The stimulating framework of the workshop “Historical Perspectives on Musical Commissions” prompted me to reflect upon the two protagonists of my ongoing PhD project – Salzburg-born conductor Herbert von Karajan (1908–1989) and Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957) – from the perspective of “patronage” and “commission.” While in the call for papers, musical patronage, following Louis Epstein’s 2022-volume The Creative Labor of Music Patronage in Interwar France, was defined as “premeditated collaborations between patrons and composers to produce new music,” I had to adapt some of these concepts: Not only was it necessary to extend the idea of “work” beyond composition to the sphere of performance but also to shift the focus from patron to commission in the broader sense of an agreement to provide a desired product.
Continue reading“ps – How about the Sibelius concerto occasionally?” | by T. Wozonig
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