What Do Composers Do All Day?, Composition as a career Options

[all ears]

So what do composers do all day...according to one Japanese site, options go something like this:

* NEET
* Night watchman
* Locked ward
* Demonstrator for major piano/keyboard manufacturer
* School teacher
* Private tutor for other hopefuls
* Agoraphobic
* Assistant to successful and famous composer
* Further study overseas
* Part-time "day jobs
* Starving on occasional arrangement jobs
* Compose soundtracks for adult videos
* Work hard and eventually get a part-time teaching contract at a university..

But seriously, what do people who major in composition these days actually DO after they graduate?

[Maizie]

Completely off topic, sort-of...

I was in the British Library last week, and they have a gallery of 'famous' documents you can look at, or documents written by famous people, etc. Including some manuscript items, so you can go and look at what Handel drew semiquavers like (wonkly) and so on.

Anyway, they have a sheet on display by Elgar, when he was commissioned by the BBC to write his third symphony. And the A4-ish sheet of paper has a title at the top, two staves with a couple of bars of music on, and then on the next stave the squggly notes turn in to doodles of people and there are a couple of staves entirely covered in little people caricatures.

So, apparently, what composers do all day is get bored and doodle (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[fsharpminor]

Surely they just compose ??

[all ears]

just compose ??

Yes, but compose what? The site I mentioned above was saying that the "commission" basis for work seemed to have become very rare (in Japan)....I gather that David mostly submits proposals to publishers?

Talking of commissions, it seems that with the internet, the "write me something special to have performed at my wedding" model should be thriving, but I gather it isn't?

[des]

One of my lecturers is a composer, he spends about an hour a day on academic stuff then just sits in his office on sibelius for the rest of the day! sometimes the rest of the night too...