Interesting comments, Jerry. And of course I readily accept that there are exceptions, including yourself.

I'd wonder, however, if your approach to your music writing today would be what it is if you hadn't, for some substantial period of time, previously been immersed in the pro world? It's probably a silly and hopeless question to ask - it's always very hard to know for sure about "what if" scenarios. But I'm thinking that the majority of hobbyists and hopeful amateurs, never having been exposed to pro work in music-making, might never be able to cotton onto ways of securing the integrity, seriousness and self-discipline you speak of - unless they actually go pro, at least for a while, and experience and learn lessons from the realities for themselves.

@Macker said:

Interesting comments, Jerry. And of course I readily accept that there are exceptions, including yourself.

I'd wonder, however, if your approach to your music writing today would be what it is if you hadn't, for some substantial period of time, previously been immersed in the pro world? It's probably a silly and hopeless question to ask - it's always very hard to know for sure about "what if" scenarios. But I'm thinking that the majority of hobbyists and hopeful amateurs, never having been exposed to pro work in music-making, might never be able to cotton onto ways of securing the integrity, seriousness and self-discipline you speak of - unless they actually go pro, at least for a while, and experience and learn lessons from the realities for themselves.

Maybe, maybe not, depends on the person.  I know that having to write on deadlines certainly helped me to realize both the benefits and pitfalls of external deadlines.  The benefit being the focus and discipline necessary to meet the deadline, the pitfall is that if you try to do something creative but cannot take your time about it, it's very possible to end up not writing your best music.  It's sort of like trying to rush a flower to grow, or to ask a woman to delivery a baby in 6 months rather than 9.  It's not going to work. 

In my own personal work, I give myself deadlines, but they are deadlines that enable me to write, rewrite and rewrite as often as necessary to get the best possible results.  In commercial work we don't have that luxury and so even though writing fast is an important skill, it's not what really counts.  Does it matter that it took Brahms 25 years to write his first symphony?  What matters are results.  Even though it's impressive that Mozart wrote his Symphony #40 in six weeks or less, what really matters are the results.  Same with a film score.  If you give the composer(s) (there are now very often more than one composer on a film project) ample time, you'll probably get a better score.

That's a great post by jsg, and so true - the line between amateur and professional is often someone just figuring out a trick of how to sell what was already being done.  Sometimes that trick is impossible to figure out though. As civilization3  mentioned, Van Gogh - who couldn't sell any paintings except to his brother, but now one of them goes for millions. Or Mahler - he was considered an arrogant conductor doing vanity projects with his symphonies in his own time - but now the greatest symphonist since Beethoven. Or to be more insanely wide-ranging H.P. Lovecraft who in his own time was almost completely unknown and only sold stories to pulp magazines, doing ghost writing on the side to earn a few extra dollars. Now he is an entire culture with multiple luxurious editions of his collected works translated into every language. So those artists didn't figure out the trick but kept working on things that could as easily be huge successes commercially. 

Another aspect is how J. S. Bach was writing cantatas on a weekly basis for a job, but then would turn around and work on Art of the Fugue written for nothing.  Or Schubert sitting in a cafe scribbling down a great melody just for the hell of it.  That person jsg mentioned who said music is dead unless it's soundtracks - what a sick mind! One could write a sonata for Ophicleide and Zither and it would be worthwhile if it was good  music. 

Also concerning deadlines and the need to get something finished I completely agree that they can be helpful or really ruinous, .  And my point about anxiety was - sometimes a professional situation creates a negative attitude because one is being forced to hurry up and do something and there just is no inspiration.  The ideal situation of a great film just begging for great music is not the norm, that is for certain.  One thinks of Herrmann getting the opportunity to score Hitchcock's Vertigo - that sort of situation doesn't usually happen.  More like an opportunity for powerful, heartrending music underscoring a promotional film about a golf course.  At least that's my experience.  It's part of why I decided to make my own films and then score them - at least I can't complain about the director being an idiot. Well, maybe I can but I keep it to myself.           

I'm most grateful to you gentlemen for the stimulating insights you've provided on this topic - and you've enabled me to reconsider my main proposition more incisively.

I'm content to stand by the proposition that there is - generally speaking - a world of difference between the amateur and the professional, in terms of mentality and activity. Common everyday experience furnishes abundant evidence of this difference. And yes of course one can always find fringe cases and notable exceptions. When has human existence ever been a matter of black-and-white, cut-and-dried categories? (Well, perhaps Disney might want to take out a 'contract' on me for saying that, lolol.)

That said, I'd readily agree that we might be falling foul of usage of certain words and their meanings or connotations here. Let's see if I can tidy things up a bit.

Not all amateurs or hobbyists are dilettanti, and not all dilettanti are amateurs or hobbyists. I suppose much of what I've tried to set forth in this thread is just another instance of the ages-old complaints against dilettantism. Amateurs and hobbyists can, if they so choose, focus only on their own particular delights in music and music making, without bothering with any real commitment to the vast panoply of knowledge, craft and skills that adept composers typically strive to acquire, maintain and develop in their music endeavours. In this case they could rightly be described as dilettanti. And still yet it doesn't necessarily follow that composers who have huge amounts of knowledge and skills under their belt will be successful as composers - professionally or not.

But there's something else in that mental state we call "commitment". I'll call it "service". Do you seriously want and intend to be of service to others, the potential 'customers' or 'consumers' of your music? Or are you merely interested in pleasing and delighting yourself, perhaps aiming always only for "solitary intoxication"? Of course one must enjoy and appreciate one's own music first and foremost. But what if the dilettante has tastes and sensibilities not only not commonly shared among many others, but also broadly avoided, shunned or even reviled? In that case I'd want to encourage the dilettante just to enjoy himself and not worry about trying to make it a livelihood.

