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Obviously the well trained engineer with a strong professional background in structural engineering is going to build a more sophisticated, complex, and safe bridge, but it's the eccentric engineer who builds the florescent green bridge with swing sets hanging from the underside and trees planted upon each pillar who's bridge will be remembered.
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You have to remember, though, that there's always money involved. If you're hired to design a bridge, you design it the way they want it designed and you do it within the budget constraints they hand you. Good luck getting someone to pay for a fluorescent green bridge with swings. In classical music back in the day, it was no different. As a composer, you had to find a patron--some king or duke or prince--who hired you to compose and you composed what he told you to compose because he was paying your bills. And if he didn't like what you did, he trashed it and that was that. If he said to remove the love song from the opera he commissioned and you felt it was the very centerpiece of the thing--too bad--you took it out because he was paying for it. Maybe future generations would have agreed with you but they'll never hear it and that might cause some to even say you weren't all that great but it wasn't your call. You did what you were paid to do.
You take that bass I had commissioned if you saw that thread I posted--the guy who built it loved doing it because I gave him the chance to really stretch his creativity. But I also had to pay for it. I paid substantially more than a normal bass would have cost (and they ain't cheap). People might look at most of his basses and say there is nothing remarkable about them--they sound good but the designs were pretty generic. But that's not his fault, he designed what he was commissioned to design because his clients were not willing to pay for extra. But my bass would show those people they were wrong about him. If I had gone to someone else, they would have rated that person as superior to my luthier but that's not necessarily the case--it's more dependent on who the benefactors are. Lots of factors involved.
To show you how good some of these guys in the music biz are, here is a Bernard Hermann score for the first Twilight Zone episode. The thing is, this is not the original music but a later recreation as the original score is lost. But you can't tell the difference, it sounds exactly same. The director used Hermann's original charts, sheet music and notes to recreate it (I have it on CD and it's all explained in the liner notes). That's way more than I can do. I even know musical directors from colleges in the area who couldn't do it and they are WAY more skilled than I am. Just shows you how good some of these people are.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaBDx7S5pao