{"id":230,"date":"2014-11-12T14:38:55","date_gmt":"2014-11-12T14:38:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/?p=230"},"modified":"2014-11-22T16:20:21","modified_gmt":"2014-11-22T16:20:21","slug":"what-constitutes-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/?p=230","title":{"rendered":"What constitutes success?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Self-mastery is the supreme victory\u2013–
\nmuch more to be valued
\nthan winning control over others.
\nIt is a victory
\nthat no other being whatsoever
\ncan distort or take away.<\/p>\n

The Dhammapada
\n(attr. to Siddh\u0101rtha Gautama aka Buddha)\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What constitutes success in music and musical composition? High profile popular artists like Robin Thicke are considered runaway successes. But their claims to off-the-cuff songwriting processes<\/a>—which feed the creativity myth<\/a> by the way—have been challenged in court. Plagiarism seems the most likely route to success he and his cohort used in the case of the\u00a0song Blurred Lines.<\/em> Whichever way the court case<\/a>\u00a0goes, Thicke has freely\u00a0admitted<\/a>\u00a0that 75% of the song was made before he even started contributing.<\/p>\n

So what we have above are two starkly contrasted views of success. The one being the invisible, personal success of the meditating recluse achieving victory over his own mind; the other being a highly visible success which appears hollow at the core (and indeed offensive to many<\/a>).<\/p>\n

What then, as composers, do you consider to be success? Is widespread recognition essential? If so, how widespread? Do you need to be a household name or just respected amongst your peers?<\/p>\n

Are performances essential to your concept of success? If so, how high-profile must they be? Consider, for instance, the difference between a hastily-rehearsed, inadequately performed orchestral commission in front of 3000 people, and the presentation of a detailed collaboration between yourself and a highly-dedicated pianist at a house concert of 15 people. Now that\u2019s a leading question of course, but consider nonetheless which is most successful and in what terms—artistic, musical, technical, career progression, kudos, publicity, etc.?<\/p>\n

Is financial gain\u00a0essential to your concept of success or is Bourdieu\u2019s sense of cultural capital<\/a>\u00a0more apt, with a diverse range of assets such as education, social standing, hipness, youtube hits, Facebook followers, etc.?<\/p>\n

How is success achieved? Is it more networking than hard technical work? More social than solitary? What ratio of promotion to composition hours should you be aiming for?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Posts in this\u00a0composition seminars category\u00a0are discussion points from the blog<\/a> I maintain at the University of Edinburgh to support postgraduate composers’ work. They are loosely based on the Socratic method, using questions to interrogate and help develop individual compositional approaches and to stimulate critical thinking.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Self-mastery is the supreme victory\u2013– much more to be valued than winning control over others. It is a victory that no other being whatsoever can distort or take away. The Dhammapada (attr. to Siddh\u0101rtha Gautama aka Buddha) What constitutes success in music and musical composition? High profile popular artists like Robin Thicke are considered runaway […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[69,61,67,66,68],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-composition-seminars","tag-bourdieu","tag-buddhism","tag-dhammapada","tag-robin-thicke","tag-success"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michael-edwards.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}