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I'm on winter break from school and extremely bored. So here's a hypothetical "would you rather:"

Let's say you are a professional musician. Would you rather be a passable, decent-but-not-incredible pianist who is very professionally successful, well recognized and good source of income -OR- an extraordinaly gifted musician who is far lesser known, with only an adequate income?

"I've been rich, and I've been poor. Rich is better."

A quote attributed to quite a few people!

Richer.

Who needs more than an adequate income?! Gentlemen ! Jesus Christ! I would--of course--choose the second option.

I'm both actually, rich and talented....errr not really :p

I would go for second option, adequate income is enough for me and talent is never enough.

I bet Mick Jagger would give a great answer.

Since its hypothetical, I would choose the second option and then choose to win the Lottery!

my teacher is in the 2nd category, but wish he'd have a good source of income. who wouldn't anyway?

I've said it to many people throughout my life. If I become a successful professional performer, I would be much happier succeeding within the 2nd scenario. I would rather that I play with artistic subtlety, nuance, and expression that is recognized by a small group of specialized connoisseurs, as opposed to by playing in a standard way that emphasizes large-scale, marketable "artistry" which is really just about the loud and fast playing that appeals to the relatively uneducated audience. I think each one is equally difficult as far as attaining success (in the first case, you would have to have a truly developed talent and a higher level of craft and expression than is common in most pianists; in the second case, you would have to have the luck and advertisement of a celebrity, complete with contacts and serendipity. Of course, in both situations you would have to have both things, but in each one there is one thing that weighs more heavily than the other, in my opinion). I also would be much happier succeeding as a true artist with a perfectly acceptable income (just enough to live and be comfortable), than as a public's pianist who dumbs himself down to cover a wide range of tastes at once.

And, winning the Lottery wouldn't hurt. Which reminds me, I need to check my Powerball ticket...

I think this is another one of those pointless questions. You're creating a dichotomy where none exists in reality.

Alicia Keys - Olli Mustonen

Hah! That was good (and very clever), Antonius!

If I don't always agree with Mustonen's interpretations, he certainly makes you hear the music from a fresh perspective. BTW, I have a good friend that lives in Finland (near Helsinki) and, alas, he heard Mustonen recently and described the experience as a definite "modified rapture".

I would choose my path to affect the greatest number of people in the most positive way possible.

That being said, the question might as well be reworded: "Would you rather be a tree that falls 'fabulously' in the forest, or a tree that 'just falls' in a city park?"

I would also challenge anyone who choses the second option to explore the idea of being buried in an unmarked grave.

The second option - and as I intend to be cremated Derulux's question is moot.

Derulux may be confusing "lesser known" with unknown ... one passage from Hamlet also comes to mind, but not clearly enough to be quoted verbatim ... or quoted at all ... but you know the passage ... or you get back to college...

Mustonen's different all right ... his style is about as marked as Gould's was ... I often enjoy Mustonen's playing more than Gould's...

Me, I think i would choose the 2nd, i love aviation, and would love to a Pilot, plan to be right now. I still love the piano though!

I suspect that Van Cliburn would have performed more if he had not been from such a wealthy family.

Derulux may be confusing "lesser known" with unknown ... one passage from Hamlet also comes to mind, but not clearly enough to be quoted verbatim ... or quoted at all ... but you know the passage ... or you get back to college...
Ah, Hamlet. Let's go earlier... a paraphrase of what Thetis said to Achilles:
The marking of a grave is one wrought from our own ego. It is a stone, a physical object, a marker that says, "I was here once." It is only human nature to be remembered.

Surely, with the first choice, you will be remembered long after your death. If you reach enough people, you may even become "immortal". But undoubtedly, with the second, you would fall into the category Thetis described for Achilles before he went to Troy. Those who would actively choose to NOT reach a greater number of people should very much be willing to be forgotten.

Most of us, when we truly reflect on the subject, will find that we are afraid of this--to be forgotten--because, in our minds, it implies that our life has meant nothing.

Well, money isn't everything but it's way ahead of whatever's in second place. As previously mentioned, there's a zillion piano players in this town better than me; however, the love and respect of your peers cannot be slid under the broiler and feed your family or buy you a trip to a world-class beach to retrench after a hard year's work...

Maybe that's a good reason to do good deeds anonymously - train your psyche to appreciate the good for goodness' sake, and you'll have no worries about being remembered - you'll just assume the good you did will have ripples throughout time.

Yet Beethoven wasn't willing to be forgotten, nor did he dumb down his music to reach a wider audience ... Reaching a wider audience wouldn't have helped him reach "immortality" ... it was the deeper effect of Beethoven's uncompromising music that did the trick ... along with the persistent support of the true connoisseurs of the 19th century ... Liszt, Wagner, and the other few ... there are always only a few ... as Schopenhauer noted in one of his essays that can be found in the collection "Art of Literature" ... Sometimes these few manage to 'immortalize' the supported artist by effecting that that artist becomes part of the curricula of most schools and colleges ... Sometimes they don't manage the feat ... the artist's work will live on with as much true vigour either way, if the always relatively small circle of shifting connoisseurs (shifting as they die and are replaced) manage to keep it available without the help of schools and masses in this mass-market democracy of a world (surprisingly often they do manage it ... I'm confident that Harry Potter--now read by everybody, not just kids--will have been forgotten for centuries, when R. A. Lafferty is still being read by those who appreciate the best in literature ... They wrote for different markets, Lafferty and that woman (who I suppose still writes): Lafferty wrote for the one that will last, and the one that will, by the way, outnumber the other market once, if our planet hasn't turned into Venus before the numbers have accumulated sufficiently--not that it would matter, just a by-the-way for those who care about numbers).

Perhaps it would be of help for a person to reflect that were the memory of him to outlast his descendants, it wouldn't outlast humanity, which, in turn, has to go sooner or later, and it doesn't matter if it goes sooner, inasmuch as everything will then be as it was before there was life, anyway... Of course, it might be a good idea not to reflect much, and live instead... Dumbing down is not living, it's snivelling compromise, it's being a shell inhabited by ghosts...