Musical Composition

Music compositions are not constructed in a vacuum, but fill a cultural role in society. Composers provide music for many activities, including entertainment, social ritual, religious enlightenment, educational study, accompaniment to drama, and healing, both emotional and physical. These artificial social divisions are of course not inflexible, as music written for entertainment can be used in a learning environment and religious music has entered the concert hall. Entertainment music includes the immense diversity of Western art music composed for the concert performance, from Gustav Mahler's (1860–1911) Symphony of a Thousand to John Cage's short silent work 4'33", and also incorporates the many uses of background music. Music compositions used for religious purposes are diverse, including chant from all religions (most without attribution), hymns, spirituals (also without attribution), complex polyphony for Christian services, both Catholic and Protestant, and the mbira compositions improvised upon by Shona performers to aid in spirit possession ceremonies, or bira. Educational music is seldom attributed to specific composers, despite its universal nature and scope—from nursery chants and simple teaching songs to the extensive historical sagas found in eastern Europe consisting of thousands of stanzas. Music for drama is subsidiary to text and plot, and includes incidental music for plays, Broadway show tunes, opera, and Japanese Noh theater. Composition is often altered through improvisation during performances of folk music, jazz, many types of non-Western music, and Western art music of the Baroque and Classical periods.

Composers have a societal function as well. In many eras and cultures, composers have a well-defined job—providing music to those who can pay within the limitations set by the occasion. The importance of a composer's work, however, is directly dependent on the distinction between composer and performer, so in cultures that focus on improvisation, composers have little to no place. For example, in religious chant and much folk music, composers are unspecified and therefore receive no recognition. In the twenty-first century, however, composers have a clear and important place in Western society—Beethoven's name makes the comic pages in Peanuts, and Mozart is the subject of the award-winning movie and musical Amadeus.

Despite the common perception that musical skill or talent is the major factor in their success, composers have attained high positions as artists because of social factors such as rank, race, political connections, heredity, and gender. Until the twentieth century, for example, women were not accepted as major composers of Western art music. In south India, the Brahman caste is traditionally associated with music. Composers' financial status in the West is determined by payments from performers and organizations for new works, sales of music of existing works and fees from concert performances, and royalties from recordings and broadcasts on radio. Composers also teach and perform music—passing on the ability to compose and perform their works to the next generation.