Yes there are talented innovators who step out beyond the norms, and whose innovative works - though perhaps not immediately accessible - attract and eventually entice many others to step beyond their accustomed norms to assimilate and ultimately 'naturalise' the innovations. On the other hand, there is that problematic minority who are simply incapable of ever seeing, hearing or feeling 'through' the senses, sensibilities and feelings of others, and who typically try to bluff and fake their way into appearing to be taking part in normal social intercourse. And how many times have we seen examples of the latter trying to pass themselves off as the former?

But tasteless nincompoops, talented innovators and narc fakers are largely outside the community I'm focused on here: specifically, hobbyists and amateurs who don't know that they haven't yet marshalled all of their potential internal resources and capabilities. Cultivating serious commitment to being - potentailly at some future time - of service to others, is, I contend, one of the simplest keys to unlocking much of the as yet untapped resources and capabilities within oneself. Following a firm commitment of that kind, the ambition and extra work involved in acquiring highest possible levels of relevant knowledge and skills, pretty much fall into place and into line as natural consequences.

Throughout the history of civilisation, countless numbers of people in all walks of life have made that transition.  It's far from being a matter of knowing some sort of esoteric formula or "life-coaching" method. Nor is it a case of having to attend the 'right' university, academy or conservatory. In the broadest and most general terms, isn't it very similar to becoming an adult? And just because there's art involved, it's not something entirely unique and a special case way out there all on its own. Whether or not it is or will become your livelihood, your serious  commitment to "service" is central to the world of difference I've tried to describe above. Let the dilettanti be as irresponsible and self-serving as they wish - that's their choice, and a choice that's not without its consequences.

@Macker said:

But there's something else in that mental state we call "commitment". I'll call it "service". Do you seriously want and intend to be of service to others, the potential 'customers' or 'consumers' of your music? Or are you merely interested in pleasing and delighting yourself, perhaps aiming always only for "solitary intoxication"? Of course one must enjoy and appreciate one's own music first and foremost. But what if the dilettante has tastes and sensibilities not only not commonly shared among many others, but also broadly avoided, shunned or even reviled? In that case I'd want to encourage the dilettante just to enjoy himself and not worry about trying to make it a livelihood.

A sense of service is what distinguishes a mature person from an immature person.  The ability and desire to be of use to others and to actualize that IS important, and not just for composers and artists but for every social being.   That being said, like all virtues, the desire to serve can be twisted, manipulated, distorted and used in destructive or just plain idiotic ways.  A lot depends on why a person wants to be of service--is it out of love for others and humanity?  Is it simply masquerading as service when the stronger motivation is egoistic craving for fame and wealth?  It's hard to tell, most people have multiple motivations, often contradictory.  None of us are perfect, but most of us, given enough time, are perfectible.  I don't think that can happen in one lifetime, but that's for another topic altogether.

For example, a young man wants to be of service to his nation so he joins the military.  He wants to do good, to protect his fellow citizens from harm.  But that nation has a deeply pathological, sadistic and narcissistic leader who cannot distinguish his egoistic ambitions from his hyper-nationalistic impulses.  So he starts a war against a nation that is of no threat to his nation; he does so because he wants to steal their oil, or their land, or he wants to be remembered as a great conquering hero to his people.   So the young man's sincere service motive gets used against him as he is ordered to kill others and possibly get killed himself.  This scenario is common throughout history and is being played out again in our supposedly 21st century "civilized" world.

Another example, far more benign, is an artist wants to be of service.  So she begins working for a giant media corporation that has one primary aim--financial profit.  What happens to the the artistic impulse, the desire to say something, to communicate beauty or truth to one's fellows?  Year after year, this corporation turns out product with predictable endings, predictable stories, predictable characters--because they stick to what sells, what the masses will "consume" (funny term, I can see myself consuming a sandwich but I've never thought of myself as consuming a recording, a book or a film).  Is the artist happy with their own work?  Do they believe in how their art is being used?  Maybe, maybe not. Again, it's complicated because each of us is a unique individual. 

So, yes, service is a virtue to which we all ought to value and strive for to the best of our ability. I know I am performing a service when I put time, energy, talent, creativity, imagination, skill and knowledge into writing a symphony that most people don't care about and won't bother to listen to.  When I was scoring industrial films I remember sitting there one morning in my studio watching a "scene" of a heat pump that "needed" background music. I was performing a service as defined by market-place values because I was getting paid to do it.  But what was I serving exactly?  Was I not just serving an idea about industry, capitalism and technology?   I certainly was not serving art.  So it's complicated, very complicated.  The fantasy of the lone composer working in isolation is not appealing to me because I am a highly social and gregarious personality; it's fair to question who and what is being served by such behavior.  But when I know I have the freedom to write music that means something deeply to myself, I have unshakeable faith that I am also serving something beyond myself, I am in service to beauty, to intellectual life, perhaps even to the cosmos in some meaningful, purposeful, almost superconscious way. 

When I was a young man I took pride in believing that I was an independent thinker.  But I've lately come to realize my thinking is utterly dependent upon truth, sincerity, reason and imagination--without those my thinking is just mechanical, "roof-brain chatter" almost worse than not thinking at all.  I'm going to be quiet now. I wish you all well.

Jerry

"I put time, energy, talent, creativity, imagination, skill and knowledge into writing a symphony..."

