyone with his ability die poor? He should have been able to make a fortune from The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni. Something was off. He was surely Godunov as a composer to be a millionaire in the currency back then.


I've read some stuff about this. It seemed that his wife had some "medical issues." I guess Wolfgang just skimped out on the Blue Cross-Blue Shied coverage. She might have been making excuses so she could spend more time at the baths with her male admirers though.


----------



## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Klassik said:


> I've read some stuff about this. It seemed that his wife had some "medical issues." I guess Wolfgang just skimped out on the Blue Cross-Blue Shied coverage. She might have been making excuses so she could spend more time at the baths with her male admirers though.


I believe Mozart's wife had the business sense and she made the money after he died, selling his scores.


----------



## Klassik (Mar 14, 2017)

hpowders said:


> I believe Mozart's wife had the business sense and she made the money after he died, selling his scores.


Yeah, but she might have been more of a hindrance financially than a benefit when Mozart was still alive. Of course, it's impossible to put all the blame on her without knowing more about the story.


----------

