Performer and Composer

   One needs to love a piece of music, if he is to perform the piece well and convincingly. In this sense, being able to love many pieces of music is one of the prerequisite of being a performer. 

   One needs to hate a lot of existing music, if he is to create new music. Or at least he needs to find major faults or lack of something in existing music in order to make something meaningful or new. In this sense, being able to hate many pieces of music is one of the prerequisite of being a composer. Of course, this does not mean that he needs to hate music itself.

   Although performers and composers live in the same world of music, their thinking and reasons to exist are very different. Performers are blessed because their activities itself has values. On the other hands, composers are valued only when his finished works have certain value. Leonard Bernstein, one of the most celebrated musicians in the 20th century, really struggled and regretted until his death as a composer because his concert works have never been accepted as much as his popular style works from movies and musicals. I very much understand how hard it must be for him. This is totally separate from being his success as a conductor (performer). 

   There is a line in Dante’s Inferno from the Divine Comedy that says:

Leave behind every hope, you who enter.

   Of course, this is the line embedded at the gate of hell, but I am sure that if there were a gate of being composer, we could read similar line on it. And I am sure that there would be something wonderful written on the gate of being performer. :)