"my thinking is utterly dependent upon truth, sincerity, reason and imagination..."  - jsg

Wow!  You are so far beyond me.  Do you also fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way?  

I would like to participate in this discussion, but I find it impossible if the words professional, amateur, hobbyist, dilettante are not defined and related to musical composition.

For example, Varèse was mentioned. He may not have made a lot of money from his works, but he didn’t write too many of them either. A huge amounts of them were, admittedly, experiments (not even experimental). Also, he lived around the same time as Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Sibelius, Strauss, and Ravel, to name a few. If you had any money, who would you throw it at? However, not only was he an innovator, but he had somebody like Stokowski eagerly awaiting for his next scribblings. He studied with d’Indy. For his whole life he was rubbing shoulders with the elite of the music world. So, what was he?

See my third post, paragraph 8.

But don’t forget!… He knew everything about music backwards! He didn’t just buy a laptop and watched a few videos. Stokowski would not have used his music to scrape muck off his tyres had that been the case.

Contrarily: Hans doesn’t know his German 6th chord from his bootstrap (not to mention the French and Italian 6ths). Be that as it may, the door is coming off its hinges as everybody who can afford him is begging/banging to commission him. He is already reeking rich, marketing himself as a composer - film composer if we must. What is he?

What was Sorabji? More or less professional than Hans? Or John Williams for that matter?

These are questions the answers to which do not easily find consensus. However, be careful. I know for a fact that there are huge nannies on this forum. Do you really wish to open this particular can of worms? Find out whether your fellow forumites consider you a ‘Professional’? If you want to have this discussion, have it out properly. Don’t run sobbing to Dietz later…

My concept of these definitions is - professional means someone who makes a living off music, and it can be great music like Bernard Herrmann (in film music) or wretched music that somehow fills the commercial purpose (like a hack in the 1940s who plagiarized Rachmaninoff phrase by phrase because the producer wanted something "Romantic").  Amateur is anyone from a rank newbie to a great artist like Charles Ives who HAD to be an amateur because his music was too advanced for people during his lifetime and he couldn't even submit it for approval to the establishment, let alone make any money off it.  Hobbyist is a person who simply enjoys music and may create something very good or bad, but not necessarily either; however, other musicians would be incensed to be called "hobbyist" as it implies they are not truly dedicated to their work as a drive for meaning in their lives, which comes from elsewhere, i.e. : selling insurance, working at a pharmacy, making contract killings, etc .  A dilettante  is a complex term, as it has referred in various eras to exceptionally talented persons  who don't need to do something but do so for the mere fun of it -  perhaps creating something wonderful -  or to shallow buffoons who are merely screwing around.

Concerning Varese - he is beyond any professional, because he is a genius who created a new musical language.  That cannot be classified in any group as each person who has done this is in his own classification.

John Williams I admire greatly because even though I loathe some of the films he scored, he was always trying to create interesting musical ideas for whatever he was offered, and he achieved a style of his own despite the snarky critics he has amassed who claim he plagiarizes - he does not truly plagiarize (and don't post examples of what sounds similar - thanks but I already know all of those) but rather, he has his own beautiful and powerful style influenced by the composers he knows in detail and loves, and it is a style which other people have now plagiarized.  

@William said:

My concept of these definitions is - professional means someone who makes a living off music, and it can be great music like Bernard Herrmann (in film music) or wretched music that somehow fills the commercial purpose (like a hack in the 1940s who plagiarized Rachmaninoff phrase by phrase because the producer wanted something "Romantic").  Amateur is anyone from a rank newbie to a great artist like Charles Ives who HAD to be an amateur because his music was too advanced for people during his lifetime and he couldn't even submit it for approval to the establishment, let alone make any money off it.  Hobbyist is a person who simply enjoys music and may create something very good or bad, but not necessarily either; however, other musicians would be incensed to be called "hobbyist" as it implies they are not truly dedicated to their work as a drive for meaning in their lives, which comes from elsewhere, i.e. : selling insurance, working at a pharmacy, making contract killings, etc .  A dilettante  is a complex term, as it has referred in various eras to exceptionally talented persons  who don't need to do something but do so for the mere fun of it -  perhaps creating something wonderful -  or to shallow buffoons who are merely screwing around.

Concerning Varese - he is beyond any professional, because he is a genius who created a new musical language.  That cannot be classified in any group as each person who has done this is in his own classification.

John Williams I admire greatly because even though I loathe some of the films he scored, he was always trying to create interesting musical ideas for whatever he was offered, and he achieved a style of his own despite the snarky critics he has amassed who claim he plagiarizes - he does not truly plagiarize (and don't post examples of what sounds similar - thanks but I already know all of those) but rather, he has his own beautiful and powerful style influenced by the composers he knows in detail and loves, and it is a style which other people have now plagiarized.  

I mostly agree with William and Errikos and have one more aspect of this discussion to add.   In many professional fields there are some kind of licensing and objective educational qualifications required.  A doctor can't be an "amateur"; a doctor has to go to an accredited medical school, pass certain state tests and qualifications and even do post-medical school work as a residence in a hospital setting before being able to hang up a sign and say "I'm a doctor".  Similar with lawyers, stock-brokers, airline pilots and financial advisors.  NASA isn't going to hire someone to write software for controlling satellites that fly out to distant planets or manage the assembly of spacecraft without that person having a PhD in physics or engineering, etc.   Not that there won't be quacks or unethical people who fall through the cracks, but in general there is some organized, official method to determine if one has the ability, education and qualifications to practice their profession. 

