Commercial vs Non-Commercial Music

A lot of my blog posts try to look at things from a slightly different angle than we are used to and this is another of that kind. I have to do a bit of biography as an introduction. My mother was a fiddler playing what we, in Canada, call "Old-Time" music. It isn't country music as known in the US, but the descendant  of Celtic music. Jig and reels are frequent, along with a mix of other things like two-steps, waltzes and so on. It is primarily dance music, but with a long vintage. It is also primarily fiddle music. My mother played from an early age and played dances her whole life. She was born in a small town in northern Canada where there were, quite literally, no professional musicians of any kind. For nearly all her life she played for dances every weekend and only in her later years was she ever paid for it. She was a good fiddler, more than once provincial champion.

So this was the environment I grew up in. Lots of music, but no commercial musicians (by the simple definition, did they get paid or not). I didn't meet a full-time professional musician until I was a music student in university. In my mind, for me, music was always a vocation, not a profession. Which probably explains my mixed success as a music professional! For a possibly amusing post on this, have a look at this one. The intersection of music and business was one that I usually found troubling. Sometimes these days I am tempted to call myself a 'non-commercial' musician since I only play benefit concerts and compose music without prior commission.

For most of music history, most composers seemed to have no problem combining the two. Bach could write music for the glory of God, but at the same time pester the Town Council for more money. Beethoven could write "from the heart, may it go to the heart" on the score of his Missa Solemnis and at the same time somewhat duplicitously sell the same piece to two different patrons. But I seem to be allergic to commercialism in music. I see a concert by a young trio from Julliard, how they dress, how they chat with the audience and what sort of music they choose to play and I think how little I am enjoying this and how distressing it is that this is what you have to do to be successful in a music career now. I look at publicity photos of very fine musicians and think how desperate they look for our attention. I think how the expressive, aesthetic nature of the music is a distant second to whatever career ambitions the artist harbors.

I think how I prefer an artist who has not got his or her eyes on the main chance, but on the unfolding of the music. But maybe this is just me. Does anyone else have any of these hangups?