Mozart, entrepreneur of himself: between self-produced concerts, symphonies written on the fly, and an art that combines creativity and strategy, even in the 18th century, this musical genius knew how to transform passion into success.
Imagine Mozart arriving in a new city and organizing a concert. Take Paris, for example. Arriving with his mother, looking for a way to escape the “cage” of Salzburg, the young Wolfgang gets busy: he weaves a web of acquaintances, arouses interest, and in the meantime organizes an académie. What does that mean? He composed Symphony No. 31 “Paris” K. 297, paid the orchestra musicians out of his own pocket, and pocketed the proceeds. The result? “You earn almost nothing with academies here,” he complained in a letter to his father. Mozart often used this formula of self-financing and self-promotion.
Mozart, the Original Music Entrepreneur
In Vienna, between 1784 and 1786, he even organized actual concert seasons “by subscription”: Viennese bourgeois and aristocrats bought a season ticket in advance and with the proceeds Mozart put on concerts where he performed as a solo pianist, playing his piano concertos, followed by symphonies of his own composition. Symphony K. 425, the famous “Linz,” is one such example. Count Thun decided to hastily organize a public music academy in honor of Mozart, who, however, had not brought a single symphony with him.
“On Tuesday, November 4, I will give an academy here, and since I don’t have a single symphony with me, I must write a new one in great haste,” Mozart wrote. That genius, of course, had no problem churning out such a symphony in one go!
Today, it seems so strange to us that classical musicians were entrepreneurs in their own right. And one might ask: is there anything left of all that? Well, what a question! Of course there is.
A little over a year ago, Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour” came to an end: 150 concerts, 10 million tickets sold, $2 billion in revenue, with an absolutely impressive number of musicians, dancers, audio, video, and lighting technicians, and so on. Yes, I would say that Taylor Swift is today’s Mozart. And I’m not saying that to be provocative (or maybe… yes!).