Obviously not so in the arts.  There are no qualifications to be a film composer or TV composer, other than having someone believe that you are capable of doing the job. You might have a degree or three in music, but then again you might not have any degree at all.  You might be a virtuoso player but then again you may just be adequate on your instrument.  There is no licensing, nobody sits on state boards to check periodically if a composer is keeping up with the latest developments in composition.  These facts contribute, I think, to the inability to draw a clear line between the amateur and the professional.

In earlier times a professional was recognized as someone with superior knowledge or skill, someone who could profess to know something about a subject.  Before that the term even had religious implications in the church.  But in today's ultra-capitalist world, the term simply means one makes money doing it.  So we have professional sex workers, professional drug dealers, professional salesmen, and I do not mean this disrespectfully, only that we've limited the term to involve earning money at something.  Whether one is really good at it, or has mastered their skill set and has a broad and deep knowledge of their subject seems mostly irrelevant in the arts. 

I am not sure what Macker's motivations are for taking the positions that he takes, I also don't know if he might entertain some illusions about what professional scoring is about or whether he's ever made a living composing.   Perhaps necessity is the mother of invention, but personal commitment is the father.  Sometimes an artist is driven by the need to make money and survive and sometimes that artist is already surviving and prospering and is seeking a quality of expression that doesn't quite fit into the what the marketplace is looking for. 

It's easy to get addicted to success.  We always want more of it.  Lily Tomlin once said if a person wins the rat-race they are still just a rat.   A mature, wise and discerning individual learns both the meaning of success and the human values that underlie real success.   If fame, money, status and power are the sole criteria for judging success we will find our world increasingly selfish, ignorant, divided, violent and dumbed-down by propaganda and lies.  And that makes it harder for each one of us to be happy. 

Jerry

@William said:

John Williams I admire greatly because even though I loathe some of the films he scored, he was always trying to create interesting musical ideas for whatever he was offered, and he achieved a style of his own despite the snarky critics he has amassed who claim he plagiarizes - he does not truly plagiarize (and don't post examples of what sounds similar - thanks but I already know all of those) but rather, he has his own beautiful and powerful style influenced by the composers he knows in detail and loves, and it is a style which other people have now plagiarized.  

While I have much to learn from this thread and little to contribute, I wanted to give a thumbs up to this comment by William. I agree very much and feel that those who claim JW plagiarizes are plain stupid and ignorant of how music really works. They do not realize that by their logic most classical composers stole from others. Williams is way above his own music. What he wrote for films, even though they are more sophisticated than 99% of other film music, was like child's play for him. His concert works are just as great as some of the greatest 20th century modern classical composers. The talent of this living legend is simply staggering,

I would even argue Williams is among the 100 greatest composers in history for his unique style of blending of modern atonal techniques with romanticism. This is self evident now that his work is becoming standard repertoire for the worlds greatest orchestras.

Errikos, once again you've helped me question, refocus, revise and clarify my mind on a topic at hand; I'm most grateful to you.

Unfortunately for any science or even philosophy on this topic, we're all up a gum tree - and I do mean everyone. It's still not known what music does to and for us as individuals, nor to and for our cultures. So how can we possibly know with clear and rational certainty how and why any particular composition or composer is more or less worthy than another? Well, though intractable to science, we're not dealing here with complete imponderables; we can and often do intuitively gauge the weight and worth of a composition or a composer.

Let's look back to a time long before universities taught everything and academic qualifications pretty much dictated what 'professional' services one should and shouldn't be trusted to provide for others. Hasn't there always been a 'Rubicon' in any earnest endeavour? For instance, we'd never confuse a child with a blacksmith, nor an archer with someone who just likes to throw sticks, nor a storyteller with someone who likes to sing a ditty now and then.

We naturally get to know the métier of particular individuals in our communities. And when it's known that a person's métier is backed, developed and maintained by their longstanding and serious commitment, devotion, fidelity and sacrifice, we're far more likely to avail ourselves of their services - we know the person has crossed the 'Rubicon' in their life. And of course word gets around. Today, perhaps this isn't as commonplace an intuitive matter of everyday experience and common sense as it used to be. Yet I believe the basics of this ages-old social and cultural phenomenon are still there, somewhere, in all of us.

The word "professional" can mean someone who makes a living in some particular endeavour; but also someone who has been professed into a faith, i.e. been received into a religious order under vows. So there is this communal or public dimension to the word "profess"; it involves more than simply what an individual is apt to aver. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the derivation of "profess" as from the Latin "profess-", meaning "declared publicly", from the verb "profiteri", from pro- "before" + fateri "confess".

Culturally speaking, it's long been a serious and even solemn matter to designate someone as a professional, reflecting the fact that the individual has been publicly acknowledged as having crossed the Rubicon in his or her life, having made a deliberate and all-encompassing commitment to a particular occupation.

The dilletante, by contrast, makes no such commitment to acquiring relevant knowledge and skills, nor to being of service to anyone. He crosses no Rubicon in his life, all options are still open and available - or so he likes to think. As I use the word, the dilettante can be seen as the very worst kind of amateur - irresponsible and wholly self-serving, and perhaps self-deluding, grandiose and antisocial too. In other words, he's the last type of person from whom society would expect or seek a worthy service. Their self-expression may not be linked in any meaningful way to society at large, perhaps instead arising from some abstruse intellectual constructs, ideals, or just plain old puerile wishful thinking. It seems unlikely to find dilettanti among those who've been through the academic mill in music; but I suppose it's possible, especially nowadays when universities seem to be making their (incredibly expensive) courses ever more comfortable, attractive, easy and fun for any and all students.

