On Music, Money and Markets: Comparing the Finances of Great Composers

Did you know that Bach invested in mines? That Rossini improved his income by running casinos in the opera houses which on weekends performed his operas? Or that Puccini composed shorter arias to make them fit the length of gramophone disks as they reported him huge revenues? Or who was, in financial terms, the most successful classical composer in history? This book ―the first of its kind― studies and compares the finances of twenty classical composers in their historical and economical context. Each chapter details and quantifies the sources of income of these musicians (wages, royalties, subsidies, percentages over the number of performances, arrangements, investments in the musical sector, etc), thus allowing to estimate the income they obtained due to their artistic ― primarily compositional, but also related― activities. In addition, it also estimates the composer’s expenditures, thus drawing a relatively complete image of their personal finances. This not only allows to concludeto create a ranking of composers according to their economic success, but ―more importantly― for the first time gives an accurate image of the financial situation of a broad set of composers. This allows to correct many false believes while also giving new insights on the relation between economics and music history.

Thomas Baumert is Professor of Economics at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). He has been a visiting researcher at the Fraunhofer-ISI Institute in Karlsruhe (Germany) and visiting professor at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität of Münster (Germany). His research ―which has resulted in a wide range of publications in high-impact national and international journals and publishers― has been funded by prominent institutions, including the European Union, the United States Department of Homeland Security, the German Historical Institute of Washington and the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. He is a permanent member of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Applied Economics (ICOAE) and patron of the Cultural Foundation of the Valencian Community "Salvador Tuset Tuset".