Quarter Notes and Bank Notes: The Economics of Music Composition in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

(Princeton University Press) This book examines the political, intellectual, and economic roots of the shift from patronage to a freelance market in the field of music composition. Scherer describes the cultural “arms race” among noble courts, the spread of private concert halls and opera houses, and changing trends in how composers acquired their skills and earned a living. Scherer is Aetna Professor Emeritus at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and Lecturer at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton.