Will Work for Ducats: Freelancing in the Classical Era

Although decades have passed since I was a teenager, I still vividly remember when I made the decision that I was going to major in clarinet performance in college. I loved playing more than anything and was so excited at the prospect of being able to spend all day every day practicing, surrounded by others who shared my love of music. I happily announced to friends and family my plans. Then the jokes started rolling in. “What’s the difference between a musician and a pizza? A pizza can feed a family of four.” 

The assumptions around the supposedly bleak financial prospects of musicians are pretty well cemented in classical music culture today, but even more interesting are the origins of the “starving artist” trope in classical music. Even Mozart had to struggle to make ends meet and convince his father he could make it as a freelance musician. The history of musical patronage and employment is one that directly reflects significant periods and political structures, particularly in Europe, that still influence how musicians find work today.  

Musical patronage before the Classical era

Musicians didn’t always have to struggle to create their own employment opportunities. From the Medieval era all the way through the Baroque era, professional musicians most often found employment working for the church or at the courts of royalty and wealthy nobility (King Louis XIV, for example, employed around 200 musicians in his court at Versailles). And in fact, some of the most famous pieces of music we still perform today were the results of contractual obligations to employers. 

Johann Sebastian Bach is one of the most famous examples of this patronage system, having been employed for 27 years by the Town Council of Leipzig as Cantor of the School of St. Thomas. In this position, Bach’s contract required him to agree to a variety of specific expectations, which he signed in 1723. One of these expectations would shape his entire musical output, which is famously devoid of operas and heavy in sacred music: “To the end that good order may prevail in those churches I should so arrange the music that it may not last too long, and also in such wise as that it may not be operatic, but incite the hearers to devotion.” It can be easy for modern listeners to forget that Bach’s most inspiring works were composed because he “had to.” The masterful St Matthew Passion, for example, was written in line with the requirement that he provide music for Good Friday church services.

This musical patronage system aligned with the longstanding dual power structure of the western world, which was run by the church and monarchs. As the Enlightenment ramped up into the 18th century, however, a shift towards individualism brought with it the birth of the freelance musician. 

Mozart and Beethoven: Enlightened, but light on cash

The 18th century was a musical turning point on multiple levels. Not only did the official shift from the Baroque to Classical era take place, but the way musicians operated significantly changed for the first time in hundreds of years. Some musicians were still enjoying the benefits of the patronage system during this time. Joseph Haydn, for example, enjoyed stable employment for nearly 30 years in the court of Prince Esterházy. Many other musicians, however, were embarking on a new path that modern musicians know all too well and tend to have a love/hate relationship with. The path of the freelance musician.

Backing up a bit, the 18th century saw drastic changes in western society as a whole, not just in the arts. The Enlightenment brought with it a cascade of structural disruptions that were previously unimaginable. The notion of separating church and state came into play. The French and American Revolutions sought to completely upend longheld systems of power and establish individual rights and liberties. And science and reason dared to challenge the previously unquestioned authority of religion. These massive changes all fueled a new emphasis on the rights, knowledge, and freedoms of individuals. Suddenly, humans were not simply royal subjects and god-fearing religious devotees. They were citizens with the capacity for free thought, and in some cases, genius. In this context, it feels less coincidental that the two composers who most often come to mind when the word “genius” is thrown out – and who were also famous freelancers – were both living and working during this time.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven hold two of the highest positions of honor in musical memory, but the realities of their daily lives as working musicians were often less than rosy. Both Mozart and Beethoven did benefit from the older patronage system earlier in their careers, having both been employed as court musicians. But neither were happy composing under the direction of someone else and sought to earn their fame independently. 

Mozart and Beethoven’s freelance careers were strikingly similar to what freelancing looks like today. They worked to earn money through a combination of performing, composing, and teaching. And, in Mozart’s case, parental support of his freelance pursuits was lacking. Mozart famously ended his employment as court organist with the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg in 1781, in part because he resented the Archbishop’s view that Mozart was like any other member of his household staff. Mozart rightly, if somewhat arrogantly, believed that his singular musical talent rose above the status of a court employee, and his resignation from stable employment to pursue freelancing in Vienna greatly disappointed his father, Leopold.

Mozart did in fact become famous as a freelance composer after his split with the Archbishop, especially after the success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) in 1782,  and even regained his father’s respect after he finally agreed to visit Wolfgang in 1785 and witnessed his popularity firsthand (a performance of the Piano Concerto no. 20 in D minor, K. 466 left Leopold particularly awestruck). But these successes came between the realities of a freelance life. While Mozart maintained his popularity, his finances were a different story, and he struggled until his early death with debt and an unpredictable income.

Beethoven similarly had ambitions of finding fame in Vienna after enjoying stable employment in Bonn into his early 20s. Beethoven moved to Vienna in 1792 to study with Haydn, a relationship that didn’t fully meet either composers’ expectations. Right away, Beethoven began to feel the pains of freelance life, struggling to find enough money to support both himself and his family in Bonn. Like Mozart, Beethoven made a name for himself fairly quickly in Vienna as a composer and piano virtuoso. But also like Mozart, his popularity did not yield consistent income. Beethoven enjoyed periods of financial success, but these were interspersed with even more periods of financial uncertainty, in part from his own financial mismanagement. Beethoven’s personality did little to help in his business dealings, with one 1823 article in The Harmonicon describing him as living in Vienna “in open hostility with many,” and having an “extreme reserve towards strangers, which is carried to such excess as to render it painful for his most intimate friends to witness.” To compare Beethoven to Mozart once again, however, his personal and financial struggles did not in the least interfere with (and maybe even lit a fire under) his ability to compose masterpiece after masterpiece. The same article that painted Beethoven in a not-so-flattering light, after all, ended by noting, “The last account we hear of this great man is that he has just completed a grand mass.” This just happened to be the monumental Missa solemnis.