What's in the back of my mind here is the worry about today's ever increasing tendency to presume - with militant obstinacy - that one can be whatever one chooses to be, by simple act of will. History and all common sense is against such immature, irresponsible and antisocial nonsense; but that just seems to inspire the culprits to up the ante and double down on their preposterous schemes. JP Sears - with cruel comedic aplomb - hilariously parodies an example here:

The best female swimmer in the world

@Macker said:

What's in the back of my mind here is the worry about today's ever increasing tendency to presume - with militant obstinacy - that one can be whatever one chooses to be, by simple act of will. History and all common sense is against such immature, irresponsible and antisocial nonsense; but that just seems to inspire the culprits to up the ante and double down on their preposterous schemes. JP Sears - with cruel comedic aplomb - hilariously parodies an example here:

The best female swimmer in the world

Macker,

Since you continue to hammer this point to death I am wondering if what really worries you is how you see yourself. Why are you so concerned with this issue in the first place? You have no control over what others do or don't do, you have no control over how others view themselves.  Is there something in your own life that you passionately want to do but are not doing?  I suspect there's some psychological projection going on here and projection easily degrades into insincerity.   Post some music and let your music speak for itself.  Music can say things words cannot.  If it didn't, we wouldn't need to compose.  I've already spent too much time in this discussion.  I keep forgetting how important it is for some people to feel like they're right.  OK. Be right if that's your aim.  I've got nothing more to say in words on this topic.

[b]Macker: [/b]What a brilliant example! So apt in this case! I could write pages upon pages arguing points and you did it with a simple link!.. [But please guys. Stay off politics if we wish to keep this forum as free of censorship as possible.]

Since chemistry and biology mean nothing these days, I will share the finest one-liner I received this past year: “I identify myself as vaccinated and expect to be treated as such!” Just change ‘vaccinated’ to ‘the greatest composer in the world’ and you’ve got it. Since people on this forum are so sensitive when it comes to their music and others’ perception thereof (I personally don’t consider the vast majority here even amateurs, let alone professionals - for an example of the musical standard of a universally recognised as amateur/dilettante composer, back when words had meaning, have a listen to the following:

let’s shift the paradigm to another discipline.

You mentioned Philosophy. How many people habitually say “My philosophy on this subject is …”? Are they professional philosophers? Are they even amateur or hobbyist philosophers? Do they belong to a specific school of philosophy? Have they created their own? Do they hold a degree in philosophy? How many philosophers have they actually read (not Alain de Botton; actual philosophical texts)? Are they up to date with current academic scholarship on the subject? The list of questions can easily continue. Don't they really mean "What I [i]think [/i]is..."? I was in the ‘science stream’ in high school, I have read many lay books on science and mathematics, I was always interested. Can I join a scientists/mathematicians forum (not a manufacturers’ forum like the VSL - that is a very important point!) because my computer has a scientific calculator (which I can use) and a Grapher, and introduce myself there as one of the boys? I will rightly be laughed out of the virtual room.

Whenever I find myself around a table when people begin a discussion on Christian dogma, I refuse to participate. When I'm asked why I won't contribute, I say that I would be interested in exchanging ideas solelywith people who have read at least the New Testament, at least once, from first line to last. Otherwise, what exactly would I be discussing?

I consider myself a voracious reader so I am familiar with quite a bit of the classical canon as well as with more recent, popular offerings. I speakthe language to an adequate degree. If I start writing storIes and regularly share them on a forum similar to this one (say the Scrivener forum), am I a professional writer? An amateur writer? A dilettante, or a hobbyist? Iam actually writing a short stories book.[i]If[/i]this book ever gets published (not self-published) and [i]if[/I] it achieves good reviews and half-decent sales (I'm not really anticipating any of this to happen), then I will consider myself to be an [i]amateur[/I] writer, at best. Otherwise, I will remain a hobbyist.

I think most people buried inside the diurnal grind of completing works with actual deadlines care about whether they are considered to be professional or not. I think most of the rest wish to be recognised as 'artists'.

Best of luck with that!..

As I am actually rather tired, I am going to pick this up again later.

agitato,

Wow, I listened to the first John Williams and that performance is fabulous!  Such great music and fantastically played.  I have to play that again on my best speaker system full blast. 

Jerry, let me fill you in on my position. (I've previously mentioned this boring stuff about me in this forum.) I'm retired; my sacrifices at the altar of hi-tech design engineering began a very long time ago; I was fortunate enough to have an interesting, fulfilling and I hope useful career in that discipline; I don't think I have it in me now to cross another Rubicon in my life. Currently I'm not writing music to put out there; right now I'm content to leave that to adepts. Perhaps one day I might put out an original composition, but that would be entirely my decision, nobody else's. I certainly do plan to put out some mockups of a few famous works to demonstrate my orchestral intonation subsystem for Logic Pro, but that's another story.

Errikos mentioned some semantic difficulties germane to the topic here. And I agree with him. The more I think about it and try to settle the semantic issues as I see them, the more fraught with complexity and tricky nuances the topic becomes - lol, comme d'habitude. I don't think we've satisfactorily settled many issues here in how best to define dilettanti, hobbyists, amateurs and professionals in music composition.

Nevertheless I hope I've made the point that having 'crossed the Rubicon' is a fair and general enough criterion or at least indicator, that has long been pertinent in intuitively distinguishing 'pros' from 'amateurs', and in estimating a composer's chances of at least satisfying non-paying audiences, if not making composition a livelihood. It's probably impossible to cover all exceptions - real and imagined.

