Part three--the Golden Age of Music

In this episode, we will explore the concept of patronage, which is not what you are thinking. Your parent, SO, therapist, etc., says "Why, yes! I do see the pink polka-dotted elephants!", is patronizing. Patronage is the concept we discussed in part two, when the rich people paid the minstrels and wandering musicians to sing and play for them and...what do you mean you haven't read part two?! *sigh* Ok. Go ahead, I'll wait.....

Yes I went there. That's what you get for slackin"!

Anyway to continue our discussion, patronage became quite popular among the gentry of the day (1700's to around the early 1800's) and at the peak of the fad almost everyone among the landed gentry was a patron of some artist or another not just musicians! Getting a patron became the dream of parents with musically talented children and for good reason. If a child showed remarkable talent early enough, then all of their schooling would be paid by the patron not to mention room and board, clothing, food, everything! The hard part was actually getting a patron. Most often the child would have to make do with an improvised instrument and find a place to play or sing that lots of rich people would frequent.

Hmm, this is kinda familiar. Oh I got it! Finding a patron back then was alot like paying your dues in the music industry now! So there are lots of ways that music has evolved but there are more that is really hasn't. But I digress...

After finding a patron a child was usually set for life (unless there was some fatal accident that left them incapable of doing what the patron was paying them for.)  Eventually this practice evolved and the patrons paid the musicians to do nothing but make/write/play music. The artist would show up at balls and accept invitations to attend parties, in a purely social capacity sometimes and at others in a professional capacity. Some of these musicians threw off the shackles of their patrons, if they were the jealous type that is, and became musical mercenaries, plying their trade to the highest bidder.

Because of this Golden Age of Music, when people were paid to be original and imaginative, (and apparently wear goofy looking wigs) we have many, many changes to the world of music from the Middle Ages. There were many new instruments invented, some that became popular and haven't changed from their inventor's original,

 and some that we look at now and go "WTF?!"

We also have some of the most beautiful music the world has ever known and some of the most powerful. But music was at this point still available to the masses because other less well known musicians could learn to play what was written by the masters and spread the joyful sound to the less fortunate.

In the next blog we will see the conception of the evil money making machine called the music industry.