To my surprise, I really enjoyed the History of Western Music at PA, with musician and composer Samuel Andreyev. I say to my surprise because much as I love music, I am not musically-gifted and worried during the first classes that I would not understand enough. Thankfully, as the name suggested, the actual minutiae of making music were only explained so that we might better understand its development across the centuries. So it was quite pleasurable, as it delved into the role of organized religion in the development of art, and in latter classes, in the status of the artist as we've come to understand it now.
As Andreyev points out in his final lecture, artists by nature like to complain a lot. We like to bemoan fate and woe-be-me it, but as he's quick to add, we live in unparalleled easy times for artists. In some ways, of course. It's still very difficult earning a living as an artist, but from a creative standpoint, at least, we're more free than ever before. Going through the history of music, the course showed us how bound composers were previously to the church (primarily) or wealthy patrons. And if you think writing (music or literature alike) is hard now, just try it when mass printing wasn't a thing. When you toiled over a piece of music only to have it performed once (at best) and then never again, forgotten in some dusty library.
It certainly put things into a new perspective for me a little.
It helped me understand what a privilege it is to be alive right now and not a minute earlier, what fantastic reach potential is at our fingertips. As Andreyev himself concluded, all an artist now needs is Internet access and some kind of recording device - be it a word processing program or a phone camera. I can't, of course, speak for composers, but as a writer, I can write this now and have you reading it across the globe in a minute.
I don't need connections or money, I don't need a wealthy patron or to steer clear from sensitive, unorthodox subjects in my work, lest I be excommunicated. How lucky is that?
Now, being a modern artist, the teacher wasn't a fool. He wasn't trying to dismiss the living hardships that face an artist in 2025. Most creative industries are still littered with nepotism, sexual favoritism and a general disregard for the striving artist. But.
Those industries, also, are a thing of the past. The other day, I watched a documentary on YouTube by some guy who just decided to make it. In my feed, I regularly come across new music recorded in people's bathrooms. And in my Hive feed here, or over on Medium, I get to read fiction pieces or clever, expert articles alike on any topic under the sun from people who never got a Creative Writing degree or got friendly over drinks with so-and-so publisher.
The takeaway from the class, as befits a rundown of the history of Western music was, count your blessings and find a way. There's a great big chunk of world available to you artists at this exact moment. Make the most of it. Find your audience. Open your phone and speak or sing. Make yourself heard, because you can. You still can, and you didn't for a long time, and you might not always.
It was a damn powerful thought to end the year on, and one I'm taking with me into the new one for sure.
Everything you do is going to be hard. But in some ways, it was harder in the past, and others still made it. Take heart.