Save for perhaps having an enjoyable and rare blah with Errikos, and making one more point a bit later, I've done what I can here.

Errikos, thank you but I must duck credit for my link - I've just been lucky to find JP Sears recently, and as his very large numbers of subs and views suggest, he ain't no beginner. But that one-liner you quoted and your modification of it - they're just exquisitely apposite! lolol.

Now largely I'm just gonna have to capitulate to the main body of your spendid exposition. Touché, Sir. Aren't those issues some of the crucial issues of the Internet era? The more I try to hang onto the old ways, the less today's situations make sense. But .... I'm not prepared to defer, let alone surrender to mere kids in the face of their noisy and all too often absurd upheavals - that would be craven and irresponsible. Millennials and especially Zoomers are still far from being capable of steering, let alone leading any of the new world that's been dumped into their laps. Those generations need our help, guidance, wisdom, common sense and sometimes a firm hand, in vouchsafing sound shape and sense in today's world and its new possibilities. Furthermore, as some of them already know or suspect, they're prone to being manipulated and groomed by highly-placed power-hungry narcs who never reveal their true hand; the young 'uns certainly need help to fight that kind of malignancy - indeed we all do.

So much of what used to be subject to clear and orderly structure in our cultural habits and activities has now become somewhat fuzzy and foggy, largely owing I think to the explosive advent of mass lateral, peer-to-peer telecommunications via Internet, and its enormous impact on the traditional power of vertical, mostly top-down mass communications and telecommunications. So many cultural gatekeeping measures established over centuries have been or are being subverted, bypassed and otherwise rendered ineffectual. The good news is that we're already seeing powerful refusals to entrust these potentially huge and profound cultural changes to IT geeks such as Zuckerberg. But the bad news is that we're also now seeing huge amplification and consolidation of top-down power - e.g. stern covid restrictions and mandates, and more recently, colossal efforts to mobilise and unify wartime propaganda - presumably mounted mostly by those who feel terribly threatened by the potential of mass lateral comms.

Where does that get us with this thread? Lolol, I dunno. It's probably fuel for several new threads - I hope started by younger blood.

I'm impressed and reassured by your choice to find a real publisher for your book - wishing you all the very best for that. I know from long family experience that getting a "pass" from the reputable gatekeepers can be tough, but then again it means all the more both to the author and potential readers looking to buy a new book. And later, as a published author, your next and subsequent offerings to publishers tend (but only tend) to be somewhat less prone to perfunctory rejection. So many people nowadays seem to fear and loathe even the idea of rejection - where's their spine, guts, grit and gumption gone? But I've a feeling you're a trouper, Errikos. (If I recall correctly, you already know what it's like to sit in front of a microphone and broadcast to a nation.)

@Errikos said:

I would like to participate in this discussion, but I find it impossible if the words professional, amateur, hobbyist, dilettante are not defined and related to musical composition.

Contrarily: Hans doesn’t know his German 6th chord from his bootstrap (not to mention the French and Italian 6ths). Be that as it may, the door is coming off its hinges as everybody who can afford him is begging/banging to commission him. He is already reeking rich, marketing himself as a composer - film composer if we must. What is he?

I quite agree that the discussion is not well informed so far as pertains to the very long tradition of how musicians and composers received reimbursement for their efforts. I could review the situation with Mozart & Beethoven but I'll just say: Mozart struggled mightily at times, oddly at the very end of his career when he wrote the likes of Don Giovanni, the Clarinet concerto, Requiem and the last of his symphonies and piano Concertos. Viennese society was bored with him and it showed in his income. The trivial likes and dislikes of society and their eagerness to 'cancel' a particular style has absolutely nothing, very often, (indeed, usually) to the intrinsic value of the artist's work. Beethoven had much success in keeping his rent paid (despite having a tendency to forget to pay it) and his pantry well stocked-when he could keep a housekeeper to do his shopping. But given the ultimate societal decision as to the worthiness of his music, Beethoven's recompense was almost trivial. Again, shows no connection between success in society's measure and the cultural value determined as the ages roll on. Rossini, to do just one more example, was rewarded handsomely towards the end of his life, one may speculate whether or not he was overpaid. Again, shows the shallow nature of the judgement regarding how much an artist gets paid means almost nothing as to the intrinsic cultural value of a work; that financially success rarely means anything other than sheer luck of the draw. 

I dislike Hans Zimmer's works because he now shows a decided proclivity to engage in repeating himself over and over, time after time the same chugging bass ostinatos - to mention but one technique he over indulges in. Basically the minimalist techniques borrowed from Phillip Glass et al become boring when listened to away from the movie itself. Mind you, all I'm saying here is that I prefer *not to listen to Zimmer-I'll take Glass about as often-I have yet to achieve a full 20 minutes of either composer without becoming agitated to the point of distraction.

But speaking of Hans Zimmer:

Shortly after the official opening, Hans Zimmer's Remote Control Productions chose Synchron Stage Vienna to record a whole slate of productions, including music for Inferno, starring Tom Hanks (directed by Ron Howard, music by Hans Zimmer), and the Netflix series The Crown by Peter Morgan (music by Hans Zimmer and Rupert Gregson-Williams).

Here's an interior shot of the Synchron Stage 

Back again.

I just glanced at my previous post. What a jumble... I don't know why the formatting turned out like that. I apologise to everybody that read it.

