Quarter Notes and Bank Notes: The Economics of Music Composition in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

The Princeton Economic History of the Western World #40

by F.M. Scherer

In 1700, most composers were employees of noble courts or the church. But by the nineteenth century, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Verdi, and many others functioned as freelance artists teaching, performing, and selling their compositions in the private marketplace. While some believe that Mozart's career marks a clean break between these two periods, this book tells the story of a more complex and interesting transition.


F. M. Scherer first examines the political, intellectual, and economic roots of the shift from patronage to a freelance market. He describes the eighteenth-century cultural "arms race" among noble courts, the spread of private concert halls and opera houses, the increasing attendance of middle-class music lovers, and the founding of conservatories. He analyzes changing trends in how composers acquired their skills and earned their living, examining such impacts as demographic developments and new modes of transportation. The book offers insight into the diversity of composers' economic aspirations, the strategies through which they pursued success, the burgeoning music publishing industry, and the emergence of copyright protection. Scherer concludes by drawing some parallels to the economic state of music composition in our own times.


Written by a leading economist with an unusually broad knowledge of music, this fascinating account is directed toward individuals intrigued by the world of classical composers as well as those interested in economic history or the role of money in art.

Genres: History, Music, Nonfiction, Economics

280 pages, Hardcover

First published December 8, 2003

Reviews

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good god damn it I wanted to like this book SO MUCH MORE than I did. The author attempts to do a economic analysis of of the profitability of composing various forms of music for Western composers. Cool right? For his data on the lives of composers he works off of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (probably an okay choice for that data) but for their body of work he gets his data from … a guide to modern recordings of the music. Why would you do that?? This means a) work that has been lost will not be included and b) work that has not been recorded for various reasons will not be included. He also defended this approach with some stunning reasoning:

To estimate the relative creative output or "productivity" of sample members, the length in centimeters of the recorded music listings in the Schwann Opus catalogue was measured. This variable is analogous to the citations indexes widely used to measure the productivity of scholars and the value of invention patents. The more music of enduring quality a composer wrote, the more items were likely to survive in recorded form, and hence the longer the Schwann listing. The better any given work was, the more likely it was to be recorded by multiple artists and groups, and so again, the longer the Schwann listing.

Just…what. An index of recorded music for historical pieces is in no way comparable to a citation impact ranking. One is made by the person’s own society, one is made 100+ years after by a different society. And I won’t even poke that “enduring quality” judgement with a 20 foot pole.

He gets an E FOR EFFORT because there’s lots of notes about MATH with FORMULAS in the back of the book, but the data and methodology is so flawed you just can’t trust anything in his analysis. He also has stuffed enough bar charts into this book to make you start wondering if you’re actually reading a middle-management Powerpoint.

The chapter on music publishing profitability uses a different set of data however, a set of detailed financial data from a 1800s German publishing house, and I think that part is actually quite strong. That chapter alone got a bump from a 2 to a 3 star rating from me. The rest of the book however is some sort of Whig-history-of-music-through-graphs, including a particularly irritating historical overview chapter with the framework of musical “feudalism” vs. “the free market.”

[Robert Poortinga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal read and so incredibly well researched!! Must read for any musician to understand and learn from the past to predict the future

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really value information about the history of the music business.