Composers may wish to avert their eyes.
Any artist is welcome to submit recent works to the annual Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Many thousands of works are submitted.
I read the catalogue of one random year (2014) in which 1,262 works were selected for display. I selected one random room (VII).
In that room were hung 129 works, with a total asking price of £1,375,076.
That comes to about £10,660 for the average work of art. The RAA takes a 30% commission, so the average take-home pay might be £7,462.
Can you name 1,262 composers who have each earned £7,462 this year for their compositions?
All right, all right, let's assume that only a third of the art works got sold. So we'll re-state the challenge:
Can you name 420 composers who have each earned £7,462 this year for their compositions?
Maybe you want to assume that the ratio of hung works to artists was 2 to 1? Fine, the challenge then becomes:
Can you name 210 composers who have each earned £14,924 this year for their compositions?
The best composer America has ever produced, in my opinion, was Elliott Carter. He wrote in 1970 that for full orchestra scores he was being paid about 25 cents per hour of his time.