Anyway, I asked for definitions and I got them from William and Macker. Since you guys went into the trouble I will add to my already long diatribe. But first, I just want to say that I mentioned my writing a book because I feel it chimes very well with this discussion. When it is finished, I will investigate whether there is any interest to be generated in publishing it, but that is more than a long shot. I realise this. If it doesn't happen (which it most probably won't - the book market is much more saturated than the music one), I won't wail at the world for being too stupid and heathenish not to be paying attention to my "brilliant" short fiction, and I know that the publishers who will reject me will vie ferociously for the rights to a Kardashyan autobiography. I don't care (too much). I am writing these stories because it gives me pleasure. I get pure enjoyment out of writing, as a hobby, as others get out of writing music, as a hobby. Id est, without the pressures that are automatically applied to a professional. 

I perused a lot of the posts here, and the prevailing idea is that a professional composer is one who makes money from their music. Well, yes and no. The money is actually the last factor in the equation. One has to satisfy every other requirement of the "job" in order to ever get to see any money. It is very akin to being an accountant or a plumber when it comes to that. People that pay money have certain expectations from the benefiting party. The whole transaction is expected to be equitable. People will rarely use an accountant or a plumber that is not referred to them by someone they trust. The times that they do go outside their comfort zone -during an emergency- they do so with fingers crossed. For the accountant they will expect that he is certified by some authority they recognise (jsg made a similar point), and this will also apply to music professionals. It is not enough that you even get access to somebody, you will play them a couple of your tracks, they'll like them and then they'll bring out their check book. Not if they know what's good for them (see point above regarding references).

Ability to write music that people like is not nearly enough in itself to make you a professional. No-no! Actually, it is not even necessary. What people that are prepared to give you money want to know is whether you can compose music to their requirements, not your own. They want to know that you can compose to at least an average professional standard for the kind of ensemble they have in mind. This is not a simple criterion: Is the ensemble professional or amateur? Do you know how to compose for professionals and amateurs for all instruments? Do you know what the differences are in range, instrumental technique, compositional technique - are you going to give multi phonics to a high-school woodwind ensemble? Etc. They want to know that you can complete the music on agreed schedule(!) and idiom, and that you will present them with score and parts of professional standards (this goes 2x for amateurs - i.e. not what the Score Editor of your favourite D.A.W. will hurl out). I am omitting a score of other important details.

What is it that will reassure these people commissioning you that you will deliver a professional product? The fact that your mother and Facebook/Youtube friends 👍like your music? A joke, surely. First of all, a university degree is that aforementioned authority people will accept as an initial guarantee that at the very least you know the rudiments and that you have already been proven responsible enough to deliver adequate work to deadlines. They cannot wait until inspiration hits. This is another difference between professionals and everybody else. Professionals have to compose, no matter what! They have contracts and a reputation to uphold/build, negotiating an unfriendly environment of vicious and back-breaking competition... If you think all the aforementioned skills can be acquired overnight, I know which category you don't belong to. Professional composers are not "merely" musicians (good or bad). They are excellent time managers, entrepreneurs (look up the origin of this word - you won't believe it...), promoters, and -most of all- reliable.

If one satisfies all requirements of being a professional composer, then -at last- money will find its way into the conversation. How much of it will depend on the client. The client will of course get the best professional he can afford. This is where it gets a little fuzzy, in that the most expensive composer is not necessarily the best. That is another point that I feel has not been addressed: The vast-vast-vast majority of professionals, in any field, by statistical definition, are journeymen! And these are the ones that know their stuff! Not the dilettantes, the hobbyists, etc. They are as journeymen as your accountant (who is not Warren Buffet's accountant I presume).

It is not by chance I mentioned Sorabji in my first post, asking rhetorically whether he was less or more professional a composer than Hans or J. Williams. You learn about Sorabji at university if you study composition, and maybe more than in passing (you learn nothing about Williams, let alone Hans). An incredible iconoclast, contemptuous of both atonality and neo-classicism, with a profound, complex thought that translates into hours of music for each work (his Piano Symphony n.5 "Symphonia Brevis" lasts over two hours), Sorabji was so eccentric that he reached a point where he summarily forbade any performances of his works without his explicit permission. The combination of the over-protracted, complex nature of his music, his introversion and misanthropy resulted in an absolute scarcity of existing recordings of his music. His extensive symphonic works have never been recorded insofar as I know. Apparently, there are also some orchestration mistakes that have been noted in his interminable manuscripts, but these, surely, would have been corrected if he ever intended to publish. Be that as it may, there they are.

Conclusion: Sorabji was not a professional composer, certainly not in the league of Hans and J. Williams. Music history however has immortalised him as an 'artist'.

'Artist' is yet another term, which I posited in my second post, the one that matters to me, and the one with which I will close this post. 

All the other designations are more or less claimable for oneself. You can call yourself an amateur, a dilettante (which didn't have such negative connotations in the past; what happened?), or a hobbyist, most will just take you on your word as the range is just so abysmally vast. If you call yourself a professional to anyone 'in the know' at least, you'd better be able to back it up [do you get commissioned a lot? For money? By whom, etc. This will determine whether you are a journeyman professional (99.999%), further details (fee, prestige of commissioning party, etc.) will determine whether you belong to the high or low end of the journeyman spectrum, or in the infinitesimal margin above or below it].

(Musical) 'Artist' is the only designation that you don't get to claim for yourself. It is a really rare distinction and must be bestowed upon you by somebody else, either by other artists or professionals, or by people with real, vast musical culture. Not by friends and family. Not by fellow amateurs.

I'm going to bed. I bid you all goodnight, and sweet dreams...

A superb and illuminating disquisition by Errikos! I'm most grateful. I'll add a couple of points, then perhaps we'll leave this complex and difficult topic in - hopefully dignified - peace.

