In my book, The Creative Labor of Music Patronage in Interwar France, I argued that “Music patronage is ultimately an exercise in power: through their wealth, influence, or prestige, patrons engineer opportunities to exercise their creative vision in tandem with the artists they support.”[1] While I still think patronage studies must contend with the application and effects of power, I worry that my initial statement was too one-sided. If patrons exercise power through patronage, then so too do those on the other side of the patronage dyad: composers, performers, scholars, and other musicians all exercise their own power in the dance of patronage. On both sides, agents exert what Joseph Nye described as soft power: that is, cooptation through attraction or appeal rather than through violence or coercion.[2] And attempts to exert even soft power by patrons or by the musicians with whom they collaborate are not always successful.
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