[lraxcykh] Composer as hero

The concept of "composer as hero" is a German invention of the 19th century, relatively new in the history of music.  Beethoven was perhaps the first.

Before then, a composer, or any other artist, was merely an another artisan, like a cobbler.  A cobbler has training in the tools and techniques to make shoes; a composer has training in the tools and techniques to compose music.  (This helps explain why so many pre-Beethoven composers, e.g., Mozart, died in poverty, not so different from so many cobblers.)

The rise of the concept of a composer as someone much more special than a cobbler is somehow related to the rise of German nationalism in the 19th and early 20th centuries.  Germans felt pride in their cultural achievements, being able to name Beethoven by name as an example (but not being able to name cobblers).  What exactly was the relationship and direction of causality of between nationalism and composer-as-hero?

As a vestige of German nationalism, we now have vastly different intellectual property protection between inventions by composers (protected by copyright for 95 years) and inventions by cobblers (protected by patents for 17 years -- "patent leather shoes", anyone?).  We still do revere composers and certain other classes of artists to be endowed with an almost magical ability to create things, distinguishing them from mere mortals.  The composer deserves respect!

However, if composer-as-hero and consequent copyright law has its origins as some sort of propaganda tool for, or by-product of, what ultimately turned out to be a disastrous nationalist movement (Nazism) -- and not merely economic incentive as copyright is currently justified -- then we should really rethink copyright.

Before composer-as-hero, before even the existence of copyright, people did compose music!  The incentives were there.  Mozart entered and chose to remain in his profession knowing full well he would likely die in poverty, as he could have plainly seen among all the other composers (and cobblers) dying around him.

Jazz, in an African-American culture segregated from white Western European influence, was likely composed by composers not regarded among their own as god-like heros.  It must have been jarring (but luxurious) when white culture, discovering jazz, began to treat them that way.  (Previously: swing dancing.)