1. Pros sometimes also do pro work as a 'hobby'

William mentioned several cases of great composers having produced superb compositions that were not commissioned, nor originally pitched at potential commissions. I can - sort of - corroborate that this kind of activity is not especially rare, by pointing to examples in my pro discipline of hi tech design engineering that are somewhat analogous. (However, I can neither confirm nor deny that these events actually took place, lolol.)

In a certain very large defence development contract back in the late '70s, it was widespread practice among the pro designers to be doing - while at their usual workplace - what used to be called "foreigners" or "homers", i.e. their own personal projects that had nothing whatever to do with the official project at hand. These homers included some marvellous designs, including, for instance, an astonishingly realistic and highly responsive analogue video simulator for driving a car in a variety of environments. There was even a competition informally set up to design and build the fastest model of a drag racer, the only rule being that all parts used had to be what was found in the lab, nothing from outside. This competition culminated in an exciting and well attended race meeting held in the canteen, where about 30 or so models were run in a drag strip and timed with opto-electronic precision.

All of these homer-designers were pros and doing pro work for the official project; but they nevertheless also found the time and motivation to indulge in what can perhaps be called "hobby" projects. Some of these pros were probably just sharpening their creative skills and ingenuity as designers; others perhaps were exploring new skills and new technologies, maybe to be used professionally in subsequent contracts; and some may have been aiming at starting a new business.

Wholly reprehensible of course, but such was the nature of large defence contract management in those days - based on the "cost-plus" model which meant in practice that pretty much whenever prime contractors asked for more time and money for their ongoing projects, they got it. But although lamentable for the customer (the Government), it could be said that at least the pro discipline as a whole benefitted from these lively albeit strictly illicit activities, in terms of general enhancement and development of the ingenuity, knowledge, skills and experiences of the pros who indulged their hobbies with such wonderful enthusiasm and commitment.

So there it is, yet another anomalous take on who is a pro and who is a hobbyist.

2. Pressure - a double-edged sword.

Let me tell you about the most intense pressure I ever experienced as a pro. I happen to be one of the type who thrives on pressure - so long as it's not nefarious or malign - but I know full well that some others suffer badly from high pressure. As always, it's a matter of horses for courses.

One day, NATO High Command discovered to their horror that there was a very serious and intolerable gap in their Order Of Battle for Anti Submarine Warfare. Long story short, I found myself in a huge, very high pressure fixed-price prime contract development project aimed at plugging that gap ASAP. By this time (in the '80s), the UK Government had become averse to cost-plus project management, and in any case NATO could not afford to be kept waiting any longer than absolutely necessary for this project to reach fruition. For this project, UK Government and my company adopted a very tough, efficient and effective programme management scheme from the US Polaris programme. I immediately recognised much of this management scheme from my studies of ancient Chinese philosophy - it had already been described and proposed just before the unification of China about 22 centuries ago and was adopted by the first Emperor of China. Plus ça change!

Needless to say, absolutely no homers showed up on this project. The ethos was far from being laid back. In fact, to my knowledge two people on project were literally taken away by men in white coats. But even worse, there were several suicides. Questions were raised in UK Parliament, but no satisfactory answers were ever provided. I shudder in recollection. The Programme Review Meetings sometimes became figurative bloodbaths and several managers were destroyed along the way. As a matrix-manager, I covered an awful lot of departments and subcontract companies and I was either in or very close to the so-called "critical path" for much of the time. And that sometimes got very scary indeed. But I delivered my milestones, and so did the great majority of others. The project concluded on time, on budget and on specification, then went swiftly into full production. Thereafter, the company quietly dropped the purest and most ruthlessly brutal aspects of the Polaris management scheme - mental breakdowns and suicides are certainly not tolerable concomitants of any kind of professional work in the UK.

Many of us did stuff for that project we didn't even know we were capable of doing. I have to say, I don't recall ever performing as well as I did during those high-pressure years, including doing creative design work (hands-on management was the rule, not the exception).

My response to those who say they conjure up their own deadlines: - pfft. Real deadline pressure can only come from outside. It's an essentially natural part of being the social, cultural creatures that we are. We either endure the pain and discomfort while taking pride in doing the best we can to serve others, or we cop out and bumble along in a happy and contented world of one. I'm pretty damn sure I know where the best results come from, and it ain't the latter. No, I'm certainly not recommending the full-on Polaris/Emperor of China environment; the optimum - except for dire emergency situations - lies somewhere between the first and second stories here.

@Macker said:

My response to those who say they conjure up their own deadlines: - pfft. Real deadline pressure can only come from outside. It's an essentially natural part of being the social, cultural creatures that we are. We either endure the pain and discomfort while taking pride in doing the best we can to serve others, or we cop out and bumble along in a happy and contented world of one. I'm pretty damn sure I know where the best results come from, and it ain't the latter. No, I'm certainly not recommending the full-on Polaris/Emperor of China environment; the optimum - except for dire emergency situations - lies somewhere between the first and second stories here.

Hey Macker!

Since you seem to know so much about music, composition, artistic creativity and composers, I'd like to ask you a few questions:  

How many music compositions have you written and completed in the last 10 years?  How many albums have you produced?  How many soundtrack cues have you written for money?  How many interviews for music magazines have you done?  How many reviews and professional endorsements have your recordings received?  How many composition and theory students have you taught?  Have you done any music workshops in professional settings? 

Dictionary definition of a dilettante:  a person who cultivates an area of interest, such as the arts, without real commitment or knowledge.

Yours truly,

A real composer