Fair enough, Ian. Differing views are fine, but can we try and keep the temperature down?

Every time I say something like that about my work or about the university my composer and friend tells me something like that:

When I was working as a clerk in some education department I was so miserable. I had no time to write anything. When I was too tired to write I would draw musical staff for the next day.
Now he is retired and he can compose what he wants. I think he likes that.
This friend tells me that I have to be grateful for what I have.
(I would prefer to teach in music school, have a grand piano, etc).

I don't know why, but when he starts telling me about working in this office, going there in the morning, how they lived on one salary (they had two children and the wife stayed home) it makes me stop complaining.
They don't know how they survived, but they did some how.
They saw many interesting plays in Dublin.
I should know drama better.

My friend who understand cars always tells me that mechanics are good and that it is better to do what they tell you than to have your car stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

I imagine that was true of many English, Modern Languages, Art, Music and Cinema departments for a long time - as opposed to other disciplines (most of the sciences, Philosophy, History, Sociology, etc.) where the activity does not seem 'secondary' in the same way. But things do seem to be changing as 'practice' is integrated into university departments to a greater extent (this may be very particular to the UK) - certainly in music there is a much greater degree of composition and performance being classified as 'research' as well as being integrated into teaching curricula, than in other times and places where the boundaries between 'theory' and 'practice' were/are stark and relatively immutable. When wearing my musicologist's hat, I sometimes worry that this may be leading to a dilution of the most rigorous and intense theoretical/scholarly practice (and it's not easy to frame the requirements of 'practice as research' in such a manner as to be comparable with other forms of 'pure research', and thus deserving of the same qualifications), but on the whole it seems a development for the good.

Indeed. Some research disciplines are so to speak more equal than others - composition, for example, is supposed to be classed as research, but obtaining a commission for a composition is not considered to be equivalent to obtaining a research grant for musicology or whatever, because it doesn't bring any cashg to the university. So composers are tacitly (sometimes not so tacitly) expected to do both.

An aspect of this situation which worries me more is that research funding for university-based composers is gradually but inexorably taking over the function that commission funding from the Arts Council and similar organisations used to have, in other words conferring an advantage on composers with academic positions and locking subsidies quite literally into the ivory tower.

I don't get what you're saying, in the context of my earlier remarks? Which hoops are you referring to - PhDs that were not originally intended for practical composition or performance? Despite some possible misgivings about such things, I wouldn't like to see them abolished (and have been working a little on and off on how to devise and promote a performance PhD - in theory such a thing already exists, it's more a question of how it's framed and presented so as to attract certain types of potential students). Or do you not think it's a good thing to try and bring about a greater integration between musicology and practical music-making (or the equivalent in other art forms/disciplines)?

A, my main "job" is writing and performing music (at least I call it that). This isn't going to change and I would never wish it to. My secondary job is teaching. My problem is either that it's impossible for me to do this the way I think it ought to be done within the institution where I'm currently doing it, or that "the way I think it ought to be done" is wrong. Either is possible.

Anyway, thank you all (almost all) for cheering me up today. Last night, when I was in something of a rage, I was instructed by nearest & dearest over the phone to take a day off work before I have a stroke. Well, that was the day off work.

For me another worrisome thing there is that the way this system works at the moment seems to me to be the accidental product of a research culture which as far as I can tell has no particular interest in the musical side of things continuing under its benevolent patronage. I remember not so long ago hearing of the possibility of a movement in counting of research points from something publications-based to something much more citations-based. Which would as far as I can see not be all that great for the aforesaid tower.

I see what you mean - a citation-based ratings certainly does have the dangers you mention, also that of favouring research in more 'popular' areas (rather than that into more obscure topics of interest to a smaller number of other scholars). On the other hand, the latter has other benefits for the scholar, not least that there are less others likely to haul them over the coals for any shortcomings in their work.

Perhaps inevitably, composition and performance based 'research' will also favour that work which has a more explicit theoretical underpinning - for example that involving elaborate compositional systems, electronics, or complex aesthetic engagements - whilst that which might loosely be called more 'intuitive' is harder to practice successfully in a university environment. I'm not sure if I know a solution to that, if the incorporation of practical work into universities is to be about more than simply the practitioners continuing to do their practice, which they would do anyhow.