Piero Scaruffi's

History of Avantgarde Music

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Preface - Art Music in the the 20th Century

In preparation. This section will contain essays defining the scope

of the book.

Art Music (or Sound Art) differs from Commercial Music the way a
Monet painting differs from IKEA furniture. Although the border is
frequently fuzzy, there are obvious differences in the lifestyles
and careers of the practitioners. Given that Art Music represents
(at best) 3% of all music revenues, the question is why anyone
would want to be an art musician at all. It is like asking why
anyone would want to be a scientist instead of joining a
technology startup. There are pros that are not obvious if one
only looks at the macroscopic numbers. To start with, not many
commercial musicians benefit from that potentially very lucrative
market. In fact, the vast majority live a rather miserable existence.
Secondly, commercial music frequently implies a lifestyle of time-
consuming gigs in unattractive establishments. But fundamentally
being an art musician is a different kind of job, more similar to the
job of the scientific laboratory researcher (and of the old-
fashioned inventor) than to the job of the popular entertainer. The
art musician is pursuing a research program that will be
appreciated mainly by his peers and by the "critics" (who function
as historians of music), not by the public. The art musician is not
a product to be sold in supermarkets but an auteur. The goal of
an art musician is, first and foremost, to do what s/he feels is
important and, secondly, to secure a place in the history of
human civilization. Commercial musicians live to earn a good life.
Art musicians live to earn immortality. (Ironically, now that we
entered the age of the mass market, a pop star may be more
likely to earn immortality than the next Beethoven, but that's
another story). Art music knows no stylistic boundaries: the
division in classical, jazz, rock, hip hop and so forth still makes
sense for commercial music (it basically identifies the sales
channel) but ever less sense for art music whose production,
distribution and appreciation methods are roughly the same
regardless of whether the musician studied in a Conservatory,
practiced in a loft or recorded at home using a laptop.

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