Awesome quote. But IMHO a better and more accurate point to make about composers and musicians 200 years ago, was that they produced, and produced, and produced

Awesome quote. But IMHO a better and more accurate point to make about composers and musicians 200 years ago, was that they produced, and produced, and produced. Being a composer or musician was about composing and performing. Artists had ownership in the abstract (that is authorship was important to the 19th century audience), but a musician being payed for a composition or performance was not significantly different to a baker being payed for his bread. You go back further and find Bach writing masterpieces on a daily basis which he could only assume would be performed once or twice, put in a box, then thrown out when his successor took over.