The Socialization of an Artist: The American Composer

A NY society may be thought of as a network of roles which must be manned continuously if the work of the society is to get done. But some of these roles are more necessary or important to the society than others. If the society is to survive, these more necessary, or important, roles must receive a sufficient supply of adequate recruits from every generation. In some societies, as has been pointed out by Linton, such a supply is ensured by ascribing roles (or statuses) on the basis of cultural patterns or biological facts.' Thus, the fact that one is born the first son of a king may mean that he gets to be king in the next generation. Other societies leave the supplying of recruits for even the more necessary roles to the individual's conscious choice and successful effort. This emphasis upon achieving roles is characteristic of our own society. But the emphasis upon achievement in a society does not seem to mean that selective processes do not operate to train individuals for, and direct them to, necessary roles. For example, Merton has pointed out that certain selective processes may be operative before the individual makes the conscious choice and successful effort to achieve a bureaucratic role.2 Thus, in a sort of backhanded way, a society still may guarantee enough recruits to get its work done. This paper attempts to show that even in one of the least necessary vocational roles in our society-the composition of serious music-such forces operate in recruiting personnel. Two aggregates of interviewed individuals have provided primary data for this paper: (1) 23 jurydetermined "most successful" American-born composers of serious music; (2) 24 advanced students of musical composition selected by the heads of three outstanding American schools of music.3 The mean age of the composers is 51; the students, 31. There is one female in each aggregate-a representation which does not seem disproportionate when compared, impressionistically, with the respective universes. The two aggregates under study obviously represent two stages of achievement. The students are on the verge of entering the vocation of composition. Probably, their ranks will thin in the process of becoming professionals. And it would seem that only a fraction of the professionals will be termed "most successful" (the jury determination of the composers under study). But to see these two aggregates as representing different stages of success in achievement of the compositional role, it must be assumed that the situational characteristics of the role are the same for both despite the difference of one "professional generation" (in this case, 20 years). An analysis of all available materials indicates that though there are some slight differences (the amount of public funds available to finance musical training is one), the broad characteristics of the compositional role outlined below apply to both aggregates. Other reservations to the study concern the techniques of observation, the representativeness of data, and the method of experiment. The techniques of observation are, admittedly, crude, but this was made necessary by the exploratory nature of the project and the desire to secure reliable data. There is no way of determining how representative these aggregates are of their universes. Consequently, the term American composer, when used here, can apply only to those composers in the aggregate under study. Finally, the experimental Method of Agreement used cannot hope to delineate, precisely, selective or causal